factor demand technical change and inter fuel substitution in africa abstract the translog production function has been widely used in applied production analysis due to its flexibility and superiority over other functional forms this study develops a translog production function for a group of african countries the random effects model is estimated using generalized least squares estimator the main findings are first output in africa is driven by a more intensive use of petroleum and electricity and to a lesser extent capital labor and coal relative to technological progress second african production technology exhibits increasing returns to scale suggesting a path towards market entry barriers third technical change is scale biased and factor augmenting albeit very slow fourth all energy inputs are substitutes indicating africa s potential to proportionally switch towards cleaner fuels without adversely affecting economic growth finally and perhaps more generally the study reinforces the assertion that imposing restrictions like homotheticity homogeneity or separability on the production technology is unrealistic and should rather be a testable hypothesis within any applied analysis in view of the documented findings relevant implications for africa are discussed

household level spillover effects from biofuels evidence from castor in ethiopia the indirect effects of biofuels are mostly considered negative in this paper we argue that there may be a positive indirect effect of biofuels on food security and poverty using micro level evidence and a matched plot pair design through which we control for plot and farmer characteristics we show that the introduction of castor production for biofuel in a poor country as ethiopia can significantly improve food productivity of rural households who produce raw material for biofuel production this spillover seems particularly linked to enhanced access to inputs and technical assistance which were provided as part of biofuel feedstock production contracts our results thus document another mechanism through which biofuels may influence smallholders food security a mechanism that did not receive attention so far

the impact of microfinance on energy access a case study from peripheral districts of lome togo this study seeks to understand the impact of microfinance on energy access in the peripheral districts of lome in togo we use descriptive statistics multiple regression propensity score matching

support for a characteristics approach evidence from the market for insecticides a procedure is developed to test the principal prediction of characteristics theory all products are priced to appear on a convex market opportunity frontier the feasibility of this testing procedure is shown by its application to the u s insecticide market during each year between 1944 and 1987 results provide the first empirical support for characteristics theory

energy consumption and economic development in sub sahara africa sub saharan african countries economic development is dependent on energy consumption this paper assesses total energy demand which is composed of traditional energy wood fuel and commercial energy electricity and petroleum in the central east south and west regions of sub saharan africa cross sectional time series data for 20 countries in 25 years are analyzed and the results of the study show that wood fuel accounts for 70 of energy consumption followed by petroleum with most industrial activities utilizing some form of wood fuel regression results suggest that energy demand is inversely related to the price of petroleum and industrial development but positively related to gdp population growth rate and agricultural expansion and that price elasticity is less than one the model results also show that there are regional differences in energy demand in addition the interaction of population growth rates by regions generates mixed results and there are regional differences in the use of commercial energy consumption and gdp growth the findings of this study suggest that countries must diversify their energy sources and introduce energy efficient devices and equipment at all levels of the economy to improve gdp growth rate and gdp per capita

can multinational enterprises light up developing countries evidences from the access to electricity in sub saharan africa summary this paper examines the role that multinational enterprises mnes and foreign direct investments fdi can have in enhancing the access to electricity for local communities in developing countries based on the quality of home and host institutions access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing countries the shortage of electricity is mainly the consequence of inability of governments in planning financing and developing necessary electricity infrastructure in this context investments from other actors can be essential particularly we focus on the role of fdi and mnes we claim that when mnes invest in developing countries they are incentivized to solve the lack of electricity infrastructure mainly for two reasons to guarantee their business activities and to gain legitimacy with their local stakeholders in addition we argue that mnes and fdi from institutionally underdeveloped countries will be more prone to develop infrastructure for the provision of electricity to local population as generally they suffer from a negative stereotype for this study we rely on 1 547 observations composed of pairs of 83 home countries and 15 host countries in sub saharan africa observed from 2005 to 2011 due to the nature of the database we adopt panel data techniques i e system gmm and corrected least square dummy variable estimators we find that fdi promotes access to electricity in developing countries with weak institutions and this is more likely true when fdi come from institutionally underdeveloped countries these results are far from obvious as they controvert common idea among institutional scholars that a regulatory authority is essential in the provision of infrastructure in conclusion with this paper we partially rehabilitate the image of mnes investing in developing countries by demonstrating that under certain conditions they could contribute to energy poverty alleviation of local population

is renewable energy a model for powering eastern african countries transition to industrialization and urbanization abstract this study profiles a conversation on the appropriateness of renewable energy as a model for powering development in east african countries estimated output elasticities of nonrenewable energy 0 29 0 48 are by far larger than those of renewable energy 0 12 0 08 and as such highlights the relative importance of the former also the biased component of technical change shows higher technological progress for nonrenewable energy furthermore substitution elasticities are positive 0 77 0 92 suggesting huge potential for a transition towards renewable energy however inherent limitations in renewables documented in wesseh and lin 52 53 undermine the usefulness of east african countries reliance on renewable energy

new hedonic technique for estimating attribute demand an application to the demand for automobile fuel efficiency a new hedonic procedure is applied to estimate the effects of gasoline price on the demand for automobile attributes and fuel efficiency direct application of a comparative statics analysis circumvents the problems of identification and severe multicollinearity affecting previous hedonic studies the results indicate that the effect of induced changes in automobile attributes in response to increases in the price of gasoline is to substantially increase fuel efficiency the estimated elasticities of fuel efficiency with respect to the price of gasoline imply that the long run own price elasticity of demand for gasoline is greater than unity 31 references

long term gains from electrification in rural india the authors know surprisingly little about the long run impacts of household electrification this paper studies the impacts on consumption in rural india over a seventeen year period allowing for both internal and external villagelevel effects under our identifying assumptions electrification brought significant consumption gains for households who acquired electricity for their own use we also find evidence of a dynamic effect of village connectivity for households without electricity themselves this is suggestive of an external effect which also comes with a shift in consumption spending suggestive of status concerns among those still without electricity labor earnings were an important channel of impact this was mainly through extra work by men there was no effect on average wage rates

price setting supergames with capacity constraints this paper examines the role of industry capacity in enforcing collusion in the context of repeated games for a fixed capacity per firm it is shown that changes in the number of firms have a non monotone effect on the best enforceable cartel price this is due to the fact that while an additional firm lowers the share that each of the other firms enjoys at the collusive price it also increases the losses to each firm should the cartel fail

causal independence between energy consumption and economic growth in liberia evidence from a non parametric bootstrapped causality test abstract this contribution investigates causal interdependence between energy consumption and economic growth in liberia and proposes application of a bootstrap methodology to better reflect causality employment is incorporated as additional variable the study demonstrates evidence of distinct bidirectional granger causality between energy consumption and economic growth additionally the results show that employment in liberia granger causes economic growth and apply irrespective of the short run or long run evidence from a monte carlo experiment reveals that the asymptotic granger causality test suffers size distortion problem for liberian data suggesting that the bootstrap technique employed in this study is more appropriate given the empirical results implications are that energy expansion policies like energy subsidy or low energy tariff for instance would be necessary to cope with demand exerted as a result of economic growth in liberia furthermore liberia might have the performance of its employment generation on the economy partly determined by adequate energy therefore it seems fully justified that a quick shift towards energy production based on clean energy sources may significantly slow down economic growth in liberia hence the government s target to implement a long term strategy to make liberia a carbon neutral country and eventually less carbon dependent by 2050 is understandable

satisfying the rural residential demand in liberia with decentralized renewable energy schemes abstract with the lowest access to electricity in the world the country of liberia west africa has efforts underway for electrification through a fossil based centralized scheme around its capital city and possible connections to the larger western africa power pool network these plans leave a large part of the rural population with no access to electricity this work analyzes the potential of decentralized generation to provide electricity to the rural liberian population the suppressed demand of the rural population is calculated at 235 gwh yr there is sufficient renewable energy potential to supply this demand the capital costs and electricity prices of decentralized generation with different fuels are calculated and compared to the ability and willingness to pay of rural liberians small diesel units have the lowest capital cost but photovoltaic small hydropower and small biomass projects provide lower electricity prices biomass and small hydro electricity are affordable for liberians at 0 08 kwh and 0 11 kwh respectively diesel and photovoltaic with levelized cost of electricity of 0 62 kwh and 0 33 kwh respectively exceed liberians willingness to pay centralized and decentralized electricity developments are not mutually exclusive both may be used within a comprehensive electrification plan decentralized generation with emphasis on rural areas can complement the existing plans to achieve the government of liberia s goal of universal access to electricity providing social equity and economic progress in order to become a reality rural decentralized electrification will need policy support and focused funding

tax incidence in a simple general equilibrium model with collusion and entry abstract we develop a two sector general equilibrium model in which oligopolistic firms collude non cooperative and earn positive economic profits even though there is free entry entry decisions involve balancing sunk costs with the present value of future profits the interest rate is determined in a capital market in which ownership of the capital stock and shares of firms are traded since the degrees of collusion and entry depend on future profits both are influenced by the interest rate we show how tax induced changes in the interest rate affect market structure in general entry and collusive pricing effects work in opposite directions

energy consumption fuel substitution technical change and economic growth implications for co2 mitigation in egypt abstract energy consumption propels economic growth but the level of co2 emissions associated with a fossil dominated energy structure raises concerns for the fight against climate change to draw consensus this study develops a translog causality based model in order to study causation between electricity natural gas petroleum and economic growth in egypt in addition the models results are used to estimate the substitution possibilities between various energy pairs and to subsequently test the co2 mitigation benefits arising from fuel substitution results support a bidirectional relationship between all energy types and economic growth in egypt and suggest also that these energy types are substitutes although technical progress is estimated to be a bit slow varying between 4 5 and 7 5 there appears to be substantial co2 emissions mitigation benefits from fuel substitution amounting to reductions in the range of 1 5 and 2 2 million metric tons under a 5 investment scenario and 2 5 and 4 5 million metric tons under a 10 investment scenario these results have broader implications for energy conservation policies and industrial merger policies in developing countries moreover by studying technical change insights are provided on future co2 mitigation potential driven by energy efficiency

energy consumption real income and temporal causality results from a multi country study based on cointegration and error correction modelling techniques abstract unlike previous studies on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth this paper illustrates how the finding of cointegration i e long term equilibrium relationship between these variables may be used in testing granger causality based on the most recent johansen s multivariate cointegration tests preceded by various unit root or non stationarity tests we test for cointegration between total energy consumption and real income of six asian economies india pakistan malaysia singapore indonesia and the philippines non rejection of cointegration between variables rules out granger non causality and imples at least one way of granger causality either unidirectional or bidirectionial secondly by using a dynamic vector error correction model we then analyse the direction of granger causation and hence the within sample granger exogeneity or endogeneity of each of the variables thirdly the relative strength of the causality is gauged through the dynamic variance decomposition technique by decomposing the total impact of an unanticipated shock to each of the variables beyond the sample period into proportions attributable to shocks in the other variables including its own in the bivariate system results based on these tools of methodology indicate that while all pair wise relationships shared common univariate integrational properties only relationships for three countries india pakistan and indonesia were cointegrated for these countries temporal causality results were mixed with unidirectional causality from energy to income for india exactly the reverse for indonesia and mutual causality for pakistan the vdcs were not inconsistent with these results and provided us with an additional insight as to the relatively more dominant direction of causation in pakistan simple bivariate vector autoregressive models for the three non cointegrated systems did not indicate any direction of causality significantly in either direction

electricity planning and implementation in sub saharan africa a systematic review abstract universal electricity access is an important development objective and the focus of a number of key global un initiatives while robust electricity planning is widely believed to be a prerequisite for effective electrification to date no comprehensive overview of electricity planning research has been undertaken on sub saharan africa the world region with the lowest access rates this paper reviews quantitative and qualitative electricity planning and related implementation research considering each of the 49 sub saharan african countries the four regional power pools and the sub continent as a whole applying a broad understanding of electricity planning and a practical limit of 20 reviewed articles per country and region 306 relevant peer reviewed journal articles are included in this review a general classification scheme is introduced that classifies the planning literature along the addressed value chain depth number of different analysed criteria and number of evaluated decision alternatives the literature is found to be strongly clustered in a few countries with less than 5 identified relevant articles in 36 of the 49 countries the total amount of articles per year is clearly increasing over time addressing technology choice operation distribution and implementation analyses although including different high level criteria in analysing electricity systems is common the literature is only starting to use formalised multi criteria decision making mcdm tools the review indicates that 63 of relevant articles favour renewable energy technologies for their given problems frequently mentioned success factors for electrification in sub saharan africa include adequate policy design sufficient finance and favourable political conditions while considerable regional and methodological literature gaps are apparent the literature in this review identifies a rich and fruitful ground for future research to fill these gaps

the finnish power market are imports from russia low cost electricity market integration of high and low price areas is expected to bring benefits to the consumers in a high price area however these potential benefits are highly dependent on the market characteristics and the policy interventions we use simulation to study the effects of different alternatives for the expansion and operation of the interconnector finland russia on the finnish market a high price area our results show that the current trading arrangement where a single trader owns the transmission rights and limits the trade during peak hours to avoid capacity charges in russia is beneficial for finland at the current interconnection capacity however if the interconnector is expanded the behaviour of the trader would create significant distortions in the finnish market we also analyse the pros and cons of maintaining a strategic reserve in finland in combination with the different scenarios of interconnection expansion and trading arrangements we conclude that in the absence of trust in imports the need for a strategic reserve is undeniable this will slightly reduce the economic benefits of integration for finnish consumers but it will significantly improve reliability

energy and national income in korea further evidence on the role of omitted variables abstract results of this paper indicate that the real oil price is a major determinant of real national income and energy consumption the combined effects of real money and real government expenditure on real income and energy consumption are also substantial a lack of causality or the causality between energy and real income in prior studies is due to the omitted variables results also confirm that the two oil price shocks combined adversely affected real national income

oil price shocks and real gdp growth empirical evidence for some oecd countries this study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries multivariate var analysis is carried out using both linear and non linear models the latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature namely the asymmetric scaled and net specifications evidence of a non linear impact of oil prices on real gdp is found in particular oil price increases are found to have an impact on gdp growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases among oil importing countries oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but japan moreover the effect of oil shocks on gdp growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample with the uk being negatively affected by an oil price increase and norway benefiting from it

appliance ownership and aspirations among electric grid and home solar households in rural kenya in sub saharan africa there are active debates about whether increases in energy access should be driven by investments in electric grid infrastructure or small scale home solar systems e g solar lanterns and solar home systems we summarize the results of a household electrical appliance survey and describe how households in rural kenya differ in terms of appliance ownership and aspirations our data suggest that home solar is not a substitute for grid power furthermore the environmental advantages of home solar are likely to be relatively small in countries like kenya where grid power is primarily derived from non fossil fuel sources

measuring the social value of local public goods an empirical analysis within paris metropolitan area a non linear hedonic model is used to estimate the implicit marginal prices of 17 local public goods in a paris suburban area on an original data set of some 8200 housing units the results reveal a robust effect of local public school quality measured both by the fraction of junior high school students that are at least two years behind grade level and the student teacher ratio on house prices it is observed that housing owners marginal willingness to pay for reducing commuting time is roughly similar for public transportation than for car transportation another noticeable result is the complete capitalization of local taxes at a discount rate of 3 5 an illustration of the potential usefulness of the results for cost benefit analysis is also provided

a review of trends policies and plans for increasing energy access in ghana abstract the need to secure future energy in the forms of electricity and modern cooking fuels is recognized as critical to achieving the millennium development goals particularly poverty reduction ensuring improved education health water supply and environmental sustainability this paper presents a review of the trends policies plans and programmes for increasing energy access in ghana with primary focus on electricity cooking fuels and renewable energy the paper argues that even though governments over the years have had the provision of energy services high on the national development agenda past and existing policies and plans have not delivered effective results to accelerate energy access especially in the rural and peri urban areas where the services are badly needed the paper therefore calls for a coherent national energy policy with inputs from a wider section of the public that has precise targets and clearly laid down strategies including financing mechanisms to achieve the targets

understanding the role of energy consumption in human development through the use of saturation phenomena a correlation is presented between the un human development index and per capita energy consumption for 120 nations a strong relationship between index values and energy consumption is observed for the majority of the world additionally a distinct secondary trend emerges from the dataset representing heavy energy exporters such as the organization of the petroleum exporting countries and some former soviet union nations among others the preliminary observation is made that these two trends closely resemble saturation curves exhibited by a variety of natural phenomena for the primary trend three regions are isolated a steep rise in human development relative to energy consumption for energy poor nations a moderate rise for transitioning nations and essentially no rise in human development for energy advantaged nations consuming large amounts of modern energy these correlations suggest that tremendous gains in human development are possible for the world s poorest with small incremental access to energy

greening africa technologies endowments and the latecomer effect abstract africa is well endowed with potential for hydro and solar power but its other endowments shortages of capital skills and governance capacity make most of the green options relatively expensive while its abundance of hydro carbons makes fossil fuels relatively cheap current power shortages make expansion of power capacity a priority africa s endowments and the consequent scarcities and relative prices are not immutable and can be changed to bring opportunity costs in africa closer to those in the rest of the world the international community can support by increasing africa s supply of the scarce factors of capital skills and governance

energy consumption and economic growth revisited in african countries abstract the aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for 21 african countries over the period from 1970 to 2006 using recently developed panel cointegration and causality tests the countries are divided into two groups net energy importers and net energy exporters it is found that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between energy consumption real gdp prices labor and capital for each group of countries as well as for the whole set of countries this result is robust to possible cross country dependence and still holds when allowing for multiple endogenous structural breaks which can differ among countries furthermore we find that decreasing energy consumption decreases growth and vice versa and that increasing energy consumption increases growth and vice versa and that this applies for both energy exporters and importers finally there is a marked difference in the cointegration relationship when country groups are considered

biofuels and food security micro evidence from ethiopia abstract there is considerable controversy about the impact of biofuels on food security in developing countries a major concern is that biofuels reduce food security by increasing food prices in this paper we use survey evidence to assess the impact of castor production on poor and food insecure rural households in ethiopia about 1 3 of poor farmers have allocated on average 15 of their land to the production of castor beans under contract in biofuel supply chains castor production significantly improves their food security they have fewer months without food and the amount of food they consume increases castor cultivation is beneficial for participating households food security in several ways by generating cash income from castor contracts they can store food for the lean season castor beans preserve well on the field which allows sales when farmers are in need of cash or food spillover effects of castor contracts increases the productivity of food crops increased food crop productivity offsets the amount of land used for castor so that the total local food supply is not affected

the dynamic relationship between agricultural sustainability and food energy water poverty in a panel of selected sub saharan african countries abstract the relationship between food energy water resources and agricultural sustainability has got a significant policy attraction that generally in favor of livelihood of the poor which is largely affected by climate change food security challenges poor access of water resources and less access of electricity these challenges generally faced by less developing countries while sub saharan african ssa countries has no exemption to escape out from this food water energy poverty nexus due to inadequate socio economic and environmental action programs of sustainable development this study examined the dynamic nexus between agricultural sustainability and food energy water poverty in a panel of selected ssa countries over the period of 1980 2013 the study used pooled least squares regression pooled fixed effects and pooled random effects regression techniques to absorb country specific time variant shocks the hausman 1978 test results reveal that country specific shocks influence the food energy water poverty model therefore the fixed effects regression results are consider a better fit model than that of the pooled random effect model the overall results conclude that agricultural value added cereal yields and forest area significantly decreases food energy water poverty nexus leading to higher economic growth and price levels at the cost of environmental degradation in general agricultural sustainability is the prerequisite for reducing food energy water poverty

optimal cartel trigger price strategies abstract a dynamical model of industry equilibrium is described in which a cartel deters deviations from collusive output levels by threatening to produce at cournot quantities for a period of fixed duration whenever the market price falls below some trigger price in this model firms can observe only their own production level and a common market price the market demand curve is assumed to have a stochastic component so that an unexpectedly low price may signal either deviations from collusive output levels or a downward demand shock

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

the interactive effects of human capital and quality of life on economic growth abstractto bridge the gap in the quality of life qol and economic growth literature and understand the reinforcing effects of qol and human capital on economic development we examine the interactive effects of these two factors on wage growth from 2000 to 2007 at the county level across the united states first a rosen roback model is employed to estimate implicit values of amenities including climate clean air and other natural attributes which are used to generate qol indices second qol human capital represented by the share of college graduates and their interaction serve as key variables in the wage growth model an instrumental variable approach and location fixed effects are used to address endogeneity of human capital and control for location specific unobservable characteristics results suggest that human capital and qol significantly contribute to economic growth and the growth effects are even larger in nonmetropolitan counties importantly we find that the effect of human capital on

climate change hydro dependency and the african dam boom summary we examine africa s increasing reliance on hydropower in light of climate change induced variations in rainfall and the potential power outages that may result we use a continent wide riverflow model and ippc climate change scenarios and show that current plans for african dam building are fairly well matched with river flow predictions so that fears that international donors and national governments are making a series of expensive and environmentally damaging investments may be overstated however predictions of an increase in extreme events and reduced rainfall for certain countries mean there are still viability concerns for certain planned hydropower investments

overuse of wood based bioenergy in selected sub saharan africa countries review of unconstructive challenges and suggestions excessive wood consumption for energy and over dependence on fossil fuel based energy are fundamental issues of importance regarding the destruction of environmental sanity in this respect international communities are seeking to explore opportunities on how to encourage aggressive deployment of technologies for clean and sustainable development and possibly renewable the kyoto protocol on climate change meeting in 1997 with about 160 countries in attendance has been used as one of the platform of discourse on carbon emissions reduction strategies advocated strategies agreed include increase in renewable energy consumption via modern techniques massive deployment of renewable energy systems on a global scale will ensure a reasonable displacement of oil based energy production which is the main source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in sub saharan africa limited access to modern energy in the region has stepped up reliance on bioenergy consumption in form of wood fuel and charcoal resulting to attendant effects on human health environment and the biodiversity in general in view of the foregoing this study presents a review on the current situations of unconstructive effects in the overuse of fuel wood and its charcoal derivative for energy consumption in three selected sub saharan african countries nigeria ghana and uganda in conclusion suggestions on how to confront the challenges associated with the over exploitation conditions of fuel wood in the region are put forward the suggestions could be part of the pursuit to increase electricity availability reliability and security with lower level of emissions in the region

financing renewable energy in africa key challenge of the sustainable development goals abstract given the challenge of offering a development perspective to a rapidly growing population it might be tempting for africa to pursue a strategy of fueling growth with the cheapest source of energy available and take care of the environment later such an approach however would disregard the social cost of fossil fuels which the population would have to bear using the sustainable development goals as a benchmark for inclusive and sustainable growth we identify the synergy effects provided by renewable energy already substantial efforts of financing the additional cost of re are under way an analysis of possible leverage points available instruments and involved actors shows that there remains a large additional potential

low carbon energy scenarios for sub saharan africa an input output analysis on the effects of universal energy access and economic growth abstract meeting sub saharan african ssa human development goals will require economic development to be the priority over the coming decades but economic development at all cost may not be acceptable across these goals this paper aims to explore five development scenarios for the five largest economies in ssa to understand the implications to co 2 equivalent emissions co 2 e and off grid energy modernisation in 2030 within this scope gdp growth economic structure availability of energy resources international trade and the development of distributed generation for remote locations are considered regional co 2 emissions were studied using a multi regional input output model for africa under the scenarios analysed all five nations will be unable to reduce 2030 co 2 e emissions below 2012 levels whilst simultaneously achieving forecast gdp growth and universal access to modernised energy services 100 off grid modernisation is estimated to require a three fold increase in primary energy supply and a 26 1317 mt increase in 2030 co 2 e emissions total regional co 2 e emissions could be reduced from 45 to 35 by meeting a 50 renewable energy supply target by 2030 climate change policy would need to focus on multi sector reform to reduce regional emissions as the agricultural sector is the largest emitter in nigeria ethiopia and kenya

output and substitution elasticities of energy and implications for renewable energy expansion in the ecowas region abstract this study estimates output and substitution elasticities of renewable energy and nonrenewable energy for the economic community of west african states ecowas and discusses implications for expanding the former the results show that nonrenewable energy promises greater benefits for ecowas economic transition with output elasticities averaging between 0 052 0 579 and 0 055 to 0 223 for nonrenewable energy and renewable energy respectively overall estimated technological progress is low 0 5 to 2 6 the bulk coming from input efficiency substitution elasticities 0 02 0 94 suggest potential for switching towards renewable energy notwithstanding scale economics and sitting problems inherent in renewable power generation challenge the opportunities for energy substitution a sustainable policy solution therefore appears to be one favoring scaled and efficient electricity generation from fossil energy in the short run with a gradual switch towards renewable power in the long run in general the applied model provides insights that energy efficiency enhances sustainable growth by propelling technological advancement especially when technical change is scale biased and factor augmenting the study also provides insights that impacts of exogenous shocks to inputs are temporary and hence do not jeopardize efforts aimed at scaling output through increased and efficient use of labor capital and energy especially nonrenewable energy

corporate taxation incumbency advantage and entry abstract it is the purpose of this paper to show that corporation tax may affect industrial structure analyzing the effects of corporation tax we demonstrate that it tends to favour incumbents over entrants we further show that the effect of this advantage on an incumbent s output depends on his profit or loss history an incumbent with a past profit is likely to produce a greater output thereby partially or fully crowding out an entrant s output in contrast an incumbent with a past loss is more likely to produce a smaller output making entry easier

the importance of bundling in a gorman lancaster model of earnings the idea that the labor market of individuals can be decomposed into payments to separate productive attributes has an enduring appeal in economics assuming that demographic groups differ only in their endowments of productive characteristics it is possible to rationalize observed demographic earnings differentials without invoking the arguments that characteristics specific to a particular demographic group are direct objects of employer demand by aggregating skills over all demographic groups it is possible to produce a theory of the market determination of the prices of skills held in different amounts by different demographic groups this paper considers conditions under which characteristics are uniformly priced across sectors of a multisector economy the paper presents empirical evidence that rejects uniform pricing of characteristics as a description of the us labor market bundling may account for this evudence but other hypotheses do as well authors

new estimates of quality of life in urban areas implicit markets capture compensation for intraurban and interregional differe nces in amenities and yield differences in housing prices and wages these pecuniary differences become preference based weights in a qual ity of life index hedonic equations are estimated using microdata fr om the 1980 census and assembled county based amenity data on climati c environmental and urban conditions ranking of 253 urban counties reveals substantial variation within as well as among the 185 urba n areas the quality of life differences across counties within one s msa is almost one half of the difference between the top and bottom ranked counties in the nation copyright 1988 by american economic association

on the formation of industry lobby groups abstract this paper provides a step towards a more complete theory of lobbying extending the menu auction model of grossman and helpman grossman g m helpman e 1994 american economic review 84 833 850 a new explanation is proposed for why more concentrated industries more easily overcome the free rider problem inherent in political collective action instead of focusing on transactions costs as olson olson m 1965 the logic of collective action harvard university press cambridge ma we show that more collusive industries with higher collusive profits have a greater incentive to form lobby groups and to contribute to industry lobbying moreover more polluting industries also have a greater incentive to form and contribute to a lobby group

the demand for gasoline in south africa an empirical analysis using co integration techniques abstract using the recently developed autoregressive distributed lag ardl bound testing approach to co integration suggested by pesaran et al pesaran m h shin y smith r j bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 2001 16 3 289 326 we empirically analyzed the long run relationship among the variables in the aggregate gasoline demand function over the period 1978 2005 our study confirms the existence of a co integrating relationship the estimated price and income elasticities of 0 47 and 0 36 imply that gasoline demand in south africa is price and income inelastic

can african countries efficiently build their economies on renewable energy abstract the translog production model is estimated to provide insights on the effectiveness of renewable energy for africa the analysis shows that capital labor renewable energy and nonrenewable energy drive output in african countries with renewable energy being a higher driver of growth than the conventional fossil fuels over the sample period this finding is reflective of the fact that renewable sources like wind hydro and solar account for a greater share of power generation in most african countries output elasticities computed for both energy types reaffirm the results and suggest that eastern and central african countries are more renewable energy dependent than the other three regions in addition technological progress is driven mainly by the efficiency with which various factors and energy inputs are used while africa has great potential of facing out conventional fossil energy the discussion provided in this study suggests that such transition is limited in practice due to issues of scale economics and sitting problems

the real time price elasticity of electricity the real time price elasticity of electricity contains important information on the demand response of consumers to the volatility of peak prices despite the importance empirical estimates of the real time elasticity are hardly available this paper provides a quantification of the real time relationship between total peak demand and spot market prices we find a low value for the real time price elasticity which may partly be explained from the fact that not all users observe the spot market price if we correct for this phenomenon we find the elasticity to be fairly low for consumers currently active in the spot market if this conclusion applies to all users this would imply a limited scope for government intervention in supply security issues

biofuels adoption in nigeria attaining a balance in the food fuel feed and fibre objectives abstract the drive towards economic development in nigeria brings about the pursuit of many competing objectives whose attainments depend on limited resources biofuels adoption has been set as an important path among other options for pursuing economic growth and development for the country the federal government of nigeria fgn is currently promoting the production processing and utilization of biofuels in the transport and energy sectors the article examines biofuels adoption in nigeria vis a vis the attainment of a balance in the food fuel feed and fibre objectives crops already profiled as preferred sources of feedstock for the primary biofuels production are also crucial for food feed and fibre the resources needed for producing these crops are limited hence the need for a balance this paper derived data from secondary sources including the food and agriculture organization fao the paper explores some aspects of biofuels sustainability and present recommendations for attaining a balance in the multiple objectives for attaining socioeconomic development

the cost of providing electricity to africa abstract sub saharan africa lacks electricity we estimate the cost of providing electricity to the region to do so we build an optimisation model that links the electricity demand to the supply and links the supply to the generation distribution and transmission of electricity between countries to the best of our knowledge such a model is novel in the literature we determine that the investment cost of providing electricity to sub saharan africa over a 10 year period is between 160 and 215 billion u s dollars depending on assumptions for electricity access and the cross country electricity trade although the electricity trade increases the investment cost estimate moderately it provides a high return to african countries and is cost efficient overall

a multivariate cointegration analysis of the role of energy in the us macroeconomy abstract this paper extends my previous analysis of the causal relationship of gdp and energy use in the usa in the post war period a majority of the relevant variables are integrated justifying a cointegration analysis the results show that cointegration does occur and that energy input cannot be excluded from the cointegration space the results are plausible in terms of macroeconomic dynamics the results are similar to my previous granger causality results and contradict claims in the literature based on bivariate models that there is no cointegration between energy and output

green growth in oil producing african countries a panel data analysis of renewable energy demand renewable energy has been considered as the solution to the hydra headed problems of energy security energy access and climate change especially in africa in addition renewable energy sources such as the sun wind wave and waste abound in africa are in need of investment in order to provide both policy and investment guide this study investigates the drivers of renewable energy demand in oil producing african countries three panel data models a random effect model a fixed effects model and a dynamic panel data model are used to estimate renewable energy demand with a comprehensive set of determinants the estimation results indicate that the main drivers of renewable energy in oil producing african countries are real income per capita energy resource depletion per capita carbon emissions per capita and energy prices the study recommends that policies should encourage the consumption of commercial sources of renewable energy to attract the needed investments

estimating consumer preferences using market data an application to us automobile demand this paper explores the possibility of using market data to identify consumer preferences a utility function composed of homogeneous characteristics and goods specific effects is used as a basic link between the goods space and the characteristics space the functional form for the hedonic price equation the data requirements and issues of measurement errors for estimating demand and supply of characteristics are discussed we illustrate the methodology by considering the us automobile demand using 1969 86 data compiled from consumer reports and ward s automotiveyearbook

agriculture based energy for rural household income and well being east african experience abstract this paper discusses biogas production in east africa and the implications to household income and sustainable development a household model that links livestock biogas and crop production is analyzed a base model was compared with three scenarios with an increase in crop yield from the use of bioslurry the results demonstrated that investing in biogas plants only for energy replacement would not give farmers positive benefits at the current interest rates the combined effects of lower interest and increases in yield could encourage farmers investments in biogas plants that could lead to increases in household income and food security and reduction in deforestation in the region

exploring the bi directional long run relationship between energy consumption and life quality abstract this study aims at investigating the bi directional long run relationship for the period of 1990 2009 between energy consumption and life quality in 198 countries categorized by income level to achieve this goal the canonical cointegrating regression ccr was utilized the results revealed that energy consumption improves the life quality of 70 of the countries despite their different incomes the study s results unlike all other previous studies also revealed that the life quality indicators also increase energy consumption a phenomenon that appears to be true in 65 of the countries despite the fact that energy consumption plays an important role in achieving a better life quality the world still depends on fossil fuels which represent 81 of total energy consumption therefore it is suggested that these countries should rationalize their fossil fuel energy consumption by increasing the role of renewable energy and increasing their energy saving to improve life quality without causing any damage to the environment

causality between energy consumption and economic growth in india a note on conflicting results abstract this note examines the different direction of causal relation between energy consumption and economic growth in india applying engle granger cointegration approach combined with the standard granger causality test on indian data for the period 1950 1996 we find that bi directional causality exists between energy consumption and economic growth further we apply johansen multivariate cointegration technique on the different set of variables the same direction of causality exists between energy consumption and economic growth this is different from the results obtained in earlier studies

the impact of energy consumption and co2 emission on the economic and financial development in 19 selected countries abstract this study investigated the impact of energy consumption on the economic and financial development in 19 countries these countries were selected due to the fact that the financial development indicators contribute an important share to their total gdp the panel model was employed taking the period of 1980 to 2008 the results show that energy consumption enables these countries to achieve high economic and financial development however the high development that these countries have achieved in the late three decades increased the co 2 emission it is important that these countries should reduce the level of pollution through utilizing energy protection policies such as rationing energy consumption and controlling carbon dioxide emissions or increasing the share of clean energy of their total energy consumption

global policy of rural electrification energy poverty and lack of electricity in the rural area exacerbate the poverty of the developing countries the sustainable renewable technologies can be considered as efficient tools to reduce energy poverty whenever they are conducted based on an appropriate policy electricity can improve the human s lifestyle by increasing the level of health education welfare and technology currently sub sahara africa with only 14 2 of rural electrification has the first rank in the world with lowest access to electricity in that region around 585 million citizens has almost no access to electricity the present study focuses on the general global policies to electrify the rural areas in this regard variety of plans and programs conducted by governmental and private institutes are investigated in the year 2011 the international energy agency iea has developed three global strategies based on the world energy market that defines the overall world energy approach in the present work different technologies for rural electrification are taken into account in two major categories of grid connected and off grid systems furthermore based on sustainable development with emphasis on environmental consideration the feasibility of electrification by using different types of renewable energies such as solar biomass hydro wind and wave have been studied despite reliability of grid connection results indicate that renewable energy sources are the best choice especially in areas far from grid connections challenges between financial institutes and executive agencies result in resource management and technology development in order to overcome existing barriers and issues

an economic analysis for the design of ipp contracts for grid connected renewable energy projects abstract in this paper we undertake an integrated financial economic stakeholder analysis of a grid connected onshore wind project that is owned and operated by an independent power producer ipp in santiago island cape verde this ipp project has received considerable positive publicity and has won many awards cape verde has a very good wind resource but it suffers from high transportation costs for petroleum fuels due to its location hence it would appear to be an ideal site for an ipp investment in a wind farm this analysis is conducted from the perspectives of the electric utility the country s economy the government and the private sector investor the key question is whether the design of the power purchase agreement ppa can simultaneously yield a high enough cash flow for the project to be bankable while at the same time yielding a positive net financial and economic present value to the electric utility and the country respectively the analysis shows that a negotiated ppa results in a negative outcome for the economy of cape verde in almost all circumstances in contrast the owners of the ipp are guaranteed under all circumstances a very substantial return on their investment

renewable based distributed generation in uganda resource potential and status of exploitation abstract uganda is gifted by nature with abundant energy resources mainly renewables which can potentially provide the country with sufficient capacity to meet future growth in energy demand surprisingly uganda has one of the lowest electricity penetration levels with only 9 12 of the total population having electricity access 2 3 of them living in rural communities there is multitude of challenges facing the energy sector of uganda forcing energy demand to always exceed the supply for decades hydropower has been and is still the base electricity supply of the country with a supplement of limited biomass diesel based thermal and solar electricity the objective of this paper is to review the potential and progress of renewable based distributed generation in uganda the potential of the country s natural renewable resources and existing distributed generation is described and existing government policies are assessed the challenges facing the energy sector and the suggested remedies are discussed various distributed generation systems that could be incorporated into the energy system of the country to improve renewable energy re utilization and possibly contribute to the electricity needs of the population are also proposed and discussed exploitation of abundant re resources through distributed energy generation around the region will not only improve the electricity needs of the country but also increase the economic welfare of the growing population

a bayesian approach to assessing the robustness of hedonic property value studies hedonic price models are widely employed to estimate implicit prices for bundled attributes residential property value studies dominate these applications using a representative cross sectional property value data set we employ bayesian methods to translate a range of priors in covariate selection typical of hedonic property value studies into a range of posterior estimates we also formulate priors regarding measurement error in individual covariates and compute the ranges of resulting posterior means finally we empirically demonstrate that a greater and more systematic use of prior information drawn from one s own data and from other studies can break the collinearity deadlock in this data

financing off grid sustainable energy access for the poor this paper examines the role of public instruments in promoting private finance to achieve off grid sustainable energy access renewable energy technologies are increasingly becoming the cheapest solutions for off grid energy access the dramatic uptake of mobile phones in developing countries shows how quickly decentralized services can develop on a commercial basis under the right conditions and raises the prospect that private finance could also drive decentralized energy access for the poor indeed there are already a number of instances of clean energy solutions such as solar portable lights household biogas units or solar home systems that have managed to scale up through leveraging private finance however the experience gained from first generation market development projects show that in almost all cases significant public resources have been necessary to increase the affordability of clean energy technologies provide access to financing for the poor and remove non economic barriers such public interventions may be funded by international public finance domestic budgets and carbon finance despite mounting fiscal constraints facing governments worldwide the emergence of new sources of climate finance and the political momentum in support of energy subsidy reforms as well as new programming modalities offer opportunities to leverage additional resources to achieve universal energy access by 2030

renewable energy electricity development in ghana observations concerns substitution possibilities and implications for the economy abstract can ghana build its economy on renewable energy is it possible to substitute nonrenewable for renewable energy what is the impact of renewable energy on the economy of ghana these questions are relevant and worth considering as far as the renewable energy development agenda in ghana is concern using the translog production function approach this study primarily investigates whether ghana can move away from nonrenewable electricity generation to renewable power generation in particular we provide estimates for the relationship between the two energy types and output the estimates are then used to calculate the output and substitution elasticities between renewable and nonrenewable energy our findings show that while the impact of nonrenewable energy on ghana s economy is negative that of renewable energy is insignificant with output elasticities for both energy types averaging 0 139 and 1 875 respectively even though substitution elasticity suggests the possibility of moving towards a renewable power generation system this study also highlights the limitations associated with such transition citing inherent problems such as scale cost and location based on the analysis done in the context of the findings this study recommends a policy that supports an optimal energy matrix with both renewable and nonrenewable sources

access to electricity in small island developing states of the pacific issues and challenges abstract energy poverty is widespread in small island developing states sids of the pacific it is estimated that 70 percent of pacific islander households do not have access to electricity which is equivalent to access rates in sub saharan africa and slightly below the average for low income countries pacific sids face unique challenges in expanding access to electricity given that their populations are spread across tens of thousands of islands governments and development partners in pacific sids continue to prioritise development of electricity grids as is evident in ongoing subsidisation of grid based power consumption and the establishment of ambitious grid based renewable energy targets this paper argues that traditional approaches to rural electrification which prioritise grid extension are not suited to the pacific islands region increased funding should be directed by both governments and development partners towards rural electrification especially in off grid areas where isolated systems are more appropriate institutional reform is also important regulatory reform is needed for power utilities to extend electricity grids into rural areas institutional arrangements that facilitate the sustainable operation and maintenance of off grid systems also need to be established past donor and government funded off grid rural electrification projects have rarely been sustainable alternative approaches involving payment of output based subsidies to energy service companies are worth exploring although will only succeed where sound regulatory arrangements are in place

corrective tax and subsidy policies in economies with bertrand competition abstract this paper shows how we can correct market failure due to imperfect competition by using taxes and subsidies the analysis is carried out at the general equilibrium level and the importance of objective demand curves is stressed the main conclusions are first it is possible to tax the economy back to the walrasian equilibrium by using linear taxes and subsidies second the welfare theorem holds in an imperfectly competitive economy with corrective taxes and subsidies third a competitive equilibrium can also be achieved by the use of ad valorem taxes and specific output subsidies

financing energy access and off grid electrification a review of status options and challenges abstract this paper provides a review of funding needs and financing mechanisms for energy access in general and off grid electrification in particular to find whether the funding for these activities has been adequate whether sufficient funding is likely to be available to meet the needs of universal energy access whether innovative approaches can be used in funding it finds that in all successful cases the state has played an important role in funding infrastructure investments but many developing countries have neglected the energy access issue for a long time international donor agencies have provided selective and limited support while the innovative mechanisms are also unfriendly towards small scale projects weak governance limited organisational capacity and unfavourable policy environment militate against large scale mobilisation of financial resources in the poorest countries of the world where energy access is a chronic problem the challenge of mobilising finance and ensuring its appropriate delivery and use remains a major issue and would require a co ordinated effort of all relevant stakeholders

compensating differences and interregional wage differentials interregional differences in average wages and earnings have been observed particularly in the north and south of the united states ever since the mid 1800s that observation has motivated several empirical attempts to determine the source of those differentials measured both in nominal and real terms and to explain why they have been maintained over time the general conclusion reached by the overwhelming majority of these studies is that the labor market has not eliminated these wage differentials even in the face of substantial interregional migration this result has at least two alternative interpretations first it would appear to contradict the theory of compensating differences as applied to the labor market thaler and rosen 1975 which stresses that under the assumptions of perfect information free geographic and intersectoral labor mobility and homogeneous consumer tastes the nominal wage rates of workers who have similar human capital characteristics live and work in similar environments and experience similar living costs are driven to equality second this result may only reflect an aggregation error in other words there may be several types of labor that are each paid different equilibrium wage rates and comprise different percentages of the workforce in each region even if the real wage paid to each class of workers is interregionally invariant a situation that instead would support the theory of compensating differences failure to distinguish accurately between labor types could produce the illusion of a wage differential this paper considers the two alternative interpretations given above as to why interregional wage differentials might exist hedonic real wage equations are estimated for four regions of the united states using observations on individual household heads drawn from the 1976 panel study in income dynamics psid this sample is of interest because the 1976 psid data contain unusually detailed measures of education work experience and occupation as well as information on workplace and job characteristics thus a more complete specification of the wage equation is permitted and the possibility of aggregation error is reduced particularly in comparison with other interregional wage differential studies several of these studies for example have been based on aggregate data from the census of manufactures fuchs and perlman 1960 gallaway 1963 scully 1969 and coelho and ghali 1971 which provide no direct measurements on the human capital of workers the remainder of the discussion is organized into three sections section ii specifies the wage equation and describes the psid data section iii then reports empirical results which are consistent with the findings based on aggregate data of bellante 1979 and coelho and ghali 1971 in that they support the theory of compensating differences more specifically for full time workers the rewards to attributes relevant in determining real wages apparently are interregionally invariant however because this result conflicts with most previous research on interregional wage differentials based on aggregate data and virtually all such research based on microdata welch 1966 hanoch 1967 hanushek 1973 1981 hirsch 1978 and sahling and smith 1983 a number of empirical comparisons are made between the present study and the approaches taken by other investigators conclusions and implications are drawn out in section iv

insights into biofuel development in burkina faso potential and strategies for sustainable energy policies abstract in many african countries the upswing in oil prices is one factor that favours the adoption and implementation of a national biofuel policy this trend has a major impact on state budgets and domestic trade balances while also limiting the access of rural inhabitants to modern energy services contribution of biofuels in stabilizing the energy sector influences ongoing negotiations on the global dynamics of climate change the reduction in greenhouse gas ghg emissions and sustainable development the question of biofuels as an alternative energy thus depends on international national and local considerations biofuels represent opportunities e g energy independence and security new national income and employment sources as well as potential food security problems african policy makers therefore need to make the right choices to guide the development of biofuel production and use this article aims to support the development of a biofuel policy by reviewing the latest technical economic environmental and social knowledge so as to be able to evaluate the potential and limits of biofuels in burkina faso

the economics of renewable energy expansion in rural sub saharan africa accelerating development in sub saharan africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity currently reaching only about one third of households this paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check the authors develop a geographically explicit framework and use spatial modeling and cost estimates from recent engineering studies to determine where stand alone renewable energy generation is a cost effective alternative to centralized grid supply the results suggest that decentralized renewable energy will likely play an important role in expanding rural energy access but it will be the lowest cost option for a minority of households in africa even when likely cost reductions over the next 20 years are considered decentralized renewables are competitive mostly in remote and rural areas while grid connected supply dominates denser areas where the majority of households reside these findings underscore the need to de carbonize the fuel mix for centralized power generation as it expands in africa

collusion among asymmetric firms the case of different discount factors abstract this study investigates collusive behavior among asymmetric firms for this purpose we develop a selection criterion for deriving a unique collusive outcome and apply it to the case when firms have different discount factors our analysis reveals that for collusion to be self enforcing it is unnecessary that all firms have sufficiently high discount factors but rather only that firms on average have a sufficiently long run view the optimal collusive outcome entails a strict ordering of output quotas in which firms with relatively low discount factors receive a disproportionate share of market demand as found in the case of a common discount factor a fall in a firm s discount factor reduces the likelihood of successful collusion this effect reduces firm profits on the other hand in the event that firms can collude a lowering of a firm s discount factor increases its output quota so that its profits rise

the politico economics of electricity planning in developing countries a case study of ghana abstract off grid technologies are increasingly being proposed as a way of ensuring cost efficient universal access to electricity in many developing countries however many un electrified communities would prefer access to electricity via the national grid rather than off grid technologies electricity planning based on cost efficiency alone could therefore be undermined by political pressure from discontented communities that are assigned off grid technologies using a case study of un electrified communities in ghana we develop an electricity planning algorithm based on hierarchical lexicographic programming and consider specifications where the priorities are adjusted to give weight to 1 cost efficiency and 2 political economy considerations so that communities with larger populations and therefore votes are given priority in terms of grid electrification the results emphasise the need to incorporate the political economy considerations in the national planning of universal electrification showing significant regional differences in terms of where grid extensions ought to be placed incorporating a political economy perspective in national planning also suggests that the most important policy trade offs shift from considering the grid versus off grid balance to focussing more on the effectiveness of grid investment in providing universal access

an integrated framework for rural electrification adopting a user centric approach to business model development rural electrification re has gained prominence over the past two decades as an effective means for improving living conditions this growth has largely been driven by socio economic and political imperatives to improve rural livelihood and by technological innovation based on a content analysis of 232 scholarly articles the literature is categorized into four focal lenses technology institutional viability and user centric we find that the first two dominate the re debate the viability lens has been used less frequently whilst the user centric lens began to engage scholars as late as 2007 we provide an overview of the technological institutional and viability lenses and elaborate upon the user centric lens in greater detail for energy policy and practice we combine the four lenses to develop a business model framework that policy makers practitioners and investors could use to assess re projects or to design future rural electrification strategies

hedonic prices goods specific effects and functional form inferences from cross section time series data tests for two key elements of the hedonic model of price determination for differentiated goods are proposed when cross sectional time series data are available first the hedonic hypothesis that price is determined by sellers and buyers valuations of characteristics bundled in a good is tested against the alternative that consumers demand specific goods the sensitivity of the outcome of the test to unmeasured characteristics serial correlation or heteroscedasticity and misspecification of functional form is assessed second a novel approach to testing functional form illustrates limitations of testing hedonic specifications only against alternatives nested in the box cox functional form

the relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

least cost network evaluation of centralized and decentralized contributions to global electrification abstract the choice between centralized and decentralized electricity generation is examined for 150 countries as a function of population distribution electricity consumption transmission cost and the cost difference between decentralized and centralized electricity generation a network algorithm is developed to find the shortest centralized transmission network that spans a given fraction of the population in a country the least cost combination of centralized and decentralized electricity that serves the country is determined case studies of botswana uganda and bangladesh illustrate situations that are more and less suited for decentralized electrification specific maps for centralized and decentralized generation are presented to show how the least cost option varies with the relative costs of centralized and decentralized generation and transmission cost centralized and decentralized fractions are calculated for 150 countries for most of the world s population centralized electricity is the least cost option for a number of countries particularly in africa substantial populations and regions may be most cost effectively served by decentralized electricity

general equilibrium tax incidence under imperfect competition a quantity setting supergame analysis the incidence of various taxes is analyzed in a model with competitive and oligopolistic sectors friedman s grim trigger strategies support collusion with firms producing output to maximize joint profits subject to the constraint that no firm desires to cheat the sustainable level of output depends on the capitalized value of future retaliation therefore tax induced changes in the net return to capital the discount rate affect the output mix through their impact on the sustainability of collusion this collusive pricing effect is isolated and analyzed one result is that a general factor tax on capital but not labor is shifted

does size matter simulating electricity market coupling between colombia and ecuador since the beginning of the liberalization era the integration of electricity markets has been promoted in many regions arguing that this will bring benefits in terms of security of supply and efficiency however little progress has been made in the last decades in most regions with some successful exceptions such as the nordpool and more research is needed to determine under which circumstances those benefits are achievable we develop a system dynamics model to analyze the potential benefits and risks of market coupling and to improve the understanding of its implications on policy design this model allows us to simulate the long term behavior of two interconnected countries under different interconnection scenarios and different policies regarding capacity payments the analysis is focused on colombia and ecuador which have been trading electricity for more than 10 years and offer an interesting case study given their complementarity in terms of hydropower supply however the results of the simulations show that this complementarity is not necessarily exploited while the relative size of the countries determines the magnitude of the potential benefits of integration the interconnector capacity plays a key role in achieving those benefits additionally both factors significantly affect the outcome of policies such as the implementation of capacity payments we conclude that capacity policies and integration policies need to be coordinated

the link between renewable energy production and gross domestic product in africa a comparative study between 1980 and 2008 abstract renewable energy re projects are arguably one of the most important strategies that can be used in the mitigation of climate change impacts at the same time re technologies can generate clean energy and potentially boost the economy of the african continent it is thus not surprising that recent studies have investigated the relationship between re and economic growth in some african countries however the limitation of these reductionist analytical frameworks is that they can conceal the true regional picture in terms of the link between investments in re technologies and gross domestic product gdp this holistic analysis is important in order to inform regional policies on climate change the article uses statistical analytic techniques to examine the correlation between re production and economic growth across different blocks of the african continent between 1980 and 2008 the analysis is between geographical blocks e g southern africa western africa etc and between oil and non oil producing blocks generally speaking while there exists a similar pattern in all the studied blocks in terms of mean standard deviation and correlation between re and gdp a few exceptions can be found for instance the rise in re gdp correlation from 1992 1993 onwards was conspicuously higher in north africa and oil producing countries compared to all the other blocks similarly southern africa was the only block where the correlation between re and gdp was negative throughout the period under review except 1988 1989 and 1997 when it was positive

biodiesel value chain and access to energy in ethiopia policies and business prospects abstract similar to many net oil importing sub sahara african countries ethiopia s economy is rural and as it stands today it is far from being a fossil fuel based economy instead the economy is largely powered by traditional burning of solid biomass despite its small share in the overall energy supply 7 imported fuel absorbs half of ethiopia s foreign currency earnings the common justifications behind the development of biofuels such as energy source diversification foreign currency saving rural poverty alleviation through employment and technology transfers were all appealing for ethiopian policy advisers in 2007 mostly influenced by the global discourse ethiopia launched a biofuel expansion strategy and a massive ad hoc investment promotion of two biodiesel crops castor and jatropha in this paper we synthesize the various biodiesel development initiatives and modes of production and point out at the gaps in policy formulation and project implementation evaluating the prospect and constraints for biodiesel production in ethiopia we conclude that most of the prerequisites for a viable biodiesel industry still need to be met we identify key areas and priorities to further strengthen the development of the biodiesel sector