energy consumption and economic growth nexus in tanzania an ardl bounds testing approach abstract in this paper we examine the intertemporal causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in tanzania during the period of 1971 2006 unlike the majority of the previous studies we employ the newly developed autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach by pesaran et al 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 289 326 to examine this linkage we also use two proxies of energy consumption namely total energy consumption per capita and electricity consumption per capita the results of the bounds test show that there is a stable long run relationship between each of the proxies of energy consumption and economic growth the results of the causality test on the other hand show that there is a unidirectional causal flow from total energy consumption to economic growth and a prima facie causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth overall the study finds that energy consumption spurs economic growth in tanzania

impacts of biodiesel production on croatian economy the aim of this paper is to assess the direct and indirect impacts on a national economy from biodiesel rapeseed methyl ester rme production using input output i o analysis biodiesel development in croatia is used as a case study for croatia as for many other countries in europe biodiesel is a new activity not included in the existing i o sectoral accounts for this reason the i o table has to be modified accordingly before being able to quantify the effect of an exogenous demand for biodiesel impacts in terms of output income and employment lead to the conclusion that biodiesel production could have significant positive net impact on the croatian economy despite the high level of subsidies for rapeseed growing

household fuelwood demand and supply in nepal s tarai and mid hills choice between cash outlays and labor opportunity abstract subsistence households are a leading source of deforestation and their consumption of fuelwood in particular is important in many developing countries yet the empirical economic examinations of fuelwood consumption are sparse particularly for rural areas where the deforestation occurs and we would argue that forest policy is often designed without a good understanding of the potential responses of subsistence households to the new policy this paper addresses these issues with household evidence from the two major populated regions of nepal market prices labor opportunities the availability of substitutes and measure of access to the basic resource are the most reliable predictive variables for fuelwood consumption and production there are however regional differences and important distinctions between the elasticities of fuelwood collecting or purchasing households with respect to these predictive variables the difference between collecting and purchasing households is notable it recommends forestry policies that target the labor opportunity and the physical resource in regions where collecting households dominate and policies that affect the fuelwood market itself in regions where purchasing households are important a second interesting finding is that fuelwood is relatively scarcer prices are higher in the mid hills and both collecting and purchasing households in this region are beginning to respond to deforestation by using their own land for fuelwood production

the causal relationship between biomass energy use and economic growth in the united states abstract this paper examines the causality relations among economic growth biomass energy consumption employment and capital in the u s between 1961 and 2011 using the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration long and short run relationships among the variables are estimated long run and short run coefficients indicate that biomass energy consumption has positive impacts on economic growth for the u s in addition the granger causality results illustrate that unidirectional causality from biomass energy consumption to real gdp supportive of the growth hypothesis

the fuelwood market in greece an empirical approach abstract wood has been since ancient times the basic household heating medium nowadays wood remains the primary energy source in rural areas of developing countries mainly in africa in greece the domestic demand of fuelwood is relied mainly on the fuelwood domestic supply especially during the post war period the domestic supply satisfies adequately the domestic demand eliminating the role of imports the present study surveys the long run relationship between the fuelwood prices of different forest species in order to determine the role of the special market conditions in their price formation in addition the error correction model is estimated in order to survey the direction of the granger causality among the prices of the fuelwood forest species the implementation of the impulse response analysis and the variance decomposition confirmed that coniferous and beech fuelwood producer price may account for the volatility of the oak fuelwood producer price this result may contribute greatly to the conservation of oak forest an important carbon storage forest ecosystem

electricity consumption and economic growth in burkina faso a cointegration analysis abstract this study empirically establishes the direction of causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in burkina faso for the period 1968 2003 the bounds test yields evidence of cointegration between electricity consumption gdp and capital formation when electricity consumption and gdp are used as dependent variable causality results indicate that there is no significant causal relationship between electricity consumption and investment estimates however detect in the long run a bidirectional causal relationship between electricity use and real gdp there is also evidence of a positive feedback causal relationship between gdp and capital formation burkina faso is therefore an energy dependent country it is also a country in which electricity consumption is growing with the level of income all of this shows that electricity is a significant factor in socio economic development in burkina faso as such energy policy must be implemented to ensure that electricity generates fewer potential negative impacts

biofuel market and carbon modeling to analyse french biofuel policy abstract in order to comply with european union objectives france has set up an ambitious biofuel plan this plan is evaluated on the basis of two criteria tax exemption on fossil fuels and greenhouse gases ghg emission savings an economic marginal analysis and a life cycle assessment lca are provided using a coupling procedure between a partial agro industrial equilibrium model and an oil refining optimization model thus we determine the minimum tax exemption needed to place on the market a targeted quantity of biofuel by deducting the biofuel long run marginal revenue of refiners from the agro industrial marginal cost of biofuel production with a clear view of the refiner s economic choices total pollutant emissions along the biofuel production chains are quantified and used to feed an lca the french biofuel plan is evaluated for 2008 2010 and 2012 using prospective scenarios results suggest that biofuel competitiveness depends on crude oil prices and demand for petroleum products and consequently these parameters should be taken into account by authorities to modulate biofuel tax exemption lca results show that biofuel production and use from seed to wheel would facilitate the french government s compliance with its plan climat objectives by reducing up to 5 ghg emissions in the french road transport sector by 2010

the fuelwood consumption in a rural area of greece abstract renewable energy sources are called to play an important role as regards the increasing energy demand worldwide in particular the need to address the problems created by the oil crises has distinguished the importance of renewable energy in economic development biomass is recognized as one of the most important renewable energy sources that can contribute decisively to the energy needs of modern society and the environment protection in both industrialized and developing countries a very important source of biomass is wood and especially fuelwood in greece because of the economic crisis there is an increased consumption of fuelwood especially in rural areas in this paper using a questionnaire and descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis we explore the determinants of fuelwood consumption in a rural area in order to propose appropriate policies for the efficient supply of the market

application of fuzzy q learning for electricity market modeling by considering renewable power penetration abstract by increasing renewable resource penetration the need for developing fast and reliable market modeling approaches in the presence of these resources has gained greater attention in this paper fuzzy q learning approach is proposed for hour ahead electricity market modeling in presence of renewable resources the proposed approach is implemented on ieee 30 bus test system the effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated and compared with q learning approach for both normal and stressful cases simulation results indicate that the proposed approach is able to model electricity market for a range of continuous multidimensional renewable power penetration in considerably less iterations compared with q learning approach moreover the probability of finding nash equilibrium is becoming higher by using fuzzy q learning approach while the other indices such as average social welfare average of locational marginal prices lmps and average standard of deviation of lmps do not change considerably

incorporating data and theory in roundwood supply and demand estimation this paper examines the aggregate pulpwood market in finland using the econometric approach advocated by hendry neale and joba and spanos who propose a statistically consistent way to estimate simultaneous equations models private nonindustrial timber supply is estimated along with a three input demand function capital labor and wood results indicate that short term supply reacts positively to an increase in stumpage price while the long term total elasticity is negative and small in absolute terms capital is a complement while labor is a substitute for roundwood input dynamic adjustment process substitution and cross price effects and capital market imperfections implied by the present study differ from those obtained in previous research

optimal indirect and capital taxation we consider an environment in which agents skills are private information and follow arbitrary stochastic processes we prove that it is typically pareto optimal for an individual s marginal benefit of investing in capital to exceed his marginal cost of doing so this wedge is consistent with a positive tax on capital income we also prove that it is pareto optimal for the marginal rate of substitution between any two consumption goods to equal the marginal rate of transformation this lack of a wedge is consistent with uniform taxation of consumption goods within a period

did oil prices trigger an innovation burst in biofuels abstract this paper documents an innovation burst in biofuels in the second half of the years 2000s and empirically confronts it to the massive variations of oil prices between 1985 and 2009 our results show that increases in oil prices greatly spurred innovation in biofuels the elasticity of the number of patent families in biofuels with respect to oil prices is greater than 1 and holds both at the country and at the firm level we find that the effect cannot be caused by the contagion of oil prices to cereal prices an important input for biofuels similarly we find that the effect is very specific no such effect is found substituting oil prices with electricity prices or substituting biofuel patents with biotechnology or environment related patents delving into applicants sectors suggests that specialized biofuel firms were less responsive to oil price variations than diversified firms

what is happening to the impact of financial deepening on economic growth i introduction among the strongest elements of the modern economists canon is that financial sector development has a significant impact on economic growth a generation ago economists like goldsmith 1969 1 and mckinnon 1973 began to draw attention to the benefits of financial structure development and financial liberalization by the early 1990s mckinnon 1991 12 could write with confidence that now however there is widespread agreement that flows of saving and investment should be voluntary and significantly decentralized in an open capital market at close to equilibrium interest rates since the 1990s a burgeoning empirical literature has illustrated the importance of financial sector development for economic growth despite the growing consensus however we find that the link between finance and growth in cross country panel data has weakened considerably over time at the very time that financial sector liberalization spread around the world the influence of financial sector development on economic growth has diminished the seminal empirical work that established the growth finance link is king and levine 1993 which extended the cross country framework introduced in barro 1991 by adding financial variables such as the ratios of liquid liabilities or claims on the private sector to gross domestic product gdp to the standard growth regression they found a robust positive and statistically significant relationship between initial financial conditions and subsequent growth in real per capita incomes for a cross section of about 80 countries in the subsequent decade numerous empirical studies expanded upon this using both cross country and panel data sets for the post 1960 period 2 in this paper we reexamine the core cross country panel result and find that the impact of financial deepening on growth is not as strong with more recent data as it appeared in the original panel studies with data for the period from 1960 to 1989 we consider various explanations for this clear shift first we suggest that financial deepening has a positive effect on growth if not done to excess rapid and excessive deepening as manifested in a credit boom can be problematic even in the most developed markets because it can both weaken the banking system and bring inflationary pressures we test this hypothesis by looking at the finance growth nexus among countries that have or have not experienced financial sector crises we find that once crisis episodes are removed the finance growth relationship remains intact its weakening over time thus seems to be a result of an increased incidence of crises in later years our second and related hypothesis is that the widespread liberalization of financial markets that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s made financial deepening less effective this is reminiscent of robert lucas s 1975 critique of econometric policy evaluation advanced three decades ago policies that have promoted and or forced increases in financial depth over the past two decades may have altered the basic structural relationship between finance and growth this could occur if the observed benefits of financial deepening led many countries to liberalize before the associated legal and regulatory institutions were sufficiently well developed as a consequence the impact of financial deepening on growth would become smaller our evidence does not indicate that recent liberalizations are responsible for the breakdown of the finance growth link however there may be an indirect link as premature financial development can lead to financial crises that have real effects third we examine the role of global equity markets that have grown in importance and prominence in the years over which the finance growth relationship disappeared however we do not find any evidence to suggest that equity market growth has substituted for the role of credit markets and banks in particular

the economics of forest based biomass supply this paper undertakes a preliminary exploration into the economics of generating energy from forest based biomass the study assesses the feasibility of greatly expanding the share of total energy consumption in developed countries that could be economically satisfied by biomass without fiscal subsidy support given current technologies and with plausible potential technologies ten years into the future the study briefly considers the environmental effects of biomass usage compared with fossil fuels since wood has uses both as fuelwood for energy and as industrial wood for wood products the comparative economics of these alternative uses are examined

how does petroleum price and corn yield volatility affect ethanol markets with and without an ethanol use mandate the recent increase in ethanol use in the us strengthens and changes the nature of links between agricultural and energy markets here we explore the interaction of market volatility and the scope for policy to affect this interaction with a focus on how corn yields and petroleum prices affect ethanol prices mandates associated with new us energy legislation may intervene in these links in the medium term future we simulate stochastically a structural model that represents these markets and that includes mandates in order to assess how shocks to corn or oil markets can affect ethanol price and use we estimate that the mandate makes ethanol producer prices more sensitive to corn yields and less sensitive to changes in petroleum prices overall we note a discontinuity in these links that is caused by the mandate ethanol use can exceed the mandate if petroleum prices and corn yields are high enough but the mandate limits downside adjustments in ethanol use to low petroleum prices or corn yields

political economy of mechanisms we study the optimal mirrlees taxation problem in a dynamic economy in contrast to the standard approach where the taxation mechanism is operated by a benevolent planner with full commitment power we focus on economies in which policy decisions are made by self interested politicians who cannot commit to policies the society controls politicians using elections we show that the provision of incentives to politicians can be partly separated from redistribution across agents and that political economy constraints can be modeled as introducing additional aggregate distortions in the dynamic mirrlees problem we provide conditions under which the political economy distortions persist or disappear in the long run if the politicians are as patient as the agents the best sustainable mechanism leads to an asymptotic allocation where the aggregate distortions arising from political economy disappear in contrast when politicians are less patient than the citizens positive aggregate labor and capital taxes remain even asymptotically we conclude by providing a brief comparison of centralized

estimation on oil demand and oil saving potential of china s road transport sector national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013 national natural science foundation of china 71203186 fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221051 national science foundation for disting

planning under incomplete information and the ratchet effect abstract central planning of production is usually performed under asymmetric information the firm in general has more information about its productive possibilities than the central planner from now on for short cp this justifies the use of incentives schemes in which the cp does not directly fix activity levels casual observation of such existing schemes suggests that the time dimensions is crucial for their working typically the cp revises the incentive scheme over time to take into account the information provided by the firm s performance managers of centrally planned economies as well as economists have long recognized that this revision induces firms to underproduce in order to avoid demanding schemes in the future this is the ratchet effect it is purpose of the present paper to study the ratchet effect under the non commitment assumption which we believe to be more realistic the inadequacy of conceptual tools made if difficult in the past to consider such an assumption now basic research on dynamic games with incomplete information recently resulted in new ideas which look particularly relevant for a theoretical analysis of the problem

computing multi period information constrained optima this paper presents a detailed theoretical derivation and justification for methods used to compute solutions to a multi period including infinite period continuum agent unobservedeffort economy actual solutions are displayed illustrating cross sectional variability in consumption and labour effort in the population at a point in time and variability for a typical individual over time the optimal tradeoff between insurance and incentives is explored and the issue of excess variability is addressed by consideration of the analogue full information economy and various restricted contracting regimes

the evolution of financial intermediation evidence from 19th century ontario microdata microdata for ontario decedents in 1892 and 1902 is analyzed to help explain the dramatic growth of the canadian banking system in the late 19th century combining data from probate inventories with census data at the township level we find that the expansion of deposit banking happened at the extensive rather than intensive margin and was correlated with the expansion of the branch network of the banking system although we cannot assign causation wealth and urbanization help to explain the growth of deposit banking but the significance of a dummy variable for 1902 points to other time correlated factors such as innovations in transportation and financial innovations that lowered costs and facilitated access to banking services resume l evolution de l intermediation financiere resultats a partir de micro donnees pour l ontario au 19e siecle les auteurs analysent les micro donnees pour les personnes decedees en ontario en 1892 et en 1902 pour tenter d expliquer la croissance dramatique du systeme bancaire canadien a la fin du 19 siecle en combinant des donnees provenant d inventaires apres deces avec celles de recensements au niveau des cantons on decouvre que l expansion du systeme bancaire va se produire a la marge extensive plutot qu a la marge intensive et etre co reliee a l expansion du reseau de succursales du systeme bancaire encore qu on ne puisse assigner un lien de causalite richesse et urbanisation aident a expliquer la croissance des banques de depots mais la signification de la variable fictive pour 1902 pointe vers des facteurs comme l innovation dans le transport et l innovation financiere qui ont reduit les couts et facilite l acces aux services bancaires

redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model abstract we investigate the redistributive potential of capital taxation in an intertemporal maximizing model of capital formation first even unanticipated redistributive capital taxation is severely limited in its effectiveness since it depresses wages second under any convergent redistributive tax policy which maximizes a paretian social objective the capital income tax will converge to zero independent of the factor supply elasticities these results are independent of workers holdings of capital

dissemination of cooking energy alternatives in india a review abstract energy requirements for cooking account for 36 of total primary energy consumption in india the rural and urban populaces depend mainly on non commercial fuels to meet their energy needs diverse urban growth patterns have led to structural changes in economy and have important ramifications on energy consumption in household sector it is observed that india follows income based ladder starting with fuelwood and ending with sophisticated fuels like liquefied petroleum gas lpg and electricity this paper discusses cooking energy dissemination in the country with an objective of understanding the underlying socioeconomic factors governing the utilization of various fuels energy carriers in cooking the diffusion of renewable energy devices is observed to be far below their estimated potential policy interventions required for better dissemination of renewable energy based devices are also discussed

political economy of intermediate goods taxation we generalize the diamond mirrlees production efficiency theorem that there should be no taxes on sectors producing pure intermediate goods to an environment with political economy constraints in our economy allocations and taxation are decided by self interested politicians without the power to commit to future policies the diamond mirrlees production efficiency result holds even when political economy constraints introduce distortions on labor supply and capital accumulation jel h11 h21 e61 p16

the impact of different energy policy options on feedstock price and land demand for maize silage the case of biogas in lombardy abstract the growing demand of maize silage for biogas production in northern italy has triggered an intense debate concerning land rents maize prices and their possible negative consequences on important agri food chains the aim of this work is to quantify the extent to which the rapid spread of biogas raised the maize price at regional level increasing the demand of land for energy crops for this purpose we applied a partial equilibrium framework simulating the agricultural sector and the biogas industry in lombardy under two alternative schemes of subsidization policy results show that policy measures implemented in 2013 reducing the average subsidy per kwh may contribute to enforce the complementarity of the sector with agri food chains decreasing the competition between energy and non energy uses compared to the old scheme maize demand for biogas would decrease lessening the market clearing price as well as feed opportunity cost for livestock sector and reducing land demand for energy purposes

competition between biomass and food production in the presence of energy policies a partial equilibrium analysis abstract bioenergy has several advantages over fossil fuels for example it delivers energy at low net co 2 emission levels and contributes to sustaining future energy supplies the concern however is that an increase in biomass plantations will reduce the land available for agricultural production the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of taxing conventional electricity production or carbon use in combination with subsidizing biomass or bioelectricity production on the production of biomass and agricultural commodities and on the share of bioelectricity in total electricity production we develop a partial equilibrium model to illustrate some of the potential impacts of these policies on greenhouse gas emissions land reallocation and food and electricity prices as a case study we use data for poland which has a large potential for biomass production results show that combining a conventional electricity tax of 10 with a 25 subsidy on bioelectricity production increases the share of bioelectricity to 7 5 under this policy regime biomass as well as agricultural production increase a carbon tax that gives equal net tax yields has better environmental results however at higher welfare costs and resulting in 1 to 4 reduction of agricultural production

short term loans and long term relationships relationship lending in early america recent banking theory holds that durable firm bank relationships are valuable to both parties this paper uses the contract specific loan records of a 19th century u s bank and shows that firms with extended relationships received three principal benefits first firmswith extended relationships had lower credit costs second long term customers provided fewer personal guarantees which were an alternative to collateral third long term customers were more likely to have loan terms renegotiated during a credit crunch these findings support theories that banks realize cost advantages through the use of proprietary information

the relationship among energy prices and energy consumption in china the pricing mechanism for energy is not in line with the international standards because the energy prices are controlled by the government partly or completely in china chinese government made a lot of efforts to improve the pricing mechanism for energy the relations between chinese energy prices and energy consumption are the foundations to reform the mechanism in this paper the relations between chinese energy consumption and energy prices are researched by cointegration equations impulse response functions granger causality and variance decomposition the cointegration relations among energy prices energy consumption and economic outputs show that higher energy price will decrease energy consumption in chinese industrial sectors but will not reduce the economic output in the long run the cointegration relation between energy price and household energy consumption shows that higher energy price will decrease household energy consumption in the long run and increase it in the short run so chinese government should deepen the reform of pricing mechanism for energy and increase the energy prices reasonably to save energy

the benefits of commitment to a currency peg aggregate lessons from the regional effects of the 1896 u s presidential election we develop a method to use the one time cross sectional impact of a cleanly identified shock to identify its aggregate impact through the use of a factor model we apply this methodology to evaluat

on the size of u s government political economy in the neoclassical growth model we study a dynamic version of meltzer and richard s median voter model of the size of government taxes are proportional to total income and they are redistributed as equal lump sum transfers voting takes place periodically over time and each consumer votes for the tax rate that maximizes his equilibrium utility we calibrate the model to u s data key elements in the calibration are the income and wealth distribution and the parameters governing the leisure and consumption choices the total size of transfers predicted by our political economy model is quite close to the size of transfers in the data

renewable energy consumption and economic growth evidence from a panel of oecd countries abstract this study examines the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of twenty oecd countries over the period 1985 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship the heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run

reduction potential of co2 emissions in china s transport industry newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1311 19436 ministry of education 10 jbg 013 national social science foundation of china 71203186

effects of corn stover year to year supply variability and market structure on biomass utilization and cost the availability of corn stover can vary considerably from year to year in a region due to annual changes in yield and area planted with corn such variations interacting with biomass market structures can affect biomass cost and utilization rate this study first characterizes year to year variations in corn stover supply for the us in general and for selected major us corn producing counties in particular there have been 20 30 year to year variations in stover supply in the us since 1975 game theoretic analysis is then applied to examining corn stover utilization rate and production cost in three market structures the analysis reveals that a free market structure will take the form of oligopoly oligopsony where large stover supply variations will expose both biorefineries and farmers to significant price volatility price equilibrium will shift significantly from year to year of the three market structures analysed the derisked supply market structure will be most favorable to biorefineries and farmers under this structure biorefineries will maintain a stover supply region that is based on derisked lower than average yield density to buffer for the supply uncertainty associated with annual variations this market structure results in significantly less volatility in biomass cost while on average only 63 of collectable stover will be used for biofuel production our findings suggest that year to year variation in corn stover availability will increase feedstock cost and reduce its potential for biofuel production

suspension of payments bank failures and the nonbank public s losses abstract we present evidence on the effects of suspensions of payments from an episode that is close to a controlled experiment for examining those effects in 1861 about 44 of the banks in wisconsin closed 81 of the banks in illinois closed and noteholders suffered substantial losses the historical record suggests that an effective suspension of payments in wisconsin but not in illinois may explain the difference our statistical evidence indicates that the suspension of payments increased the probability of a bank remaining open by about 21 percentage points and decreased noteholders losses by about 14 cents per dollar

malaysian biofuels industry experience a socio political analysis of the commercial environment this study examines the jatropha adoption process in sarawak malaysia a land rich in biological and ethnic diversity but highly impoverished attempts to alleviate poverty through oil palm plantation development resulted in internationally condemned destruction of peat lands sarawak subsequently turned to the inedible low input exportable biodiesel feedstock jatropha this case study argues that jatropha is unlikely to make more significant socio economic contributions than oil palm or other cash crops the analysis suggests that companies use social capital to aggressively expand their jatropha business among the native population in order to gain access to native customary lands which are often underproductive peat lands global biofuels sector development dynamics are examined through the lenses of political economics and social agricultural and energy studies the research finds that farmers 39 decisions to participate in the biofuels global value chain may result in negative income effects household food security reduction and biodiversity loss from peat land destruction the paper concludes with a proposal for an alternative approach to evaluate both social and financial drivers in order to prevent the negative effects of biofuel based agribusiness on human and environmental systems c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

energy consumption and income a semiparametric panel data analysis this paper proposes a semiparametric analysis for the study of the relationship between energy consumption per capita and income per capita for an international panel dataset it shows little evidence for the existence of an environmental kuznets curve for energy consumption energy consumption increases with income for a majority of countries and then stabilizes for very high income countries neither changes in energy structure nor macroeconomic cycle technological change have significant effect on energy consumption

how do banks adjust to changing input prices a dynamic analysis of u s commercial banks before and after the crisis abstract the 2000 2013 period was characterized by substantial regulatory monetary and technological change especially after the onset of the global financial crisis this study assesses the total impact of these policy shifts and technological changes on u s commercial banks short run and long run substitution elasticities an endogenous break test divides the sample into a pre crisis period and a post crisis period during the former period banks inputs tend to be inelastic substitutes after the onset of the crisis particularly the long run substitutability of most input factors decreases to even lower levels due to changes in both cost technology and economic conditions at the same time banks response to input price changes becomes more sluggish hence especially after the onset of the crisis banks have little flexibility regarding input factor usage and are thus sensitive to input price changes from a cost perspective

assessing non marginal variations with consequential lca application to european energy sector many policies are being designed to mitigate impacts of human activities on the environment an environmental evaluation of these policies should include assessments of their impacts according to all known environmental impacts moreover because policies may indirectly affect regions or economic sectors not initially targeted by these policies indirect environmental consequences should be included in environmental balances life cycle analysis lca is a holistic method made to assess environmental impacts caused by products or services according to various environmental damage categories however the ability of lca to model environmental consequences due to a change is restricted to marginal changes occurring in small life cycles new methodological developments are needed to study major changes and their environmental consequences as they may happen when a policy is applied at large scale for that purpose the economic general equilibrium model gtap has been used to predict global economic perturbation that would be caused by two different european energy policies bioenergy policy and business as usual policy lca was then used to assess environmental impacts due to european energy generation and perturbation of world economy despite the bioenergy policy involves more energy from renewable technologies which are expected to be less polluting results show that due to rebound effects bioenergy policy results in more environmental impacts combining both gtap and lca improves environmental assessment made with gtap because it allows computing environmental impacts according to products life cycles instead of using economic sector emission factors and because emissions and extractions from environment are related to impacts on environment regarding lca method this new approach allows studying significant changes affecting large systems with a global modeling of economy in a time dependent environment however more work is needed to evaluate this new approach especially uncertainty should be studied

an analysis of policy scenario effects on the adoption of energy production on the farm a case study in emilia romagna italy abstract the agriculture sector s contribution to energy production is a central issue in ongoing policy debates and one of the central elements of the development of bioeconomy sector the common agricultural policy cap is one of the main determinants of the different farm strategies of european farmers the cap is now undergoing a thorough revision process which necessarily includes a debate of the role of the policy in rural areas and the effectiveness of the various cap policy mechanisms the objective of this paper is to assess the impact of alternative cap scenarios in the light of the possible changes in 2013 and the willingness to adopt energy plants for energy crops in the province of bologna italy this is pursued using both survey information and farm household mathematical programming models hence using stated intentions and simulated profitability to analyse the adopt of new technologies for energy production the results underscore the relevance of the cap scenarios in altering intentions with regard to the adoption of energy production and the relevant effect of uncertainty in delaying the diffusion of energy production systems

a demand scenario based fuelwood supply chain a conceptual model abstract fuelwood is one of the main fuels for heating in many countries as the price of fuelwood is relative low comparing to oil or gas demand for fuelwood rises over the years a supply chain is considered by different nodes that are essential for some operations concerning transportation and production due to the sensitive nature of the forest which is the production plant in the examined supply chain certain restrictions concerning the production and distribution of fuelwood should be taken into account a more environment oriented production model should be developed taking into consideration the sustainable management of the forests for this purpose a mixed integer linear programming milp model is considered in modeling uncertainty for fuelwood demand moreover the minimization of the overall operations cost is examined under different fuelwood demand representations using lagrangean relaxation algorithm

communities matter institutional preconditions for community renewable energy abstract energy transitions are high on political agendas from a practical viewpoint community approaches are deemed essential in order to transition from a predominantly centralized energy supply to a decentralized one and to exploit the potential of renewable energies in this paper i discuss how the emergence of community based energy projects can be analyzed from an institutional perspective in this context a community is treated as an individual institutional order that shapes decisions i examine how community structures the implementation of biogas cooperatives in the autonomous province of south tyrol in northern italy my findings suggest that community spirit a cooperative tradition and the norms of locality and responsibility are central drivers behind the emergence and constitution of biogas cooperatives not only do these institutional features of community influence the decision concerning which farmers are in or out but also plant location and scale i argue that community is a necessary analytical category for understanding community energy

electricity consumption and economic growth in seven south american countries abstract this paper attempts to investigate the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth among seven south american countries namely argentina brazil chile columbia ecuador peru and venezuela using widely accepted time series techniques for the period 1975 2006 the results indicate that the causal nexus between electricity consumption and economic growth varies across countries there is a unidirectional short run causality from electricity consumption to real gdp for argentina brazil chile columbia and ecuador this means that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic growth in those countries in venezuela there is a bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth this implies that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic growth and that economic growth also stimulates further electricity consumption in that country however no causal relationships exist in peru the documented evidence from seven south american countries can provide useful information for each government with regard to energy and growth policy

repeated games with differential time preferences when players have identical time preferences the set of feasible repeated game payoffs coincides with the convex hull of the underlying stage game payoffs moreover all feasible and individually rational payoffs can be sustained by equilibria if the players are sufficiently patient neither of these facts generalizes to the case of different time preferences first players can mutually benefit from trading payoffs across time hence the set of feasible repeated game payoffs is typically larger than the convex hull of the underlying stage game payoffs second it is not usually the case that every trade plan that guarantees individually rational payoffs can be sustained by an equilibrium no matter how patient the players are this paper provides a simple characterization of the sets of nash and of subgame perfect equilibrium payoffs in two player repeated games

electoral competition and politician turnover abstract in this paper we analyze the selection by opportunistic parties of the candidates who run for election we consider a setting with incomplete but symmetric information about the candidates abilities in which electoral campaigns provide voters with additional information about candidates parties care only about selecting an appropriate candidate to win the election while voters elect the best candidate conditional on their information we first argue that in order to defeat an established very good candidate of its rival a party may favor a new candidate with highly uncertain ability rather than an established good candidate next we establish that the discrepancy between the objective of parties and the objective of the electorate leads to inefficient conservatism in the selection of candidates i e each party keeps its incumbents too often from the voters viewpoint

environmental externalities and social optimality in biomass markets waste to energy in the netherlands and biofuels in france this paper explores two existing markets for energy produced from biomass waste to energy electricity production in the netherlands and the blending of biofuels with oil based fossil fuels in cars in france both cases provide excellent material to analyse social optimality of current biomass markets vis a vis their fossil fuel substitute the paper applies social cost benefit analysis to estimate both private and environmental cost of these supplies and uses the results to evaluate actual government behaviour in both countries the main findings for the waste to energy case in the netherlands are perhaps somewhat surprizingly that waste to energy is optimal only if the alternative of landfilling is excluded as an opportunity for waste management the case for biofuels in france shows that the take off of this market is only due to considerable government subsidization these subsidies cannot be defended by the difference they make in externality reduction even if the opportunity cost and benefits of set aside land are included as well as the potential productivity improvements

dynamics of oil price precious metal prices and exchange rate this study examines the co movements and information transmission among the spot prices of four precious metals gold silver platinum and palladium oil price and the us dollar euro exchange rate we find evidence of a weak long run equilibrium relationship but strong feedbacks in the short run the spot precious metal markets respond significantly but temporarily to a shock in any of the prices of the other metal prices and the exchange rate furthermore we discover some evidence of market overreactions in the palladium and platinum cases as well as in the exchange rate market in conclusion whether there are overreactions and re adjustments or not investors may diversify at least a portion of the risk away by investing in precious metals oil and the euro policy implications are provided

sustainable plans and mutual default this paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of optimal taxation in which both private agents and the government can default on their debt as a benchmark we consider ramsey equilibria in which the government can precommit to its policies at the beginning of time but in which private agents can default we then consider sustainable equilibria in which both government and private agent decision rules are required to be sequentially rational we adapt abreu s 1988 optimal trigger strategies to completely characterize the entire set of sustainable equilibria in particular we show that when there is sufficiently little discounting and government consumption fluctuates enough the ramsey allocations and policies in which the government never defaults can be supported by a sustainable equilibrium by way of an example we show that the larger the variance of government consumption the easier it is to support good outcomes we also show for moderate discount factors that in the best sustainable equilibrium tax rates are more volatile and debt is smaller than in the ramsey equilibrium

financial intermediation and economic performance historical evidence from five industrialized countries this paper examines the nature of links between the intensity of financial intermediation and economic performance that operated in the united states the united kingdom canada norway and sweden over the 1870 1929 period after describing the coevolution of the financial and real sectors in these countries vector error correction models vecms establish the quantitative importance of long run relationships among measures of financial intensity and real per capita levels of output and the monetary base granger causality tests then suggest a leading role for the intermediation variables in real sector activity while feedback effects are largely insignificant the results suggest an important role for intermediation in the rapid industrial transformations of all five countries

energy consumption and economic growth a causality analysis for greece abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between aggregated and disaggregated levels of energy consumption and economic growth for greece for the period 1960 2006 through the application of a later development in the methodology of time series proposed by toda and yamamoto 1995 at aggregated levels of energy consumption empirical findings suggest the presence of a uni directional causal relationship running from total energy consumption to real gdp at disaggregated levels empirical evidence suggests that there is a bi directional causal relationship between industrial and residential energy consumption to real gdp but this is not the case for the transport energy consumption with causal relationship being identified in neither direction the importance of these findings lies on their policy implications and their adoption on structural policies affecting energy consumption in greece suggesting that in order to address energy import dependence and environmental concerns without hindering economic growth emphasis should be put on the demand side and energy efficiency improvements

dynamics of fuelwood prices in india policy implications abstract this paper examines the changes in prices of fuelwood in urban centers over the years in india fuelwood prices have risen in india relative to prices of other commodities this has been the combined effect of increase in demand for fuelwood and decrease in supply of fuelwood due to degradation and depletion of forests policy interventions needed to change the situation are i increasing commitment for conserving existing forests ii stimulating the use of fuel efficient cookstoves to contain fuelwood demand and iii stimulating agroforestry systems and wasteland plantations

incentives and aggregate shocks this paper presents an incentive based theory of the dynamics of the distribution of consumption in the presence of aggregate shocks the paper builds on the models concerning the distribution of income or consumption and incentive problems of green 1987 thomas and worrall 1991 phelan and townsend 1991 and atkeson and lucas 1992 by incorporating aggregate production shocks the model allows an examination of the interactions between individual and aggregate consumption series given incomplete insurance further the methodology outlined allows the incorporation of incentive considerations to macroeconomic environments similar to rogerson 1988 and hansen 1985

incumbent performance and electoral control in the pure theory of electoral competition citizens compare the platforms of the candidates and vote for the one whose platform is preferred candidate strategies are identified with promises about future performance in office models of this sort have been developed in both static mckelvey 1975 and dynamic kramer 1977 i settings and all appear to have the property that if the set of alternatives is large enough in some sense equilibrium platforms rarely exist but these models have another feature that is quite as disturbing as their instability in the static setting discussed by mckelvey little attention is paid to the possibility that once in office the politician s preferences may diverge from those of his constituents and that he may therefore choose policies at variance from his platform instead it is simply assumed that promises will be kept whether or not such behavior is congruent with the interest of the officeholder it is sometimes argued that an enforcement mechanism may exist to discipline politicians for failing to keep promises but without a specification of the mechanism it is not obvious that it would be in the interests of the

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

a bilevel programming approach to determining tax credits for biofuel production abstract this paper presents a bilevel programming formulation of a leader follower game that can be used to help decision makers arrive at a rational policy for encouraging biofuel production in the model the government is the leader and would like to minimize the annual tax credits it allows the petro chemical industry for producing biofuels the crops grown for this purpose are on land now set aside and subsidized through a different support program the agricultural sector is the follower its objective is to maximize profits by selecting the best mix of crops to grow as well as the percentage of land to set aside two solution algorithms are developed the first involves a grid search over the tax credit variables corresponding to the two biofuels under consideration ester and ethanol once these values are fixed nonfood crop prices can be determined and the farm sector linear program solved the second algorithm is based on an approximate nonlinear programming nlp formulation of the bilevel program an engineering approach is taken where the discontinuities in the government s problem are ignored and the farm model is treated as a function that maps nonfood crop prices into allocation decisions results are given for an agricultural region in the northern part of france comprising 393 farms

allocating the co2 emissions of an oil refinery with aumann shapley prices abstract linear programming is widely used by multiproduct oil refining firms which minimize a refinery s variable cost under a set of constraints in addition to operating costs this variable cost can include the cost associated with the refinery s co 2 emissions we suggest a quite general approach combining use of aumann shapley cost sharing method and breakdown of the objective function of the linear program this approach determines an appropriate rule for the allocation of the refinery s co 2 emissions or in general variable costs among the various finished products which can be used for purposes of life cycle assessment a numerical application to a simplified refining model is presented

the dynamics of government abstract we model income redistribution with dynamic distortions as determined by rational voting without commitment among individuals of different types and income realizations we find that redistribution is too persistent relative to that chosen by a planner with commitment the difference is larger the lower is the political influence of young agents the lower is the altruistic concern for future generations and the lower is risk aversion furthermore there tends to be too much redistribution in the political equilibrium finally smooth preference aggregation as under probabilistic voting produces less persistence and does not admit multiple equilibria which occur under majority voting aggregation

carbon dioxide emissions and international trade at the turn of the millennium we present a new dataset of geographical production final embodied production and consumption based carbon dioxide emission inventories covering 78 regions and 55 sectors from 1997 to 2011 we extend previous work both in terms of time span and in bridging from geographical to embodied production and ultimately to consumption we analyse the recent evolution of emissions the development of carbon efficiency of the global economy and the role of international trade as the distribution of responsibility for emissions across countries is key to the adoption and implementation of international environmental agreements and regulations the final production and consumption based inventories developed here provide a valuable extension to more traditional geographical production based criteria

energy production from biogas in the italian countryside policies and organizational models abstract in recent years italy has witnessed a proliferation of agricultural biogas plants this article argues that institutional factors have played an important role in their diffusion it describes the state and evolution of agricultural biogas in italy and then investigates the extent to which institutional pressures have been influential in shaping organizational models of biogas production it finds that the dominance of one particular organizational model is the result of an isomorphic process in which a monopolistic market legal structures and subsidies play a role the prevalence of this organizational model however does not lead to the effective use of biogas production and furthermore it results in low environmental efficiency for a more sustainable development of bioenergy italian policy makers should reform the existing institutional framework by reorganizing subsidies liberalizing the management of gas grids and involving farmers in local projects

biogas and eu s 2020 targets evidence from a regional case study in italy abstract the provision of renewable energy by agriculture so called agroenergy is a key element of the europe 2020 strategy and has sparked public and research debates on the bio based economy hot topics involve direct and indirect land use change and the ability of agroenergy to foster or hinder food and energy security worldwide research has dealt with these and other issues associated with the sustainability of the diffusion of agroenergy generation systems but the subject is still open this paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the sustainability of agroenergy we propose an empirical model to simulate the diffusion of farm biogas installations and estimate a set of indicators covering the economic environmental and social dimensions of sustainability at the regional level model results show that the current incentive mechanism does not allow to meet eu s energy targets at the local level to do so the policy mix needs an improved design accounting for regional peculiarities across the eu model results show that agroenergy production can help farmers stabilise their income and keep viable rural areas despite some trade offs among socioeconomic and environmental indicators major drawbacks are environmental risks associated with farming intensification

banks free banks and u s economic growth the federalist financial revolution may have jump started the u s economy into modern growth but the free banking system 1837 1862 did not play a direct role in sustaining it despite lowering entry barriers and extending banking into developing regions we find in county level data that free banks had little or no effect on growth the result is not just a symptom of the era as state chartered banks seem to have strong and positive effects on manufacturing and urbanization jel g21 n21 o43

the causes of free bank failures a detailed examination abstract in this paper we propose and test a new explanation of bank behavior during the free banking era 1837 1863 arguing against the conventional view that free bank failures were due to wildcat banking we claim they were caused by falling asset prices confronting both explanations with our new and detailed data set developed from state auditor reports we find that the falling asset price explanation of free bank failures explains far more failures than does the wildcatting hypothesis

a subsector approach to small enterprise promotion and research abstract this paper introduces a diagnostic research methodology designed to help target small enterprise development efforts in less developed countries it argues that research should focus on commodity specific subsectors which include the competing channels and supporting input and output linkages of small firms using this approach analysts can improve their understanding of small enterprise dynamics interventions that may promote them at low cost and policies that constrain small firm growth

micro economic modelling of biofuel system in france to determine tax exemption policy under uncertainty abstract liquid biofuel support program launched in 1993 in france is implemented through tax exemptions to biofuels produced by agro industrial chains activity levels are fixed by decree and allocated by the government to the different chains based on earmarked budget increase voted in the parliament total quantity of biofuels will be increased by 50 in the horizon 2002 2003 a micro economic biofuel activity model containing a detailed agricultural sector component that is represented by 700 farms is used to estimate costs and surpluses generated by the activity at the national level as well as tax exemption levels furthermore monte carlo simulation has been used to search for efficient tax exemptions policies in an uncertain environment where biofuel profitability is significantly affected by petroleum price and soja cake prices results suggest that for the most efficient units both at the industry level large size biomass conversion units and at the agricultural sector level most productive farms unitary tax exemptions could be decreased by 10 20 for both biofuels ethyl ether and methyl ester with no risk for the viability of any existing chain

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from 11 sub sahara african countries abstract the paper examines the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries in sub saharan africa using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test the study finds that energy consumption is cointegrated with economic growth in cameroon cote d ivoire gambia ghana senegal sudan and zimbabwe moreover this test suggests that energy consumption has a significant positive long run impact on economic growth in ghana kenya senegal and sudan granger causality test based on vector error correction model vecm shows bi directional relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for gambia ghana and senegal however granger causality test shows that economic growth granger causes energy consumption in sudan and zimbabwe the neutrality hypothesis is confirmed in respect of cameroon and cote d ivoire the same result of no causality was found for nigeria kenya and togo the result shows that each country should formulate appropriate energy conservation policies taking into cognizance of her peculiar condition

bounds test approach to cointegration and causality between nuclear energy consumption and economic growth in india abstract this paper attempts to examine the dynamic relationship between economic growth nuclear energy consumption labor and capital for india for the period 1969 2006 applying the bounds test approach to cointegration developed by pesaran et al 2001 we find that there was a short and a long run relationship between nuclear energy consumption and economic growth using four long run estimators we also found that nuclear energy consumption has a positive and a statistically significant impact on india s economic growth further applying the toda and yamamoto 1995 approach to granger causality and the variance decomposition approach developed by pesaran and shin 1998 we found a positive and a significant uni directional causality running from nuclear energy consumption to economic growth without feedback this implies that economic growth in india is dependent on nuclear energy consumption where a decrease in nuclear energy consumption may lead to a decrease in real income for a fast growing energy dependent economy this may have far reaching implications for economic growth india s economic growth can be frustrated if energy conservation measures are undertaken without due regard to the negative impact they have on economic growth

bioenergy policy and market development in finland and sweden abstract the use of biomass in finland and sweden has steadily increased over the past 25 years up to approximately 20 of the primary energy supply in 2001 in both countries most biomass originates from forests forest biomass is now an integral part of modern energy systems although primarily in industry and in the heating sector for example biomass accounts for 7 9 and 53 of the fuel mix in district heating in finland and sweden respectively the general energy policy of both countries has supported biomass for energy over the entire period although specific policies have changed with time research development and demonstration has been continuously supported and some subsidy schemes have been applied in particular for district heating systems dhs and combined heat and power heavy taxation of competing fossil fuels seems to have been the most effective policy instrument although this has been directed mainly at the heat and transportation fuel markets electricity taxes are imposed on consumption industry is largely exempt and do not discriminate significantly between the sources of electricity starting in 2003 sweden will have a quota based system a renewable portfolio standard which is expected to increase biomass based electricity production both countries possess vast and not fully exploited biomass resources in the form of forests and have a history of rational and large scale forestry strong actors exist both with regard to forest ownership and the industrial processing of forest products the user side in particular represented by dhs can also be characterised by strong and professional management over time structures have developed that facilitate an increased use of biomass for energy for example the forest industry infrastructure and extensive district heating actors within these structures have had the ability to react to policies resulting in a stable growth in biomass use

free bank failures risky bonds versus undiversified portfolios almost 30 of the 872 banks established under the free banking system 1837 62 are considered failures unable to reimburse noteholders for the full value of their bank notes upon closure lacking sufficient data economists have focused on one of two general failure explanations poor regulation design or undiversified bank portfolios i test both explanations within hazard functions using warren weber s annual balance sheet data for almost every antebellum bank my results suggest that free banking s bond secured note issue was the underlying problem but individual banks could have avoided failure by diversifying their assets with loans and controlling their circulation

princes and merchants european city growth before the industrial revolution as measured by the pace of city growth in western europe from 1000 to 1800 absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry a region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its total urban population shrink by one hundred thousand people per century relative to a region without absolutist government this might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue maximizing absolutist governments than under nonabsolutist governments which care more about general economic prosperity and less about state revenue

effects of changes in italian bioenergy promotion schemes for agricultural biogas projects insights from a regional optimization model italy has witnessed an extraordinary growth in biogas generation from livestock effluents and agricultural activities in the last few years as well as a severe isomorphic process leading to a market dominance of 999 kw power plants owned by entrepreneurial farms under the pressure of the economic crisis in the country the italian government has restructured renewable energy support schemes introducing a new program in 2013 in this paper the effects of the previous and current support schemes on the optimal plant size feedstock mix and profitability were investigated by introducing a spatially explicit biogas supply chain optimization model which accounts for different incentive structures by applying the model to a regional case study homogenization observed to date is recognized as a result of former incentive structures considerable reductions in local economic potentials for agricultural biogas power plants without external heat use are estimated new plants are likely to be manure based and due to the lower energy density of such feedstock wider supply chains are expected although optimal plant size will be smaller the new support scheme will therefore most likely eliminate past distortions but also slow down investments in agricultural biogas plants

coupling economic and ghg emission accounting models to evaluate the sustainability of biogas policies abstract the aim of this study is to evaluate and quantify the impacts of different biogas and related policies on the agricultural sector as well as their performance in terms of climate change mitigation and associated costs to do so we coupled the partial equilibrium approach simulating the market clearing process with the perspective of life cycle assessment of ghg applying it to the well documented lombardy case results show that the recent italian biogas policy prompting manure utilization and reducing the average subsidy per kwh effectively increased the environmental sustainability of the system which only now seems able to counteract global warming synergies are observed when the recent common agricultural policy greening reform is simultaneously considered by the model

impulse response analysis of cointegrated systems abstract impulse response or dynamic multiplier analysis of vector autoregressive systems with cointegrated variables is considered the asymptotic distribution of the responses estimated with johansen s 1988 maximum likelihood procedure is derived the results are illustrated with an analysis of a west german money demand system the investigation shows that a direct interpretation of the cointegration relations may be difficult or misleading thereby the virtue of impulse response analysis for applied work is illustrated

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

the dynamics of political compromise we characterize efficient self enforcing divisions of political or economic surplus between two parties that interact repeatedly the party in power can decide the allocation and the parties political strength changes according to a markov process we find that the share of the party currently in power depends not only on its current strength but also on whether it had previously been even stronger since it last came to power we find that the constitutional supermajority requirements that attempt to constrain the use of power can counterproductively create less compromise

politically credible social insurance abstract this paper considers the political credibility of allocations in settings with dynamic private information it embeds a benchmark dynamic moral environment into political economy games which feature repeated voting over mechanisms optimal politically credible allocations are shown to solve virtual planning problems with social discount factors in excess of the private one

on efficient distribution with private information this paper is a study of the dynamics of the efficient distribution of consumption in an exchange economy with many consumers each of whom is subject to private idiosyncratic taste shocks we propose a recursive method for finding feasible allocations that are incentivecompatible and that are pareto optimal within this set the method is applied to several parametric examples we find that in an efficient allocation the degree of inequality continually increases with a diminishing fraction of the population receiving an increasing fraction of the resources we discuss the extent to which these allocations can be decentralized via market arrangements this paper is a study of the dynamics of the efficient distribution of consumption in an exchange economy with private information the economy we study has a constant endowment flow of a single non storable consumption good which is to be allocated each period among a large number of consumers each period these consumers experience unpredictable idiosyncratic privately observed taste shocks affecting their marginal utility of current consumption efficiency dictates that more resources be allocated to those consumers who in any given period have a high marginal utility of current consumption

environmental cost effectiveness of bio diesel production in greece current policies and alternative scenarios following european directive 2003 30 ec the greek government adapted legislation that introduces and regulates the bio diesel market the implemented quota scheme allocates the country s annual predetermined tax exempt production of bio diesel to industries based on their ability to meet several criteria a number of bio diesel supply chain stakeholders have criticized this policy for being efficiency robbing and vague this paper uses 2007 data from energy crop farms and three bio diesel producing companies in order to assess these criticisms we study the economic and environmental aspects of the currently adopted policy and compare them to three alternative scenarios we conclude that such criticisms have a merit and that policy makers need to reconsider their alternative options regarding the promotion of bio diesel in transport permission of sales directly to local consumers and promotion of forward integration by farmers are efficiency enhancing and environment friendly means of promoting the use of bio diesel in transport

predicting fuelwood prices in greece with the use of arima models artificial neural networks and a hybrid arima ann model abstract throughout history energy resources have acquired a strategic significance for the economic growth and social welfare of any country the large scale oil crisis of 1973 coupled with various environmental protection issues have led many countries to look for new alternative energy sources biomass and fuelwood in particular constitutes a major renewable energy source res that can make a significant contribution as a substitute for oil this paper initially provides a description of the contribution of renewable energy sources to the production of electricity and also examines the role of forests in the production of fuelwood in greece following this autoregressive integrated moving average arima models artificial neural networks ann and a hybrid model are used to predict the future selling prices of the fuelwood from broadleaved and coniferous species produced by greek state forest farms the use of the arima ann hybrid model provided the optimum prediction results thus enabling decision makers to proceed with a more rational planning for the production and fuelwood market

vegetable oil market and biofuel policy an asymmetric cointegration approach abstract the present paper analyses the long run relationship between vegetable oil prices and conventional diesel prices in the eu for the period 2005 2007 we applied recent developments in the threshold cointegration approach to investigate the presence of asymmetric dynamic adjusting processes between the prices of rapeseed oil sunflower oil and soybean oil and the price of a mineral oil diesel the results presented suggest a two regime threshold cointegration model only for the rapeseed oil diesel price pair thus the rapeseed oil price adjusts rapidly to its long run equilibrium determined by fossil diesel prices but this adjustment is asymmetric it differs if the divergence between the two prices is above or below a critical threshold consequently rapeseed oil appears particularly exposed to external shocks deriving from global political scenarios suggesting the reassessment of the high quota 80 of eu biodiesel represented by this vegetable oil