policy implications of potential conflicts between short term and long term efficiency in co2 emissions abatement abstract this paper shows that under certain conditions including path dependence and lock in policies and measures leading to a cost effective ghg emissions mitigation in the short term may not allow reaching long term emissions targets at the lowest possible cost that is they might not be cost effective in the long term the reason is that in a situation where currently expensive technologies have a large potential for cost reductions through learning effects and r d investments the implementation of incentive based mitigation policies such as taxes or tradable permits will encourage the adoption and diffusion of currently low cost abatement technologies but might not be enough to make attractive the diffusion of expensive ones which is a necessary condition for these technologies to realise their cost reduction potential through the aforementioned effects a simple model and a numerical simulation are provided to show this possible conflict between static and dynamic efficiency which points out to the need to combine different instruments some aiming at short term cost efficiency such as incentive based environmental policy and others at encouraging dynamic cost reductions such as technology innovation policy

the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

the innovation impact of the eu emission trading system findings of company case studies in the german power sector abstract this paper provides a detailed analysis of how the european emission trading system eu ets as the core climate policy instrument of the european union has impacted innovation towards this end we investigate the impact of the eu ets on research development and demonstration rd d adoption and organizational change in doing so we pay particular attention to the relative influences of context factors policy mix market factors and public acceptance and firm characteristics value chain position technology portfolio size and vision empirically our qualitative analysis is based on multiple case studies with 19 power generators technology providers and project developers in the german power sector which were conducted in 2008 09 we find that the innovation impact of the eu ets has remained limited so far because of the scheme s initial lack of stringency and predictability and the relatively greater importance of context factors additionally the impact varies significantly across technologies firms and innovation dimensions and is most pronounced for rd d on carbon capture technologies and organizational changes our analysis suggests that the eu ets on its own may not provide sufficient incentives for fundamental changes in corporate innovation activities at a level which ensures political long term targets can be achieved

tax structure and growth are some taxes better than others using pooled cross sectional data from 23 oecd countries between1965 and 1990 i find evidence that the tax structure affectseconomic growth specifically the proportion of tax revenueraised by taxing personal income has a negative correlation witheconomic growth this result is robust to a rigorous sensitivityanalysis where i control for other plausible growth determinantsin a systematic manner also there is some empirical evidencethat tax progressivity measured in terms of the long run incomeelasticity of tax revenue is associated with low economicgrowth

supplementing an emissions tax by a feed in tariff for renewable electricity to address learning spillovers abstract in the presence of learning spillovers related to renewable energy technologies an optimal strategy to mitigate climate change should complement an emissions tax by a subsidy for renewables this article addresses the question how such subsidy should be designed it is shown that the widely used approach of a revenue neutral fixed feed in tariff can yield an optimal outcome under restrictive conditions only it has to be adapted continuously as the electricity price changes moreover funding the tariff by a surcharge on the electricity price has important implications for the design of the emission tax the optimal tax rate has to be below the pigovian level differentiated across fossil fuels and adapted over time as the patterns of technological development change these requirements may pose a formidable challenge for practical decision making however it is important to point out that the eventual choices made with respect to the design and funding of a feed in tariff have to be based on a careful and more comprehensive policy assessment including inter alia economic effects beyond the electricity sector and existing institutional constraints

do deployment policies pick technologies by not picking applications a simulation of investment decisions in technologies with multiple applications abstract the role of deployment policies that aim to foster technological change has grown considerably especially in the fields of energy and climate however recent research has shown that the adoption of deployment policies carries the potential of locking in the technology that is most cost effective at the point of policy introduction but may be inefficient in the long term the present paper contributes to the emerging literature on the role of deployment policies in creating path dependency and eventually technology lock in while previous studies focused on the relationship between lock in and the technology specificity of deployment policies this paper introduces a new factor the existence of multiple applications for a technology we argue that this factor is highly relevant for technological lock in and should be considered by policy makers to support our argument we simulate the competition among four stationary battery technologies across energy system applications in an investment simulation model this simulation shows that the degree of competition among technologies differs strongly across applications which corresponds with a highly varying lock in probability hence selecting applications in deployment policies very likely corresponds to selecting technologies we discuss the implications of these results for both policy makers and for the academic debate on deployment policies and technological lock in as well as on technology assessment and governance more generally based on the notion that policies can have different technology specificity levels we develop the idea of the application specificity of policies and provide examples of currently enacted deployment policies that vary in terms of their technology and application specificity

dynamic modeling of thermal generation capacity investment application to markets with high wind penetration modeling the dynamics of merchant generation investment in market environments can inform the making of policies whose goals are to promote investment in renewable generation while maintaining security of supply such models need to calculate expected output costs and revenue of thermal generation subject to varying load and random generator outages in a power system with high penetrations of wind this paper presents a dynamic investment simulation model where the short term energy market is simulated using probabilistic production costing using the mix of normals distribution mond technique to represent residual load load net of wind output price mark ups due to market power are accounted for an energy only market setting is used to estimate the economic profitability of investments and forecast the evolution of security of supply simulated results for a great britain gb market case study show a pattern of increased relative security of supply risk during the 2020s in addition many new investments can recover their fixed costs only during years in which more frequent supply shortages push energy prices higher

measuring the temporal dynamics of policy mixes an empirical analysis of renewable energy policy mixes balance and design features in nine countries abstract complex societal or environmental problems require fast and substantial socio technical transitions for instance in the case of climate change these transitions need to take place in the energy transport and several industry sectors to induce and accelerate such transitions numerous policy interventions are required which interact with each other in policy mixes while several conceptual studies on policy mixes have been published recently there is very little empirical research apart from single case or small n studies it has been prominently argued that the debate about policy mixes has reached an impasse partly due to this lack of empirical work this paper addresses this gap by providing a first analysis of the temporal dynamics of complex policy mixes to do so we develop a conceptualization and measurement of policy mix balance across instrument types as well as policy mix design features in the form of intensity as a general and technology specificity as a technology focused design feature this allows us to answer the question how temporal dynamics of policy mixes differ between countries regarding their balance and design features our measurement approach is developed bottom up i e policies are assessed individually and then aggregated systematically at the policy mix level this enables overcoming the dependent variable problem in the study of policy change i e the problem of measuring policy output more specifically we develop a comparative dataset of 522 renewable energy policies in nine oecd countries our analysis shows that countries policy mix dynamics vary strongly regarding some variables e g technology specificity but less regarding others e g balance as a validity check we also test the effects of these mix dynamics on policy outcome in the form of renewable energy technology diffusion we reflect our findings in light of the theoretical debates around policy mixes and policy design and discuss how our results provoke an agenda for the new generation of research on policy mixes we specifically discuss avenues for future research with a particular focus on the politics of policy mixes

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

increasing returns path dependence and the study of politics it is increasingly common for social scientists to describe political processes as path dependent the concept however is often employed without careful elaboration this article conceptualizes path dependence as a social process grounded in a dynamic of increasing returns reviewing recent literature in economics and suggesting extensions to the world of politics the article demonstrates that increasing returns processes are likely to be prevalent and that good analytical foundations exist for exploring their causes and consequences the investigation of increasing returns can provide a more rigorous framework for developing some of the key claims of recent scholarship in historical institutionalism specific patterns of timing and sequence matter a wide range of social outcomes may be possible large consequences may result from relatively small or contingent events particular courses of action once introduced can be almost impossible to reverse and consequently political development is punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life

decarbonising the power sector via technological change differing contributions from heterogeneous firms abstract in the power sector technological change is a key lever to address the decarbonisation needed to avoid dangerous climate change policy makers aim to accelerate and redirect technological change by targeting relevant firms via climate policy e g the european union emissions trading system eu ets and climate relevant technology policies e g feed in tariffs changes in firm s behaviour i e their research and development r d as well as diffusion activities are at the heart of technological change however firms are heterogeneous actors with varying attributes which perceive policy differently hence they can be expected to react very heterogeneously to these new policies based on an original dataset of 201 firms we perform a cluster analysis grouping firms along their r d and diffusion activity changes we then compare these clusters with regards to the characteristics of the contained firms our analysis results in seven clusters showing very diverse contributions to low carbon technological change suggesting potential for policy to become more effective a comparison of the firms characteristics allows us to derive indicative recommendations on how to adjust the policy mix in order to induce contributions from most firms in the power sector

the selection principle and market failure in systems competition abstract if governments stepped in where markets failed reintroducing markets through the backdoor of systems competition will again result in market failure three models are presented which illustrate this wisdom the first is concerned with congestion prone public goods and shows that fiscal competition may be ruinous for the governments the second considers the insurance function of redistributive taxation and shows that systems competition may suffer from adverse selection the third studies the role of quality regulation and shows that systems competition may be a competition of laxity resulting in inefficiently low quality standards

why sweden s welfare state needed reform according to professor walter korpi the swedish economy would be in better shape if leading politicians had paid less attention to the advice from an influential group of swedish academic economists allegedly hostile to the welfare state their claim that high taxes and extensive social security programmes have strong adverse effects on aggregate economic performance rested on a politically biased reading of comparative international data in purporting to show that sweden had fallen behind other comparable countries the sclerosis diagnosis they set the stage for cutbacks in the welfare state and a major tax reform involving substantially lower marginal tax rates apart from creating inequality at a negligible gain in efficiency the very same reforms may also explain why sweden ran into a macroeconomic tailspin in the early i 990s rather than an instructive case study of the ultimate consequences of a long term obsession with income equality and social protection the exceptional economic crisis can be traced to severe macroeconomic policy blunders the views of professor korpi are quite familiar for anyone that has followed the swedish debate over the last decade supporters of the welfare state applaud professor korpi for revealing the ideological bias underlying the evidence presented in support of the sclerosis diagnosis some swedish economists rather thank of him as a modern day don quixote eager to pick a fight with imaginary villains being a swede and a professor of economics i can hardly claim the status of an impartial observer i certainly believe that harberger triangles convey information and i am convinced that most of the recently implemented reforms make sense nevertheless i believe that professor korpi raises important issues many of the accusations made against the welfare state in sweden and elsewhere rest on evidence which does not survive normal academic scrutiny in their capacity as policy advisors academic economists far from always live up to the standards of the seminar room speculation and sweeping generalisations are poor substitutes for facts and empirical investigations like professor korpi i doubt that very important insights on the harmfulness of the welfare state can be gained from comparative aggregate data over the period i970 90 swedish economic growth was below the oecd average at the same time the public sector was very large however

the quest for qwerty in settings ranging from office suite software to online auctions casual empiricism suggests a strong tendency for markets where platforms compete to tip to a single dominant player but which platform will prevail one might hope that the better platform will be selected theory however offers no such comfort standard models suggest that tipping to any platform even an inferior one comprises an equilibrium paul a david 1985 suggests that getting stuck in a bad equilibrium is not merely a theoretical possibility but a good description of what happened in the typewriter keyboard market he argues that the qwerty arrangement prevailed and continues to prevail despite its inferiority to the dvorak arrangement the essence of david s argument is that by virtue of its head start in the market users expected qwerty to prevail and these expectations were selffulfilling as a consequence the superior platform dvorak was never adopted the idea that self fulfilling expectations can lead an inferior platform to triumph in the face of better alternatives has now become standard in the economics literature and features prominently in many textbooks see for instance luis m b cabral 2000 yet despite the long passage of time since david s piece was first published the paucity of modern examples illustrating this idea is striking most textbooks including cabral s are content to focus on qwerty as well as the competition between betamax and vhs some 30 years ago the validity of the qwerty example itself has been called into question s j liebowitz and stephen e margolis 1990 suggest that the quest for qwerty

the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox author s paul a david source the american economic review vol 80 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundred and second annual meeting of the american economic association may 1990 pp 355 361 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2006600 accessed 08 12 2010 01 40

escaping carbon lock in this article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in understanding carbon lock in unruh 2000 which posited that industrial countries have become locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale carbon lock in arises through technological organizational social and institutional co evolution culminating in what was termed as techno institutional complex tic in order to resolve the climate problem an escape from the lock in condition is required however due to the self referential nature of tic escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required

optimal diversity increasing returns versus recombinant innovation abstract choices regarding diversity play an important role in economics and innovation management but often remain implicit once made explicit the objectives of efficiency and diversity are usually posed as in conflict as efficiency relates positively and diversity negatively to various increasing returns to scale in markets such a perspective however neglects the benefits of diversity in terms of realizing system improvements through recombinant innovation or spillovers the latter implies a contribution of diversity to long term efficiency dominant economic approaches that address diversity such as option value and real options theories regard benefits of diversity as exogenous this paper proposes a simple model of variable endogenous diversity to analyse the optimal balance between increasing returns to scale and recombinant innovation it is discussed under which conditions one of four solutions is optimal complete specialization regardless of which option complete specialization in one specific option symmetric diversity perfect balance and asymmetric diversity the results give rise to a number of policy insights

integrating finance into the multi level perspective technology niche finance regime interactions and financial policy interventions abstract any major socio technical transition requires a fundamental re direction of financial capital from incumbent to new technologies and practices while the transitions literature conceptually covers financial markets the role of finance is marginalized and has scarcely been analysed empirically to address this gap here we build on the multi level perspective mlp which considers financial markets as part of the existing regime we argue that the role of finance is highly relevant for the niche regime interaction redirecting finance towards new niche technologies requires that either the niche is fit for and conforms to the financial regime s expectations or the financial regime is stretched and transformed in order to accept and finance niche technologies based on 56 interviews we identify factors that determine interactions between the financial regime and technology niches these include acceptable risk and transaction size an abundance of knowledge and heuristics in both the regime and niche and an extensive existing industry network we further analyse how state investment bank sib interventions in germany the uk and australia aimed to mobilise private finance into low carbon project development affect the interaction between the technology niche and financial regime i e whether they resulted in fitting and conforming the technological niche for the financial regime or stretching and transforming the financial regime our results point to several important effects of sib interventions with most effects fitting the niche to the regime however we also detect effects that stretch and transform the financial regime through evolutionary processes importantly some effects occur as a consequence of the primary effects based on our findings we discuss policy implications on how to accelerate transitions through policies aiming at finance as well as theoretical insights gained through our analysis

technological innovations and sectoral change transformative capacity adaptability patterns of change an analytical framework following up on recent debates about sectoral systems of innovation and production the paper introduces a heuristic framework for analyzing and explaining distinct patterns of technology based sectoral change the concept is based on two interrelated influencing factors the first is the sectoralspecific transformative capacity of new technologies themselves that is their substantial or incremental impact on socioeconomic and institutional change in a given sectoral system the second is the sectoral adaptability of socioeconomic structures institutions and actors confronted with the opportunities presented by new technologies the first factor the sectoral transformative capacity of new technologies enables us to identify the technology based pressure to change and adjust the structural institutional and organizational architectures of the sectoral system the second complementary factor sectoral adaptability helps us to discern the distinct social patterns of anticipating and adopting this technology based pressure the specific interplay between the two influencing factors creates distinguishable modes of sectoral transformation ranging from anticipative and smooth adjustments to reactive and crisis ridden patterns of change even processes of radical sectoral change continue over longer periods of mismatch and are characterized by numerous and mostly gradual organizational structural and institutional transformations

quantifying the sustainability of economic resource networks an ecological information based approach abstract sustainability as a concept has multiple disparate perspectives stemming from different related disciplines which either maintain ambiguous interpretations or concentrate on metrics pertaining to single aspects of a system given the embedded multi dimensionality of sustainability systemic approaches are needed that can cope with interactions of different dimensions past efforts for measuring sustainability holistically have taken an accounting approach based on the availability and efficiency of resource flows however an accounting approach fails to fully incorporate the intensive parameters pertaining to sustainability an ecological information based approach is a promising holistic measurement which incorporates both intensive and extensive dimensions of sustainability this paper evaluates this approach by applying it to six economic resource trade flow networks virtual water oil world commodity oecd bric commodity oecd bric foreign direct investment and iron and steel from the perspective of biomimicry it appears that these networks can achieve higher levels of efficiency without weakening their robustness to resource delivery the trends of measured efficiency and redundancy of the studied networks are demonstrated to be useful in reflecting long term changes while the trend in robustness levels were found to exhibit similar behavior to an ecosystem in its early phase of development

beyond technology push and demand pull lessons from california s solar policy abstract the scale of the technological transformation required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels while minimizing economic impacts necessitates an emphasis on designing climate policy to foster or at least not impede environmental innovation there is only a weak empirical base for policy makers to stand on regarding the comparative innovation effects of various climate policy options however empirical scholarship in environmental innovation is hindered by the complexity of both the innovation process and the interactions between the dual market failures of pollution and innovation that are in play and it appears that the field would benefit from the structure provided by a common lexicon this paper focuses on the issues related to policy categorization in this field these issues have received little attention in the literature despite their importance to making insights gained from empirical studies generalizable the paper reviews the origins strengths and weaknesses of the dominant policy typology of technology push versus demand pull instruments its primary contribution however is to assemble a comprehensive chronology of solar policy in california and its impacts on innovation where known and then use this as a basis for building a new policy categorization that takes advantage of the intuitive resonance of the dominant typology while encompassing the broader range of policy instruments that are employed in practice in order to stimulate environmental innovation the most noteworthy aspect of the new categorization is that it introduces a third category of environmental innovation policy instrument that focuses on improving the interface between technology suppliers and users this reflects developments in the economics of innovation literature as well as considerable evidence in the domain of distributed solar energy technologies that opportunism by some of the actors that work at this interface can be a barrier to innovation

public policy influence on renewable energy investments a panel data study across oecd countries this paper examines the impact of public policy measures on renewable energy re investments in electricity generating capacity made by institutional investors using a novel combination of datasets and a longitudinal research design we investigate the influence of different policy measures in a sample of oecd countries to suggest an effective policy mix which could tackle failures in the market for clean energy the results call for technology specific policies which take into account actual market conditions and technology maturity to improve the conditions for institutional investments advisable policy instruments include economic and fiscal incentives such as feed in tariffs fit especially for less mature technologies additionally market based instruments such as greenhouse gas ghg emission trading systems for mature technologies should be included these policy measures directly impact the risk and return structure of re projects supplementing these with regulatory measures such as codes and standards e g rps and long term strategic planning could further strengthen the context for re investments

borrowing to defend the exchange rate and the timing and magnitude of speculative attacks abstract the paper analyses the implications for the timing and magnitude of a speculative attack on a fixed exchange rate of government borrowing to increase the stock of international reserves it is shown that such borrowing reduces the likelihood of an early collapse and increases the likelihood of an eventual collapse the magnitude of the speculative attack also increases

the two faces of market support how deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry the recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies while there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very effective in bringing technologies to the market it is less understood how these policies affect technological innovation to shed more light on this important question we conducted comparative case studies with a global sample of 9 firms producing solar photovoltaic pv modules complemented by in depth interviews with 16 leading pv industry experts we propose that on the one hand policy induced market growth serves as an important catalyst for innovative activity as it raises the absolute level of firm investments in technological exploration on the other hand however deployment policies create an incentive for firms pursuing more mature technologies to shift their balance between exploitation and exploration toward exploitation firms focusing on less mature technologies cannot tap the potentials of exploitative learning to the same extent as those with more mature technologies therefore stimulating strong market growth may raise the barrier to market entry for less mature technologies we conclude that when designing deployment policies great care should be taken to avoid adverse effects on technological diversity and a premature lock in into more established technologies

the dynamics of innovation from national systems and mode 2 to a triple helix of university industry government relations abstract the triple helix of university industry government relations is compared with alternative models for explaining the current research system in its social contexts communications and negotiations between institutional partners generate an overlay that increasingly reorganizes the underlying arrangements the institutional layer can be considered as the retention mechanism of a developing system for example the national organization of the system of innovation has historically been important in determining competition reorganizations across industrial sectors and nation states however are induced by new technologies biotechnology ict the consequent transformations can be analyzed in terms of neo evolutionary mechanisms university research may function increasingly as a locus in the laboratory of such knowledge intensive network transitions

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

fostering a renewable energy technology industry an international comparison of wind industry policy support mechanisms this article examines the importance of national and sub national policies in supporting the development of successful global wind turbine manufacturing companies we explore the motivations behind establishing a local wind power industry and the paths that different countries have taken to develop indigenous large wind turbine manufacturing industries within their borders this is done through a cross country comparison of the policy support mechanisms that have been employed to directly and indirectly promote wind technology manufacturing in 12 countries we find that in many instances there is a clear relationship between a manufacturer s success in its home country market and its eventual success in the global wind power market whether new wind turbine manufacturing entrants are able to succeed will likely depend in part on the utilization of their turbines in their own domestic market which in turn will be influenced by the annual size and stability of that market consequently policies that support a sizable stable market for wind power in conjunction with policies that specifically provide incentives for wind power technology to be manufactured locally are most likely to result in the establishment of an internationally competitive wind industry

government size and growth a survey and interpretation of the evidence the literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings this conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and the countries studied an alternative approach of limiting the focus to studies of the relationship in rich countries measuring government size as total taxes or total expenditure relative to gdp and relying on panel data estimations with variation over time reveals a more consistent picture the most recent studies find a significant negative correlation an increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0 5 to 1 percent lower annual growth rate we discuss efforts to make sense of this correlation and note several pitfalls involved in giving it a causal interpretation against this background we discuss two explanations of why several countries with high taxes seem able to enjoy above average growth one hypothesis is that countries with higher social trust levels are able to develop larger government sectors without harming the economy another explanation is that countries with large governments compensate for high taxes and spending by implementing market friendly policies in other areas both explanations are supported by ongoing research

compulsive policy making the evolution of the german feed in tariff system for solar photovoltaic power abstract in recent years policy approaches that build upon the notion of innovation systems have enjoyed increasing attention in science technology and innovation policy but while the usefulness of systemic thinking in policy making has been demonstrated in a large number of empirical settings we still lack a detailed understanding of the dynamics at play when policy makers address systemic problems in this paper we show how complex interdependencies and the uncertain nature of technological change shape the process of targeted policy interventions in socio technical systems toward this end we analyzed the evolution of the german feed in tariff fit system for solar photovoltaic power a highly effective and widely copied policy instrument targeted at fostering the diffusion and development of renewable energy technologies we find that the policy has been subject to a considerable amount of changes many of which are the result of policy makers addressing specific system issues and bottlenecks interestingly however often these issues themselves were driven by unforeseen technological developments induced by previous policy interventions we argue that the pattern of policy serving as both a solution to and a driver of technological bottlenecks shows strong similarities with what rosenberg 1969 called compulsive sequences in the development of technical systems by shedding more light on how the characteristics of socio technical systems affect policy interventions our framework represents a first step toward more closely integrating the literature on innovation systems with the work on policy learning

evolutionary approaches for sustainable innovation policies from niche to paradigm fostering technological innovation is considered as an important element of policies towards sustainable development in the past 10 years evolutionary policy approaches have been increasingly advocated for several reasons they seem well equipped to underpin sustainable innovation policies they focus on dynamics of change and their drivers they allow for a substantive perspective on technologies beyond mere input output relations taking into account trajectories and different characteristics of innovation and they are able to describe circumstances under which established technologies might persist even when they are to some extent inferior to their new competitors lock in however the policy effectiveness of evolutionary approaches in cases in which radical or systemic changes are involved is not yet proven in this paper we assess the theoretical rationale instrumental aspects and the coping with policy constraints of three evolutionary policy approaches which have also been used in empirical studies strategic niche management transition management and time strategies each approach has its strengths and specific problems and all three have to be further developed and tested out but they hold promise for contributing to non incremental change with economic and environmental benefits by shaping processes of variation selection and retention with the outcomes feeding back into policy they may also be used in other areas in which innovation direction is important for instance health care or food

government expenditure and economic growth a cross country study this paper examines the relationship between the share of government consumption expenditure in gdp and the rate of growth of real per capita gdp the work of the u n international comparison project has recently made available new estimates for over 100 countries of both per capita gdp and the share of government consumption these new estimates are based on direct price comparisons rather than exchange rate conversions as a result the statistics for different countries are more comparable and cross country studies will be more reliable

endogenous technological change in climate change modelling this article investigates the impact on optimal co2 abatement and carbon tax levels of introducing endogenous technological change in a macroeconomic model of climate change we analyse technological change as a function of cumulative capacity as incorporated recently in energy systems models our calculations confirm that including endogenous innovation implies earlier emission reduction to meet atmospheric carbon concentration constraints however the effect is stronger than suggested in the literature moreover the development of non fossil energy technologies constitutes the most important opportunity for emission reductions optimal carbon tax levels reducing fossil energy use are lower than usually advocated