stacking up the ladder a panel data analysis of tanzanian household energy choices energy use statistics in tanzania reflect the country s low level of industrialization and development in 2016 only 16 9 of rural and 65 3 of urban inhabitants in mainland tanzania were connected to some form of electricity we use a nationally representative three wave panel dataset 2008 2013 to contribute to the literature on household energy use decisions in tanzania in the context of the stacking and energy ladder hypotheses we firstly adopt a panel multinomial logit approach to model the determinants of household cooking and lighting fuel choices secondly we focus explicitly on energy stacking behaviour proposing various ways of measuring what is inferred when stacking behaviour is thought of in the context of the energy transition and presenting household level correlates of energy stacking behaviour thirdly since fuel uses have gender differentiated impacts we investigate women s bargaining power in the decision making process of household fuel choices we find that whilst higher household incomes are strongly associated with a transition towards the adoption of more modern fuels especially lighting fuels this transition takes place in a context of significant fuel stacking in tanzania government policy has been aimed mostly at connecting households to the electric grid however the public health environmental and social benefits of access to modern energy sources are likely to be diminished in a context of significant fuel stacking lastly we present evidence that the educational attainment of women in the household is an important aspect of household fuel choices

fuel demand elasticities for energy and environmental policies indian sample survey evidence india has been running large scale interventions in the energy sector over the last decades still there is a dearth of reliable and readily available price and income elasticities of demand to base these on especially for domestic use of traditional fuels this study uses the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids using micro data of more than 100 000 households sampled across india the la aids model is expanded by specifying the intercept as a linear function of household characteristics marshallian and hicksian price and expenditure elasticities of demand for four main fuels are estimated for both urban and rural areas by different income groups these can be used to evaluate recent and current energy policies the results can also be used for energy projections and carbon dioxide simulations given different growth rates for different segments of the indian population

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

forests fuelwood and livelihoods energy transition patterns in eastern indonesia the central thesis of the energy ladder model is a unidirectional transition from primitive to advance fuel with increased affluence of households although now largely discredited this assumption remains a foundation of laissez faire policies that anticipate energy transition resulting spontaneous forest recovery with economic development our results suggest that such policies can undermine broader policy objectives and actually worsen forest conditions in rural indonesia based on a case study of forest margin communities in eastern indonesia we demonstrate that fuel subsidy reform did little to reduce rural household demand for fuelwood while dramatically increasing fuelwood demand for processing agricultural products our results show how household decisions related to fuel sources are affected by non economic considerations and external factors such as opportunities to sell fuelwood we argue that policy interventions that encourage energy transition of households do not necessarily improve forest conditions as household fuelwood use may be a symptom rather than a driver of deforestation and forest degradation thus policies to improve forest conditions should focus more on addressing the market environment of forest margin communities providing energy alternatives to small industries that are often the larger consumers of fuelwood

equity externalities and energy subsidies the case of kerosine in indonesia abstract this paper examines two arguments used to justify the subsidy provided kerosine the primary commercial fuel of indonesian households one argument holds that the subsidy reduces deforestation externalities resulting from wood gathering econometric analysis of a large cross section of households finds that firewood kerosene substitution is very limited in java where the deforestation problem is most severe so that kerosene subsidy is not an effective means of alleviating the problem the second argument holds that social equity requires the subsidization of basic needs such as kerosene it is found that the kerosene subsidy disproportionately benefits urban and wealthier households

dynamic delegation of experimentation i study a dynamic relationship where a principal delegates experimentation to an agent experimentation is modeled as a one armed bandit that yields successes following a poisson process its unknown intensity is high or low the agent has private information his type being his prior belief that the intensity is high the agent values successes more than the principal does so prefers more experimentation the optimal mechanism is a cutoff rule in the belief space the cutoff gives pessimistic types total freedom but curtails optimistic types behavior pessimistic types over experiment while the most optimistic ones under experiment this delegation rule is time consistent

commitment flexibility and optimal screening of time inconsistency this paper develops a theory of optimal provision of commitment devices to people who value both commitment and flexibility and whose preferences differ in the degree of time inconsistency if time inconsistency is observable both a planner and a monopolist provide devices that help each person commit to the efficient level of flexibility however the combination of unobservable time inconsistency and preference for flexibility causes an adverse selection problem to solve this problem the monopolist and possibly the planner curtail flexibility in the device for a more inconsistent person at both ends of the efficient choice range moreover they may have to add unused options to the device for a less inconsistent person and also distort his actual choices this theory has normative and positive implications for private and public provision of commitment devices

urban household energy use in tanzania prices substitutes and poverty abstract this paper presents the findings of the tanzanian urban household energy survey undertaken as part of the tanzania urban energy project household energy use varies by income group according to local fuel availability considerable differences between the marginal costs of supplying fuels and market prices paid by consumers have led to major misallocations of resources when the results of this survey are compared to the results of the 1987 household energy survey a significant shift by households toward kerosene and electricity away from fuelwood charcoal and lpg is shown to have taken place these shifts toward modern fuels are consistent with the claims of the households in the 1990 survey and can largely be explained by fuel prices finally an assessment of the lifeline tariff and the kerosene cross subsidy demonstrate that the latter is a more effective method of ensuring the basic energy needs of the urban and rural poor

from linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model abstract promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the energy ladder model that suggests that with increasing affluence a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels in this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four year 1992 96 case study of a village in mexico and from a large scale survey from four states of mexico we show that an alternate multiple fuel model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households the multiple fuel model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty a economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels b technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices c cultural preferences and d health impacts this model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households

co2 emissions reduction by price deregulation and fossil fuel taxation a case study of indonesia abstract as environmental issues and the issue of global warming in particular rise to the top of the international agenda developing nations are faced with a major question how to confront these environmental problems and simultaneously address a number of more pressing developmental imperatives this paper tries to answer that question on a limited scale using indonesia as a case study the study indicates that by deregulating energy prices and imposing different levels of taxation on fossil fuels indonesia could reduce its co 2 emissions without considerably suppressing the growth of its economy in the long run however these policies cannot cope with the inevitable rise in coal use in indonesia due to constraints on domestic natural gas and oil resources limiting the growth of coal consumption in the future will require direct technological intervention in the supply and demand of energy and a shift in current energy export and import policies

who benefit most from fuel subsidies evidence from nigeria abstract the paper studies the benefit incidence of fuel subsidies in nigeria household sector combining annual subsidy estimates with the households expenditure data from the 2009 10 harmonized living standard survey we investigate how the benefits from fuel subsidies are accrued to each income groups in nigeria the results show that while the kerosene subsidy is more evenly distributed across income groups petrol subsidy is concentrated to high income groups in aggregate the top 20 households enjoy twice as much the benefit of fuel subsidies as the bottom 20 households we also examine the concentration and progressivity of fuel subsidies using gini coefficient measures and lorenz concentration curves and find both fuel subsidies are more regressive than the per capita expenditure

nepali fuelwood production and consumption regional and household distinctions substitution and successful intervention this article uses household data from nepal s two major populated regions and 27 of 59 districts within those regions to examine fuelwood consumption and production in contrast with a purely market assessment household analysis includes production which is consumed in the producing household the household regressions yield coefficients and elasticities that are very different from and more reliable than a comparable assessment of market demand and supply household results generally support the hypotheses that expenditures on fuelwood are a small share of total household activity and that fuelwood is not sufficiently scarce to alter household behaviour fuelwood is sufficiently scarce however to alter behaviour for those households in the hill region that do not participate in market exchange these households may be the best targets for public market interventions designed to alter fuelwood supply and deforestation

the fuelwood crisis and the environment problems policies and instruments the paper defines the third world fuelwood crisis in a broad development context in terms of the implications of fuelwood scarcity and environmental damage for private and public choice it shows how the identification of the nature of the policy problems underlying the crisis influences the objectives and instruments of energy policy the paper concludes that to get energy policy to try to be responsible for rather than to take account of the wider context is likely to make policy ineffective

fuelwood consumption and forest degradation a household model for domestic energy substitution in rural india this paper disusses domestic en ergy supply and demand in rural india links be tween forest scarcity and household fuel collec tion are analyzed in a non separable household model focusing on substitution of non commer cial fuels from the commons and the private do main based on data from villages bordering a protected area a novel maximum entropy ap proach is used for estimation it is found that households respond to forest scarcity and in creased fuelwood collection time by substituting fuels from private sources for forest fuelwood however the magnitude of the response appears insufficient to prevent current fuelwood collection practices from causing serious forest degrada tion jel q24

consumer behaviour theory and empirical evidence a survey this survey is designed to emphasize the relationship between empirical a nd theoretical considerations in the analysis of consumer behavior a lthough it focuses primarily on analysis at the individual or micro l evel it tries where possible to draw implications for the estimati on of aggregate relationships the importance of micro level analysis stems from the rapid expansion in available panel and survey data se ts this development has generated its own theoretical and empirical issues many of which are raised in this survey copyright 1988 by royal economic society

demand for beef and chicken products separability and structural change several studies have indicated that the recent shift from beef to poultry in consumption is not entirely caused by changes in rela tive prices or income braschler chavas dahlgran hudson and vertin moschini and meilke frank thurman most studies of structural change have focused on red meat consumption only thurman has looked closely at the poultry market and no one has considered poultry products yet the mix of chicken products marketed changed dramat ically during the last twenty years and should have influenced aggregate meat demand the share of broiler slaughter marketed as whole birds declined from 74 in 1965 to 28 in 1985 while cut up parts and processed chick en products increased from 26 to 72 whole birds are inferior goods and cut up parts and processed chicken are normal goods haidacher et al the shift in chicken prod uct mix away from whole birds should have increased the preference for total chicken in this article two related questions are ad dressed first do consumers allocate expendi tures among meats by animal origin or by product type second does disaggregation of meat into products in a meat demand model give insight into the causes of structural

household fuel use in developing countries review of theory and evidence because of recent concerns about the negative externalities of traditional fuel use on the environment and health the issue of the household fuel transition in developing countries from dirty fuels towards clean fuels has received growing research attention this paper provides an up to date survey of the economic literature on household fuel use in these countries first we present the conceptual and theoretical frameworks then we discuss the empirical results that show how a wide range of factors drive the household fuel transition finally we suggest priorities for policy initiatives and highlight areas of future research

joint production and consumption in traditional households fuelwood and crop residues in two districts in nepal forest conversion by agricultural households is the leading cause of deforestation yet we know little about agricultural household use of forest and tree products this article measures household production of and demand for fuelwood and fuel substitutes in two districts in nepal women play a larger role in collection in the district dependant on production from common forestlands men and agricultural capital are more important inputs in the district dependant on production from private lands the article also measures demand elasticities for fuelwood combustible agricultural residues and improved stoves a technological substitute each by household income group all price and income demand elasticities are less than one the substitution elasticities between residues and fuelwood are less than one residues are more important substitutes for low income households and improved stoves are more important substitutes for high income households

household energy mix in uganda abstract this paper presents evidence that household energy use in uganda conforms to the energy ladder theory as household income increases solid and transitional fuel use evolves in an inverse u manner while electricity consumption shows a direct relationship with income public infrastructure provision income and education are the key variables which can be targeted to reduce household dependence on solid fuels while increasing non solid fuel use while education and public infrastructure have varying impacts on rural and urban households energy mix these variables generally reduce rudimentary fuel use and increase modern fuel consumption timely investment in electricity infrastructure is necessary to cater for burgeoning electricity demand as households become affluent strategies for reforestation dissemination of improved cookstoves relieving supply side constraints for modern fuels and staggered payment options to lower the cost of entry for modern fuels can improve ugandan households energy security

demographic variables in demand analysis in this paper the authors discuss five procedures for incorporating demographic variables into theoretically plausible demand systems translating scaling and the gorman reverse gorman and implicit prais houthakker procedures these five procedures are used to incorporate a single demographic variable the number of children in a household into the generalized ces demand system using household budget data for the united kingdom for the period 1966 1972 excerpt

willingness to pay for forest property rights and the value of increased property rights security this paper studies the willingness to pay wtp for forest property rights in viet nam we do so by asking respondents to estimate the value of two different forest property rights regimes where only the level of property security differs and all other forest plot characteristics are constant we use this information to identify the value of the property rights security our results reveal that a significant number of individuals are willing to pay for an additional area of forestland but that the amount offered appears to be inadequate to compensate sellers as very few land market transactions actually take place the results further indicate that income relates positively to wtp irrespective of forest property regime wealth age and ethnicity also have an impact on the amount households are willing to pay as expected there was a significant mark up on the more secure right econometric estimates of the difference between the wtp for secure and insecure property rights show that a higher level of female education and household age decrease the difference between the two wtp measures while the difference tends to increase as income improves this has important policy implications as it indicates that households tend to evaluate the property rights institutions differently

the environmental impact of poverty evidence from firewood collection in rural nepal abstract we investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural nepal using 1995 96 and 2002 3 world bank living standards measurement survey lsms data we incorporate village fixed effects endogenous censoring measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of different household assets we find no evidence in favor of the poverty environment hypothesis the evidence for the environmental kuznets curve depends on the precise measure of living standards and time period studied firewood collections fall with a transition to modern occupations and rise with increasing population and household division the local interhousehold collection externality is negligible indicating that policy interventions are justified only by ecological considerations or nonlocal spillovers

effect of fuelwood scarcity and socio economic factors on household bio based energy use and energy substitution in rural ethiopia abstract in ethiopia biomass is predominantly utilized for household energy needs often using inefficient rudimentary stoves which cause adverse environmental and welfare effects this paper examined the contribution of biomass resources to rural household energy use and energy substitution the analysis applied the ordinary least square in the final stage estimation of fuelwood and overall biomass energy consumption by using predicted shadow prices the paper used tobit model to estimate charcoal and agricultural fuel consumption due to the presence of censoring an increase in fuelwood shadow price was associated with reduced household fuelwood consumption with price elasticity of 0 38 the cross price elasticity between fuelwood and agricultural fuels revealed no evidence of energy substitution which conforms to the findings of previous studies household access to electricity was associated with lower household biomass energy utilization but kerosene was not fuelwood substitute household energy use conformed to the fuel stacking or multiple fuel use concept but households preferred modern energy options as welfare increased in areas where modern energy is available this suggests that there is a promising prospect for fuel transition but access to modern energy and economic growth have key roles the findings suggest that a concerted policy effort is required that would help diversify rural livelihoods improve living standards and encourage economic growth encourage inter fuel substitution through improved modern energy access and afforestation to increase biomass supply

comment on commitment vs flexibility this comment corrects two results in the 2006 econometrica paper by amador werning and angeletos awa that features a model in which individuals face a trade off between flexibility and commitment first in contrast to proposition 1 in awa we show that money burning can be part of the ex ante optimal contract when there are two states second in contrast to proposition 2 in awa we show that money burning can be imposed at the top in the highest liquidity shock state even when there is a continuum of states we provide corrected versions of the above results publication abstract

value chain clusters and aquaculture innovation in bangladesh abstract farmers adopting and implementing innovations such as new technologies and new products often require collaborative inter segment innovation by other actors in other segments of the value chain such as wholesalers implementing new product innovations such as supply of commercial fish feed and chemicals and buying and marketing non traditional fish species we tested whether the clustering and thus economies of agglomeration with implied lower transaction costs encourage and facilitate farmers to innovate that potential determinant of farmer choices has not been studied in agriculture or aquaculture or indeed the food sector we use a unique data set from our own primary survey of the aquaculture value chain in bangladesh including micro data for 1500 fish farm households and 20 districts 77 villages for meso level data we calculate an index to include both horizontal agglomeration and vertical interconnections among actors in the value chain we find being in an area with a high clustering index is associated with a higher probability of farmers using more modern inputs and growing non traditional commodity fish species controlling for farmers other characteristics as well as proximity to cities

woodfuels livelihoods and policy interventions changing perspectives in the 1970s it appeared that fuelwood use was growing rapidly and this could have major adverse impacts on the resource and poor users by the mid 1980s revised assessments indicated that there was less of a problem than had been foreseen and much less of a need for forestry interventions to maintain supplies as a result many of the latter were sharply scaled back additional information and analysis that has become available since the 1980s support the view that there is no need for large scale interventions devoted just to provision of fuelwood however declining access to supplies or markets can raise significant problems in some areas and for particular categories of user growing urban demand for charcoal can also cause local problems in particular in africa the potentials for appropriate forms of intervention are discussed

sources of change in the demand for energy by indonesian households 1980 2002 abstract this paper describes the energy transition in indonesia and examines the determinants of energy demand by fuel the key innovation of this paper is the documentation of how these relationships have evolved over time we present a new method to combine econometric analysis and index decomposition analysis to examine household energy transition this approach also allows us to consider a broad range of demographic and structural factors while providing a clear and concise representation of our findings we find that the composite indices mask important underlying patterns in particular our results indicate that energy transition in indonesia cannot be confidently attributed to any one index rather it has been driven predominantly by the triple interaction of demographics income growth and change in demand supply parameters our findings point to the importance of utilizing time series data in studying both the characteristics and determinants of energy transition in developing countries

urban household energy use in india efficiency and policy implications biomass based fuels are being steadily replaced with modern fossil fuels and electricity in cities of developing countries the latter energy sources are more convenient and efficient to use and produce less local pollutants this fuel transition has accompanied economic growth in many cities empirical data to substantiate these generalizations are being gathered by researchers we report on a recent survey of household energy use in the city of hyderabad india the survey reveals that the underlying fuel transition is consistent with that in other developing country cities government policy however has favored the rich because of the inequities in fuel and equipment availability among income groups we report the major findings of the survey in context of other data for india and suggest policy changes to redress these inequities

bioenergy consumption in rural china evidence from a survey in three provinces abstract biomass in the form of crop residues and firewood is a major energy source for rural households in china a survey conducted in the provinces of shanxi zhejiang and guizhou shows that 37 percent of rural households use bioenergy for heating and cooking and that bioenergy accounts for 18 percent of their total energy consumption most of the biomass used for energy is burned in traditional stoves contributing to indoor air pollution in rural homes crop residues also are commonly burned in the fields contributing to the high level of outdoor air pollution in china our econometric analysis of the key determinants of bioenergy use shows that bioenergy consumption falls modestly with income growth increased time required for biomass collection and less farmland hence open burning of some biomass is an optimal choice and is likely to become more of a problem without policy intervention these findings suggest that a more sustainable use of biomass requires policies that promote cleaner more efficient bioenergy combustion technologies and increase the economic value of biomass such that local households can benefit from biomass collection

forecasting the recovery from the great recession is this time different abstract this paper asks whether the slow recovery of the us economy from the trough of the great recession was anticipated and identifies some of the factors that contributed to surprises in the course of the recovery we construct a narrative using news reports and government announcements to identify policy and financial shocks we then compare forecasts and forecast revisions of gdp to the narrative successive financial and fiscal shocks emanating from europe together with self inflicted wounds from the political stalemate over the us fiscal situation help explain the slowing of the pace of an already slow recovery

food versus fuel examining tradeoffs in the allocation of biomass energy sources to domestic and productive uses in ethiopia rural households in ethiopia have limited options to meet their domestic energy needs because they lack access to modern fuels and technologies domestic use of certain fuel sources such as cow dung can hinder agricultural outcomes and productivity this article explores the tradeoffs between domestic and productive uses of biomass energy sources in the nile basin of ethiopia using a nonseparable farm household model where labor allocation to energy collection and farming are analyzed simultaneously we estimate a system of five structural equations using three stage least squares and find that the use of dung as a domestic fuel source has negative implications for the value of harvested crops while use of on farm fuelwood is associated with increased value of agricultural output on farm production of fuelwood appears to increase the value of crop output and provide labor savings by making fuelwood collection more convenient for households policy interventions to support the expansion of agroforestry and increase access to new energy efficient technologies are needed to ensure that agricultural productivity can be both increased and sustained

how urbanization affects energy use in developing countries abstract this paper identifies mechanisms whereby urbanization affects energy consumption industrialization and urbanization accompany each other during economic development but urbanization exerts a number of independent influences on energy use it permits economies of scale in production but requires more transportation food must be transported to urbanized populations and relatively smaller agricultural populations must modernize entailing considerable increases in agricultural energy use in cities a number of production activities which were domestically provided in rural areas using human or animal energy shift to sources outside the household using modern energy sources the largest single source of change in energy use is personal transportation passenger transport in cities is heavily weighted towards fuel using modes particularly as incomes increase to assess the overall impact a regression analysis of 59 developing countries for 1980 is conducted holding constant per capita income and the extent of industrialization the elasticity of energy consumption per capita and per dollar of gdp is between 0 35 and 0 48

contracting with diversely naive agents in standard contract theoretic models the underlying assumption is that agent types differ in their preference or cost parameters and the principal s objective is to design contracts in order to screen this type we study a contract theoretic model in which the heterogeneity among agent types is of a cognitive nature in our model the agent has dynamically inconsistent preferences agent types differ only in their degree of sophistication that is their ability to forecast the change in their future tastes we fully characterize the menu of contracts which the principal offers in order to screen the agent s sophistication the menu does not exclude any type it provides a perfect commitment device for relatively sophisticated types and exploitative contracts which involve speculation with relatively naive types more naive types are more heavily exploited and generate a greater profit for the principal our results allow us to interpret real life contractual arrangements in a variety of industries

socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies on heterogeneous agricultural households nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme in principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation however concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods to study the effect of government policies on forest use an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in nepal was developed the model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income employment and income inequality the results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies this study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment and widen income inequalities within communities compared to alternative policies certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households ability to meet survival needs the findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry s contribution to production are accounted for the study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs