the renewables portfolio standard in texas an early assessment texas has rapidly emerged as one of the leading wind power markets in the united states this development can be largely traced to a well designed and carefully implemented renewables portfolio standard rps the rps is a new policy mechanism that has received increasing attention as an attractive approach to support renewable power generation though replacing existing renewable energy policies with an as of yet untested approach in the rps is risky early experience from texas suggests that an rps can effectively spur renewables development and encourage competition among renewable energy producers initial rps targets in texas were well exceeded by the end of 2001 with 915 mw of wind installed in that year alone rps compliance costs appear negligible with new wind projects reportedly contracted for well under 3 us cent k wh in part as a result of a 1 7 us cent kwh production tax credit an outstanding wind resource and an rps that is sizable enough to drive project economies of scale obliged retail suppliers have been willing to enter into long term contracts with renewable generators reducing important risks for both the developer and the retail supplier finally the country s first comprehensive renewable energy certificate program has been put into place to monitor and track rps compliance c 2002 published by elsevier science ltd less

governmental intervention approaches to promote renewable energies special emphasis on japanese feed in tariff abstract almost all countries have issued laws and regulations to promote renewable energy re however the applications and motivations of such laws as well as achievements have been different currently the japanese government has announced its targets to expand the electricity feed in tariff scheme for solar power along with other energy sources within two years to meet the goal set by the japanese prime minister who in the 15th united nations climate change conference cop15 held in september 2009 proclaimed to cut 25 of greenhouse gas ghg emissions from the 1990 levels by 2020 in this paper the current japanese energy policies and measures for promoting re in comparison to popular methods followed worldwide are explored furthermore a least cost feed in tariff lcfit simulation model for japanese case was developed to calculate the optimal mix of technologies to reach certain targets the lcfit also calculates the tariff that should be proposed for each technology and the total cost for the program with and without a carbon tax and estimates the premium added to the bill of the customer every month

the effect of information streams on capital budgeting decisions in this paper a new decision rule for capital budgeting is considered a firm has the opportunity to invest in a project of uncertain profitability over time the firm receives additional information in the form of signals indicating the profitability of the project the belief that the firm needs to have in a profitable project for investment to be optimal is calculated and analyzed it is shown that the probability of investing in a project with low profitability is larger when the firm uses a conventional rule like the net present value rule as a counterintuitive result it is obtained that it can be optimal to undertake the investment at a later point in time in case the expected number of signals per time unit is higher also an error measure is discussed that indicates the accuracy of capital budgeting rules in this stochastic environment

the importance of comprehensiveness in renewable electricity and energy efficiency policy based on extensive research interviews and supplemented with a review of the academic literature this article assesses the best way to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency it begins by briefly laying out why government intervention is needed and then details the four most favored policy mechanisms identified by participants eliminating subsidies for conventional and mature electricity technologies pricing electricity accurately passing a national feed in tariff and implementing a nationwide systems benefit fund to raise public awareness protect lower income households and administer demand side management programs drawing mostly from case studies in the united states the article also discusses why these policy mechanisms must be implemented comprehensively not individually if the barriers to renewables and energy efficiency are to be overcome

information revelation incentives and the value of a real option the real options approach to capital budgeting focuses on valuing benefits of project flexibility this paper presents an incentive consideration in such valuation operating flexibility not only allows a firm to change course in response to new information but also allows interested observers to make inferences based on the change in course or lack thereof such information conveyance through refined operating choices can alter observers incentives as a result an option to delay may prove valuable because it allows a firm to prolong informational advantages

green electricity policies in the united states case study while there has been interest in promoting the use of renewable energy in electricity production for a number of years in the united states the market share of non hydro renewable energy sources in electricity production has remained at about 2 percent over the past decade the paper reviews the principal energy resources used for electricity production considers the changing regulatory environment for the electricity industry and describes government policies that have been used to promote green electricity in the united states with an emphasis on measures adopted by state governments factors influencing the development of green power markets are also discussed including underlying economic issues public policy measures the regulatory environment external costs and subsidies without significant increases in fossil fuel prices much more stringent environmental regulations or significant changes in electricity customer preferences green electricity markets are likely to develop slowly in the united states

binary choice models with social network under heterogeneous rational expectations abstract this paper extends brock and durlauf s 2001a 2001b binary choice complete network or group interaction model with homogeneous rational expectations to a general network model with heterogeneous rational expectations in our model individuals will form expectations regarding peers behaviors taking into account their characteristics endogenous contextual and correlated effects are all identifiable conditions for unique equilibrium are established for a complete network with heterogeneous rational expectations multiple equilibria can be characterized by an aggregate scalar index the empirical results on adolescents smoking behaviors show significant endogenous and contextual effects even after controlling for school grade random effects and school fixed effects

extent and types of small scale wind policies in the u s states adoption and effectiveness abstract renewable energy sources including wind are increasingly promoted by u s state governments using state level data and survey responses from energy officials in 44 states this study catalogs the extent and types of small wind policies adopted by states it examines the factors correlated with policy adoption and perceptions about which policy tools are most effective results indicate that 84 of the states participating in the survey have adopted at least one policy to promote small wind technologies and most have adopted several policies the most frequent policy is net metering and this policy tool was also perceived to be one of the most effective at encouraging businesses and consumers to install small wind technologies however several other policy tools perceived to be most effective at promoting small wind installations have been adopted by relatively few states this identified gap suggests opportunities for improving policy effectiveness in explaining factors associated with adoption of policy tools we find support for variables comprising both the policy diffusion and internal determinants models of policy adoption including state commitment to environmental protection and policy innovations citizen ideology per capita wealth energy policy network communications and desire to be viewed as an environmental leader

towards a sustainable electrification in ghana a review of renewable energy deployment policies abstract ghana has been facing perennial power rationing over the years due to fuel supply challenges the country s energy system is likely to suffer additional strain from rising energy demand fueled by population growth rapid urbanization and economic development fortunately there are enormous renewable energy resources which can provide sustainable electrification as backbone to socioeconomic development while curbing global warming ghana s energy strategy targets 100 access to electricity and 10 share of sustainable power in national generation mix by 2020 despite the existence of numerous policies and a renewable energy act current contribution of non conventional renewable energy to electricity generation is less than 1 the right mix of policies to address the unique domestic conditions and achieve its specific development goals remains insufficient this study reviews the regulatory framework financing incentives and other provisions of ghana s renewable energy act it critically examines the policy s strengths weaknesses opportunities and treats based on comparative analysis and lessons drawn from failed and successful implementation of similar policies around the world the study also assesses the impact of policy on project development it was found that the performance of ghana s renewable energy policy on grid connected electricity has been poor compared to its target the fundamental reasons for this unsatisfactory performance may be attributed to partial implementation of policies lack of market driven support schemes lack of pricing policy framework weak grid network limited access to funds and inconsistencies in renewable energy development strategies this study proposes the following countermeasures i ghana should comprehensively harmonize renewable energy regulatory and fiscal policies with domestic electricity pricing regime ii market driven support schemes should be prioritized for cost effectiveness and minimum governmental influence these reforms can help eliminate some of the major barriers to sustainable electrification in ghana while the lessons provide a learning curve for other african countries

a multinomial choice model of neighborhood effects this paper provides a model of individual decisionmaking in the presence of neighborhood effects by neighborhood effects we refer to interdependencies between individual decisions and the decisions and characteristics of others within a common neighborhood as such neighborhood effects are forms of social interactions in fact the terms would seem to be interchangeable in many contexts within economics there has developed an increasing recognition that neighborhood effects play a possibly major role in explaining a range of individual behaviors rich empirical and theoretical literatures have developed a failing of much of this work is the absence of strong connections between theory and empirics this paper addresses this limitation by providing a model of multinomial choice with neighborhood effects the model represents a generalization of the binary choice model of william brock and steven durlauf 2001a b the model is econometrically implementable and so has the potential of allowing for structural estimation of neighborhood effects section i outlines a basic choice model with neighborhood effects section ii specializes the structure using a multinomial logit framework section iii considers econometric implementation section iv discusses some limitations of the framework and proposes some research directions proofs of all theorems may be found in brock and durlauf 2001c

a model for the multiperiod multiobjective power generation expansion problem a long term multiobjective model for the power generation expansion planning of electric systems is described and evaluated in this paper the model optimizes simultaneously multiple objectives i e minimizes costs environmental impact imported fuel and fuel price risks and decides the location of the planned generation units in a multiperiod planning horizon among the attributes considered in the model are the investment and operation cost of the units the environmental impact the amount of imported fuel and the portfolio investment risk the approach to solve this problem is based on multiobjective linear programming and the analytical hierarchy process a case study from the mexican electric power system is used to illustrate the proposed framework

environmental constituent interest green electricity policies and legislative voting abstract research in political economy has traditionally sought to disentangle the effects of legislative ideology and constituent interest in explaining policy decisions frequently proxy variables are used to measure constituent interest however these measures do not adequately reflect true constituent interest which is based upon the costs and benefits of the policies under consideration incorporating the scope of the policies using haiku a detailed model of the us electricity sector and taf an integrated assessment model of pollution pathways and valuation i construct economic measures of constituent interest at the state level as well as for federal policy i then use these measures to analyze state adoption of more stringent green electricity policies and congressional roll call voting on federal environmental policy previous studies that use proxy measures of constituent interest typically find that the legislator ideology matters more while my study shows that both ideology and constituent interest are significant factors

symmetric equilibrium strategies in game theoretic real option models with incomplete information this paper considers a real options model with incomplete information in a duopoly setting i show that even in the presence of a first mover advantage there are circumstances in which the preemption region is eroded entirely and the only equilibrium strategy is of simultaneous type both players should exercise together or not at all this outcome arises if the price paid by a player from exercising the option simultaneously with his competitor over exercising alone as a stackelberg leader is low such an outcome has not been previously recognised in the literature the underlying information structure has been applied in a one firm setting to a range of different contexts of late all of which have competitive pressures in practice as such the existence of this equilibrium under certain conditions ought to be recognised

green electricity market development lessons from europe and the us this study compares the development and implementation of green electricity policies in germany the netherlands sweden and the united states a set of countries applying a range of policy instruments to encourage electricity from renewable energy sources a general tendency is identified that policies shift emphasis from r d stimulation towards dissemination and market application of renewable energy technologies we argue that in light of the long term nature of policy goals on energy security mitigation of climate change and environmental protection the applied range of policy instruments may be lacking in providing incentives for the long term development of new technologies clarifying policy objectives would allow careful selection of policy instruments including support for r d improved capacity building for policy implementation is also important

the impact of voluntary disclosure on a firm s investment policy in this paper we provide a model which describes how voluntary disclosure impacts on the timing of a firm s investment decisions a manager chooses a time to invest in a project and a time to disclose the investment return in order to maximise his monetary payoff we assume that this payoff is linked to the level of the firm s stock price prior to investing the profitability of the project and the market reaction to the disclosure of the investment return are uncertain but the manager receives signals at random points in time which assist in resolving some of this uncertainty we find that a manager whose objective can only be achieved through voluntarily disclosing the return is motivated to invest at a time that would be sub optimal for an identical manager with a profit maximising objective

american policy conflict in the greenhouse divergent trends in federal regional state and local green energy and climate change policy climate change threatens significant impacts on global ecosystems and human populations to address this challenge industrialized nations have ratified the kyoto protocol and undertaken commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases the primary agents linked to anthropogenic alteration of earth s climate by contrast the us government led by the bush administration has rejected mandatory targets for curbing emissions under the protocol and has instead pursued voluntary mitigation measures amid a larger push for clean coal and next generation nuclear technologies these actions in total have fueled global perceptions that the us is not acting in substantial ways to address climate change nevertheless action within the us is indeed moving forward with states cities and regional partnerships filling the federal leadership vacuum this paper reviews the diverse policies strategies and cooperative frameworks that have emerged at regional state and local levels to guide climate protection and identifies the environmental and economic benefits linked to such programs the paper also attempts to explain the existing federal impasse on climate policy with attention given to how sub national efforts may ultimately obviate national governmental inaction r 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

intertemporal dynamics of corporate voluntary disclosures while empirical evidence alludes to the intertemporal nature of corporate voluntary disclosures most of the existing theory analyzes firms voluntary disclosure decisions within single period settings introducing a repeated multiperiod disclosure setting we study the extent to which firms strategic disclosure behavior in the past affects their prosperity to provide voluntary disclosures in the future our analysis demonstrates that by voluntarily disclosing private information firms make an implicit commitment to provide similar disclosures in the future and therefore are less willing to voluntarily disclose information in the first place this effect is expected to be of larger magnitude for firms 1 with a long history of absence of voluntary disclosures and an impressive past operating performance or 2 that operate in a relatively stable and predictable business and information environment or 3 whose managers have a long time horizon and a high degree of risk aversion

selective disclosures in the presence of uncertainty about information endowment abstract this paper analyzes a setting where firms could have private information from various sources and disclose a selective subset of that information investors have uncertainty about how much information firms have using a stylized model where there are two signals about a firm s future value and the firm may be privately informed of none one or all of those signals this paper establishes an equilibrium link between the cutoff value characterizing the partially informed firm s disclosure strategy and the partition of the signal space characterizing the fully informed firm s disclosure strategy the paper also discusses potential extensions of the model

is the choice of renewable portfolio standards random this study investigated factors influencing the adoption or intention to adopt renewable portfolio standards rps by individual states in the united states u s theory of adoption of innovation was applied as a conceptual framework a logistic model was used to achieve the task gross state product gsp growth rate of population grp political party dominancy education level natural resources expenditure and share of coal in electricity generation were used as explanatory variables results indicated that the model predicts the dependent variable state s choice of adopting or not adopting rps 82 times correctly out of 100 results also suggested that education followed by political party dominancy gsp and grp are shown to have large impacts on the probability of rps adoption

the renewable portfolio standard design considerations and an implementation survey renewables have social and environmental bene ts compared to conventional electricity sources but are rarely competitive on a strict nancial cost basis this is because conventional sources are sometimes subsidized their full pollution costs are ignored and renewables involve newer higher cost technologies whose relative costs will fall with commercialization governments use several mechanisms to support renewables including direct nancial support grants loans indirect support r d demonstrations reform of nancial costs of conventional sources subsidy removal pollution taxes and the renewable portfolio standard rps the rps requires a minimum share of electricity from renewable energy sources its use is spreading because it maintains an incentive for renewable producers to reduce costs links the regulated market outcome to an environmental target and reduces government involvement although it is too early to evaluate fully its e ectiveness the survey for this study explored implementation issues in three european countries nine us states and australia and found the following the rps target is usually set to have environmental bene ts without causing signi cant price increases cost caps are sometimes used most jurisdictions limit eligibility to gridconnected domestic renewables the rps is usually applied to producers rather than consumers and to energy output not capacity flexibility mechanisms are desired but a challenge to implement administration in the us and australia is by government with delegation to independent utility regulators while in europe it is more the responsibility of government everywhere the rps is applied alongside other mechanisms of renewables support 2001 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

evaluation of firm s loss due to incomplete information in real investment decision abstract we investigate the effect of incomplete information in a model where a start up with a unique idea and technology pioneers a new market but will eventually be expelled from the market by a large firm s subsequent entry we evaluate the start up s loss due to incomplete information about the large firm s behavior we clarify conditions under which the start up needs more information about the large firm the proposed method of evaluating the loss due to incomplete information could also be applied to other real options models involving incomplete information

discrete choice with social interactions this paper provides an analysis of aggregate behavioural outcomes when individual utility exhibits social interaction effects we study generalized logistic models of individual choice which incorporate terms reflecting the desire of individuals to conform to the behaviour of others in an environment of noncooperative decisionmaking laws of large numbers are generated in such environments multiplicity of equilibria in these models which are equivalent to the existence of multiple self consistent means for average choice behaviour will exist when the social interactions exceed a particular threshold local stability of these multiple equilibria is also studied the properties of the noncooperative economy are contrasted with the properties of an economy in which a social planner determines the set of individual choices finally a likelihood function based on the theoretical model is given and conditions for the econometric identifiability of the model are established

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

community power and population increase an empirical test of the growth machine model attempts to relate community power to policy outputs have been criticized for lacking theoretical relevance and statistical significance to overcome these criticisms this research employs a power policy model based on a political economy framework which utilizes molotch s conpetion of the community as a growth machine analysis of the permanent community sample provides strong power policy relationships that support the major tenets of the growth machine explanation as members of the business elite gain power they can successfully promote population growth that provides them with greater profits through higher property values the most widely cited common good for growth lower unemployment does not accrue this supports the relevance of a political economy approach to community phenomena and suggests different directions for community power research

the impacts of uncertainties in a real options model under incomplete information abstract this paper examines the impact with respect to the uncertainty of the underlying state variable profit uncertainty on the real options model in a situation of incomplete information profit uncertainty has not incorporated into the real options model under incomplete information in that the underlying state variable is not formulated as the stochastic process see e g bernardo a e chowdhry e b 2002 resources real options and corporate strategy journal of financial economics 63 211 234 we extend the model developed by bernardo and chowdhry to formulate the underlying state variable as the stochastic process we conclude that profit uncertainty has the same type of impact on the real options value and its triggers both under complete and incomplete information

policy instruments fostering wind energy projects a multi perspective evaluation approach abstract during the last decade a large number of policy instruments have been developed and implemented all over europe aiming at supporting renewable energy project development however the success of the different policy approaches varies significantly given the very different mechanisms of the diverse instruments the design or the selection of appropriate instruments may cause methodological difficulties in order to support instrument selection economists have developed several evaluation criteria however this paper states that most of the typically proposed and applied criteria catalogues still neglect the interests and requirements of important stakeholder groups this paper therefore proposes a more integrated evaluation approach taking into account the different interests of all relevant stakeholder groups in the three fields renewable energy business especially wind industry policy making and conventional power business

complementarity and substitutability a review of state level renewable energy policy instrument interactions abstract this paper provides an extensive review of two streams of literature the first part of the review focuses on policy tools and their interrelationships and the second part focuses on the literature on the state renewable energy policy tools based on the reviews this paper investigates how policymakers choose a set of interrelated renewable energy policy instruments and identify under what conditions policy instruments complement or substitute we extend the political market framework by examining the influences of 1 administrative agencies on the supply side 2 interest groups on the demand side and 3 the policy induced problem situation changes on the adoption of state renewable energy policy tools building upon reviews of both policy tools and policy diffusion theories a set of hypotheses are advanced for state renewable energy policy interactions among public benefit fund pbf renewable portfolio standards rps and corporate tax incentive cti the hypotheses are tested by three event history models in which rps pbf and cti serve as dependent variables separately the complementary effects between previous use of rps and adoption of pbf between previous use of pbf and adoption of rps and between previous use of cti and adoption of rps are confirmed we also find support for the policy substitutability between previous use of cti and adoption of pbf

cost effectiveness of renewable electricity policies we analyze policies to promote renewable sources of electricity a portfolio standard rps raises electricity prices and primarily reduces gas fired generation a knee of the cost curve exists between 15 and 20 goals for 2020 in our central case and higher natural gas prices lower the cost of greater reliance on renewables a renewable energy production tax credit lowers electricity price at the expense of taxpayers which limits its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions and it is less cost effective at increasing renewables than a portfolio standard neither policy is as cost effective as a cap and trade policy for achieving carbon emission reductions

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

the impact of choice architecture on sustainable consumer behavior the role of guilt companies often encourage consumers to engage in sustainable behaviors using their services in a more environmentally friendly or green way such as reusing the towels in a hotel or replacing paper bank statements by electronic statements sometimes the option of green service is implied as the default and consumers can opt out while in other cases consumers need to explicitly ask opt in for switching to a green service this research examines the effectiveness of choice architecture and particularly the different default policies i e the alternative the consumer receives if he she does not explicitly request otherwise in engaging consumer green behavior in four experiments we show that the opt out default policy is more effective than the opt in because it increases anticipated guilt this effect is stronger for consumers who are less conscious for the environment study 1 we also show that a forced choice policy in which the consumer is not automatically assigned to any condition and is forced to choose between the green and the non green service option is more effective than the opt in policy and not significantly more effective than the opt out policy study 2 finally we show that the role of defaults is weakened enhanced if a negotiated reciprocal cooperation strategy is used study 3 the article contributes to the literature of defaults and provides managerial and public policy implications for the design of green services

trendy solutions why do states adopt sustainable energy portfolio standards abstract thirty four states had adopted sustainable energy portfolio standards seps or similar goals by the end of 2008 with 14 adoptions since 2006 there appears to be something trendy about seps and states may adopt seps when internal variables would indicate otherwise this analysis extends the current discussion of seps adoption beyond internal variables relying on innovation and diffusion theory logistic regression with seps adoption as the dependent variable is used to test internal determinants and diffusion measures for the years 1997 2008 of the internal determinants variables affluence and government ideology were found to be positive and significant the results show that regional and neighbor diffusion variables are significant in seps adoption decisions even when accounting for ideological distance from previous adopters

a social interaction model with ordered choices abstract we introduce a social interaction model with ordered choices we provide a micro foundation for the econometric model based on an incomplete information network game and characterize the sufficient condition for the existence of a unique equilibrium of the game we discuss the identification of the model and propose to estimate the model by the nfxp and npl algorithms we conduct monte carlo simulations to investigate the finite sample performance of these two estimation methods

geographic proximity to coal plants and u s public support for extending the production tax credit abstract the production tax credit ptc is an important policy instrument through which the federal government promotes renewable energy development in the united states however the efficacy of the ptc is hampered by repeated expirations and short term extensions and by the general uncertainty surrounding its future status we examine the factors driving variation in public support for the extension of the ptc using a nationally representative internet based survey americans living near a coal fired power plant are significantly more likely to support extending the ptc than are their peers who are more insulated from the externalities of burning coal the evidence for this dynamic was strongest and most statistically significant among subjects experimentally primed to think about the adverse health effects of burning coal raising awareness of the public health ramifications of generating electricity from fossil fuels holds the potential to increase support for renewable energy policies among those living in proximity to coal plants even in a highly politicized policy debate

default and liquidation timing under asymmetric information abstract we consider a dynamic model in which shareholders delegate the running of a firm to a manager who observes private information about the firm s running and liquidation costs we analytically derive the optimal compensation scheme contingent on the firm s cost structure information asymmetries can change the high cost firm s bankruptcy choice and timing most notably even if the liquidation value is higher than the face value of debt the high cost firm can choose default rather than liquidation to reduce the manager s information rent this can lead to the counterintuitive result that the debt value increases beyond the face value as the firm approaches default and that it jumps upward at the default time information asymmetries accelerate negative liquidation and delay positive liquidation whereas they accelerate default the optimal leverage ratio of the asymmetric information case becomes higher than that of the symmetric information case because more debt mitigates the loss due to information asymmetries our results can potentially account for many empirical findings

clean energy policies and green jobs an evaluation of green jobs in u s metropolitan areas state and local governments in the u s are actively promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency to seek economic development opportunities and create green jobs this study evaluates the employment effects of state and local clean energy and climate policies in u s metropolitan areas msas in 2006 the regression analysis shows that both state and local clean energy policies have positive and statistically significant impacts on green jobs at the metropolitan level the results from two stage probit least squares 2spls indicate that every additional state clean energy policy tool adopted is associated with 1 more green jobs in the msa on average msas with iclei membership maintain 9 3 more green jobs than msas without iclei membership ceteris paribus

fiscal and economic impacts of state incentives for wind energy development in the western united states abstract wind energy production in the united states has seen significant growth over recent years due in large part to the state and federal policies designed to encourage wind energy development this research focuses on measures undertaken at the state level in the western region of the united states several of these states have implemented legislation in the form of financial incentives and renewable portfolio standards to support wind development it is shown that state tax incentives and physical drivers have a significant positive impact on wind energy growth there has been concern however about the fiscal impacts of financial incentives on state tax revenues as a result some states have removed tax incentives a recent example is the removal of sales and use tax rebates for wind producers in idaho however the removal of such incentives results in a net loss of tax revenues as well as negative economic impacts by hindering the development of wind energy projects it is shown that attendant economic benefits from wind development results in significant positive fiscal impacts by increasing tax revenues for state and local governments the increased tax revenues begin with the pre construction and construction phases of such projects and continue to accrue throughout the life of project operations until eventual decommissioning the removal of this incentive in idaho results in a net reduction in tax revenues as well as the loss of significant economic benefits in terms of employment incomes and total output for the state