primary energy demand in japan an empirical analysis of long term trends and future co2 emissions abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy demand gnp and the real energy price in japan using data covering 1887 2001 it is found that if an underlying energy demand trend is appropriately incorporated the resulting econometric model produces a long run income elasticity of about unity and a long run price elasticity of about 0 2 the estimated model is utilised to forecast energy consumption and co 2 emissions up to 2012 it is shown that given current economic conditions and policies there is considerable uncertainty about whether japan will be able to meet its kyoto target by reducing co 2 emissions in 2008 2012 to the 1990 level it is shown that this uncertainty depends on the strength of the economy and leaves the japanese government with a difficult policy dilemma if there is a resurgence in growth to something near the annual average growth rate since the early 1980s a considerable effort will be required in order to meet its kyoto target requiring not only using the kyoto mechanisms but also additional tougher domestic policies and measures such as emissions capping r d incentives and education for energy conservation in addition to a pricing and tax policy

factorial decomposition of co2 emissions a generalized divisia index approach abstract this paper introduces a novel approach to estimating the impact of the major factors driving co 2 emissions gdp energy consumption population their carbon intensities and other related indicators that may be chosen arbitrarily the suggested approach is based on the generalization of the divisia index to interconnected factors the approach also extends the kaya identity by explicitly including gross domestic product and energy consumption a computer program in r language aimed at automating the calculations is supplied factorial analysis of the united states and china s co 2 emissions is provided as an example of application

global warming and energy demand list of tables list of figures list of contributors preface 1 global warming and energy elasticities terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstonepart 1 estimating long term energy elasticities 2 alternative approaches to estimating long run energy demand elasticities an application to asian developing countries ron smith and m hashem pesaran 3 a survey of international energy elasticities neil manning and jago atkinson 4 long run demand elasticities for gasoline thomas sterner and mikael franzen 5 responses of energy demand in uk manufacturing to the energy price increases of 1973 and 1979 80 alan ingham 6 elasticities for oecd aggregate final energy demand lakis vouyoukas 7 modelling uk energy demand derek hodgson and keith millerpart ii energy the economy and greenhouse gas abatement 8 endogenous technological progress in fossil fuel demand laurence boone stephen hall david kemball cook and clare smith 9 uk energy price elasticities and their implications for long term co2 abatement terry barker 10 price elasticity and market structure overcoming obstacles to ensure energy efficiency tim jackson 11 rethinking the use of energy elasticities stefan p schleicher 12 revisiting the costs of co2 abatement paul ekins 13 asymmetrical price elasticities of energy demand michael grubb14 conclusions terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstone bibliography index

liberalizing the energy markets of western europe a computable equilibrium model approach using a computable equilibrium model the short run effects of a radical liberalization of the west european natural gas and electricity markets are examined in each model country oil gas coal and electricity are produced traded and consumed there are world markets for oil and coal and well integrated competitive markets for gas and electricity in western europe gas and electricity are transported and traded across markets under the assumption of ideal third party access regimes for transportation and limited capacities in the transportation networks it is found that relative to the data year 1996 radical liberalization reduces the average end user price of natural gas by around 20 and the average end user price of electricity by around 50 the supply of electricity increases by around 20 mainly due to increased coal power production after such liberalization coal power emerges with the largest market share of electricity production in western europe

bundled discounts strategic substitutes or complements bundled discounts by pairs of otherwise independent firms play an increasingly important role as a strategic tool in several industries given that prices of firms competing for the same consumers are strategic complements one would expect their discounts levels also to be strategic complements however in this paper we show that under some circumstances bundled discounts may be strategic substitutes this occurs under vertically differentiated products where a low quality pair of producers may indeed prefer to lower its discount after an increase in the discount offered by a high quality pair of producers

structural change in europe s gas markets three scenarios for the development of the european gas market to 2020 abstract against the background of the european union s gas directive and the emergence of new players and markets in europe s gas sector this paper explores how company actions could shape the future for the gas industry starting with an examination of company strategies this paper develops three scenarios for the future a gradual transformation scenario where a single european gas market develops that is essentially oligopolistic in nature a vertical integration scenario where upstream and downstream gas companies merge to form a vertically integrated gas supplier and a pull the plug scenario where the current market structure decomposes into a competitive market these scenarios are examined in terms of their impact on gas prices demand and the distribution of gas rent along the supply chain the paper highlights the fact that the eu s gas directive is not sufficient for the introduction of competition into europe s gas markets but that company actions will be the key determinant and they may favour alternative market structures

assessing energy price induced improvements in efficiency of capital in oecd manufacturing industries to assess how capital stocks adapt to energy price changes it is necessary to account for the impacts on different vintages of capital and to account separately for price induced and autonomous improvements in the energy efficiency of capital stock the results of econometric analysis for five manufacturing industries in 19 oecd countries between 1990 and 2005 indicate that higher energy prices resulted in smaller energy use due to both improved energy efficiency of capital stock and reduced demand for the energy input the investment response to energy prices varied considerably across manufacturing industries being more significant in energy intensive sectors the results of policy simulations indicate that a carbon tax can deliver significant reductions in energy consumption in the medium run with modest declines in energy using capital stock

consumption of electricity in punjab structure and growth electricity has played a pivotal role in the development of punjab economy of late there has been a steep rise in the demand for electricity in the state the present study undertakes a holistic view of growth of demand for electricity in the state the technique applied is multiple regression and secondary data is used for the purpose of analysis the study concludes that demand for electricity in the state is price inelastic but income elastic for majority of consuming sectors an important policy implication thereof is that price hike will be ineffective in regulating and managing demand unless price is varied in an hourly basis therefore the state has to resort to other demand side management dsm measures such as improving efficiency of electricity use and its conservation considering the high income elasticity of electricity demand sufficient electricity generating capacity needs to be created since demand is expected to grow at an accelerated rate in future this calls for a comprehensive electricity policy the study further concludes that in the long run price demand as well as income demand relationship in case of electricity is likely to remain uncertain especially in the post reform era

complementing empirical evidence on global recycling and trade of waste paper this comment provides a critical analysis of van beukering and bouman s world development 29 2001 1717 article on global paper recycling and trade we first question their notion that developin

coupon value a signal for price in this article the author proposes that consumers use the value of a coupon to estimate price study 1 shows that the higher the percentage discount the higher the perceived price study 2 demon

rethinking the costs related to global warming a survey of the issues one approach to the economic analysis of global warming seeks to balance the costs of damage from or adaptation to it with the costs of mitigating it the costs of adaptation and damage have been estimated using techniques of environmental evaluation but are subject to a wide margin of uncertainty the costs of mitigation principally by reducing the emissions of co2 have been estimated using different kinds of economic models some of the results of which have suggested that very little abatement of carbon emissions is justified before the costs of abatement exceed the benefits of it in terms of foregone damage and adaptation costs the paper analyses the extent to which this conclusion is a function of the modelling assumptions and techniques used rather than likely practical outcomes with regard to the models treatment of unemployed resources revenue recycling prior distortions in the economy due to the tax system and possible dynamic effects from the introduction of a carbon energy tax it concludes that with different and arguably more appropriate treatment of the above issues especially when the secondary benefits of reducing co2 emissions are also taken into account it is not clear that even substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels will incur net costs especially if there is the prospect of even moderate costs from global warming

the impact of social structure on economic outcomes s ocial structure especially in the form of social networks affects economic outcomes for three main reasons first social networks affect the flow and the quality of information much information is subtle nuanced and difficult to verify so actors do not believe impersonal sources and instead rely on people they know second social networks are an important source of reward and punishment since these are often magnified in their impact when coming from others personally known third trust by which i mean the confidence that others will do the right thing despite a clear balance of incentives to the contrary emerges if it does in the context of a social network economists have recently devoted considerable attention to the impact of social structure and networks on the economy for example see the economists chapters in rauch and casella 2001 and the illuminating review essay of this volume by zuckerman 2003 as well as dutta and jackson 2003 and calvoarmengol 2004 however i focus here on sociologists contributions sociologists have developed core principles about the interactions of social structure information ability to punish or reward and trust that frequently recur in their analyses of political economic and other institutions i begin by reviewing some of these principles building on these i then discuss how social structures and social networks can affect economic outcomes like hiring price productivity and innovation

interfirm bundling and vertical product differentiation in this paper we study the competitive effects of bundled discounts offered by pairs of independent firms in a setting with vertically differentiated goods where firms decide whether to participate in a discounting scheme before prices are set it is shown that in equilibrium all pairs of firms producing goods of the same quality level offer bundled discounts relative to the no bundling benchmark we find that i all headline prices rise ii all bundle prices net of the respective discount decrease and iii only high quality sellers will obtain higher profits furthermore this equilibrium corresponds to the worst scenario in terms of consumer welfare and it and decreases social welfare

carbon leakage from unilateral environmental tax reforms in europe 1995 2005 abstract studies of the effects of the kyoto protocol have shown carbon leakage typically from tax and permit schemes with lump sum revenues recycling to be in the range of 5 20 using static computable general equilibrium models however in practice researchers have found that carbon leakage from the implementation of the eu ets is unlikely to be substantial because transport costs local market conditions product variety and incomplete information all tend to favour local production this study investigates potential carbon leakage from six eu member states mss that implemented environmental tax reform etrs unilaterally over the period 1995 2005 the study uses the large scale multisectoral integrated energy environment economy e3 model of 27 european countries energy environment economy model of europe e3me to undertake a dynamic comparative analysis to assess any carbon leakage effects over the longer term 1995 2012 a counterfactual reference case is constructed assuming that the six countries did not introduce etrs then alternative scenarios are developed to assess the effects of the etrs including effects on co2 emissions for the eu25 economies most mss recorded a reduction in co2 emissions when comparing the baseline case to the reference case the results show that carbon leakage is very small and in some cases negative due to technological spillover effects

the formation of expected future price a reference price for forward looking consumers among numerous possible reference prices expected future price is important a consumer s expectation of the future price of a brand plays a crucial role in the decision to buy now or later failure to characterize reference price as a forward looking concept a common practice in the reference pricing literature violates premises of neoclassical economic theory and leads to questionable modeling applications explicit measures of future price expectations were obtained and used to test various models of expectations formation providing insight into the effect of expected future price on consumers responses to price promotions and brand choice decisions

the economics of climate change impacts a la stern novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted abstract the stern report conducts an estimation of greenhouse gas control costs weighed against the benefits of avoiding damages at the global scale as i show stern and colleagues are aware of the limits to cba although they chose to ignore the considerable literature on the subject the many contributions by ecological economists and especially work specific to the enhanced greenhouse effect various problems are raised or mentioned in the report including strong uncertainty incommensurability plural values non utilitarian ethics rights distributional inequity poverty and treatment of future generations how then can this report acknowledging so many of those aspects of climate change that render cba an unsuitable tool for generating policy recommendations go ahead to conduct a global cba and make policy recommendations i explain how issues are suppressed and sidelined in a careful and methodical manner with the pretence they have been addressed by state of the art solutions meanwhile the authors maintain allegiance to an economic orthodoxy which perpetuates the dominant political myth that traditional economic growth can be both sustained and answer all our problems besides perpetuating myths this diverts attention away from alternative approaches away from ethical debates over harming the innocent the poor and future generations and away from the fundamental changes needed to tackle the very real and serious problems current economic systems pose for environmental systems

competitiveness and exemptions from environmental taxes in europe a number of european countries have introduced a variety of environmental taxes a common characteristic of their implementation is the inclusion of exemptions and tax relief in particular for some sectors of manufacturing industry this paper analyses the pattern and motivation of exemptions as they have developed in western european countries making clear the difference between the nominal and effective tax rates once the exemptions have been taken into account the principal motivation for exemptions relates to concern about competitiveness while particular environmentally intensive sectors may have some grounds for concern even these might be able to achieve cost effective environmental improvements such that their competitive position is not over disadvantaged while for an economy structured like the uk s an environmental tax plus rebate scheme sometimes called an ecological tax reform would be likely to yield benefits in terms of competitiveness the exemptions usually run counter to the environmental economic logic of using environmental taxes to internalise social costs and give economic signals that are based on the full costs of production and they are likely to increase the costs of achieving a given level of emission reduction with little justification for them also on the grounds of competitiveness it would therefore be undesirable on both economic and environmental grounds for them to remain a feature of the implementation of environmental taxes in the future

do traditional institutions constrain female entrepreneurship a field experiment on business training in india what constrains the entrepreneurial choices of poor women do traditional institutions pose unique barriers to business growth and profitability for female run enterprises the explosion of microfinance programs which typically target poor female entrepreneurs has drawn attention to these questions indeed one view is that inadequate access to credit prevents women from undertaking high return business activities however one recent empirical study finds low returns to capital in female run micro enterprises suresh de mel david mckenzie and christopher woodruff 2008 thus another view is that the primary barrier to female entrepreneurial success is limited demand for rather than supply of credit with poor women lacking high return means of expanding their businesses for instance due to gender differences in education or business networks women might be relatively uninformed about investment opportunities and untrained in basic cost benefit analysis dean s karlan and martin valdivia 2008 a second possibility is that norms governing women s roles in society limit women s perceptions about what is achievable in the workplace even differences

discrimination in the small business credit market we use data from the 1993 and 1998 national surveys of small business finances to examine the existence of racial discrimination in the small business credit market we conduct an econometric analysis of loan outcomes by race and find that black owned small businesses are about twice as likely to be denied credit even after controlling for differences in creditworthiness and other factors a series of specification checks indicates that this gap is unlikely to be explained by omitted variable bias these results indicate that the racial disparity in credit availability is likely caused by discrimination

start up capital does gender matter female and male entrepreneurs differ in the way they finance their businesses this difference can be attributed to the type of business and the type of management and experience of the entrepreneur indirect effect female start ups may also experience specific barriers when trying to acquire start up capital these may be based upon discriminatory effects direct effect whether gender has an impact on size and composition of start up capital and in what way is the subject of the present paper the indirect effect is represented by the way women differ from men in terms of type of business and management and experience the direct effect cannot be attributed to these differences and is called the gender effect we use of a panel of 2000 dutch starting entrepreneurs of whom approximately 500 are female to test for these direct and indirect effects the panel refers to the year 1994 we find that female entrepreneurs have a smaller amount of start up capital but that they do not differ significantly with respect to the type of capital on average the proportion of equity and debt capital bank loans in the businesses of female entrepreneurs is the same as in those of their male counterparts

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

the effects on competitiveness of coordinated versus unilateral fiscal policies reducing ghg emissions in the eu an assessment of a 10 reduction by 2010 using the e3me model abstract international competitiveness effects from coordinated and uncoordinated multilateral policies to reduce co 2 emissions from 11 member states of the eu by 2010 are compared with those from unilateral policies to achieve a 10 cut in each member state alone the paper presents the results from four projections using a large scale integrated regionalised e3 model of the eu estimated on time series cross section data 1968 93 with international trade treated as between each member state and a european transport and distribution network the 10 reduction is achieved by additional excise duties incremented every year 1999 to 2010 according to the carbon contents of fuels with special with special treatment of electricity taxed on outputs not inputs with revenues recycled via reductions in employers social security contributions multilateral coordinated policies require a common tax rate of 156 ecu per tonne carbon 1999 prices which rises to an average of 165 ecu per tonne with a wide range between regions when policies are uncoordinated all the tax shift projections show double dividends for emission reduction and employment gain for all member states unilateral policies do not show much carbon leakage but they show smaller gains for output and employment effects for price competitiveness appear to be small and mixed with serious losses appearing only for the netherlands and for metals and chemicals especially for unilateral action

a cost effective approach to attracting low income countries to international emissions trading theory and experiments the cost effectiveness of the kyotoprotocol and any similar non global treatywould be enhanced by attracting additionalcountries to international emissions tradingand achieving this as soon as possible incontrast to what is heard in most of thedebate such an enlargement is here taken to beattained with the new participants atleast to begin with being fullycompensated this paper focuses on twoforms of compensation that can be used toattract poor countries to participate inemissions trading the theoretical aswell as experimental evidence suggests that ifpoor countries are more risk averse than richcountries partial compensation in terms offinancial transfers is more cost effective thanrelying solely on compensation in kind emission quotas as has been the case so far using money for partial compensation would alsoreduce the risk for hot air allocations andthe ensuing political obstacles tocost effectiveness that such allocations tendto create

forecast errors in iea countries energy consumption every year energy policy of iea countries includes a forecast of the energy consumption in the member countries forecasts concerning the years 1985 1990 and 1995 can now be compared to the actual values the second oil crisis resulted in big positive forecast errors the oil price drop in 1986 did not have a similar opposite effect a correction for economic growth reduces forecast errors during the second oil crisis but not elsewhere industry has a relatively big positive forecast error while transportation has a negative forecast error even when the forecast error is small the results are not so nice because the small value is often the sum of large positive and negative errors almost no significant correlation is found between forecast errors in the 3 years correspondingly no significant correlation coefficient is found between forecast errors in the 3 main energy sectors therefore a relatively small forecast error is not caused by a relatively small forecast error in all 3 sectors

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

carbon taxes and carbon emissions trading this paper surveys the literature on and examples of current implementation of carbon taxes and carbon emission permits it sets out the theoretical basis for these instruments with special reference to the revenue recycling and tax interaction effects this theoretical work concludes that instruments which raise revenue which can be recycled so as to reduce pre existing distortionary taxes are significantly less costly than those which do not the paper then reviews the sizable literature on the distributional effects of these instruments especially with regard to industrial competitiveness and regressive effects on low income groups evaluating attempts to mitigate these where they are perceived as unacceptable the paper concludes that such efforts at mitigation while possible can substantially reduce the efficiency benefits of the instruments the projected costs of carbon taxes depend on a wide range of assumptions this is still a contested area but the paper concludes that on a range of plausible assumptions these costs need not be high finally the paper notes that early evaluations of the environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes have been generally positive this suggests that if concern about anthropogenic climate change continues to increase more countries will introduce carbon taxes and emission permits with the latter increasingly auctioned

the impact of entrepreneurship programs on minorities we document the impact of an entrepreneurship training program on startup activity of minorities females and non caucasians we compare entrepreneurial activity between applicants who are accepted into the program with applicants who are program finalists but not accepted we find that the effect of the program is small for minorities in the short run however the effect of the program is more pronounced for minorities likelihood of longer run startup activity whereas the effect on non minorities is small and statistically insignificant we suggest that such programs are most effective for individuals that may otherwise have limited access to entrepreneurial opportunities

empirical evidence of direct rebound effect in catalonia this paper reviews the empirical literature concerning the direct rebound effect in households it briefly analyzes the main theoretical and methodological aspects and finally estimates the magnitude of direct rebound effect for all energy services using electricity in households of catalonia spain using econometric techniques the main results show an estimated direct rebound effect of 35 in the short term and 49 in the long term the existence of a rebound effect reduces the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies

a consumer perspective on price matching refund policies effect on price perceptions and search behavior although price matching refund policies are common in many retail environments the impact of such policies on consumers has largely been ignored this article reports the results of three studies that examine price matching policies from a consumer perspective study 1 shows that consumers perceive price matching policies as signals of low store prices and that the presence of a refund increases the likelihood of discontinuing price search contrary to the predictions based on signaling theory in information economics studies 2 and 3 show that when search costs are low the number of stores searched increases in the presence versus absence of a price matching policy when search costs are high consumers appear to accept the price matching signal at face value and search less in the presence of a refund the article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the findings and suggesting directions for future research

reference prices and deception in newspaper advertising consumers were exposed to newspaper advertisements for four products and one of five different price representations regular price alone sale price alone regular price with manufacturer s suggested list price mslp sale price with regular price or sale price with mslp perceptions of the ordinary prices of the products were not affected by the presence or type of reference price but the subjects did have lower estimates of ordinary prices in the sale context the accuracy of consumer perceptions of ordinary prices was not related to the recency of subject shopping experience for the products as measured in the study

consumer perceptions of comparative price advertisements the authors analyze the issue of comparative price advertising from a behavioral perspective because public policy recognizes that comparative pricing may lead to consumer misperceptions the auth

the assessment international competitiveness the concept of international competitiveness as applied to national economies is a popular one politicians businessmen and economists alike re fer to it in day to day discussion when looking at the external export import market share or trade balance performance of different countries indi cators are produced showing changes in or levels of various countries competitiveness e g the relative price or cost indices regularly published by the imf and the oecd or the absolute measures produced by organizations such as the geneva world economic forum and the lausanne institute for management development governments of ten instigate research on the matter as for instance in the case of the 1993 us competitiveness policy council orthe 1995 eu competitiveness advisory group yet it has recently been argued by paul krugman that competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies and the obsession with competitiveness is both wrong and dangerous krugman 1994 p 44 apositionkrugman forcefully reaffirms in his contribution to this issue of the oxford review of economic policy

environmental taxes on fuels and electricity some experiences from the nordic countries in economic theory environment based energy taxation provides a direct financial incentive for environmentally sound economic behaviour in the energy field in practice only a few countries have implemented such taxes unilaterally in the 1990s to be effective environment based energy taxes seem to need international implementation the eu commission has made three proposals in 1992 1995 and 1997 but so far none of them has proceeded in the negotiations in this article we focus on implemented environmental taxes on fuels and electricity in the nordic countries firstly the idea of environment based taxes as a part of sustainable energy policy is presented secondly we review the impacts of this kind of taxes on the environment energy production and consumption income distribution and competitiveness via estimates presented in the literal sources thirdly we review comparative studies of environmental taxes on energy from a methodological perspective and finally we analyse the use of energy tax comparisons in political decision making a recent energy tax reform in finland is used as an example

consumer price and promotion expectations an experimental study the authors report results from a controlled experiment designed to investigate the impact of a brand s price promotion frequency and the depth of promotional price discounts on the price consumers

underlying trends and seasonality in uk energy demand a sectoral analysis this paper demonstrates the importance for energy demand modelling of allowing for trends and seasonal effects that are stochastic in form inherent underlying trends may be non linear and reflect not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction using quarterly unadjusted data for various sectors in the uk it is shown that unless energy demand models are formulated so as to allow for stochastic trends and seasonals estimates of price and income elasticities could be seriously biased

household transport demand in a cge framework the main objective of this study is to improve the modelling of household demand for transport services in a computable general equilibrium cge model the new extended model is then used for numerical calculations to test how the swedish economy reacts to a carbon target special attention will be given to distributional effects and the connection between labour supply and work journeys in a sparsely populated country like sweden a differentiation between trip purposes and trip length a complementary relationship between work journeys and labour supply and a subdivision of households by density of population and income influence the numerical results our main conclusions from the analysis of a carbon target are that if the carbon tax revenue is recycled by decreasing the employers social contribution fee welfare costs are lower than with lump sum replacements of tax revenue to households the welfare cost may be reduced even further if work journeys are not additionally taxed as compared to the base year however the lower total welfare cost is obtained at the expense of making society more unequal since both labour tax recycling cuts in employers social contributions and exempting tax on work journeys will make low income groups carry a higher burden an increased carbon dioxide tax is also shown to increase welfare differences between sparsely populated areas and city regions in sweden

an empirical analysis of internal and external reference prices using scanner data single source yogurt data are used to examine whether both internal and external reference prices affect purchase decisions internal reference prices are memory resident prices based on actual fair or other price concepts external reference prices are observed stimuli such as regular prices that stores may display along with a sale price for comparability discrete choice models with variables representing the two types of reference prices are estimated and both types of variables are found to have significant effects on purchase probabilities this suggests that consumers may use multiple reference points in evaluating price in purchase decisions in addition a model using an indicator of a sale price discount explains purchase probabilities as well as one that models the actual discount which suggests that consumers may be reacting to the indication of savings rather than to the amount of the discount

industrial companies demand for electricity evidence from a micropanel abstract the paper presents a micro econometric analysis of industrial companies demand for electricity previous studies on electricity consumption in the industrial sector have relied on aggregate data or cross section observations here we present an econometric study on electricity demand based on a panel of 2949 danish companies followed from 1983 to 1996 it is found that estimators of electricity demand that take account of the panel structure fixed effect models yield considerably lower price and production elasticities compared to estimators that do not like cross section models it is also investigated how various company characteristics like size type of industrial sub sector and electricity intensity in production influence price and production elasticities it appears that companies with a high electricity intensity also have a high own price elasticity

when do price promotions affect pretrial brand evaluations the authors investigate the conditions in which price promotions affect pretrial brand evaluations a price promotion is theorized to be informative about brand quality when it stands out because i

a reference dependent model of the price quality heuristic people often use price as a proxy for quality resulting in a positive correlation between prices and product liking known as the price quality p q heuristic using data from three experiments conducted at a winery this article offers a more complex and complete reference dependent model of the relationship between price and quality the authors propose that higher prices set higher expectations which serve as reference points when expectations are met or exceeded we observe the familiar p q relationship however when price is high and quality is relatively low the product falls short of consumers reference point and the p q relationship is reversed thus people evaluate a low quality product with a high price more negatively than a low quality product with a low price using the results of a field experiment the authors discuss implications for pricing considerations and profitability

correlates of price acceptability the cognitive tradeoff between price and product quality is used as a basis for hypothesizing interrelationships between two individual difference variables and two price related responses results of a correlational study support the hypothesis of an inverse relationship between price consciousness and product involvement and the hypotheses that price consciousness and product involvement have opposite implications for several price related constructs results also indicate a positive relationship between price acceptability level and the width of the latitude of price acceptance

economic impacts of the 1997 eu energy tax simulations with three eu wide models in march 1997 the european commission adopted aproposal that increases existing minimum levels oftaxation on mineral oils by around 10 to 25 andintroduces excises for other energy products thispaper analyses the macroeconomic impacts of theproposal it employs three models hermes gem e3 ande3me all models confirm that the proposal will havepositive macroeconomic impacts when the tax revenuesare used to reduce social security contributions paidby employers for the eu as a whole both gdp andemployment are expected to be higher and co2emissions are 0 9 to 1 6 percent lower the positiveeu wide effects can be observed in practically allmember states the sector impacts are modest with theenergy sector expected to face the most negativeimpacts differences between model results are due tothe model type general equilibrium ormacro econometric the eu countries covered and theway tax exemptions were handled crucial assumptionsto obtain the double dividend are the modelling ofthe labour market and the impacts on eu externaltrade the sensitivity of the results for the use oftax revenues tax exemptions and tax rate increases isassessed

examining the formation of human capital in entrepreneurship a meta analysis of entrepreneurship education outcomes abstract effective human capital formation through the medium of entrepreneurship education and training eet is of increasing concern for governments as eet is growing rapidly across the world unfortunately there is a lack of consistent evidence showing that eet helps to create more or better entrepreneurs we undertake the first quantitative review of the literature and in the context of human capital theory find that there is indeed support for the value of eet based on 42 independent samples n 16 657 we find a significant relationship between eet and entrepreneurship related human capital assets r w 217 and entrepreneurship outcomes r w 159 the relationship between eet and entrepreneurship outcomes is stronger for academic focused eet interventions r w 238 than for training focused eet interventions r w 151 we find evidence of heterogeneity in many of our correlations and recommend that future studies examine potential moderators to more clearly delineate eet effect sizes we also find a number of methodological weaknesses among the studies analyzed and that those studies with lower methodological rigor are overstating the effect of eet recommendations to improve the quality of future work in the field are provided

the effect of plausible and exaggerated reference prices on consumer perceptions and price search this article examines whether advertisers regular price claims affect consumer perceptions and price search behavior experiments involving simulated shopping via personal computers indicate that compared to an ad with no reference price an ad with a plausible reference price raised subjects estimates of the advertiser s regular price and the perceived offer value an exaggerated reference price had generally the same positive effects on perception as a plausible reference price even for the more skeptical subjects further when subjects were presented with an advertised sale price above the lowest expected price the exaggerated reference price increased the percentage of subjects who purchased the product from the advertiser without checking other stores prices

empirical analysis of energy management in danish industry abstract in this article we examine energy management practice in the danish manufacturing industry the paper addresses the following to what extent is energy management put into practice in danish industry from which sources does danish industry obtain its information about making improvements in energy management based upon the results of a telephone survey covering 304 danish industrial firms and by use of our definition of the minimum requirements for energy management we concluded that between 3 and 14 practice energy management inspiration to manage energy comes from many different sources but the electricity utilities emerge as the main source of inspiration this leads to a presentation of a statistical model synthesising two types of energy management and two potential avenues that can lead to improved energy management one size fits all is not appropriate when giving incentives for firms to practice improved energy management possible variations between industrial sectors are addressed

emission trading under the kyoto protocol effects on fossil fuel markets under alternative regimes abstract the consequences of the kyoto protocol for the fossil fuel markets depend on which policy instruments are used in order to reach the emission targets this paper uses a numerical model to assess the significance of international emissions trading for the oil coal and gas markets three different trading regimes are compared particular attention is devoted to the eu proposal about limits on acquisitions and transfers of emission permits we find that the eu proposal will be non binding for buyers of emission permits but will significantly constrain the sale of emission permits from eastern europe the eu proposal will increase the level of abatement in annex b countries and will cause a sharp increase in the price of permits compared to the free trade equilibrium