crime and poverty a search theoretic approach numerous studies document that criminal activity is positively related to unemployment and negatively related to educational attainment levels within given communities we study this phenomenon in the context of a search equilibrium model in which agents choose between formal employment and pursuing crimerelated activities theft prior to their occupational choices agents undertake costly schooling raising their productivity crime acts in essence as a tax on human capital by affecting the probability that a worker s earnings possessions are subsequently appropriated there are multiple equilibria high crime low levels of educational attainment long spells of unemployment and poverty are correlated across them

education work and crime a human capital approach this article develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work and expected costs associated with incarceration older more intelligent and more educated adults should commit fewer street unskilled crimes white collar crimes decline less or increase with age and education predictions for age crime and education crime relationships receive broad empirical support in self report data from the national longitudinal survey of youth and arrest data from the uniform crime reports the effects of education training and wage subsidies as well as enforcement policies on criminal behavior are discussed

does market based electricity price affect china s energy efficiency abstract china is in a critical period of market oriented reform and energy transition as a crucial means to regulate supply and demand under the market oriented mechanism the electricity price can promote the development of energy efficiency by optimizing resource allocation with the gradual increase in electricity consumption the influence of its price on energy consumption is also gradually enhanced therefore this paper evaluated the process of electricity price marketization and conducted a spatial temporal comparative analysis of the effect of electricity price on energy efficiency by controlling economic policy and other price factors the results show that 1 the marketization degree of china s electricity price has improved with steady steps 2 market oriented electricity price has a stable positive correlation with energy efficiency in both the short and long term 3 marketization improves the promotion effect of electricity price on energy efficiency and the influence of electricity price is more significant in the eastern region with a high degree of marketization and the subsequent stage 4 the impact of market oriented electricity price on energy efficiency is asymmetric the impulse response under positive and negative shock is opposite and under the positive shock the response time is longer and the degree is greater

democracy and development the devil in the details does democracy promote economic development this paper reviews recent attempts to address this question that exploited within country variation it shows that the answer is largely positive but also depends on the details of democratic reforms first the sequence of economic vs political reforms matters countries liberalizing their economy before extending political rights do better second different forms of democratic government lead to different economic policies and this might explain why presidential democracy leads to faster growth than parliamentary democracy third it is important to distinguish between expected and actual political reforms taking expectations of regime change into account helps identify a stronger growth effect of democracy

employment deterrence and crime in a dynamic model using maximum likelihood techniques and monthly panel data we solve and estimate an explicitly dynamic model of criminal behavior where current criminal activity impacts future labor market outcomes we show that the threat of future adverse effects in the labor market when arrested acts as a strong deterrent to crime moreover such forward looking behavior is estimated to be important hence policies that weaken this deterrence will be much less effective in fighting crime this suggests that prevention is more powerful than redemption since anticipated redemption allows criminals to look forward to negating the consequences of their crimes

voluntary agreements in the field of energy efficiency and emission reduction review and analysis of experiences in the european union abstract a number of member states of the eu have introduced voluntary agreements vas that aim to deliver energy savings and emission reductions via increased energy efficiency in different end use sectors mainly targeting industry where there is a successful track record of cooperation between public authorities and the private sector vas can offer advantages to public authorities in comparison to legislation most importantly better flexibility when introduced or updated greater acceptance by industry possibility for tailor made solutions e g at the level of industrial sectors and opportunity to overcome the information asymmetry between public authorities and private actors nevertheless vas have been criticized for lack of specific obligations and lenient targets as well as for deficiencies in compliance monitoring and self reporting and difficulty in establishing the policy additionality of va activity this paper analyses the design of existing vas in terms of general framework targets and sectors obligations and commitments motivation to join reporting and monitoring provisions and results of existing vas as reported by national authorities the paper summarizes the key characteristics of voluntary agreements and gives recommendations for the successful application of this policy tool

impact of food inflation on poverty in the philippines abstract we simulate the impact of food inflation between june 2006 and june 2008 on poverty across different areas and between agricultural and non agricultural households we explicitly treat the spatial heterogeneity in food inflation and the differences in consumption and production patterns across households by merging household expenditure survey and price datasets at the provincial level or lower although some of the poor agricultural households may have escaped poverty the poorest of the poor whether they are in an agricultural household or not are severely and adversely affected by the food inflation

major oecd country industrial sector interfuel substitution estimates 1960 1979 abstract a range of static and dynamic translog based expenditure shares models are estimated for non energy producing industrial sectors of the major seven countries of the oecd area sectoral energy volume and fuel efficiency bias variables are shown to be significant over and above individual prices in explaining individual fuel expenditure shares statistically significant own price and cross price elasticities of demand are presented for individual countries with some magnitudes varying considerably across alternative model specifications

us residential energy demand and energy efficiency a stochastic demand frontier approach this paper estimates a us frontier residential aggregate energy demand function using panel data for 48 states over the period 1995 to 2007 using stochastic frontier analysis sfa utilizing an econometric energy demand model the in efficiency of each state is modeled and it is argued that this represents a measure of the inefficient use of residential energy in each state i e waste energy this underlying efficiency for the us is therefore observed for each state as well as the relative efficiency across the states moreover the analysis suggests that energy intensity is not necessarily a good indicator of energy efficiency whereas by controlling for a range of economic and other factors the measure of energy efficiency obtained via this approach is this is a novel approach to model residential energy demand and efficiency and it is arguably particularly relevant given current us energy policy discussions related to energy efficiency

is the implementation of energy saving and emission reduction policy really effective in chinese cities a policy evaluation perspective abstract reducing pollutant emissions while ensuring a stable economic growth is an important embodiment of sustainable development based on the national comprehensive demonstration of energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy eser policy proposed by the chinese government in 2011 this paper analyzes the impact of such policy on emissions reduction and economic growth under the framework of differences in differences did method this paper first identifies the implementation conditions of eser policy then we adopt three specifications to control the endogenous problem for the selection of demonstration cities the robustness test verifies the reliability of our findings and the spillover effect analysis reveals the deficiency of this policy we reach the following conclusions 1 different from the previous studies we find that the eser policy can effectively reduce the pollutant emissions while ensuring a stable economic growth 2 however the event study reveals that the reduction effect is only existing in the demonstration period which means that this policy is not sustainable 3 furthermore we find no spillover effect of eser policy on the non policy targeted pollutant suggesting that the local government only cares about the reduction of policy targeted pollutants based on these findings we propose that the future energy saving and emissions reduction policy formulation should focus on the policy sustainability and overall environmental performance

endogeneity and the dynamics of internal corporate governance abstract we use a well developed dynamic panel generalized method of moments gmm estimator to alleviate endogeneity concerns in two aspects of corporate governance research the effect of board structure on firm performance and the determinants of board structure the estimator incorporates the dynamic nature of internal governance choices to provide valid and powerful instruments that address unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity we re examine the relation between board structure and performance using the gmm estimator in a panel of 6 000 firms over a period from 1991 to 2003 and find no causal relation between board structure and current firm performance we illustrate why other commonly used estimators that ignore the dynamic relationship between current governance and past firm performance may be biased we discuss where it may be appropriate to consider the dynamic panel gmm estimator in corporate governance research as well as caveats to its use

modelling oecd industrial energy demand asymmetric price responses and energy saving technical change abstract the industrial sector embodies a multifaceted production process consequently modelling the derived demand for energy is a complex issue made all the more difficult by the need to capture the effect of technical progress of the capital stock this paper is an exercise in econometric modelling of industrial energy demand using panel data for 15 oecd countries over the period 1962 2003 exploring the issue of energy saving technical change and asymmetric price responses although difficult to determine precisely it is tentatively concluded that the preferred specification for oecd industrial energy demand incorporates asymmetric price responses but not exogenous energy saving technical change

adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector an empirical analysis based on energy survey data this paper empirically explores factors driving the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector which mainly consists of public and private services trade commerce and some small industries the measures considered include switching off installations or lighting managing energy use and routinely considering energy efficiency for new purchases our statistical analysis employs single and multivariate probit models relying on more than 1500 observations from a recent representative survey of the tertiary sector in germany the findings suggest that the landlord tenant dilemma holds for the adoption of all low cost energy efficiency measures considered they further imply that financial incentives such as higher energy prices accelerate the diffusion of low cost energy measures our findings also provide some evidence that knowledge transfer from the mother company to a subsidiary enhances the diffusion of low cost energy efficiency measures likewise public sector organizations are more likely to adopt energy management by and large though sectoral heterogeneity appears to have little impact on the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures

an economic analysis of the age crime profile abstract the age crime profile is one of the most established and prominent empirical regularities in social science this paper formulates an economic dynamic model of illegal behavior to explain the age crime profile the model offers a new interpretation of the age crime profile that is entirely different from the prevailing one in the literature the implications of the model are testable and are consistent with the empirical evidence examined in the paper the analysis shows that intertemporal criminal decisions can be modeled as a dynamic consumption investment problem

comparative assessment of policies targeting energy use efficiency in lithuania abstract energy efficiency is an important issue of european climate policy energy efficiency is measured by the energy intensity of an economy showing how much energy expressed in kilograms of oil equivalent kgoe is used for the production of one unit 1000 eur of gdp there are huge differences between eu old and new member states though there are some trends of energy intensity convergence between eu member states however the achieved decrease in energy intensity is attributable mostly to a loss of energy intensive industrial capacities in the transformation process there is a crucial difference between whether the energy intensity of a given economy decreases as a result of downscaling energy intensive activities or because of increased energy efficiency in activities that are maintained it is important to make sure that this distinction is made within the policy framework which at present is not the case the aim of the paper is to assess policies targeting energy intensity decrease in lithuania in terms of efficiency effectiveness and efficacy and to select the best policies able to increase energy efficiency in activities that are maintained

impact of energy policy instruments on the estimated level of underlying energy efficiency in the eu residential sector the promotion of energy efficiency is seen as one of the top priorities of eu energy policy ec 2010 in order to design and implement effective energy policy instruments it is necessary to have information on energy demand price and income elasticities in addition to sound indicators of energy efficiency this research combines the approaches taken in energy demand modelling and frontier analysis in order to econometrically estimate the level of energy efficiency for the residential sector in the eu 27 member states for the period 1996 to 2009 the estimates for the energy efficiency confirm that the eu residential sector indeed holds a relatively high potential for energy savings from reduced inefficiency therefore despite the common objective to decrease wasteful energy consumption considerable variation in energy efficiency between the eu member states is established furthermore an attempt is made to evaluate the impact of energy efficiency measures undertaken in the eu residential sector by introducing an additional set of variables into the model and the results suggest that financial incentives and energy performance standards play an important role in promoting energy efficiency improvements whereas informative measures do not have a significant impact

safe port in a storm the impact of labor market conditions on community college enrollments the paper examines the impact of the business cycle on enrollments and finances at individual community colleges between the late 1960s and the mid 1980s we find that 1 percent increases in the unemployment rates of recent high school graduates and of all adults are associated with rises in full time attendance of about 0 5 percent and 4 percent respectively part time enrollment exhibits similar anticyclical patterns this link carries over in large part to degrees obtained in contrast state and local appropriations per student are procyclical we interpret this funding pattern as a failure to integrate education policy sufficiently closely with labor market policy

dynamic translog and linear logit models a factor demand analysis of interfuel substitution in us industrial energy demand abstract we compare and contrast two popular dynamic flexible functional forms for cost functions the translog and the logit j bus econ stat 8 1990 347 353 using data on us industrial energy demand from 1960 to 1992 which has been analysed by previous studies energy econ 11 1989 89 94 appl econ 21 1989 931 945 j bus econ stat 13 1995 459 465 we show the crucial role played by different dynamic formulations of the translog in this analysis of factor demands with respect to rates of dynamic adjustment and substitution possibilities we conclude that the poor performance of the dynamic translog relative to the dynamic logit cannot be explained solely by dynamic model mis specification or the inclusion of price unresponsive non energy fuel use data our most robust empirical result is that coal and oil are substitutes

do energy efficiency policies save energy a new approach based on energy policy indicators in the eu member states abstract over the last two decades the european union and its member states have introduced policies aimed at improving energy efficiency the energy service directives esd introduced the concept of measurement of energy savings attributed to policies two different and complementary methodologies for the evaluation of energy savings have been developed under the esd the bottom up bu approach based on a technical analysis of each measure and the top down td approach based on the analysis of how energy intensity changes over time bu methods can hardly take into account policy induced behavioural changes whereas td methods have difficulties in disentangling policy induced savings from other savings econometric models have been proposed as a viable alternative to deal with both drawbacks the purpose of this article is to present an econometric model aimed at estimating the energy savings induced by energy efficiency policies in the eu member states in the period 1990 2013 we introduce an explicit measure of energy policy intensity based on the mure database which is used as explanatory variable in a dynamic panel model for 29 european countries our results suggest that energy consumption in 2013 in europe would have been about 12 higher in the absence of energy efficiency policies

the governance of the european energy union efficiency effectiveness and acceptance of the winter package 2016 abstract the new governance mechanisms of the european energy policy proposed by the european commission in its winter package will redefine european energy and climate governance this contribution reviews the proposal its supporting documents and overall stakeholder positions according to the criteria of the efficiency effectiveness and acceptance of governance to assess its ability to support european energy and climate goals we find that the proposed governance amounts to a densely meshed coordination of policies between the european level and member states compared to the present governance system the enhanced mechanism can draw on significant synergies and reduce administrative costs our review of stakeholder positions reveals strong acceptance of enhanced coordination nonetheless our review identifies some potential flaws in terms of governance effectiveness the proposed structures surpass the method of open coordination they could also be seen as a case of harder soft governance in conflict with article 194 2 tfeu finally the local level is excluded

a harmonized calculation model for transforming eu bottom up energy efficiency indicators into empirical estimates of policy impacts abstract this study is an impact analysis of european union eu energy efficiency policy that employs both top down energy consumption data and bottom up energy efficiency statistics or indicators as such it may be considered a contribution to the effort called for in the eu s 2006 energy services directive esd to develop a harmonized calculation model although this study does not estimate the realized savings from individual policy measures it does provide estimates of realized energy savings for energy efficiency policy measures in aggregate using fixed effects panel models the annual cumulative savings in 2011 of combined household and manufacturing sector electricity and natural gas usage attributed to eu energy efficiency policies since 2000 is estimated to be 1136 pj the savings attributed to energy efficiency policies since 2006 is estimated to be 807 pj or the equivalent of 5 6 of 2011 eu energy consumption as well as its contribution to energy efficiency policy analysis this study adds to the development of methods that can improve the quality of information provided by standardized energy efficiency and sustainable resource indexes

from demand side management dsm to energy efficiency services a finnish case study abstract energy conservation is expected to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and energy security traditionally energy companies have had strong role in providing demand side management dsm measures however after energy market liberalization in europe energy companies dsm activities declined in response the eu issued directive 2006 32 ec on energy end use efficiency and energy services esd to motivate energy companies to promote energy efficiency and conservation closely followed by directive 2012 27 eu on energy efficiency eed requiring the setting up energy efficiency obligation schemes despite strong political and economic motivation energy companies struggle to develop energy efficiency services in liberalised energy markets due to conflicting institutional demands which arise from contradicting policy requirements and customer relations the main challenges in developing new innovative energy efficiency services evidenced by an in depth case study were 1 the unbundling of energy company operations which makes it difficult to develop services when the contribution of several business units is required and 2 the distrust among energy end users which renders the business logic of energy saving contract models self contradictory on the basis of the research avenues out of these dilemmas are suggested