aggregate demand for electricity in south africa an analysis using the bounds testing approach to cointegration abstract electricity demand in south africa has grown at a very rapid rate over the past decade as part of reform initiatives to enhance long term sustainability of the country s electricity industry south africa s authorities have in recent years sought to develop an electricity pricing framework that is cost reflective and forms the cornerstone of demand management schemes meant to foster changes in consumption behaviour and enhance efficiency in resource use the effects of any pricing policy on aggregate electricity consumption will depend on a useful understanding of the factors that influence electricity demand and the magnitude to which electricity demand responds to changes in such factors in this context this paper applies the bounds testing approach to cointegration within an autoregressive distributed lag framework to examine the aggregate demand for electricity in south africa during the period 1960 2007 the results indicate that in the long run income is the main determinant of electricity demand with electricity prices having an insignificant effect on aggregate electricity demand future pricing policies will need to ensure that electricity prices are cost reflective and enhance efficiency of electricity supply and use

elements for the development of public policies in the residential sector of mexico based in the energy reform and the energy transition law abstract mexico has entered in an important dynamic of structural changes in the energy area proof of this it is the energy reform 2013 and the energy transition law published the last december 24th 2015 thus it is important to carry out studies of the impacts of future politics in the consumption of the population so this study estimate an energy demand system using microdata collected from 97 817 households in a national households income and expenditure survey enigh acronyms in spanish encuesta nacional de ingresos y gastos de los hogares in the 20 years period from 1994 to 2014 the magnitudes of all the fuels are smaller than one indicating that electricity lpg gasoline and public transport are normal goods while lpg is the most inelastic energy source the geographic factor shows that households in the north of mexico tend to consume more gasoline whereas in the south of the country the lowest share of lpg expenditure is reported the rigorous evaluation of energy demanded in households will help policy makers to put forward more efficient reforms

social norms and csr performance some institutional investors e g pensions universities and religious charitable and not for profit institutions are exposed to social norms and public scrutiny prior research indicates that these norm constrained institutions engage in negative screening and invest less in firms operating in sin industries we examine whether social norms also motivate these institutions to engage in positive screening where they invest more in firms with better corporate social responsibility csr performance and csr related activism where they promote improvements in the csr of existing investees we find that firms with superior csr performance have greater ownership by norm constrained institutions consistent with positive screening and we use a natural experiment to establish causality we also find that increases in the shareholdings of norm constrained institutions are associated with subsequent improvements in csr consistent with activism further we rule out an alternative explanation for our results where the positive screening and activism are profit driven rather than driven by social pressure thus our results suggest that the influence of social norms on stock markets is more pervasive than documented in the prior literature

reforming residential electricity tariff in china block tariffs pricing approach the chinese households that make up approximately a quarter of world households are facing a residential power tariff reform in which a rising block tariff structure will be implemented and this tariff mechanism is widely used around the world the basic principle of the structure is to assign a higher price for higher income consumers with low price elasticity of power demand to capture the non linear effects of price and income on elasticities we set up a translog demand model the empirical findings indicate that the higher income consumers are less sensitive than those with lower income to price changes we further put forward three proposals of chinese residential electricity tariffs compared to a flat tariff the reasonable block tariff structure generates more efficient allocation of cross subsidies better incentives for raising the efficiency of electricity usage and reducing emissions from power generation which also supports the living standards of low income households

gender norms in financial markets evidence from kenya abstract the role of institutions rules and norms in markets is increasingly recognized in development discourse this paper considers the role of gender relations for rules and norms in financial markets using evidence from central kenya it develops a framework for establishing the influence of gender on the demand for and access to financial services so explaining the gender differentiated use of rotating savings and credit associations roscas it first analyzes intrahousehold norms related to income and expenditure flows and their management so identifying gendered patterns of demand second by conceptualizing financial intermediaries as operating within rules and norms it allows the influence of gender relations on access to financial services to be more systematically investigated

energy demand in ghana a disaggregated analysis this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of energy demand in ghana by estimating demand functions for key disaggregated energy components including gasoline diesel liquefied petroleum gas lpg kerosene biomass residual fuel oil rfo and electricity our results show that energy prices income urbanization and economic structure are significant demand drivers of the different energy types in ghana with varying estimated elasticities further there is evidence of high degree of inter fuel substitution in energy demand in ghana particularly from gasoline diesel and kerosene towards lpg consumption we recommend among different policy options a customization of energy price subsidization policies especially on lpg to reduce the unintended beneficiary dilemma or spillover effect of current government policy other policies such as intensification of energy conservation programs and market entry of independent power trading companies to enhance energy service delivery through competition are also discussed

a robust analysis of the relationship between renewable energy consumption and its main drivers we provide a comprehensive and robust analysis of the drivers of renewable energy consumption for a panel of 64 countries using both the static pooled ols panel fixed and random effects and dynamic difference and system gmm panel data estimation approaches we show that the dynamic panel data model provides more efficient estimators than the static ones and that increases in per capita co2 emissions and per capita trade with foreign partners mainly drive the changes in per capita renewable energy consumption we also find limited evidence of oil price effects on renewable energy consumption which reflects the fact that renewable energy is just a complement and not a perfect substitute of crude oil at least in the short run

short and long run elasticities in energy demand a cointegration approach abstract short and long run energy demand elasticities are estimated on danish annual data for 1948 1990 energy consumption the real price of energy and real gdp appear to be non stationary variables cointegration and error correction methods are therefore applied all estimated parameters have the expected signs and magnitudes and no evidence is found of a structural break in energy demand caused by the increases in real energy prices since 1973 74

institutional ownership of stock and dimensions of corporate social performance an empirical examination collectively institutions own an increasing proportion of outstanding corporate equities as an emergent force in shaping corporate america the linkages between institutional ownership and corporate social performance csp require empirical examination not only do corporate policy makers need to know those areas where social performance may lure or inhibit capital infusions lawmakers also need a better understanding of the social forces guiding corporate policy as anticipated this study found a positive relationship between the amount of institutional ownership of corporate stock and a company s social responsiveness as measured by the representation of women on its board of directors however no statistically significant relationship with social responsibility as measured by charitable giving was found the exemplar of social issues management compliance with the sullivan principles showed an unexpected negative relationship with the level of institutional ownership

short run and long run elasticities of import demand for crude oil in turkey abstract the aim of this study is to attempt to estimate the short run and the long run elasticities of demand for crude oil in turkey by the recent autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration as a developing country turkey meets its growing demand for oil principally by foreign suppliers thus the study focuses on modelling the demand for imported crude oil using annual data covering the period 1980 2005 the bounds test results reveal that a long run cointegration relationship exists between the crude oil import and the explanatory variables nominal price and income but not in the model that includes real price in domestic currency the long run parameters are estimated through a long run static solution of the estimated ardl model and then the short run dynamics are estimated by the error correction model the estimated models pass the diagnostic tests successfully the findings reveal that the income and price elasticities of import demand for crude oil are inelastic both in the short run and in the long run

the structure of residential energy demand in greece abstract this paper attempts to shed light on the determinants of residential energy demand in greece and to compare it with some other oecd countries from the estimates of the short run and long run elasticities of energy demand for the period 1965 1999 we find that residential energy demand appears to be price inelastic also we do not find evidence of a structural change probably because of the low efficiency of the energy sector we find however that the magnitude of the income elasticity varies substantially between greece and other oecd countries

a critique of milton friedman s essay the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits the main arguments of milton friedman s famous and influential essay are unsuccessful he fails to prove that the exercise of social responsibility in business is by nature an unfair and socialist practice

non libertarianism and shareholder theory a reply to schaefer libertarianism and the shareholder model of corporate responsibility have long been thought of as natural bedfellows in a recent contribution to the journal of business ethics brian schaefer goes so far as to suggest that a proponent of shareholder theory cannot coherently and consistently embrace any moral position other than philosophical libertarianism the view that managers have a fiduciary obligation to advance the interests of shareholders exclusively is depicted as fundamentally incompatible with the acknowledgement of natural positive duties duties to aid others that have not been acquired by some prior commitment or transaction i argue that schaefer is mistaken positive duties are incompatible with the shareholder model only if we must contribute to their fulfilment in the corporate context only if we have some reason to think that it is not possible or not permissible to discharge these obligations entirely in our private lives or through our various other roles and capacities but we have no good reason to accept this i argue that individuals are presumptively free to decide how and when to discharge their positive duties and that buying shares does not cause this presumption to lapse hence a non libertarian moral theory can be held without incoherence by a proponent of the shareholder model

residential electricity demand dynamics in turkey abstract this article provides fresh empirical evidences for the income and price elasticies of the residential energy demand both in the short run and long run for turkey over the period 1968 2005 using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration the computed elasticities of income and price are consistent with the previous studies and as expected the long run elasticities are greater than the short run elasticities an augmented form of granger causality analysis is implemented among residential electricity income price and urbanization in the long run causality runs interactively through the error correction term from income price and urbanization to residential energy but the short run causality tests are inconclusive the parameter stability of the short run as well as long run coefficients in the residential energy demand function are tested the results of these tests display a stable pattern

ethical aspects of investor behavior the neoclassical paradigm assumes that shareholders utility is solely a function of their wealth and prescribes that management should act in a manner consistent with share price maximization the stakeholder view also assumes that shareholders utility derives from wealth but prescribes that managers must balance the shareholder wealth maximization objective against the rights of other constituencies thus while neoclassicists and stakeholder theorists have different prescriptives for management behavior their definitions of the shareholders interest are consistent shareholders are self interested economic agents whose utility is best served by share price maximization however if shareholders are other interested and attack importance to ethical and moral values then both the neoclassical and stakeholder view derive from invalid assumptions in this paper i present evidence that much shareholder behavior is ethically motivated as a result the basis for both the neoclassical and the stakeholder view are weakened

survey of western u s electric utility resource plans we review long term electric utility plans representing 90percent of generation within the western united states and canadian provinces we address what utility planners assume about future growth of electricity demand and supply what types of risk they consider in their long term resource planning and the consistency in which they report resource planning related data the region is anticipated to grow by 2percent annually through 2020 before demand side management about two thirds of the utilities that provided an annual energy forecast also reported energy efficiency savings projections in aggregate they anticipate an average 6 4percent reduction in energy and 8 6percent reduction in peak demand by 2020 new natural gas fired and renewable generation will replace retiring coal plants although some utilities anticipate new coal fired plants most are planning for steady growth in renewable generation over the next two decades most planned solar capacity will come online before 2020 with most wind expansion after 2020 fuel mix is expected to remain 55percent of total generation planners consider a wide range of risks but focus on future demand fuel prices and the possibility of ghg regulations data collection and reporting inconsistencies within and across electric utility resource plans lead to recommendations on policies to address this issue

does equity ownership matter for corporate social responsibility a literature review of theories and recent empirical findings based on the concept of shareholder primacy many scholars have argued that it is more important for businesses to earn profits for their shareholders than to provide benefits to society at large corporate social responsibility csr is often regarded as an investment that comes at the expense of shareholders in contrast research analyzing the connections between the equity ownership structure of a company and its level of csr engagement suggests that csr offers benefits to shareholders that go beyond direct financial returns from investments this study provides a comprehensive review and systematic assessment of theoretical considerations and approaches regarding different forms of equity ownership and their relationships to csr and it discusses the relevant benefits and motivations of shareholders the perceived value of these csr benefits varies among different types of shareholders as they assign unequal values to short term financial or to rather long term csr benefits based on a literature sample of 146 publications this review demonstrates central problems inherent in previous analyses given the ambiguous and partially contradictory findings of prior research this study identifies potential moderating influences that help clarify empirical evidence a contingency approach is suggested in future research as this can help resolve the problem of contradictory empirical findings and theoretical arguments

the effects of risk on education in indonesia abstract we study the effects of risk and uncertainty on education in indonesia households that face more uncertainty and that have limited or no access to formal insurance will have a higher motive for self insurance and this may have adverse consequences for investment in child education a key contribution of the article is to decompose risk into village and household level components and to estimate whether they have different effects on education we find no evidence of household risk affecting child education however there is evidence that village risk adversely affects investment in education

exploring the curvature of the relationship between hrm csr and corporate financial performance this article contributes to the general literature on the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance as well as to the emerging hrm csr literature by exploring the curvature of the relationship between hrm csp and cfp we advance conceptual arguments in favor of an inverted u shaped relationship our results demonstrate a significant quadratic relationship between hrm csp and cfp we provide evidence that this relationship is not linear or s shaped but rather inverted u shaped

short and long run elasticities in us residential electricity demand a co integration approach abstract co integration techniques show promise in the analysis of short and long run effects of economic variables on energy use we use these techniques to develop an error correction model of annual us residential electricity demand we construct equipment stock indices and estimate the model for 1949 1993 our analysis suggests a structural shift in consumption during the 1960s we discuss reasons for this shift report the short and long run elasticities provide forecasts for 1994 1995 and compare the model s forecasts with other published forecasts

a study of the link between a corporation s financial performance and its commitment to ethics a number of studies have tested the relationship between a corporation s social and ethical performance and its financial performance in contrast this is the first study to demonstrate a link between overall financial performance and an emphasis on ethics as an aspect of corporate governance it identifies the 26 8 percent of the 500 largest u s public corporations that in their annual report to shareholders commit to ethical behavior toward their stakeholders or emphasize compliance with their code of conduct the financial performance of these corporations ranks higher than that of those who do not at a significance level of p 0 005 using the 1997 business week ranking which averages eight publicly reported measures of historical financial performance these findings should motivate more corporations to utilize the principles of social and ethical accounting auditing and reporting seaar

does the influence of institutional investors depend on the institutional framework an international analysis this article analyses the effect of institutional ownership in alleviating or exacerbating the conflicts of interests among stakeholders in different legal and institutional frameworks this analysis is carried out based on two characteristics the concentration of power of institutional ownership and the identification of the main types of institutional investors in common law countries consistent with the convergence and entrenchment hypotheses we find a u shape relation between ownership structure and firm performance in civil law countries consistent with the collusion and contest theories we find an inverted u shape relation we also find that when institutional investors are classified as pressure resistant and pressure sensitive according to the strength of their ties with managers pressure resistant investors who operate more independently are the most capable of improving the value of the firm

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

symposium on consumption smoothing in developing countries this symposium explores how households in low income countries even without access to formal credit and insurance markets find ways to smooth consumption in the face of large shocks to their income this general area of risk sharing and consumption smoothing has received a great deal of attention from development economists in the last five years the papers highlight the extent to which theoretical work in mechanism design contract theory and information economics has informed recent work in development economics these papers also underscore the ways large detailed household level data sets have recently been applied in developing country research

corporate contributions altruistic or for profit existing literature has focused on three rationales for corporate philanthropy through the firm giving corporate statesmanship and profit motivated giving the profit motivation argument was exa

can drought increase total calorie availability the impact of drought on food consumption and the mitigating effects of a conditional cash transfer program abstract this study uses the panel data of a randomized experiment from the mexican progresa program to evaluate the impact of drought on total calorie availability and the mitigating effects of progresa on food consumption in periods of drought drought reduced total expenditures and total food expenditures but increased the total availability of calories this paradox can be explained by the impact of drought on the composition of calories that is it reduced the consumption of expensive calories in such foods as vegetables fruits and animal products but increased calories consumed from cheaper sources such as grains this study finds that progresa can completely mitigate the negative effects of drought on calorie availability from vegetables fruits and other sources however progresa cannot mitigate the impact of drought on calories available from grains the analysis also shows that during drought households who increase their consumption of grains get them mainly from purchased sources rathe

electricity consumption in g7 countries a panel cointegration analysis of residential demand elasticities this article applies recently developed panel unit root and panel cointegration techniques to estimate the long run and short run income and price elasticities for residential demand for electricity in g7 countries the panel results indicate that in the long run residential demand for electricity is price elastic and income inelastic the study concludes that from an environmental perspective there is potential to use pricing policies in the g7 countries to curtail residential electricity demand and thus curb carbon emissions in the long run

does social performance really lead to financial performance accounting for endogeneity the empirical relationship between a firm s social performance and its financial performance is still not well established in the literature despite more than 30 years of research and more than 100 empirical studies on the issue the results are still mixed we argue that the heterogeneous results found in previous studies are not due exclusively to problems related with the measurement instruments or the samples used instead we posit that a more fundamental problem related with the endogeneity of social strategic decisions could be driving most of the empirical findings we show that using a panel data of 658 firms from 1991 to 2005 how some of the results found in previous research change and some are even reversed when endogeneity is properly taken into account

a review of time use models of residential electricity demand residential electricity demand in most european countries accounts for a major proportion of overall electricity consumption the timing of residential electricity demand has significant impacts on carbon emissions and system costs this paper reviews the data and methods used in time use studies in the context of residential electricity demand modelling it highlights key issues which are likely to become more topical for research on the timing of electricity demand following the roll out of smart metres

energy demand and environmental taxes the case of greece the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects that energy taxes may have on reducing environmental pollution in greece we study the demand for residential energy for the period 1965 1998 and on the basis of these estimates we make forecasts for co2 emissions in the coming years furthermore we develop alternative scenarios for tax changes and study their effects on co2 emissions according to our findings the harmonization of the greek energy taxes to the average european union levels implies an increase of total co2 emissions by 6 annually if taxes are raised however to the highest european union levels the co2 emissions are restricted significantly these empirical findings may indicate that environmental taxation cannot be the unique instrument for combating pollution

the influences of financial and non financial factors on energy saving behaviour a field experiment in japan abstract this study examines the influences of financial and non financial factors on electricity conservation behaviour a random sample of 236 japanese households participated in the field experiment and the participants were offered two interventions such as monetary rewards depending on their reduction in electricity consumption and comparative feedback the average saving rates of the i reward intervention group 5 9 and the ii reward with comparative feedback group 8 2 are statistically larger than those of the iii control group 1 7 our study demonstrates the following first our econometric analysis confirmed a significant response by households to financial incentives but a more inconclusive response to the treatment that provided non financial additional information second we found a positive influence of treatment externalities across time and households on energy saving third there is a heterogeneous treatment effect in the reward intervention group with the households having a high new ecological paradigm nep score being more likely to respond to the reward programme and save electricity than those that do not finally and most interestingly differences in responses to the questionnaire before and after the experiment suggest that the participants had underestimated the marginal costs of saving electricity before they actually started to do so

electricity demand and conservation potential in the chinese nonmetallic mineral products industry newhuadu business school research fund ministry of education foundation 10jzd0018 10jbg013 china sustainable energy program g 1103 13921 national social science foundation 09zd050

renewable energy consumption co2 emissions and oil prices in the g7 countries abstract economic and societal issues related to energy security and global warming is placing greater emphasis on the consumption of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates an empirical model of renewable energy consumption for the g7 countries panel cointegration estimates show that in the long term increases in real gdp per capita and co2 per capita are found to be major drivers behind per capita renewable energy consumption these results are robust across two different panel cointegration estimators oil price increases have a smaller although negative impact on renewable energy consumption deviations from equilibrium are driven mostly by the error correction term as opposed to short term shocks short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take anywhere from between 1 3 years france and 7 3 years japan to correct

the impact of systematic changes in weather on the supply and demand of beverages abstract weather especially temperature plays an important role in determining the supply and demand for a vast variety of goods and services though the economic impact of extreme weather is often measured and reported the impact of systematic changes in weather such as long term temperature trends or short term heat and cold waves are seldom quantified in this research we posit that such systematic changes in temperature impact the profitability of firms and we develop a two step econometric model to quantify the impact the proposed two step model estimates the impact that temperature has on the profitability of firms and partitions this impact into a long term and a short term component we take up the case of six liquid refreshment beverages lrbs for illustrating the impact that systematic change in temperature has on demand the results indicate that a the demand for lrbs is increasing by about 0 21 63 million gallons from year to year on account of the rising temperature trend and b there is an asymmetry in the effect of a heat wave versus a cold wave on beverage demand i e the weekly demand for beverages increases by about 2 1 per degree on account of a heat wave while the weekly demand decreases by only 0 4 per degree on account of a cold wave we also illustrate how these estimates of the impact of the long term temperature trends could be linked to strategic decisions such as facility location and the estimates of the impact of the short term temperature aberrations could be linked to operational decisions such as the inventory order quantity in a week when there is a temperature aberration

residential electricity consumption in seattle abstract recent empirical research for different regions of the united states indicates that residential electricity may be an inferior good whose consumption is negatively correlated with income that is a provocative result that runs counter to what many earlier econometric studies indicate given that it makes sense to examine how electricity consumption behaves in different regional service areas even if residential electricity is an inferior good whose usage declines as income rises there is no guarantee that this will be the case across all service areas this study examines residential electricity consumption for seattle washington the largest metropolitan economy in the northwestern region of the united states results from a dynamic error correction modeling approach indicate that residential electricity consumption reacts in statistically significant manners to changes in real price real income and cold weather in the short run residential electricity is a normal good in this metropolitan economy in the long run residential electricity appears to be an inferior good in seattle all else equal whenever real per capita income growth exceeds 1 2 per capita residential electricity usage declines in seattle

moral and conceptual issues in investment and finance an overview as director of the second east carolina university conference in applied philosophy it is my pleasure to introduce this fine collection of papers on moral and conceptual issues in investment and finance the essays address a wide range of topics south african disinvestment the professional responsibil ities of accountants decision theoretic problems for fiduciaries and the rights of employees in corporate takeovers to cite just a few examples consequently any attempt to somehow summarize or tie together all this material would be either extremely super ficial or far exceed the available space instead in what follows i try to supplement the papers first by offering some general observations about our con ference topic and secondly by identifying what seem to me to be some of the fertile areas for further research the title of our conference was meant to em phasize two points first although a number of philosophers and business scholars now study a field commonly called business ethics a more natural and general description of their interests might be philosophical issues in business the study of the particularly abstract foundational or normative aspects of business thus while topics such as the rights of employees or the social obligations of corporations are of course part of the philosophical study of business so are non normative or less explicitly normative questions such as whether and in what sense corporations are persons the extent to

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

regionally varying and regionally uniform electricity pricing policies compared across four usage categories the objective of our research is to predict how electricity demand varies spatially between status quo regionally uniform electricity pricing and hypothetical regionally varying electricity pricing across usage categories we summarize the empirical results of a case study of electricity demand in south korea with three key findings and their related implications first the price elasticities of electricity demand differ across usage categories specifically electricity demands for manufacturing and retail uses are price inelastic and close to unit elastic respectively while those for agricultural and residential uses are not statistically significant this information is important in designing energy policy because higher electricity prices could reduce electricity demands for manufacturing and retail uses resulting in slower growth in those sectors second spatial spillovers in electricity demand vary across uses understanding the spatial structure of electricity demand provides useful information to energy policy makers for anticipating changes in demand across regions via regionally varying electricity pricing for different uses third simulation results suggest that spatial variations among electricity demands by usage category under a regionally varying electricity pricing policy differ from those under a regionally uniform electricity pricing policy differences in spatial changes between the policies provide information for developing a realistic regionally varying electricity pricing policy according to usage category

residential electricity demand in taiwan this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in taiwan as a function of household disposable income population growth the price of electricity and the degree of urbanization short and long term effects are separated through the use of an error correction model in the long run the income elasticity is unit elastic the own price effect is negative and inelastic in an error correction framework the short run income and price effects are small and less than the long run effects cooling degree day effects have a positive impact on short run consumption we have used a proxy variable urbanization to capture economic development characteristics and changes in electricity using capital stocks not explained by income the variable provides significant explanatory power to the model both in the short and long run we interpret it as controlling for economic development factors not captured by the pure income effect and we think it holds promise for explaining residential electricity consumption in other developing countries

the corporation and profits in this paper i argue that a theory of the firm that takes profit maximizing to be the essential activity and purpose of the firm is seriously inadequate i argue that firms in the actual economy neither are nor should be maximizers of profit i argue instead that firms are and must be satisficers that they must make enough profit to satisfy the various demands which they encounter in their operation yet it should be clear that the notion of satisficing while it escapes the major problems encountered by maximization itself lacks much of any very clear content in the end i claim that the notion of satisficing can best be understood if we abandon the traditional characterization of profits and replace it with a notion of extended profits which i define as that part of corporate revenue which is available for distribution among stockholders management and labor and for reinvestment in the corporation s business operation

long term load forecasting accuracy in electric utility integrated resource planning abstract forecasts of electricity consumption and peak demand over time horizons of one or two decades are a key element in electric utilities meeting their core objective and obligation to ensure reliable and affordable electricity supplies for their customers while complying with a range of energy and environmental regulations and policies these forecasts are an important input to integrated resource planning irp processes involving utilities regulators and other stake holders despite their importance however there has been little analysis of long term utility load forecasting accuracy we conduct a retrospective analysis of long term load forecasts on twelve western u s electric utilities in the mid 2000s to find that most overestimated both energy consumption and peak demand growth a key reason for this was the use of assumptions that led to an overestimation of economic growth we find that the complexity of forecast methods and the accuracy of these forecasts are mildly correlated in addition sensitivity and risk analysis of load growth and its implications for capacity expansion were not well integrated with subsequent implementation we review changes in the utilities load forecasting methods over the subsequent decade and discuss the policy implications of long term load forecast inaccuracy and its underlying causes

corporate social responsibility in the banking industry motives and financial performance abstract the current study investigates the association between corporate social responsibility csr and financial performance fp and discusses the driving motives of banks to engage in csr three motives namely strategic choices altruism and greenwashing suggest that the relationship between csr and fp is positive non negative and non existent respectively we obtained our sample which covered 2003 2009 from the ethical investment research service eiris databank and bankscope database the data consists of 162 banks in 22 countries we then classified the banks into four types based on their degree of engagement in csr this study proposes the use of an extended version of the heckman two step regression in which the first step adopts a multinomial logit model and the second step estimates the performance equation with the inverse mills ratio generated by the first step the empirical results show that csr positively associates with fp in terms of return on assets return on equity net interest income and non interest income in contrast csr negatively associates with non performing loans hence strategic choice is the primary motive of banks to engage in csr

are ethical or socially responsible investments socially responsible in this article we discuss whether it pays to invest ethically our aim is to examine corporate social responsibility from philosophical moral and practical points of views we focus on two main issues related to ethical investments firstly we discuss the moral dilemma of how capitalism has changed its shape in today s world and from blaming the business there is a general attempt to use the markets to promote ethics values and corporate social responsibility secondly we analyze the growth of ethical investment funds in the uk today and their performance and highlight some of the institutional investors involved in the management of ethical funds we discuss whether ethical investments really succeed in reducing the conflict between profit making and social responsibility as they promise or whether they use commercial rhetoric and market mechanism to merely sell us our own perceived values back we conclude that the paper has a key contribution in setting the scene for future research in an area that is evolving and of fundamental importance to companies investors and various stakeholder groups

estimating residential demand for electricity in the united states 1965 2006 abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in the us economy as a function of the per capita income the price of electricity the price of oil for heating purposes the weather conditions and the stock of occupied housing over the period 1965 2006 this paper has two novelties first the occupied stock of houses as a proxy for the stock of electrical appliances and second the identification of a possible equilibrium relationship among the variables is ascertained through the recently advanced ardl approach to cointegration our empirical findings give support to a stable long run relationship implying also short run and long run elasticities whose size and sign are comparable to other similar studies

price and expenditure elasticities of residential energy demand during urbanization an empirical analysis based on the household level survey data in china abstract urbanization one of the most obvious characteristics of economic growth in china has an apparent lock in effect on residential energy consumption pattern it is expected that residential sector would become a major force that drives china s energy consumption after urbanization process we estimate price and expenditure elasticities of residential energy demand using data from china s residential energy consumption survey crecs that covers households at different income levels and from different regional and social groups empirical results from the almost ideal demand system model are in accordance with the basic expectations the demands for electricity natural gas and transport fuels are inelastic in the residential sector due to the unreasonable pricing mechanism we further investigate the sensitivities of different income groups to prices of the three types of energy policy simulations indicate that rationalizing energy pricing mechanism is an important guarantee for energy sustainable development during urbanization finally we put forward suggestions on energy pricing reform in the residential sector based on characteristics of china s undergoing urbanization process and the current energy consumption situations

ethical commitment financial performance and valuation an empirical investigation of korean companies a variety of stakeholders including investors corporate managers customers suppliers employees researchers and government policy makers have long been interested in the relationship between the financial performance of a corporation and its commitment to business ethics as a subject of research the relations between business ethics and corporate valuation has yet to be thoroughly quantified and investigated this article is an effort to amend this inadequacy by demonstrating a statistically significant association between ethical commitment and corporate valuation measures consistent with anecdotal evidence we have found a significant association between the ethical commitment of korean companies and their valuation on the korean stock market however the result reveals that the association between ethical commitment and financial performance is not significantly supported

moral agency profits and the firm economic revisions to the friedman theorem the paper reconstructs in economic terms friedman s theorem that the only social responsibility of firms is to increase their profits while staying within legal and ethical rules a model of three levels of moral conduct is attributed to the firm 1 self interested engagement in the market process itself which reflects according to classical and neoclassical economics an ethical ideal 2 the obeying of the rules of the game largely legal ones and 3 the creation of ethical capital which allows moral conduct to enter the market process beyond the rules of the game points 1 and 2 position the friedman theorem in economic terms while point 3 develops an economic revision of the theorem which was not seen by friedman implications are spelled out for an instrumental stakeholder theory of the firm

socially responsible investment in the spanish financial market this paper reviews the development of socially responsible investment sri in the spanish financial market the year 1997 saw the appearance in spain of the first sri mutual fund but it was not until late 1999 that major spanish fund managers offered sri mutual funds on the retail market the development of sri in the spanish financial market has not experienced the high levels of development seen in other european countries such as france or italy where interest in sri began during the same period this paper presents an analysis of the impact of sri mutual funds managed by spanish fund managers comparing the evolution of managed assets and number of investors we also analyse the investment strategies adopted by these funds which mainly use negative screening criteria and the participation of non governmental organisations as institutional investors an analysis of the take up of socially responsible investment in the spanish financial market shows majors deficits in this process this is due to spanish investors having limited sensitivity to social issues and knowledge of sri and a lack of development of sri investment strategies such as engagement or shareholder activism by fund managers furthermore the take up of sri mutual funds in the spanish financial market coincided with a fall in the stock market at the beginning of the 21st century we conclude with an analysis of the relationship between sri and corporate social responsibility csr

corporate social investments do they pay the stock market reaction to two very different corporate social investments the 1977 sullivan principles adoption announcement and the 1990 mcdonald s corporation environmental statement is explored a market model event study methodology is employed using daily stock returns the results are that the stock market appears to have ignored the 1977 announcement but rewarded the 1990 event future research and possible managerial implications are discussed

lifestyle factors in u s residential electricity consumption abstract a multivariate statistical approach to lifestyle analysis of residential electricity consumption is described and illustrated factor analysis of selected variables from the 2005 u s residential energy consumption survey recs identified five lifestyle factors reflecting social and behavioral patterns associated with air conditioning laundry usage personal computer usage climate zone of residence and tv use these factors were also estimated for 2001 recs data multiple regression analysis using the lifestyle factors yields solutions accounting for approximately 40 of the variance in electricity consumption for both years by adding the household and market characteristics of income local electricity price and access to natural gas variance accounted for is increased to approximately 54 income contributed 1 unique variance to the models indicating that lifestyle factors reflecting social and behavioral patterns better account for consumption differences than income geographic segmentation of factor scores shows distinct clusters of consumption and lifestyle factors particularly in suburban locations the implications for tailored policy and planning interventions are discussed in relation to lifestyle issues

estimating short and long term residential demand for electricity new evidence from sri lanka this study investigates the short run dynamics and long run equilibrium relationship between residential electricity demand and factors influencing demand per capita income price of electricity price of kerosene oil and price of liquefied petroleum gas using annual data for sri lanka for the period 1960 2007 the study uses unit root cointegration and error correction models the long run demand elasticities of income own price and price of kerosene oil substitute were estimated to be 0 78 0 62 and 0 14 respectively the short run elasticities for the same variables were estimated to be 032 0 16 and 0 10 respectively liquefied petroleum lp gas is a substitute for electricity only in the short run with an elasticity 0 09 the main findings of the paper support the following 1 increasing the price of electricity is not the most effective tool to reduce electricity consumption 2 existing subsidies on electricity consumption can be removed without reducing government revenue 3 the long run income elasticity of demand shows that any future increase in household incomes is likely to significantly increase the demand for electricity and 4 any power generation plans which consider only current per capita consumption and population growth should be revised taking into account the potential future income increases in order to avoid power shortages ill the country

the residential demand for electricity in australia an application of the bounds testing approach to cointegration this paper reports estimates of the long and short run elasticities of residential demand for electricity in australia using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration within an autoregressive distributive lag framework in the long run we find that income and own price are the most important determinants of residential electricity demand while temperature is significant some of the time and gas prices are insignificant our estimates of long run income elasticity and price elasticity of demand are consistent with previous studies although they are towards the lower end of existing estimates as expected the short run elasticities are much smaller than the long run elasticities and the coefficients on the error correction coefficients are small consistent with the fact that in the short run energy appliances are fixed

modeling the impact of a carbon tax a trial analysis for washington state abstract in recent years energy policy makers have proposed a carbon tax as an economy wide policy tool to curb greenhouse gas ghg emissions the quantification of its impact on ghg emissions has relied on an energy economy model whose complexity often makes it difficult to comprehend how it simulates the interaction of a carbon tax and energy demand this study therefore aims at developing an alternative model called the carbon tax analysis model c tam the elasticity based approach used in c tam is less sophisticated than an equilibrium based approach used in an energy economy model but c tam is designed to maximize its predictive capabilities by using a wide range of elasticities for each sector and fuel use accounting for likely changes in fuel mix for electricity generation and addressing the model s sensitivity to elasticity estimates with monte carlo simulation the trial analysis in this study evaluates a potential carbon tax in washington state suggesting a carbon tax at us 30 per metric ton of co 2 tco 2 lowers ghg emissions by 8 4 from the business as usual bau scenario in 2035 the study concludes that c tam can provide meaningful policy implications by forecasting detailed impact on revenues and energy demand for each sector and fuel use

the nerc fan a retrospective analysis of the nerc summary forecasts summary forecasts of the growth in demand for electricity published annually since 1974 by the north american electric reliability council have proved to be excessively optimistic although the projected growth rate has been revised downward each year should forecasters have been able to do a better job of predicting the slowdown in demand growth since the early 1970s should they have responded more quickly as actual demand growth fell short of projections our objective in this article is to provide some partial answers to these questions by comparing the published nerc summary forecasts nsf with benchmark forecasts provided by simple models representing well established techniques one alternative forecast is provided by the exponential smoothing box jenkins method es bj and another by a simple dynamic demand equation that uses real price and real income as explanatory variables we conclude that relative to es bj the nsf were not excessively optimistic relative to the simple demand equation

an empirical examination of institutional investor preferences for corporate social performance this study investigates the pattern of institutional shareholding in the u k and its relationship with socially responsible behavior by companies within a sample of over 500 uk companies we estimate a set of ownership models that distinguish between long and short term investors and their largest components and which incorporate both aggregated and disaggregated measures of corporate social performance csp the results suggest that long term institutional investment is positively related to csp providing further support for earlier studies by johnson and greening 1999 academy of management journal 42 564 576 and graves and waddock 1994 academy of management journal 37 1034 1046 disaggregation of csp into its constituent components suggests that the pattern of institutional investment is also related to the form which csp takes investigation of the impact of investment screens on the selection of stocks suggests that long term institutional investors select primarily through exclusion rejecting those firms which have the worst csp