how would the gas exporting countries forum influence gas trade the cleanest burning fossil fuel today is natural gas while many businesses have gone global it has remained an exception an impending challenge facing the industry however is the evolution of a cartel from the 5 year old gas exporting countries forum how would this new organization influence the trade of gas globally does its existence imply a threat to the development of gas trade the paper reviews this fairly new organization within the context of the above questions it is mainly a comparative study of the body in relation to opec s historical political and economic development subsequently the author proposes probable influence options available to the forum and the impending consequence of such actions on the market the outcome of this study calls for further analysis and research on new issues and questions of interest

the dynamic linkages between crude oil and natural gas markets abstract the time varying price spillovers between natural gas and crude oil markets for the period 1994 to 2014 are investigated contrary to earlier research we show that in a large part of our sample the natural gas price leads the price of crude oil with price spillover effects lasting up to two weeks this result is robust to a battery of tests including out of sample forecasting exercises however after 2006 we detect little price dependencies between these two energy commodities these findings arise due to a conjunction of both demand and supply side shocks arising from both natural and economic events including hurricane katrina the tohoku earthquake and the global financial crisis as well as infrastructure and technological improvements the increased use of new technologies such as hydraulic fracking for the extraction of gas and oil in particular affected supply in the latter part of the study we conclude that the long term relation present in the early part of the sample has decoupled such that price determination of these two energy sources is now independent

a large scale linear complementarity model of the north american natural gas market abstract the north american natural gas market has seen significant changes recently due to deregulation and restructuring for example third party marketers can contract for transportation and purchase of gas to sell to end users while the intent was a more competitive market the potential for market power exists we analyze this market using a linear complementarity equilibrium model including producers storage and peak gas operators third party marketers and four end use sectors the marketers are depicted as nash cournot players determining supply to meet end use consumption all other players are in perfect competition results based on national petroleum council scenarios are presented

does price elasticity vary with economic growth a cross category analysis abstract how does price sensitivity change with the macroeconomic environment the authors explore this question by measuring price elasticity using household level data across 19 grocery categories over 24 quarters for each category they estimate a separate random coefficients logit model with quarter specific price response parameters and control functions to address endogeneity this specification yields a novel set of 456 elasticities across categories and time that are generated using the same method and therefore can be directly compared on average price sensitivity is countercyclical it rises when the macroeconomy weakens however substantial variation exists and a handful of categories exhibit procyclical price sensitivity the authors show that the relationship between price sensitivity and macroeconomic growth correlates strongly with the average level of price sensitivity in a category they examine several explanations for this result and conclude that a category s share of wallet is th

renewable and non renewable energy use economic growth nexus the case of mena net oil importing countries abstract this study examines the energy use economic growth nexus by disaggregating energy use into two types of energy renewable and non renewable energy use our sample consists of eleven mena net oil importing countries noics during the period 1980 2012 a multivariate panel framework was used to estimate the long run relationship and the panel granger causality tests was employed to assess the causality direction among variables the empirical results provide evidence for long term equilibrium relationship between real gross domestic product gdp renewable energy use non renewable energy use real gross fixed capital formation and labor force the results provide evidence also for positive and statistically significant elasticities moreover the empirical findings from panel error correction model confirm the existence of bidirectional causality between renewable energy use and economic growth and between non renewable energy use and economic growth results that support the feedback hypothesis moreover our empirical findings provide evidence for two way bidirectional causal association in both the short and long run between renewable and non renewable energy use which proves the substitutability and interdependence between these two types of energy sources the policies implications of these results are also proposed and discussed

the impacts on climate mitigation costs of considering curtailment and storage of variable renewable energy in a general equilibrium model abstract the curtailment and storage associated with the fluctuation of electricity supplied by variable renewable energy vre may limit its penetration into electricity systems therefore these factors need to be explicitly treated in the integrated assessment models iams this study improves the representation of curtailment and storage of vre in a computable general equilibrium cge model with the data generated from an hourly power sector model curtailment and storage of vre electricity are treated as a function of the shares of solar and wind in the electricity mix this relationship is incorporated into a cge model and we also updated the vre costs and resource potential the results show that with such improvement by 2100 in a 450 ppm atmospheric co 2 equivalent concentration henceforth ppm scenario some electricity generated from vre is either curtailed 2 1 or needs to be stored 2 9 in contrast if vre fluctuation is not considered the long term global economic cost of carbon mitigation is significantly underestimated by 52 in the same scenario conversely updating the vre costs and resource potential leads to a decrease in mitigation costs our simulation implies that the fluctuation of vre cannot be ignored and needs to be incorporated into cge models moreover in addition to storage with batteries many other options are available to reduce curtailment of vre the top down type cge model has limitations to fully incorporate all aspects due to its limited spatial temporal and technological resolution

modelling asymmetric volatility in oil prices under structural breaks abstract this paper shows that accounting for endogenously determined structural breaks within an asymmetric garch model reduces volatility persistence in oil prices more importantly we find that both good and bad news have significantly more impact on volatility if structural breaks are accounted for in a model thus previous studies have significantly underestimated the impact of news on volatility as they have inadvertently ignored these structural breaks in volatility our empirical results suggest that it is best to include both asymmetric effects and structural breaks in a garch model to accurately estimate oil price volatility dynamics our results have important practical implications not only for option valuation and hedging decisions but also have major consequences for broader financial markets the energy industry and the overall economy

rational addiction and the effect of price on consumption legalization of such substances as marijuana heroin and cocaine surely will reduce the prices of these harmful addictive drugs by the law of the downward sloping demand function their consumption will rise but by how much according to conventional wisdom the consumption of these illegal addictive substances is not responsive to price however conventional wisdom is contradicted by becker and murphy s 1988 theoretical model of rational addiction the becker murphy b m analysis implies that addictive substances are likely to be quite responsive to price in this paper we summarize b m s model of rational addiction and the empirical evidence in support of it we use the theory and evidence to draw highly tentative inferences concerning the effects of legalization of currently banned substances on consumption in the aggregate and for selected groups in the population addictive behavior is usually assumed to involve both reinforcement and tolerance reinforcement means that greater past consumption of addictive goods such as drugs or cigarettes increases the desire for present consumption but tolerance cautions that the utility from a given amount of consumption is lower when past consumption is greater these aspects of addictive behavior imply

decoupling economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions in china a sectoral factor decomposition analysis china is facing the dilemma of how to coordinate economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions reduction this paper investigates the decoupling effect of economic growth from co2 emissions in china during the period 1992 2012 using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method we decompose the driving forces of the decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions in china s five major economic sectors into several factors and measure the contribution of each factor to the decoupling of china s overall economy from co2 emissions the results show that china performed the weak decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions during 1992 2012 and so did all its five major sectors such a state did not occur smoothly and presented five different stages energy intensity and economic activity level were the most important factors affecting the decoupling in china energy intensity decreased in all sectors indicating a large acceleration for the sectoral decoupling states this finding is applicable to process carbon intensity in industrial sector and energy emission factor in agricultural industrial construction and service sectors in terms of sectoral effects on the decoupling in china industrial sector played a dominant role while construction sector had the most marginal influence the economic activity level and economic share of industrial sector exerted the most negative effects on the decoupling the energy intensity of industrial sector played a key role in promoting the national decoupling state while the energy emission factor of agricultural sector contributed the least

decoupling co2 emissions and industrial growth in china over 1993 2013 the role of investment abstract since industrial sector is a leading energy consumer and co 2 emitter in china the degree of the decoupling of co 2 emissions and industrial growth plays a critical role in realizing the energy conservation and emission reduction goals of china this is the first study to present a specific investigation on the decoupling of co 2 emissions and industrial growth in china from 1993 to 2013 using an extended logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model focusing on both energy related and process related co 2 emissions and introducing three novel investment factors i e investment scale investment share and investment efficiency we highlight and explore the remarkable role of investment in the mitigation and decoupling of co 2 emissions with industrial growth the results show that china s industrial sector experienced the weak decoupling during 1993 2013 the investment scale is the most important factor responsible for the increase in co 2 emissions and the inhibition of the decoupling the investment efficiency effect has a volatile trend and overall it plays the most significant role in reducing co 2 emissions followed by the energy intensity effect and process carbon intensity effect whereas the energy mix carbon coefficient and investment share have marginal effects among 36 industrial sub sectors the seven factors of rcmcp raw chemical materials and chemical products nmp nonmetal mineral products and spfm smelting and pressing of ferrous metals have significant effects on the decoupling thus the three sub sectors should be among the top concerns for abating co 2 emissions finally we provide policy recommendations considering both conventional and investment factors for china s industrial sector to realize emission reduction targets

is addiction rational theory and evidence this paper makes two contributions to the modeling of addiction first we provide new and convincing evidence that smokers are forward looking in their smoking decisions using state excise tax increases that have been legislatively enacted but are not yet effective and monthly data on consumption second we recognize the strong evidence that preferences with respect to smoking are time inconsistent with individuals both not recognizing the true dife culty of quitting and searching for self control devices to help them quit we develop a new model of addictive behavior that takes as its starting point the standard rational addiction model but incorporates time inconsistent preferences this model also exhibits forward looking behavior but it has strikingly different normative implications in this case optimal government policy should depend not only on the externalities that smokers impose on others but also on the internalities imposed by smokers on themselves we estimate that the optimal tax per pack of cigarettes should be at least one dollar higher under our formulation than in the rational addiction case

the renewable energy and economic growth nexus in black sea and balkan countries the aim of this study is to explore the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth within the framework of traditional production function for the period of 1990 2012 in 9 black sea and balkan countries for this purpose we use pedroni 1999 2004 panel cointegration pedroni 2000 2001 co integration estimate methods and dumitrescu and hurlin 2012 heterogeneous panel causality estimation techniques the study has concluded that there is a long term balance relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth and renewable energy consumption has a positive impact on economic growth heterogeneous panel causality analysis results support growth hypothesis in bulgaria greece macedonia russia and ukraine feedback hypothesis in albania georgia and romania neutrality hypothesis in turkey and according to the panel data set including all nine countries the results support feedback hypothesis with the findings it was concluded that there is a significant impact of renewable energy consumption on economic growth in balkan and black sea countries

rational addiction with learning and regret we present a theory of rational behavior in which individuals maximize a set of stable preferences over goods with unknown addictive power the theory is based on three fundamental postulates that consumption of the addictive good is not equally harmful to all that individuals possess subjective beliefs concerning this harm and that beliefs are optimally undated with information gained through consumption although individual actions are optimal and dynamically consistent addicts regret their past consumption decisions and regret their initial assessment of the potential harm of the good addict prone individuals who believe it could not happen to them are most likely to be drawn into a harmful addiction

smoking cessation a model of planned vs actual behavior for time inconsistent consumers we offer a simple model of intertemporal choice to characterize how planned versus actual behaviors evolve for time inconsistent smokers our results suggest that smokers participation and cessation decisions are governed by the interplay between three effects the cessation effect leads smokers to advance their plans to quit smoking whereas the procrastination effect leads them to consecutively revise their planned quitting age upwards consequently the duration of smoking is effectively governed by which one of these two effects is dominant finally for certain consumer segments a threshold effect causes an all or nothing type of extreme smoking behavior based on certain critical values of present biased preferences our results provide some preliminary evidence that both marketing efforts by tobacco firms and public policy initiatives can have a significant influence on smoking behavior in particular we find that reductions in the age at which individuals start smoking may not only vastly extend their duration of smoking but also convert potential never smokers into lifetime smokers finally we estimate a hazard model using survey data from over 800 smokers to provide evidence in support of our theoretical model

representation of variable renewable energy sources in timer an aggregated energy system simulation model the power system is expected to play an important role in climate change mitigation variable renewable energy vre sources such as wind and solar power are currently showing rapid growth rates in power systems worldwide and could also be important in future mitigation strategies it is therefore important that the electricity sector and the integration of vre are correctly represented in energy models this paper presents an improved methodology for representing the electricity sector in the long term energy simulation model timer using a heuristic approach to find cost optimal paths given system requirements and scenario assumptions regional residual load duration curves have been included to simulate curtailments storage use backup requirements and system load factor decline as the vre share increases the results show that for the usa and western europe at lower vre penetration levels backup costs form the major vre cost markup when solar power supplies more than 30 of the electricity demand the costs of storage and energy curtailments become increasingly important storage and curtailments have less influence on wind power cost markups in these regions as wind power supply is better correlated with electricity demand mitigation scenarios show an increasing vre share in the electricity mix implying also increasing contribution of vre for peak and mid load capacity in the current scenarios this can be achieved by at the same time installing less capital intensive gas fired power plants sensitivity analysis showed that greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector in the updated model are particularly sensitive to the availability of carbon capture and storage ccs and nuclear power and the costs of vre

assessing the development of china s new energy industry abstract as the world s largest carbon dioxide co 2 emitter china is facing increasing international pressure to reduce emissions actively developing new energy has become a fundamental means to solve the dilemma between environmental pollution and energy consumption growth thus more scholars have conducted a wide range of studies on the new energy industry however most of the existing studies use traditional linear models to investigate the relationships between new energy industry and its driving forces ignoring the objective reality that there are many nonlinear relationships in economic variables in order to overcome the shortcomings of existing research this paper uses a data driven nonparametric additive regression model to study the new energy industry the results show that the nonlinear effect of agricultural development shows an inverted u shaped pattern due to the changes in crop acreage at different stages of development the nonlinear impact of foreign energy dependence also indicates an inverted u shaped pattern however technological progress produces a positive u shaped nonlinear impact on the new energy industry because of the difference in r d funding and r d personnel investments similarly the impact of energy consumption structure also shows a positive u shaped pattern owing to the gradual decline in coal consumption therefore the government should develop differentiated policies at different stages in order to effectively promote the development of new energy industries

retail competition and the dynamics of demand for tied goods we present a demand system for tied goods incorporating dynamics arising from the tied nature of the products and the stockpiling induced by storability and durability we accommodate competition across tied good systems and competing downstream retail formats by endogenizing the retail format at which consumers choose to stockpile inventory this facilitates measurement of long run retail substitution effects and yields estimates of complementarities within and substitution across competing systems of tied goods we present an empirical application to an archetypal tied goods category razors and blades we discuss the implications of measured effects for manufacturer pricing when selling the tied products through an oligopolistic downstream retail channel and assess the extent to which retail substitution reduces channel conflict

using an extended lmdi model to explore techno economic drivers of energy related industrial co2 emission changes a case study for shanghai china although investment and r d activities can exert significant effects on energy related industrial co2 emissions eice related factors have not been fairly uncovered in the existing index decomposition studies this paper extends the previous logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition model by introducing three novel factors r d intensity investment intensity and r d efficiency the extended model not only considers the conventional drivers of eice but also reflects the microeconomic effects of investment and r d behaviors on eice furthermore taking shanghai as an example which is the economic center and leading co2 emitter in china we use the extended model to decompose and explain eice changes also we incorporate renewable energy sources into the proposed model to carry out an alternative decomposition analysis at shanghai s entire industrial level the results show that among conventional macroeconomic factors expanding output scale is mainly responsible for the increase in eice and industrial structure adjustment is the most significant factor in mitigating eice regardless of renewable energy sources the emission reduction effect of energy intensity focused on by the chinese government is less than the expected due to the rebound effect but the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies its mitigating effect partly resulting from the transmission from the abating effect of industrial structure adjustment the effect of energy structure is the weakest although all the three novel factors exert significant effects on eice they are more sensitive to policy interventions than conventional factors r d intensity presents an obvious mitigating effect while investment intensity and r d efficiency display an overall promotion effect with some volatility the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies the promotion effect of r d efficiency as a result of the green paradox effect finally we propose that co2 mitigation efforts should be made by considering both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors in order to achieve a desirable emission reduction effect

strategic oil stockpiling for energy security the case of china and india abstract compared with the developed countries the developing countries could be more vulnerable to oil supply disruptions due to their lack of strategic petroleum reserves sprs several developing countries including china and india are establishing their sprs to ensure energy security in the common world oil market one country s spr decisions can be affected by the decisions of other countries this paper investigates the spr policies of china and india two of the largest developing countries in a game theoretic framework where the interactions between the two countries are taken into account the results show that players equilibrium stockpiling strategies and total expected costs could vary significantly with the initial oil market state stockpile acquisition capacity and the probabilities for disruptions to persist

modeling multiple sources of state dependence in random utility models a distributed lag approach we propose a utility theoretic brand choice model that accounts for four different sources of state dependence 1 effects of lagged choices structural state dependence 2 effects of serially correlated error terms in the random utility function habit persistence type 1 3 effects of serial correlations between utility maximizing alternatives on successive purchase occasions of a household habit persistence type 2 and 4 effects of lagged marketing variables carryover effects our proposed model also allows habit persistence to be a function of lagged marketing variables while accommodating the effects of unobserved heterogeneity in household choice parameters this model is more flexible than existing state dependence models in marketing and labor econometrics using scanner panel data we find structural state dependence to be the most important source of state dependence marketing mix elasticities are systematically understated if state dependence effects are incompletely accounted for the seetharaman and chintagunta 1998 model is shown to recover spurious variety seeking effects while overstating habit persistence effects ignoring habit persistence type 1 leads to an underestimation while ignoring habit persistence type 2 leads to an overestimation of structural state dependence effects we find lagged promotions to have carryover effects on habit persistence ignoring one or more sources of state dependence underestimates the total incremental impact of a sales promotion we draw implications for manufacturer pricing

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

the effect of promotion on consumption buying more and consuming it faster the authors empirically demonstrate the existence of flexible consumption rates in packaged goods products how this phenomenon can be modeled and its importance in assessing the effectiveness of

dynamic relationship of oil price shocks and country risks abstract this study investigates the dynamic relationship between oil price shocks and country risks using a structural var framework for a sample of both net oil exporting and net oil importing countries over the period january 1994 december 2014 the results reveal that country risk is significantly affected by oil price shocks but the impacts are different unanticipated positive oil price shocks trigger a reduction addition in country risk for net oil exporting country net oil importing countries as to the responses of oil prices to country risk shock evidence show that country risk shocks have a delayed significantly positive impacts on oil price for oil exporting country with respect to the effects of subcomponents of country risk we find evidence that economic and political risk have a significant impact on supply side shocks in net oil exporting countries like canada while economic and political risk have a significant effect on supply side shocks and oil specific demand shocks in net oil importing countries like the us these results are particularly important to policy makers and government

state dependence and alternative explanations for consumer inertia for many consumer packaged goods products researchers have documented inertia in brand choice a form of persistence whereby consumers have a higher probability of choosing a product that they have purchased in the past using data on margarine and refrigerated orange juice purchases we show that the finding of inertia is robust to flexible controls for preference heterogeneity and not due to autocorrelated taste shocks thus the inertia is at least partly due to structural not spurious state dependence we explore three economic explanations for the observed structural state dependence preference changes due to past purchases or consumption experiences which induce a form of loyalty search and learning our data are consistent with loyalty but not with search or learning properly distinguishing among the dierent sources of inertia is important for policy analysis because the alternative sources of inertia imply qualitative dierences in firm s pricing incentives and lead to quantitatively dierent equilibrium

intercourse across economic growth trade and renewable energy consumption in developing and developed countries abstract this article exploits a dynamic simultaneous equation panel data approach to research the bond across economic growth renewable sort of energy and trade for information of 72 countries since 1990 until 2012 we likewise analyze this relationship by separating all countries into three groups as per the level of development whole developing high income developing upper middle income developing lower middle income developing lower income developing developed major developed and others developed countries the outcomes demonstrate a feedback linkage between income and renewable energy consumption between trade and renewable energy consumption and between trade and income this implies that the three variables considered are interdependent

when is a break up of gazprom good for russia in the late 1990s several proposals for a structural reform that would bring competition and market prices to the russian gas industry were intensely debated splitting up russian gas monopolist gazprom into several producing companies was a considered option in this paper i examine theoretically and numerically how a split up of gazprom would affect russian national welfare results show that under the current gas market structures in europe and russia the split up of gazprom s monopoly might not be beneficial for russia however analysis in the paper indicates that the market shares that gazprom has in both russian domestic and european gas markets are important in determining whether gazprom s dominance is supported under the national welfare criteria when gazprom has small market share in europe and large market share in russia a break up of gazprom might plausibly result in increase of russian national welfare

a dynamic analysis of market structure based on panel data internal market structure analysis infers brand positions in an attribute space from preference and choice data given a market in which consumers have heterogeneous tastes for attributes previous market structure models have adopted a static framework e g elrod 1988 chintagunta 1994 elrod and keane 1995 furthermore they assumed that consumer perceptions of brand attributes do not vary across consumers yet these approaches may render inaccurate representations of market structure if there is state dependence in consumer choice behavior this paper attempts to incorporate consumer choice dynamics into market structure models by specifying the source of choice dynamics explicitly in particular the process by which past purchases affect current choices is modeled in a framework which captures both consumer habit persistence and variety seeking behavior more specifically consumer preferences for brand attributes are modeled to depend on the attributes of brands bought on the previous purchase occasion furthermore the modeling approach adopted incorporates heterogeneity in both consumer preferences and perceptions of brand attributes the audience of this paper includes practitioners and academics interested in understanding consumer choice processes and inferring market structure from consumer choice data the proposed models are estimated on nielsen scanner panel data for margarine peanut butter yogurt and liquid detergent using simulated maximum likelihood techniques the empirical results suggest that accounting for choice dynamics improves both in sample and out of sample fit the results indicate that the average consumer is habit persistent in all the product categories studied this result is consistent with the findings of kannan and sanchez 1994 who conducted an aggregate analysis of consumer variety seeking behavior across product categories however the results obtained in this paper suggest that consumers are heterogeneous with respect to the processes by which past purchases affect current purchases these results provide strong evidence for habit persistence and variety seeking in brand attributes to be the behavioral source of consumer choice dynamics in food categories thus consumer tastes utility weights seem to be affected by the attributes of the brands consumed in the past given the empirical result that a large proportion of consumers are habit persistent this suggests that tastes are reinforced by the brand attributes consumed in the past the empirical results also show that not accounting for state dependence in market structure models for panel data may produce misleading results that is depending on consumer behavior patterns models that do not account for state dependence may distort the true nature of competition among brands more specifically the results confirm the expectation that if there is habit persistence that is if consumer tastes are reinforced by attributes of brands consumed in the past models that do not capture this choice dynamics will overestimate the distance between similar brands furthermore the policy experiments conducted suggest that 1 static models overestimate the short run impact of a price cut on the sales of the brand on promotion 2 price cuts hurt the sales of the more similar brands more and 3 free samples affect relatively less similar brands the most finally this paper studies variety seeking and habit persistence across brands over purchase occasions however variety seeking behavior may also involve the purchase of a portfolio of brands or items at a purchase occasion consumers may buy multiple items knowing that prior to the next trip they may want to consume different items simanson 1990 walsh 1995 this type of behavior can be modeled within the context of dynamic expected utility maximization with forward looking consumers the development and estimation of market structure models that include forward looking consumers who maximize expected utility over a planning horizon incorporating their future tastes and needs and shopping for an inventory of brands remain an important future research issue

cartelization in gas markets studying the potential for a gas opec natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels using the world gas model a large scale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation this paper analyzes possible future gas cartels and their effects on gas markets in a number of regions across the world in addition scenarios related to lower transport costs and decreased unconventional gas supply in the united states are considered

dynamic relationships between crude oil prices and socially responsible investing in brazil evidence for linear and non linear causality abstractrecent years have witnessed an increasing interest in socially responsible investing sri reflecting investors growing awareness of social environmental ethical and corporate governance issues at the same time the effect of oil price shocks on stock price returns has become a prominent issue due to surges in energy prices using the brazilian corporate sustainability index ise as a benchmark for socially responsible investments in the brazilian stock market the present study extends the understandings on the impact of oil prices on stock price behaviour focusing on a new class of assets those from socially responsible firms to this end apart from conventional linear causality approaches we apply a nonparametric test by diks and panchenko dp on daily data spanning from january 2008 to december 2015 to test for non linear causality before and after controlling for conditional heteroscedasticity our findings show that in spite of their efforts to become more socially responsible

a strategic model of european gas supply gasmod abstract this paper presents a model of the european natural gas supply gasmod which is structured as a two stage game of successive natural gas exports to europe upstream market and wholesale trade within europe downstream market and which explicitly includes infrastructure capacities we compare three possible market scenarios cournot competition in both markets perfect competition in both markets and perfect competition in the downstream with cournot competition in the upstream market eu liberalization we find that cournot competition in both markets is the most accurate representation of today s european natural gas market where suppliers at both stages generate a mark up at the expense of the final customer double marginalization our results yield a diversified supply portfolio with newly emerging lng exporters gaining market shares enforcing competition in the european downstream market would lead to lower prices and higher quantities by avoiding the welfare reducing effects of double marginalization binding infrastructure capacity restrictions strongly influence the results and we identify bottlenecks mainly for intra european trade relations whereas transport capacity in the upstream market is globally sufficient in the cournot scenario

testing for convergence in electricity consumption across croatian regions at the consumer s sectoral level abstract using the panel unit tests with and without structural break s the convergence hypothesis in relative per capita electricity consumption series is tested across croatian regions during the period 2001 2013 the results are mixed depending primarily on the consumption sector considered and the test applied they indicate the necessity to conduct analysis and formulate energy policy measures on the sector disaggregated and regional specific electricity consumption time series the croatian electricity markets are not fully integrated and some regions are faced with statistically significant structural break s demonstrating thereby the croatian gradual energy reform process with several sudden innovations significant regional differences and the market dependence on expectations domestic and international economic and non economic innovations the impacts of innovations are likely to be permanent for most of the regions and their electricity consumption behaviours are likely to be path dependent consequently innovations into the energy markets including government interventions may have long run effects indicating that space and time for experimenting with alternative mechanisms are quite limited

how to promote the growth of new energy industry at different stages abstract china is currently the world s largest emitter of carbon dioxide co2 vigorously developing new energy sources has become an important way to reduce co2 emissions therefore more and more scholars have studied effective ways to promote the development of new energy industry however most of the existing research use single equation linear models or static models to study the driving forces of the new energy industry this not only ignores the large number of dynamic relationships between economic variables but also produces endogeneity problems in order to overcome the shortcomings of existing research this paper uses vector autoregressive model to study the new energy industry the results show that energy consumption structure has a positive effect on the new energy industry in the short run but the effect is limited in the long run the impact of the agriculture industry is gradually narrowing over time due to the gradual reduction of crop acreage however the influence of economic growth is positive both in the short and long run this is due to the gradual optimization of industrial structure technological progress produces a similar impact owing to continued investment in research and development funding as well as research and development personnel

modeling heterogeneity and state dependence in consumer choice behavior in frequently purchased consumer goods markets consumer brand choices exhibit substantial persistence across purchase occasions in this article i estimate a choice model that admits of both heterogeneity in preferences and true state dependence as sources of this persistence using nielsen scanner data on ketchup i find evidence for true state dependence in the choice process even after controlling for a rich heterogeneity structure simulation of the model indicates that the long term effect of a promotion induced purchase on future purchase probabilities is positive but small

a framework for investigating habits the hand of the past and heterogeneity in dynamic brand choice in this paper we develop a general class of dynamic brand choice models called lightning bolt lb models which are consistent with the theory of random utility maximization of consumer choice behavior the underlying random utility process is markov and the inter temporal evolution of the utility maximizing brand choice process is also markov the models permit parsimonious parameterizations of the random utility process in brand choices with the resulting switching probabilities being functionally related to explanatory variables the model allows for structural state dependence feedback habit persistence inertia and unobserved heterogeneity the theoretical development shows that several well known stochastic brand choice models can be deduced from random utility maximization theory from a managerial perspective the usefulness of the proposed model stems from its ability to separate out the effects of habits state dependence and heterogeneity strong state dependence effects imply incentives for inducing trial of a brand e g product sampling in contrast with state dependence a strong habit persistence effect may be indicative of buyer behavior where inducement of trial of a different brand may not be sufficient to maintain a sustained defection of the consumer from the habitually purchased brand to the trial brand failure to distinguish between these two effects has important implications for example a model that only accounts for state dependence effects would in the presence of only habit persistence incorrectly attribute it to state dependence based on this the manager could decide to embark on an expensive sampling program that might prove ineffective due to the absence of state dependence it is also important to distinguish between the effects of unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence in the absence of true state dependence failing to account for unobservable variations across households such as differences in price sensitivities results in the temporally persistent unobservable elements showing up as state dependence in the model hence a manager may incorrectly opt for sampling as the appropriate marketing action whereas a couponing or price promotion strategy should have been preferred we estimate the model parameters using the ac nielsen household scanner panel data set on catsup purchases further we investigate empirical techniques for overcoming the initial conditions problem that affects many dynamic models of brand choice through simulation analysis using the estimated parameters we show that the calculated profitability of a promotion must take into account the multi period impact due to state dependence further we demonstrate how ignoring heterogeneity can result in spurious state dependence thereby making marketing tactics such as product sampling appear far more attractive than they actually are specifically the model that accounts only for habit persistence and state dependence effects predicts a share increase of 2 4 points through sampling for one of the brands in the empirical analysis once the effects of unobserved heterogeneity are accounted for however this number drops precipitously to 0 3 while even this low number might fulfill the objectives of the brand manager it ensures that expectations are not eight times that number it is important to note that this paper is a first attempt at analyzing the three fundamental dimensions of dynamic brand choice behavior our formulation represents a reduced form approach as opposed to a structural approach other limitations of the model include our focus on time invariant choice sets extensions of the model to situations where choice sets vary over time are possible but are difficult another limitation is the dependence on multivariate extreme value distributions an alternative would be to use multivariate normal distributions i e a probit like structure which has certain useful properties a comparison of the two approaches would be useful empirical extensions of the model to allow for higher order processes and nested logit type model structures could also be fruitful explicitly incorporating variety seeking behavior in the model would further enrich the theoretical framework proposed in this paper

determinants of store level price elasticity using weekly scanner data representing 18 product categories the authors estimated store specific price elasticities for a chain of 83 supermarkets they related these price sensitivities to a com

sales and consumer inventory temporary price reductions sales are common for many goods and naturally result in a large increase in the quantity sold we explore whether the data support the hypothesis that these increases are at least partly due to demand anticipation at low prices consumers store for future consumption this effect if present has broad economic implications we test the predictions of an inventory model using scanner data with two years of household purchases the results are consistent with an inventory model and suggest that static demand estimates may overestimate price sensitivity

the unintended consequences of countermarketing strategies how particular antismoking measures may shift consumers to more dangerous cigarettes countermarketing or efforts to reduce consumption of certain products has become common in categories such as tobacco junk food fossil fuels and furs countermarketing has a particularly long history in the tobacco industry efforts to reduce smoking have included excise taxes that increase the cost of consumption smoke free restrictions that make consumption less convenient and antismoking advertising campaigns that highlight the dangers of tobacco use this article presents an analysis of the relative effectiveness of these different strategies we find that cigarette excise taxes are the most effective tool for reducing overall cigarette sales followed by antismoking advertising smoke free restrictions are not found to have a significant effect on cigarette sales we also investigate how these various policy tools induce product substitution this issue is of considerable importance because some countermarketing techniques may potentially shift consumers to more dangerous higher nicotine and

the price consideration model of brand choice the workhorse brand choice models in marketing are the multinomial logit mnl and nested multinomial logit nmnl these models place strong restrictions on how brand share and purchase incidence price elasticities are related in this paper we propose a new model of brand choice the price consideration pc model that allows more flexibility in this relationship in the pc model consumers do not observe prices in each period every week a consumer decides whether to consider a category only then does he she look at prices and decide whether and what to buy using scanner data we show the pc model fits much better than mnl or nmnl simulations reveal the reason the pc model provides a vastly superior fit to inter purchase spells

a dynamic model of rational addiction evaluating cigarette taxes addiction creates an intertemporal link between a consumer s past and present decisions altering their responsiveness to price changes relative to nonaddictive products we construct a dynamic model of rational addiction and endogenous consumption to investigate how consumers respond to policy interventions that aim to reduce purchases of cigarettes we find that on average the category elasticity is about 35 higher when the model correctly accounts for addiction however some policies spur substitution from more expensive single packs to less expensive cartons of cigarettes resulting in higher overall consumption for some consumers

social rate of return to r d on various energy technologies where should we invest more a study of g7 countries abstract the importance of investment in research and development r d in the energy sector is indisputable especially considering the benefits of new technologies to sustainability security and environmental protection however the nature and potential of various energy technologies that are capable of improving the energy and environmental conditions globally is a challenging task for governments and policy makers that have to make decisions on the allocation of funds in r d to do so the optimal resource allocation to r d should be determined by estimating the social rate of return for r d investments this paper aims to estimate the social rate of return of r d on various energy applications and technologies such as energy efficiency fossil fuels renewable energy sources and nuclear for the g7 countries the results show that primarily r d investment on energy efficiency technologies and nuclear are the ones that yield high social benefits for all g7 countries while exactly the opposite holds for fossil fuels

an empirical investigation of the dynamic effect of marlboro s permanent pricing shift the strategy philip morris adopted in 1993 featured a one time permanent publicly announced price cut an event referred to as marlboro friday little is known about the impact of permanent and publicly announced price cuts on consumer brand switching behaviors for an addictive product in the context of marlboro friday we investigate 1 how consumers brand choices are affected by a permanent price cut 2 whether differential and dynamic effects of permanent price cuts occur for different types of consumers and 3 the implications of publicly announced permanent price cuts on consumer brand switching behavior in the long run we develop a dynamic structural brand choice model that allows for consumer forward looking behavior learning and addiction and investigate how consumers adjusted their brand choice behaviors before and after this permanent price cut using unique consumer panel data pertaining to cigarette purchases before and after the event we provide behavioral explanations of whether and how the drastic and permanent price cut represented an effective step to encourage brand switching for an addictive product and a necessary step for philip morris to combat the growing market share of generic brands

shifting policy priorities in eu china energy relations implications for chinese energy investments in europe shifting energy policy priorities both in china and the eu european union have transformed their bilateral relationship in order to assess the impact of domestic policy priorities on bilateral energy cooperation and climate policy this comparative study traces the evolution of eu and chinese approaches to energy policy and their relative emphasis on factors and frames such as availability efficiency affordability and environmental stewardship drawing on government documents and a data set of interviews with chinese policy makers experts and academics in 2015 2016 the article argues that while the eu started with a strong emphasis on environmental stewardship and moved towards a focus on affordability and availability china started with a strong emphasis on availability and has moved towards a greater emphasis on environmental stewardship this shift in frames on the chinese side and subsequent changes in subsidy structures and targets can partially explain the increase in investments in renewable energy technologies the article concludes that the chinese and eu perspectives have become more aligned over the past ten years coinciding with an increasing trend towards renewable energy in chinese energy investments in the eu for example in italy and the uk

promotion effect on endogenous consumption over the years researchers have found that promotion makes consumers switch brands and purchase earlier or more however it is unclear how promotion affects consumption especially for product categories that are perceived to be versatile and substitutable in this paper we propose a dynamic structural model with endogenous consumption under promotion uncertainty to analyze the promotion effect on consumption this model recognizes consumers as rational decision makers who form promotion expectations and plan their purchase and consumption decisions in light of promotion schedule applying the proposed model to packaged tuna and yogurt we find that endogenous consumption responds to promotion as a result of forward looking and stockpiling behavior this is the first empirical paper that recognizes consumption as an endogenous decision variable and proposes a structural model to offer behavioral explanations on whether how and why promotion encourages consumption for product categories with flexible consumption

multiple discreteness and product differentiation demand for carbonated soft drinks for several of the largest supermarket product categories such as carbonated soft drinks canned soups ready to eat cereals and cookies consumers regularly purchase assortments of products within the category consumers often purchase multiple products and multiple units of each alternative selected on a given trip this multiple discreteness violates the single unit purchase assumption of multinomial logit and probit models the misspecification of such demand models in categories exhibiting multiple discreteness would produce incorrect measures of consumer response to marketing mix variables in studying product strategy these models would lead to misleading managerial conclusions we use an alternative microeconomic model of demand for categories that exhibit the multiple discreteness problem recognizing the separation between the time of purchase and the time of consumption we model consumers purchasing bundles of goods in anticipation of a stream of consumption occasions before the next trip we apply the model to a panel of household purchases for carbonated soft drinks