optimal production and carbon emission reduction level under cap and trade and low carbon subsidy policies abstract in recent years massive carbon emissions have caused serious global environmental damage such as a worsening greenhouse effect and thick haze to curb carbon emissions as well as maintain sustainable economic development governments promote the development of low carbon economy by issuing multiple policies among which the cap and trade policy ctp and low carbon subsidy policy lcsp are widely adopted moreover manufacturers are increasingly adopting carbon emission reduction technology to produce greener products considering related government policies and rising environmental awareness among consumers to give policy making insights to governments as well as production and carbon emission reduction decision making insights to manufacturers this paper investigates the impacts of ctp and lcsp on the production and carbon emission reduction level of a manufacturer and explores which policy is better for society the results show that the carbon emission reduction level increases as the carbon trading price increases whereas it is independent of the unit low carbon subsidy interestingly the carbon trading price does not always have a negative effect on the manufacturer s profit and the cap does not always produce a positive effect on the manufacturer s profit more importantly we find that lcsp is more beneficial to society when the environmental damage coefficient is less than a threshold but otherwise ctp is more beneficial

incentive policies from 2006 to 2016 and new energy vehicle adoption in 2010 2020 in china abstract new energy vehicle nev development is key to reducing vehicle pollutant emissions conserving fuel oil energy and sustaining both the automotive industry and the transportation industry of a country china is now ranked first in terms of nev adoption policies are the main driving force this paper aims to uncover how policies systematically link together to provide support direct rapid development regulate various players to cope with the challenges and achieve an impressive progress in nev adoption in china we propose a policy dependency mapping method which enables us to analyze 175 nev policies from national jing jin ji regional beijing tianjin and hebei from january 2006 to april 2016 with adoption targets projected from 2016 to 2020 our research reveals that the nev policies constitute complex policy systems involving governments at various levels with multiple purposes the national policies direct local policies and depend upon local policies to implement and meet the decomposed targets whereas regional policies horizontally coordinate the provincial governments and solve issues across provincial boundaries local policies play a key role in implementing the national and regional policies and address different local challenges such as traffic congestion and local economy development the nev policy systems are dynamic and nev adoption in local areas is uneven the public sector is the first breakthrough to promote nev adoption followed by a demonstration in the private sector beijing takes the lead in terms of both ev adoption and policymaking challenges in local protectionism technology advancement with subsidies phasing out and subsidies fraud are discussed these findings help both policy makers and nev players to understand the nev development roadmap and create better strategies to promote nevs in the future

an evaluation of government incentives for new energy vehicles in china focusing on vehicle purchasing restrictions abstract in order to reduce carbon emissions and urban smog the chinese government has instituted a number of policies to promote the diffusion of new energy vehicles nevs achieving remarkable results this paper aims to quantify the effectiveness of various policies after reviewing and quantifying the policies directly related to the sales and driving of nevs in the past five years we established a multivariate co integration model and an error correction model to analyse the long and short term effects of these policies the results demonstrate positive co integration for the relationship between the nev market share and the nev purchase subsidy tax exemption the policy of restricting internal combustion engine vehicle icev purchase and the abolishment of traffic restrictions for nevs china s unique policy of restricting icevs has in fact promoted nev sales by adjusting the supply and demand to influence the consumers choices finally we found technology to still be a bottleneck factor in the nev industry and technological progress s effect on nev diffusion is greater than the economic subsidy policy therefore this study suggests that the funds being made available from the gradual reduction of the purchase subsidy should be transferred to research and development

an overview of energy efficiency standards in china s transport sector abstract china s transport sector is facing severe energy and environmental challenges establishing energy efficiency standards is an essential measure to cope with these challenges this paper comprehensively reviews the energy efficiency standards in china s road water aviation railway and pipeline transport sectors based on the review it is suggested that 1 the integrity of policy framework should be further improved energy efficiency standards based market access qualification mechanism is quite necessary for all transport sectors especially the aviation railway and pipeline transport sectors where such mechanism is absent 2 efforts for improving energy efficiency should be balanced among different transport sectors priority should be determined by considering each sector s energy consumption the cost and potential of energy efficiency improvement etc especially the major energy consuming sectors such as heavy duty vehicles should have similar priority to passenger vehicles in the overall energy efficiency improvement scheme 3 the scientific basis for the energy efficiency standards should be enhanced policies should be proposed with full considerations of china s context rather than borrowing the experiences of developed countries intelligence from the research community should be incorporated to ensure the rationality of the policies

evaluating natural resource investments notwithstanding impressive advances in the theory of finance over the past 2 decades practical procedures for capital budgeting have evolved only slowly the standard technique which has remained unchanged in essentials since it was originally proposed see dean 1951 bierman and smidt 1960 derives from a simple adaptation of the fisher 1907 model of valuation under certainty under this technique expected cash flows from an investment project are discounted at a rate deemed appropriate to their risk and the resulting present value is compared with the cost of the project this standard textbook technique reflects modern theoretical developments only insofar as estimates of the discount rate may be obtained from crude application of single period asset pricing theory but see brennan 1973 bogue and roll 1974 turnbull 1977 constantinides 1978 the inadequacy of this approach to capital budgeting is widely acknowledged although not widely discussed its obvious deficiency is its the evaluation of mining and other natural resource projects is made particularly difficult by the high degree of uncertainty attaching to output prices it is shown that the techniques of continuous time arbitrage and stochastic control theory may be used not only to value such projects but also to determine the optimal policies for developing managing and abandoning them the approach may be adapted to a wide variety of contexts outside the natural resource sector where uncertainty about future project revenues is a paramount concern

impact of loss aversion on the newsvendor game with product substitution abstract this paper studies a newsvendor game in which two substitutable products are sold by two different retailers newsvendors with loss averse preferences each loss averse retailer facing stochastic customer demand and deterministic substitution rate will make an order quantity decision to maximize his expected utility since product substitution causes two retailers to make decisions in a competitive environment game theory is used to find the retailers optimal order quantities it is shown that under certain conditions there exists a unique nash equilibrium in the newsvendor game under a symmetry assumption each retailer s equilibrium order quantity is decreasing in the loss aversion coefficient and increasing in the substitution rate further if the effect of loss aversion on the order quantity is strong enough to dominate the effect of competition the total inventory level of a decentralized supply chain will be lower than that of a centralized supply chain numerical experiments are conducted to illustrate our results

bayesian modeling and computations in final offer arbitration this article develops a bayesian model for the analysis of bidding behavior in final offer arbitration posterior calculations are obtained using a markov chain algorithm an example is considered using salary data from major league baseball

comparative productivity the ussr eastern europe and the west this paper compiles comparative measures of output per worker in 1975 in four socialist and seven western market economy wme countries and explores sources of observed differences between the two groups of countries in that regard such differences seem explicable only partially by reference to differences in per worker capital stock and farm land a residual disparity of 25 to 34 percent in favor of wme countries appears to testify to superior efficiency in the latter copyright 1987 by american economic association

the development of new energy vehicles for a sustainable future a review with the rapid growing number of automobiles new energy vehicle is becoming one of approaches to mitigate the dependence of the auto industry on petroleum so as to reduce pollutant emissions the chinese government has promulgated a number of policies from the perspectives of industrial development development plans demonstration projects fiscal subsidies and tax incentives with an aim to promote the new energy vehicle industry this paper presents a comprehensive and critical review of the policy framework for new energy vehicles the analysis shows that electric vehicle has been assigned a top priority in the future development of the automobile industry in china policy guidance and planning has played a vital role to the growth of new energy vehicle industry however this industry faces significant challenges related to technologies industrial chain and social factors some core technologies are still in its infancy similarly the market share of new energy vehicles is very small in spite of the preferential policies the construction of supporting facilities and infrastructures has to be accelerated in order to accommodate the growing demands there is a long way to go for the industrialization and popularization of new energy vehicles in china

electric vehicles rising from the dead data needs for forecasting consumer response toward sustainable energy sources in personal transportation abstract since standard vehicles are powered by internal combustion mechanisms that rely on fossil fuels electric vehicles that are propelled by one or more electric engines have been proposed as an alternative to promote sustainable personal transportation in this paper we propose a general demand model for vehicle purchases at the individual level assuming that the necessary microdata is available we then list the ideal microdata that would be needed for estimating this general demand model for elaborating this list we take into account the particularities of low emission vehicles with emphasis in their cost reliability environmental benefits tradeoff as well as the potentiality for evaluation of welfare improving policies related to adoption of energy efficient technologies we discuss data sources and collection strategies for the different attributes of the model especially for those characteristics that are nonstandard such as symbolic values for instance we discuss the role of range anxiety as a barrier of adoption of electric vehicles and the implied relevance of including driving range to get consumers willingness to pay for better performing electric batteries

salary arbitration and pre arbitration negotiation in major league baseball two assumptions in this analysis of baseball salary arbitration are that 1 players and clubs to serve their interests in pre arbitration negotiation submit final offers to maximize and minimize

how much redistribution is possible through commodity taxes abstract this paper aims to quantify the redistribution which can be attained as the outcome of indirect taxation this question is of crucial relevance to many countries which are constrained to depend primarily on indirect taxes i assess the maximum possible redistribution by imposing the most redistributive indirect taxation the public budget is balanced and the real income gain to the worst off is taken as the metric of redistribution ceilings on this metric are first obtained within a general set up and then in a number of specific models the resulting redistribution is found to be meager as this is the outcome of the most redistributive taxation redistribution from any real world indirect taxation will be even smaller

strategic delegation in bargaining abstract principals have the opportunity to delegate to an agent in the context of the nash bargaining model this paper resolves a shortcoming in the related bargaining literature in equilibrium a symmetric outcome typically will not result and multiple equilibria exist

evaluation of china s electric energy efficiency under environmental constraints a dea cross efficiency model based on game relationship abstract the traditional data envelopment analysis dea model ignores the cooperation relationship among decision making units dmus so it is difficult to evaluate the dmus efficiency reasonably in this study we use a cross efficiency model considering the game relationship of dmus to evaluate and analyze the provincial electric energy efficiency of china the power industry panel data of china s 30 provinces from 2005 to 2014 are used to evaluate the energy efficiency of china s provincial power industry under environmental constraints in addition based on the obtained values of electric energy efficiency clustering analysis is implemented and the regional similarity in electric energy efficiency is analyzed the results indicate that in the past decade china s provincial electric energy efficiency has not significantly improved and efficiency values have a certain degree of volatility especially in western china in general the electric energy efficiency of eastern china is significantly higher than central and western china the clustering analysis further demonstrates that there is no polarization phenomenon in china s electric energy efficiency in recent years the electric energy efficiency of western china has been greatly improved with significant volatility it reveals that the electric energy efficiency of western china is sensitive to the environment the implementation of energy policies should be adapted to local conditions in the process of formulating policies for improving electric energy efficiency the provincial government should improve the regional opening up layout and establish effective coordination mechanisms among different regions

bargaining and the role of expert agents an empirical study of final offer arbitration abstract expert agents such as lawyers play a prominent role in conflict resolution yet little is known about how they affect outcomes we construct a model that permits us to estimate the influence of agents and test whether the parties in a dispute face prisoner s dilemma incentives using eighteen years of final offer arbitration data from new jersey we find the parties do significantly better when they retain agents and that the parties learn about this benefit over time however we also find that the gain to using an agent is fully offset when the opposing party also hires an agent since agents are costly this noncooperative equilibrium is pareto inferior

arbitration and bargaining across the pacific this paper reports laboratory experiments comparing arbitration behavior between and across two countries with extensive trade relations the united states and japan besides comparing disputes in both locations we evaluate disputes between them while we find nominal differences between the countries we observe significant changes in both groups behavior when facing someone from the other country specifically americans seek larger profits when facing a japanese counterpart and japanese subjects settle more frequently with an american counterpart our results suggest that the literature on bargaining behavior across cultures paints an incomplete picture of international comparisons by failing to consider bargaining interactions

bias in salary arbitration the case of major league baseball this study analyses all baseball arbitration cases from 1985 90 to determine if decisions differ among ethnic groups unlike earlier arbitration analyses extensive controls for individual and team performance are used holding performance constant the results indicate that latin american players have 33 less chance and blacks 19 less chance than does a white player of winning a case these differences are not reflected by more risky salary demands by minority players and only marginally reflected by market salary practices toward minority players therefore bias appears to emanate from arbitrator utility functions

what role for the epas in the caribbean the aim of this paper is to consider the possible implications of an epa between the eu and the caribbean the focus is on the caribbean economies and on the question of what form of epa might be pro development and pro poor for the region the discussion outlines the specificities of the caribbean region and some of the economies therein as well as detailing the key analytical issues which need to be considered the empirical analysis focuses on examining patterns of trade by product and geographical source at a highly detailed level of disaggregation the analysis suggests that future epa arrangements are more likely to lead to significant trade diversion as opposed to trade creation or trade reorientation mfn liberalisation would serve to minimise trade diversion but in turn is likely to lead to greater adjustment costs if the epas are to be pro development and pro poor than maintaining increasing levels of market access to the eu and ensuring appropriate levels of assistance and aid will be critical

did china s regional transport industry enjoy better carbon productivity under regulations despite rapid economic development the transport industry has been claimed to account for a major part of climate change this paper investigates total factor carbon sensitive productivity growth in the regional transport sector in china and decomposes its dynamic changes over time taking account of the regional heterogeneity of different provinces thus the contemporaneous metafrontier malmquist luenberger approach that combined with non radial directional distance functions is proposed and define a new indicator called the contemporaneous metafrontier malmquist luenberger carbon emission performance index cmml this total factor indicator includes the metafrontier efficiency change index mec the metafrontier technology change index mtc and the metafrontier technology gap change index tgc results show an about 4 increase in overall total factor carbon emission productivity during the period of 2000 2012 different growth patterns are also observed in the transport sector across different area of china in the eastern region the growth of carbon productivity is driven mainly by pure efficiency changes whereas the central region is driven mainly by innovations in the low carbon transport technology

energy status in lebanon and electricity generation reform plan based on cost and pollution optimization abstract this paper presents a review of the energy status conventional and renewable in lebanon and illustrates their problems with the suggested recommendations in addition a detailed review of the principal directorates of the electricity of lebanon company edl is also presented all along with the existing problems and recommended solutions an economic environmental optimization of different power sources is studied where three scenarios are introduced based on the fuel source of different ccgt power plants the results emphasized on the maximum possible use of wind energy and natural gas in electricity generation based on the optimization study a five year master plan for electricity generation is modeled the suggested plan has an investment capital cost of 5553 m with the savings and additional incomes being 5900 m compared to edl financial status in the adopted base year 2009 in addition this plan exceeds the trend to introduce a 12 share of renewable energy in the power sector by 2020 where the share is supposed to be about 15 out of the total installed capacity before this date the concluding remarks highlight the role of politics in the development of the energy sector

a critical review on energy efficiency and conservation policies and programs in vietnam abstract due to the rapid population growth and economic development energy demand is likely to triple over the next decade in vietnam development and implementation of energy efficiency and conservation eec review the evolution of the government s eec and identify the challenges and provide the recommendations for implementing eec capacity building close coordination among the relevant ministries and the organizations and agencies during the implementation of eec etc should be put forward in the coming years in addition a number of recommendations for promoting ee in three largest energy consumers in vietnam namely industrial residential and transport sectors has been made in this paper

energy efficiency assessment of fixed asset investment projects a case study of a shenzhen combined cycle power plant abstract the assessment of fixed asset investment projects of energy conservation is based on a scientific and systematic approach to analyze the energy production consumption and management and helps to analyze whether the use of energy is in line with the national and local industrial policies and whether the project design meets china s energy saving design outlines and industry standards the level of energy consumption is compared to the domestic and international advanced levels regarding the project energy use and process analysis in all aspects of energy production and energy consumption taking technically feasible economically reasonable and environmentally and socially responsible measures and effective and rational use of energy to reduce consumption and losses and to stop waste while investigating if the project has a certain advanced and rational use of energy this study provides a full consideration of whether there is a scientific and rational use of energy to avoid low level repetition construction to avoid blind expansion trends and to promote the upgrading of industrial structure this paper takes as an example a gas turbine power plant in shenzhen as an assessment case study of the potential energy savings the project is expected to have an annual power supply of 37 89 10 8 kw h and an annual heat supply of 5 43 10 4 gj the consumption of power generation in tons of coal equivalent units is expected to reach 208 g per kw h the comprehensive annual average thermal efficiency is 77 16 and the average heat to power ratio is 40 65 these technical indicators are thought to be one of the best compared to similar level projects in the country

a method for allocating renewable energy source subsidies among final energy consumers abstract in a new context of growing need for renewable energy sources res tariff design has become a critical component of energy system regulation a methodology for allocating the cost of res subsidies that ensures an optimal balance between compliance with the main regulatory principles of tariff design and each state s specific policy is of cardinal importance in the current context this paper presents and discusses a novel methodology to allocate the res subsidy costs which consists of distributing them among final energy consumers in proportion to their consumption regardless of the type of final energy consumed liquid fuels gas electricity or coal first the different designs of res subsidies are categorized and a review of a good number of the res burden sharing mechanisms implemented in the eu is presented then the proposed methodology is developed on the basis of the basic regulatory principles underlying the tariff design and the current regulatory context in force in the eu finally to illustrate its actual impact in a real case example the proposed methodology is applied to the spanish system in which the burden of extra costs incurred for res amounts to a very large proportion of the overall energy system costs

the loss averse newsvendor game abstract this paper extends the standard newsvendor problem based upon risk neutrality to a game setting where multiple newsvendors with loss aversion preferences are competing for inventory from a risk neutral supplier we show that if the supplier allocates the total demand among the newsvendors proportional to their order quantities then there exists a unique nash equilibrium order quantity in this newsvendor game we also find that while the demand stealing effect increases the total order quantity of the newsvendors the loss aversion effect decreases the newsvendors total order quantity and if strong enough may lead to a lower total inventory level of the decentralized supply chain than that of an integrated supply chain

optimal electric vehicle production strategy under subsidy and battery recycling abstract government subsidy and battery recycling are two common practical issues in the electric vehicle ev market this study investigates a loss averse ev manufacturer s optimal production strategy under uncertain market demand in the presence of both government subsidy and battery recycling an analytical model is built and related optimal solution and numerical experiments are provided results indicate that increased subsidy promotes the manufacturer s optimal production quantity and expected utility increased battery recycling rate promotes the manufacturer s optimal production quantity however the manufacturer s expected utility decreases with the battery recycling rate if the optimal production quantity is sufficiently small this result implies that the manufacturer may prefer a relatively small battery recycling rate when the market scale is small consequently the government should establish regulations to promote battery recycling for environmental protection we find that either subsidy or battery recycling can offset the negative effects of loss aversion on the optimal production quantity and expected utility the majority of our results still hold if we consider multiple repurposing options for used batteries or an alternative subsidy mechanism in particular the manufacturer s optimal production quantity and expected utility are higher under cost subsidy mechanism than under consumer subsidy mechanism

productivity growth in pre 1990 mongolian agriculture spiralling disaster or emerging success the reasons for the spectacular collapse of so many centrally planned economies are a source of ongoing debate in this paper we use detailed farm level data to measure total factor productivity tfp changes in mongolian grain and potato farming during the 14 year period immediately preceding the 1990 economic reforms we measure tfp growth using stochastic frontier analysis sfa and data envelopment analysis dea methods our results indicate quite poor overall performance with an average annual tfp change of 1 7 in grain and 0 8 in potatoes over the 14 year period however the pattern of tfp growth changed substantially during this period with tfp growth exceeding 7 per year in the latter half of this period this suggests that the new policies of improved education greater management autonomy and improved incentives which were introduced in final two planning periods in the 1980s were beginning to have a significant influence upon the performance of mongolian crop farming crown copyright c 2002 published by elsevier science b v all rights reserved

energy consumption and ghg emissions from china s freight transport sector scenarios through 2050 abstract china s freight transport volume experienced rapid growth over recent years causing great concerns over its energy and environmental impacts in this study by establishing a bottom up accounting framework a set of scenarios reflecting the possible future trajectories of energy consumption and greenhouse gas ghg emissions from china s freight transport sector are developed according to our estimation ghg emissions from china s freight transport sector were 788 mt co2e in 2013 roughly accounting for 8 of nationwide ghg emissions under business as usual bau scenario energy consumption and ghg emissions in 2050 will be 2 5 and 2 4 times the current levels ghg emissions will peak by 2045 at the level of 1918 mt co2e with all major mitigation measures implemented energy consumption and ghg emissions in 2050 can be reduced by 30 and 32 respectively besides ghg emissions will peak earlier by around 2035 at a much lower level than under bau scenario our study suggests that in order to keep in pace with china s overall mitigation agenda aggressive efforts should be made to reduce ghg emissions from freight transport sector

a comparison of conventional final offer and combined arbitration for dispute resolution two widely used forms of arbitration are conventional arbitration in which the arbitrator makes an unconstrained settlement choice and final offer arbitration in which the arbitrator must choose between disputants final offers under an innovative as yet unused approach called combined arbitration if the arbitrator s notion of a fair settlement lies between the disputants final offers final offer arbitration rules are used otherwise conventional arbitration rules are used theoretically by combining the risks that the two standard forms of arbitration pose for disputants who do not voluntarily settle combined arbitration should generate convergent final offers the results of this controlled laboratory study show however that dispute rates are highest in combined arbitration and lowest in conventional arbitration these results challenge the theoretical predictions for combined arbitration as well as claims that final offer arbitration should reduce disputes compared to conventional arbitration the results are however consistent with a simple theory of disputant optimism

distinguishing characteristics of degrees of success and failure in economic sanctions episodes this paper uses 104 episodes from the hufbauer et al 1985 1990 dataset to examine the correlates of classes of outcomes of economic sanctions the parsimonious equations presented identify the characteristics of sanctions episodes conducive to success rather than marginal success and the characteristics productive of failure rather than marginal failure failure is most likely if there is significant third party assistance to the target and if the pre existing trade linkage between sender and target is small success is most easily achieved when the objective is not classified as modest and when pre sanction relations between sender and target are cordial or neutral the equations presented overcome data and methodological flaws of earlier studies exhibit reasonable predictive accuracy and satisfy a battery of tests of statistical significance hypothesized coefficient sign goodness of fit high likelihood and informational efficiency

loss averse newsvendor model with two ordering opportunities and market information updating abstract a fashion supply chain characterized by a long lead time and a short selling season is considered in this paper facing demand uncertainty the risk averse retailer has two opportunities to make order decisions before the demand is realized the risk aversion is modelled as a penalty to the decision maker the retailer if a target profit is not attained we derive the retailer s optimal ordering decisions and analyze the monotonicity behaviours of the critical market signal the optimal first stage order quantity and the optimal expected payoff with respect to the penalty coefficient we also examine the impact of demand forecast quality on the retailer s decisions and extend the study to the case where order cancellation is allowed

energy efficiency and natural gas consumption in the context of economic development in the european union abstract our paper evaluates the relationship between energy efficiency which is the key issue of european climate policy consumption of the natural gas and economic development in the european union we employ the panel time series data from 1997 to 2011 that covers 26 eu member states represented by the countries of the eurozone we build and test a multivariate model originating from in the neoclassical growth model and amended to include gross fixed capital and total labour as our explanatory variables we use the panel cointegration tests and error correction modelling for determining whether there exists a long term causality between economic growth and natural gas consumption in the eu moreover we aim to derive the existence of the two way causality between natural gas consumption and economic growth in the eu member states our results show that the relationship between economic development and the consumption of the natural gas is positive while the relationship between the consumption of the natural gas and economic development in the eu appears to be negative our findings might be relevant for formulating the policy framework targeting and increasing energy intensity and efficiency

history regionalism and caricom trade a gravity model analysis abstract a gravity model is fitted to 17 annual cross sections 1980 1996 of bilateral trade data imports and exports between caricom member states and selected trading partners specifically the paper investigates the effects of regional integration colonial legacies and linguistic ties on caricom bilateral trade flows between member states and between member states and north american and european union countries the empirical results indicate that history and regionalism have had significant and strong effects on caricom trade additionally two traditional explanatory variables in gravity models income per capita and population have significant and positive effects on caricom trade while the distance between trading partners exerts the expected negative effect

foreign aid and conditions precedent political and bureaucratic dimensions abstract international donor agencies increasingly use their influence to press for major reforms in development policies and administrative practices in third world countries reform recommendations are often conceptualized with little regard for the political and bureaucratic contexts in which they are to be adopted and pursued without greater concern for issues of political and bureaucratic feasibility however reform recommendations are likely to have only minimal impact policy space research and administrative systems research are promising approaches for acquiring and analyzing information about the political and bureaucratic aspects of government decision making such analyses can improve the potential for reform recommendations to be adopted and pursued

union leaders as experts wage bargaining and strikes with union wide ballot requirements to avoid strikes and to curb labour militancy some governments have introduced legislation stating that union leadership as well as wage offers should be decided through union wide ballots this paper shows that members still have incentives to appoint militant union leaders if these leaders have access to information critical for the members voting decisions furthermore conflicts may arise in equilibrium even though the contract zone is never empty and there is an option to resolve any incomplete information ballot requirements hence preclude neither militant union bosses nor inefficient conflicts

the theory of state owned enterprises in market economies abstract four topics are covered the circumstances under which state owned enterprises soes are more effective than private firms the different approaches to modelling public and private firms the performance of soes and strategies including privatization to limit their more damaging effects it is argued that ideological or development motives are important in their genesis but that if efficiency and innovation are key considerations the normative case for their existence is more doubtful various types of soe model are identified deriving from the variety of circumstances in which they operate and the theoretical perspective of the modeller these include the property rights school the public choice tradition neoclassical behavioural and budget maximizing approaches all models assume the existence of monitoring problems created by informational asymmetry the consequences can include high non pecuniary benefits for managers a concentration on monitored activities and lower innovation levels and efficiency than private firms curiously this is not necessarily reflected in higher prices or costs possible remedial strategies include a change of ownership a change of objectives the introduction of incentive compatible payment schemes improved performance indicators and privatization

convergence of inflationary shocks evidence from the caribbean in this paper we aim to shed some light on the inflation dynamics in the caribbean we analyse the inflation rates for twelve countries using various time series methods the results show that the inflation rates are mean reverting processes and that there is evidence of a convergence club in inflation rates within the area which contradicts previous studies our contribution implies a high degree of similarity in the dynamics of our target countries inflation rates

reference dependent electric vehicle production strategy considering subsidies and consumer trade offs abstract in this paper we extend previous reference dependence newsvendor research by incorporating both consumer trade offs and government subsidies to evaluate the relevant influences on the optimal electric vehicle ev production decisions we present the properties of the model derive the closed form solutions for the model given the relevant constraints and use numerical experiments to illustrate the results we find that subsidies loss aversion the performance of both evs and internal combustion engine powered vehicles icevs and the coefficient of variation of demand are significant factors influencing the optimal production quantity and the expected utilities of ev production the high selling price and other high costs of icevs help offset the influence of loss aversion whereas the high costs of ev enhance loss aversion our study enriches the literature on subsidies for evs by establishing a behavioral model to incorporate the decision bias in terms of loss aversion at the firm level these findings provide guiding principles for both policymakers and ev managers for making better strategies to promote evs in the early immature market

green fuel tax on private transportation services and subsidies to electric energy a model based assessment for the main european countries abstract this paper evaluates the environmental and macroeconomic implications for france germany italy and spain of taxing motor vehicle fuels for private transportation a sector not subject to the emissions trading system so as to reduce taxes on electricity consumption and increase subsidies to renewable sources of electricity generation the assessment is based on a dynamic general equilibrium model calibrated for each of the four countries the results suggest that the measures posited will reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector and favor the development of electricity generation from renewable sources thus limiting the growth of emissions from electricity generation the measures do not jeopardize economic activity the results are robust whether implementation is unilateral in one country or simultaneous throughout the eu

consumers evaluation of national new energy vehicle policy in china an analysis based on a four paradigm model abstract the chinese government has issued numerous policies to promote the development and adoption of new energy vehicles nevs to address the problem of excessive energy consumption and environmental pollution in this study we divided these policies into seven categories macroscopic demonstration subsidization preferential tax technical support industry management and infrastructure since consumers opinions affect the policy choices of government based on questionnaire data we use a four paradigm model to analyze the consumers evaluation of each policy in terms of perceptions of importance and satisfaction the results show that macroscopic policies are perceived to be of high importance and satisfaction whereas for industry management policies they are perceived to be of low importance and satisfaction the importance perceptions of preferential tax and demonstration policies are low whereas perceptions of their satisfaction are high perceptions of the importance of subsidization technical support and infrastructure policies are high whereas perceptions of their satisfaction are low we find that the subsidization technical support and infrastructure policies need urgent improvement finally we put forward several suggestions to improve the current policies and increase the consumers intention to adopt nevs

using the law to change the custom the custom often acts as a powerful hindrance to equity increasing changes in this paper we present a simple model of legal dualism in which a progressive legal reform can under certain conditions shift the conflicting custom in the direction intended by the legislator formal law then acts as an outside anchor that exerts a magnet effect on the custom we also characterize the conditions under which a moderate reform performs better than a radical one in improving the welfare of the disadvantaged sections of the population we illustrate our insights using examples on inheritance marriage and divorce in sub saharan africa and india

a policy utility dislocation model based on prospect theory a case study of promoting policies with low carbon lifestyle abstract a low carbon lifestyle is an inevitable choice for mitigating climate change however in the actual situation where policy makers and policy target groups are separated from each other low carbon lifestyle changes are often manifested as individual strong government actions behind which social actions are seriously lagging based on this observation in this study a concept of policy utility dislocation was developed and a policy utility dislocation model was constructed based on prospect theory numerical simulation showed that policy utility dislocation can be reduced by increasing the proportion of residents environmental benefits government efforts and subsidies and reducing the cost of implementing a low carbon lifestyle for residents in particular when the environmental benefits of the government and residents accounted for 15 and 65 respectively or the subsidy coefficient was 2 the policy utility dislocation became zero in addition policy utility dislocation began to appear when the cost of implementing a low carbon lifestyle exceeded 3 this study enriches the connotation of policy utility and quantifies the policy utility dislocation and provides new ways to launch policies that promote low carbon lifestyles

reference dependence in multilocation newsvendor models a structural analysis we propose a behavioral theory to predict actual ordering behavior in multilocation inventory systems the theory rests on a well known stylized fact of human behavior people s preferences are reference dependent we incorporate reference dependence into the newsvendor framework by assuming that there are psychological costs of leftovers and stockouts we also hypothesize that the psychological aversion to leftovers is greater than the disutility for stockouts we then experimentally test the proposed theory in both the centralized and decentralized inventory structures using subjects motivated by substantial financial incentives consistent with the proposed theory actual orders exhibit the so called pull to center bias and the degree of bias is greater in the high profit margin than in the low profit margin condition these systematic biases are shown to eliminate the risk pooling benefit when the demands across store locations are strongly correlated because the proposed model nests the standard inventory and ex post inventory error minimization theories as special cases one can systematically evaluate the predictive power of each alternative using the generalized likelihood principle we structurally estimate all three theories using the experimental data and the estimation results strongly suggest that the proposed behavioral theory captures actual orders and profits better we also conduct two experiments to validate the behavioral model by manipulating the relative salience of the psychological costs of leftovers versus that of stockouts to alleviate the pull to center bias

the newsvendor problem review and directions for future research in this paper we review the contributions to date for analyzing the newsvendor problem our focus is on examining the specific extensions for analyzing this problem in the context of modeling customer demand supplier costs and the buyer risk profile more specifically we analyze the impact of market price marketing effort and stocking quantity on customer demand how supplier prices can serve as a coordination mechanism in a supply chain setting integrating alternative supplier pricing policies within the newsvendor framework and how the buyer s risk profile moderates the newsvendor order quantity decision for each of these areas we summarize the current literature and develop extensions finally we also propose directions for future research

market socialism a case for rejuvenation in this paper we will outline a feasible economic mechanism of competitive socialism our claim is that competitive markets are necessary to achieve an efficient and vigorous economy but that full scale private ownership is not necessary for the successful operation of competition and markets contrary to popular impression this claim has not yet been disproved by either history or economic theory it is the failure of both the political right and the left to disentangle the concepts of private ownership and the competitive market that has led to the premature obituaries for socialism in the second section we look at the question of the soft budget constraint as an agency problem under market socialism we then propose two variants of a bank centric system of insider monitoring as a viable solution to the agency problem the next section discusses the essential problem of political accountability and the difficulty of credible pre commitment in avoiding the soft budget constraint problem and suggests ways of minimizing this problem in our proposed system we then conclude by addressing some of the other standard objections to a proposal for market socialism

decision bias in the newsvendor problem with a known demand distribution experimental evidence in the newsvendor problem a decision maker orders inventory before a one period selling season with stochastic demand if too much is ordered stock is left over at the end of the period whereas if too little is ordered sales are lost the expected profit maximizing order quantity is well known but little is known about how managers actually make these decisions we describe two experiments that investigate newsvendor decisions across different profit conditions results from these studies demonstrate that choices systematically deviate from those that maximize expected profit subjects order too few of high profit products and too many of low profit products these results are not consistent with risk aversion risk seeking preferences prospect theory preferences waste aversion stockout aversion or the consequences of underestimating opportunity costs two explanations are consistent with the data one subjects behave as if their utility function incorporates a preference to reduce ex post inventory error the absolute difference between the chosen quantity and realized demand two subjects suffer from the anchoring and insufficient adjustment bias feedback and training did not mitigate inventory order errors we suggest techniques to improve decision making

a proposal for using incentive precommitments in public enterprise funding abstract among the central problems of less developed countries ldcs is the poor performance of their public enterprises pes and the seemingly limited ability of governments and other agencies to improve this performance this paper proposes that project agencies be induced as a part of the initial financing of pes to undertake specific types of precommitments a precommitment to liquidate the project if its ex post performance falls below some threshold level and a precommitment to link a non negligible part of employee compensation to actual performance our proposal is not guaranteed to improve pe performance because there are no perfect solutions to what is inherently a politically difficult problem nevertheless we argue that as long as public enterprises exist independent of whether this is a good idea or not a precommitment to use performance based incentives is likely to improve their performance we discuss the primary sources of pe losses compare their probable magnitudes and explain how various precommitments are likely to ameliorate such losses our proposal is aimed at stimulating more thought on this subject and is addressed to a broad audience

institution building multilateral development banks and state owned enterprises abstract despite the increasing popularity of privatization in latin america many large and important firms will remain in the public sector and for those firms improved economic performance is essential if a constant drain on developing country treasuries is to be avoided this paper analyzes the improvements in enterprise performance that may occur as a result of cooperation between state owned enterprise soes and multilateral development banks and argues that the combination of softer terms and harder conditions may help soe management increase the operational efficiency of their firms the experience of the paraguayan state firm ande and the inter american development bank is examined and found to provide evidence in support of this hypothesis

time to build option value and investment decisions abstract investment decisions and outlays are often made sequentially for example the rate at which construction proceeds is usually flexible and can be adjusted with the arrival of new information traditional discounted cash flow methods which treat the pattern of investment as fixed ignore this flexibility and understate the value of the project this paper uses contingent claims analysis to derive optimal decision rules and to value such investments we determine the effects of time to build opportunity cost and uncertainty on the investment decision for reasonable parameter values we show how a simple npv rule can lead to gross errors

the relative efficiencies of market and planned economies are planned economies systematically more or less productive than market economies this question provoked heated intellectual debate since the time of hayek 11 keynes 16 lange 19 lange and taylor 20 and lerner 22 the collapse of the communist systems of east europe since 1989 closed the debate planned economies were without doubt less efficient in utilizing economic resources than market economies but how much less efficient this question is of obvious scientific interest but it has not been answered some work addressing the broad question of comparative efficiency has been done by bergson 4 5 6 marer 25 26 moroney 28 and others all indicate comparatively lower efficiency in planned economies but none addresses the question by how much our contribution here is to answer this question using a novel methodology we estimate aggregate frontier production functions for two groups of countries 7 centrally planned economies in east europe and 17 predominantly market economies in west europe estimating frontier production functions enables two types of comparisons that have not

institutions freedom and technical efficiency the impact of institutions on economic performance is currently the subject of much research in this study we use panel data to estimate a stochastic production frontier and the sources of inefficiency for a broad set of countries a maximum likelihood procedure is used to estimate the parameters for the stochastic production frontier and the determinants of inefficiency simultaneously our results show that institutions that promote greater economic freedom in turn promote efficiency

the effect of standards and fuel prices on automobile fuel economy an international analysis abstract there is an intense debate over whether fuel economy standards or fuel taxation is the more efficient policy instrument to raise fuel economy and reduce co 2 emissions of cars the aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of standards and fuel prices on new car fuel economy with the aid of cross section time series analysis of data from 18 countries we employ a dynamic specification of new car fuel consumption as a function of fuel prices standards and per capita income it turns out that standards have induced considerable fuel savings throughout the world although their welfare impact is not examined here if standards are not further tightened then retail fuel prices would have to remain at high levels for more than a decade in order to attain similar fuel savings finally without higher fuel prices or tighter standards one should not expect any marked improvements in fuel economy under business as usual conditions

energy efficiency analysis of the economic system in china during 1986 2012 a parallel slacks based measure approach abstract the economic system in china is composed of three internal parallel industries primary secondary and tertiary industries to examine energy efficiency of the economic system this paper proposes a parallel slacks based measure approach in the described approach the measures of energy efficiencies and energy saving potentials for the whole system and its three industries are defined application of the proposed approach to the economic system in china during 1986 2012 shows that it can be effectively used to measure energy efficiency of the evaluated system with several parallel sub systems the institutional influential factors of energy efficiency in china are also examined the following findings can be achieved based on the application results 1 the inefficiency of the economic system in china is mainly sourced from the lower energy performance of the secondary industry 2 energy efficiency of the economic system increases during the study time period with an exception during 2001 2005 3 it is better for the whole economic system to improve energy efficiency which can help to save much more energy consumption in production in china and 4 economic development is estimated to have positive impacts on national energy efficiency while energy structure adjustment and industrial structure optimization have negative effects on national energy efficiency