scale economies perverse comparative statics results the marshallian stability and the long run equilibrium for a small open economy abstract using a simple general equilibrium model we show that the perverse comparative statics results can occur under scale economies these paradoxes disappear iff the equilibrium is marshallian stable and the latter holds iff it is a stable long run equilibrium under capital adjustment

producer services comparative advantage and international trade patterns we unite the theories of factor abundance and monopolistic competition to explore the general equilibrium relations between trade in producer services economies of scale and factor markets in our model two final goods are produced using capital labor and a variety of differentiated producer services that are produced under increasing returns to scale we analyze the implications for comparative advantage and trade in goods between two countries that differ in factor endowments and in technology of service provision moreover we use the concept of the integrated world equilibrium to investigate trade in goods and services also when services require foreign direct investments

alternative policies to subsidize rural household biogas digesters existing policies of household biogas projects focus mainly on supports on construction but less consider management and maintenance resulting in high scrap rate and waste of resources alternative policies must be explored to balance construction and operation taking the costs and benefits from a typical rural household biogas project this paper assesses the economic performance at three different subsidy levels i e no subsidy existing standard and positive externality based standard furthermore three subsidy alternatives one time annual and combined option are applied to the externality based standard the results show that household biogas digesters have unsatisfactory economic performance without any subsidy and even in current subsidy policies environmental benefits of the digester were estimated as 2732 chinese yuan significantly larger than existing subsidy standard to keep continuous work during the 20 year lifespans of digesters the income disparity of farmers among regions must be considered for policy application with the increasing of labor costs the ratio of initial subsidies must be reduced these results provide policy implications to the future development of biogas projects in terms of both their construction and follow up management reuse of the abandoned digesters as well as the exploitation of other emerging renewable energy projects

scale economies in factor supplies international trade and migration this paper incorporates externalities generated by human capital into the heckscher ohlin samuelson framework to examine the patterns of international trade and migration individuals endowed with different levels of human capital choose to become either unskilled or skilled workers national scale economies with respect to human capital play an important role in endogenously determining these factor supplies and yield a number of interesting patterns of trade and migration migration could reinforce comparative advantage both skilled and unskilled workers could migrate in the same direction

the role of bounded rationality and imperfect information in subgame perfect implementation an empirical investigation in this paper we conduct a laboratory experiment to test the extent to which moore and repullo s subgame perfect implementation mechanism induces truth telling in practice both in a setting with perfect information and in a setting where buyers and sellers face a small amount of uncertainty regarding the good s value we nd that moore repullo mechanisms fail to implement truth telling in a substantial number of cases even under perfect information about the valuation of the good this failure to implement truthtelling is due to beliefs about the irrationality of one s trading partner therefore although the mechanism should in theory provide incentives for truth telling many buyers in fact believe that they can increase their expected monetary payo by lying the deviations from truth telling become signicantly more frequent and more persistent when agents face small amounts of uncertainty regarding the good s value our results thus suggest that both beliefs about irrational play and small amounts of uncertainty about valuations may constitute important reasons for the absence of moore repullo mechanisms in practice

biogas energy from family sized digesters in uganda critical factors and policy implications dependence on fossil energy sources is increasingly becoming unsustainable due to ecological and environmental problems and rapid depletion biogas energy could augment these conventional energy sources but despite its advantages and favourable conditions for its production biogas energy use in uganda remains low due to technical economic and socio cultural impediments based on primary data on households in central and eastern uganda and the use of logistic regression this study analyses factors affecting the adoption of biogas energy in uganda the empirical results suggest that the probability of a household adopting biogas technology increases with decreasing age of head of household increasing household income increasing number of cattle owned increasing household size male head of household and increasing cost of traditional fuels in contrast the likelihood of adoption decreases with increasing remoteness of household location and increasing household land area policy options and recommendations including educational and awareness campaigns on biogas benefits and successes the provision of financial and non financial incentives to households and establishment of an institutional framework could bolster wider biogas energy acceptance in uganda

impact of government subsidies on household biogas use in rural china abstract in this paper we evaluate empirically the impact of biogas subsidies on household biogas energy use in rural china special attention was given to the problem of sample selection bias in assessing the impact of subsidies on biogas energy use because biogas subsidies often change the propensity for installing biogas digesters using data from a large scale household survey the results indicate that biogas subsidies did promote the construction of biogas digesters the results suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in subsidy cost ratio would lead to a 3 increase in digester installations we also found that biogas subsidies correlated negatively with average time of digester use a 10 percentage point increase in the subsidy cost ratio would result in a 4 3 reduction in the average working time of digesters these results suggest that the net effect of the current subsidy policy on rural household biogas use was near negligible indeed a 10 percentage point increase in the subsidy cost ratio resulted in a mere 1 15 increase in biogas use these findings indicate that biogas subsidies have possibly not been targeted effectively at households that would actually prefer to use biogas energy

production trade and migration with differentiated skilled workers a model is developed in which the output of one traded sector e g high tech is produced using consultants who supply differentiated skilled services an external economy is shown to exist which in turn implies a the suboptimal supply of skilled specialists b multiple equilibria and c disadvantages for small and or late developing economies although the results indicate a positive role for subsidies the model emphasizes the need to subsidize the use not training of skilled specialists the latter policy subsidizes foreigners through emigration production commerce international et migration dans un contexte ou laforce de travail est qualifieze et differenciee l auteur developpe un modele dans lequel la production dans un secteur ofu les biens sont transiges internationalement haute technologie requiert l usage de consultants qui fournissent des services qualifies et differencies on montre l existence d economies externes qui font que a il y a offre sous optimale d experts qualifies b des equilibres multiples existent et c les petites economies ou celles qui se sont developpees tardivement sont desavantagees bien que les resultats indiquent que les subventions peuvent jouer un role positif le modele suggere qu il faut subventionner l utilisation et non pas la formation de specialistes qualifies cette derniere politique subventionne les etrangers via la migration

determinants and policy implications for household electricity saving behaviour evidence from beijing china this research sets out to explore the possibilities for further saving in household electricity consumption through a study of the residents willingness and behavioural characteristics in electricity saving as applied within a chinese context based on an extensive literature review the authors argue that economic benefits policy and social norms and past experience may have a positive correlation with household electricity saving behaviour while the discomfort caused by electricity saving activities may exert a negative effect on it through a sample of 816 randomly selected residents in beijing the propositions are examined using logit regression analysis the conclusions support the ideas concerning both the positive influence of economic benefits policy and social norms and past experience as they affect broader electricity saving behaviour and the negative influence of the discomfort caused by electricity saving activities finally some inferences are drawn and suggestions are offered for policy makers and further studies

estimates of energy subsidies in china and impact of energy subsidy reform abstract for a transitional economy such as china some energy subsidies are reasonable and sometimes even necessary for achieving social goals however with rising energy prices and environmental concerns we see conflicts emerging between energy subsidies energy demand supply fundamentals and climate change considerations energy subsidies have important implications for sustainable development through their effects on energy use efficiency and the choice of fuel source this paper applies the price gap approach to estimate china s energy subsidies results indicate that china s energy subsidies amounted to cny 356 73 billion in 2007 equivalent to 1 43 of gdp subsidies for oil products consumption are the largest followed by subsidies for the electricity and coal sectors furthermore a cge model is used to analyze the economic impacts of energy subsidy reforms our findings show that removing energy subsidies will result in a significant fall in energy demand and emissions but will have negative impacts on macroeconomic variables we conclude that offsetting policies could be adopted such that certain shares of these subsidies are reallocated to support other sustainable development measures which could lead to reducing energy intensity and favoring the environment

which factors are effective for farmers biogas use evidence from a large scale survey in china the chinese government since 1995 has carried out programs for the construction of household biogas digesters in the chinese countryside despite the large governmental spending in the building of household biogas digesters only 12 16 of the households suitable to produce and use biogas have built a digester li 2009 this article asks which factors on the household level may be important for the decision whether or not to build a biogas digester based on a survey with 1227 households from guangxi hubei shandong and gansu provinces results of a binary probit model show that the governmental promotion of biogas has a significant effect on households decision the question arises which households may if governmental programs were to be running out be most likely to construct a household biogas digester the household head s age the number of household members staying at home the total household income and the subjective discount rate of the respondents are significant factors in a farm household s decision to build a biogas digester however also agro climatic conditions reveal to be decisive which is why technical solutions for tackling the low productivity of biogas digesters in cold regions may need to be further considered

production possibilities with a public intermediate good this paper considers the shape of the production possibility set with a public intermediate good of the atmos phere type the elements which tend to give rise to a concave product ion frontier are isolated from those which tend to generate a convex one by using the notion of the production surface the results from earlier models are both generalized and sharpened

what s the point of reciprocal trade negotiations exports imports and gains from trade this paper explains why trade policy makers may prefer reciprocal trade negotiations rtn to unilateral tariff reductions utr for economic reasons it answers puzzles like why wto reciprocity and strengthens the unnecessarily weak case made for the wto by those who downplay or dismiss benefits from foreign tariff reductions ftr rtn is superior to utr because it provides economic benefits that utr cannot namely ftr benefits which are clearer than potentially important utr benefits whereas each policy offers efficiency gains any terms of trade effect of utr generally detracts from these gains while any terms of trade effect of ftr is typically beneficial especially for a small price taking country with this benefit augmenting ftr s efficiency gains moreover benefits from reductions in foreign barriers may come from several sources they are not solely the result of terms of trade improvement or economies of scale the two benefits already noted in the literature though often dismissed for example with foreign ntb elimination possible home benefits are shown even with rising costs and terms of trade deterioration rtn is also superior to utr because by eliminating protection in either ntb or tariff form rtn provides an escape from not only a terms of trade prisoners dilemma but many other previously unrecognised prisoners dilemmas including one in international rent transfers and several others with no economies of scale or terms of trade motivation of course if superior rtn is not an option utr may well be desirable if reciprocity is an option but only in a narrower cu or fta form such reciprocity may still be superior to utr or it may be inferior theory cannot unambiguously rank these

a theoretical explanation of some stylized facts of economic growth this paper presents a three good two country general equilibrium model that is consistent with several stylized facts of economic growth the three goods are manufactures agriculture and services manufactures are subject to economies of scale the model predicts that services a nontraded good must be more expensive in the country with higher per capita income it also shows that as per capita income increases we should expect the productivity in commodities relative to services to rise the model is able to generate many other stylized facts of economic growth

relative performance of two simple incentive mechanisms in a public goods experiment we compare the performance of two incentive mechanisms in public goods experiments one mechanism the falkinger mechanism rewards and penalizes agents for deviations from the average contributions to the public good falkinger mechanism the other the compensation mechanism allows agents to subsidize the other agents contributions compensation mechanism it is found that both mechanisms lead to an increase in the level of contributions to the public goods however the falkinger mechanism predicts the average level of contributions more reliably than the compensation mechanism

trade factor prices and the gains from trade with increasing returns to scale existing analyses seem to suggest that national increasing returns to scale are not a very useful tool for analysing trade owing to problems such as multiple equilibria and the tendency towards complete specialization the purpose of this paper is to construct a model in which there are in fact determinant relationships among country size the direction of trade the gains from trade and international factor price differences in the model differences in country size determine the direction of trade which in turn determines factor price differences and limits the possible distribution of the gains from trade commerce international prix des facteurs de production et les gains de l change dans un contexte de rendements croissants a l echelle les analyses conventionnelles semblent suggerer que les rendements croissants h l 6chelle au niveau national ne constituent pas une avenue prometteuse dans l analyse du commerce international parce que de tels rendements creent une presomption en faveur de la specialisation complete et conduisent a des situations d 6quilibres multiples le but de ce m6moire est de construire un mod le dans lequel il existe des rapports determinants entre la dimension du pays la direction des 6changes les gains de l echange et les differentiels internationaux entre les prix des facteurs de production dans ce mod le les differences entre les pays en termes de dimension d6terminent la direction du commerce international laquelle d6termine le differentiel entre les prix des facteurs de production et limite l eventail des r6partitions possibles des gains de l echange

the groves ledyard mechanism an experimental study of institutional design the groves ledyard mechanism theoretically can solve the free rider problem in public good provision in certain environments two questions are of overriding importance in implementing the mechanism the first is related to the actual performance of the mechanism in general the second is the choice of a punishment parameter which is the only parameter that is available for those who may want to actually use the mechanism thus the determination of the role of this variable on mechanism performance is fundamental for any advances along the lines of actual implementation in studying the groves ledyard mechanism we show that the punishment parameter plays a crucial role in the performance of the mechanism by using 1 and 100 we show that under the higher punishment parameter the groves ledyard equilibrium is chosen much more frequently a higher level of the public good is provided and efficiency is higher by examining two behavioral models we show that a higher leads to an increase in the probability of an individual choosing a best response predicted by the model the parameter alone explains nearly 70 of the data in both the cournot and the carlson auster behavioral model we also found that convergence to cournot behavior is faster and more stable under a high than under a low

estimating the rebound effect in us manufacturing energy consumption abstract the energy price shocks of the 1970s are usually assumed to have increased the search for new energy saving technologies where eventual gains in energy efficiencies will reduce the real per unit price of energy services and hence the consumption of energy will rise and partially offset the initial reduction in the usage of energy sources this is the rebound effect which is estimated for the us manufacturing sector using time series data applying the dynamic ols method dols when allowing for asymmetric price effects the rebound effect is found to be approximately 24 for the us manufacturing sector

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

rising wages and energy consumption transition in rural china abstract residential energy consumption in rural china is undergoing a transition from traditional biomass energy to modern commercial energy this paper examines the impact of rising wage rates on energy consumption mix in rural china using a unique panel data set from our two round surveys of 409 rural households in 4 provinces the results show that the wage rate at the village level has a significant negative impact on traditional biomass energy consumption and significant positive effects on consumption of electricity and new renewable energy in rural china as traditional biomass energy is mainly collected with family labor and is relatively labor intensive an increase in rural wage rates would enhance the opportunity costs of traditional biomass energy leading to a reduction in biomass energy consumption continuously rising rural wage rates could accelerate the transition from biomass energy to electricity in rural areas these findings could have important policy implications not only for indoor air quality and environmental and health issues in rural areas but also for greater security in rural energy supply and policies to incentive farmers to better utilize biomass resource after harvest

increasing returns and the gains from trade it is known that gains from trade are positive in the presence of increasing returns to scale if all increasing returns industries expand in the shift from autarky sufficient conditions for gains when some increasing returns industries expand and others contract suffer from the limitations that the production frontier must be convex changes must satisfy a prespecified hierarchical pattern or that total factor supplies must be fixed between equilibria conditions which can not generally be assured this paper develops a necessary and sufficient condition for gains and from it a sufficient condition that does not depend on these restrictions copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

a note on the neoclassical ambiguity and the specific factor production model under variable returns to scale abstract this note investigates the relationship between commodity price changes and factor rewards in a specific factor production model that admits variable returns to scale the principal result is that in the presence of variable returns to scale the so called neoclassical ambiguity may be resolved without resorting to detailed knowledge of the mobile factor s preferences that is to say the effect of a commodity price change may as it does with the returns to those factors specific to each industry raise or lower the real reward of the mobile factor in terms of either commodity depending only on the characteristics of the technology

cost effective subsidy incentives for room air conditioners in china an analysis based on a mcfadden type discrete choice model abstract based on a mcfadden type conditional logit cl discrete choice model this paper estimates the most economic subsidy level mesl for room air conditioners racs in china that minimizes the net cost of subsidy per unit of electricity saved the analysis reveals that given the current price and efficiency spectrum of racs in the chinese market as well as the electricity price and cooling demand of chinese households the mesl for racs in china should be around 60 which is much higher than the current subsidy level of 5 15 a sensitivity analysis suggests that the high mesl 60 is mainly a consequence of relatively low electricity price and household cooling demand in the country if china s household cooling demand increases further and its electricity price were to rise to a higher level the mesl for racs could possibly drop to about 5 15 as household cooling demand varies among chinese cities in different climatic zones and at different levels of economic development the rac subsidy incentives should be region specific with necessary modifications the method for analysis proposed in this paper can also be applied to other household appliances to prioritize the types of appliances requiring subsidies

factor movements and commodity trade as complements abstract several models are presented in which factor mobility leads to an increase in the volume of world trade the models share the common characteristic that the basis for trade is something other than differences in relative factor endowments these alternative bases for trade include returns to scale imperfect competition production and factor taxes and differences in production technology taken together the models suggest a more general idea the widely held notion that trade in goods and factors are substitutes is in fact a rather special result which is a general characteristic only of factor proportions models

energy consumption in rural china a household model for three villages in jiangxi province abstract in china fuelwood and coal are the most important energy sources for rural households in poor areas along with population and economic growth excessive fuelwood collection is a major cause of deforestation burning coal contributes to environmental problems such as air pollution acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions the purpose of this article is to analyze factors determining choice of energy source and labor input into fuelwood collection in poor forest rich regions and to provide policy recommendations on ways to affect these choices to this end a nonseparable household model reflecting choices in labor allocation and energy demand of rural households is estimated from available data for three villages in a poor forest rich region in jiangxi province southeast china innovative aspects of this article are the analyses of factors driving household substitution between forest and non forest fuels and of dissimilarities in household responses under different market access conditions

marshallian stability and long run equilibrium in the theory of international trade with factor market distortions and variable returns to scale abstract we show that perverse comparative statistics paradoxes associated with factor market distortions and variable returns to scale vanish if the equilibrium is marshallian stable and that the equilibrium is marshallian stable iff it is a stable long run equilibrium

the effectiveness of energy efficiency improvement in a developing country rebound effect of residential electricity use in south korea abstract the government of south korea considers an energy efficiency improvement policy an effective economic measure for climate change like many other governments but it is unaware of any rebound effect the unexpected result of energy efficiency improvement so the rebound effect of residential electricity use in south korea was estimated using two different scales in this paper at the macro level the rebound effect was estimated indirectly by using price elasticity and at the micro level the rebound effect of individual home appliances was estimated directly by using a non linear relationship between energy efficiency and energy use at the macro level the long and short term results of rebound effect were estimated at 30 and 38 respectively also at the micro level the rebound effect of air conditioners was 57 70 while refrigerators showed only a composite of rebound and income effects finally there was no backfire effect and efficiency improvement brought energy reduction in conclusion these suggest that rebound effect is an important factor that the government of south korea must consider when planning its energy efficiency improvement policy

factor mobility trade and welfare abstract the paper develops a north south model which is driven by scale economies in the modern sector the model predicts that skilled and unskilled labor migrate from south to north and capital migrates from north to south migration of skilled labor and capital exhibits complementarity with trade while migration of labor may exhibit complementarity or substitutability if the terms of trade effects are ignored small movements of all factors affect the welfare of the population in south negatively and of that in north positively the effects of migration on the terms of trade are ambiguous in general

implementation of mechanism by processes public good allocation experiments abstract the design problem for decentralized public good provisions is outlined hyothesized to be incomplete if the process the informational logic of decisionreaching is left unspecified experiments with the incentive compatible deficit mechanism and two different processes smith and seriatim are reported more failures to agree are found with the smith process but neither set of experiments supports a hypothesis of outcomes approximating the pareto efficient cournot nash equilibrium allocation this is hypothesized to result from the failure of the deficit mechanism to balance the budget

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

household biogas use in rural china a study of opportunities and constraints as a renewable energy biogas is not only an important part of the development of rural new energy but also an important aspect of sustainable development in china the development process and present status of household biogas specifically the opportunities and constraints of household biogas in rural china are discussed in this paper only about 19 of the biogas potential has been utilized in rural china there are several opportunities for household biogas development in rural china including the problem of rural household energy consumption the availability of biogas fermentation materials national financial subsidies legal and international clean development mechanisms also more research needs to be done in straw fermentation and cold fermentation technology training should be conducted to raise the level of biogas customers in comprehensive biogas utilization measures should be taken to improve the follow up services and management of biogas plants the information presented in this paper will be helpful not only to the sustainable development of household biogas in rural china but also to the development of biogas in similar countries around the world