renewable natural resource management and use without markets natural resources by their nature are not readily bent to the status of private property efficient resource use is complicated by jurisdictional externalities public goods non use values and beneficiaries spatially separated from the location of resources the task is made more challenging by ecological complexity that obscures cause benefits and effects costs and dramatic time lags between individual actions and subsequent social consequences that together with substantial uncertainty introduce the chance of irreversibilities resource economists have played a major role in the literature on externalities the development of individual transferable quotas non market valuation techniques and common property management

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

fraudulent collection of unemployment benefits a theoretical analysis with reference to income tax evasion abstract the harshest abusers of the unemployment insurance program are those employed who collect benefits while working this paper analyzes fraudulent claiming behavior and optimal deterrence policy under two alternative penalty schemes commonly used in tax evasion analyses one relates punishment to the magnitude of the dishonesty whereas the other relates punishment to the amount of illegal returns two exclusive features of fraudulent benefit claiming are given special attention the requirement to report at a labor exchange to demonstrate availability for work and the need to serve a waiting period before benefits can be collected

is the post fossil era necessarily post capitalistic the robustness and capabilities of green capitalism abstract our central target is to show that capitalism is not only much more robust to crises than presumed by its critics but also features promising capabilities with regard to solving the environmental crisis to elaborate this thesis we analyse how far capitalism can survive given the end of fossil energy carriers and may maintain its productivity under the preconditions of a regenerative energy system in a further step we demonstrate that crises may actually provide the prerequisites of the economy s transformation towards sustainability we argue that especially competitive capitalism as analysed by schumpeter offers excellent preconditions for generating environmental innovations however we will also point out the numerous social problems of green infrastructure projects in the last section we assume that markets alone will not suffice to concertedly solve the global environmental crisis here political action is needed that pools societal forces with regard to the ecological challenges hence specifically promoting desirable innovations the usefulness of state measures is to be judged in correlation to the respective specific national political and economic contexts a generalised opposition to capitalistic social orders disregards the complexity of these contexts and is at danger of omitting decisive determinants of crisis management

going beyond best technology and lowest price on renewable energy investors preference for service driven business models abstract renewable energy is becoming increasingly important for economies in many countries but still in an emerging industry renewable energy requires supportive energy policy helping firms to develop and protect competitive advantages in global competition as a guideline for designing such policy we consult well informed stakeholders within the renewable energy industry investors their preferences serve as explorative indicator for assessing which business models might succeed in competition to contribute to only limited research on renewable energy investors preferences we ask which business models investment managers for renewable energy prefer to invest in we report from an explorative study of 380 choices of renewable energy investment managers based on the stated preferences we modelled three generic business models to calculate the share of investors preferences we find exiting evidence a customer intimacy business model that proposes best services is much more preferred by investors than business models that propose lowest price or best technology policy makers can use those insights for designing policy that supports service driven business models for renewable energy with a scope on customer needs rather than technology or price additionally we state important implications for renewable energy entrepreneurs managers and research

a new product growth for model consumer durables this article originally appeared in management science january 1969 volume 15 number 5 pp 215 227 published by the institute of management sciences a growth model for the timing of initial purchase of new products is developed and tested empirically against data for eleven consumer durables the basic assumption of the model is that the timing of a consumer s initial purchase is related to the number of previous buyers a behavioral rationale for the model is offered in terms of innovative and imitative behavior the model yields good predictions of the sales peak and the timing of the peak when applied to historical data a long range forecast is developed for the sales of color television sets

fishermen s discount rates in itq systems in this paper the fishermen s planning and investment horizon is investigated using their discount rates it is shown that one might calculate the implicit discount rate in an itq regulated fishery from the available information from the quota market this gives information about how well the system is working in particular discount rates where itq systems are in operation initially were very high before they started to decrease this implies that it take some time to reap the full benefits of an itq system it also gives arguments for not letting itqs be perpetual property rights and hence enables more flexibility in the management system

tenure security private time preference and use of natural resources among lowland bolivian amerindians abstract to estimate the effect of tenure security and private time preference on the use of different types of natural resources such as old growth and fallow forests fish and game we did a survey and a psychological experiment with 443 households in 42 villages of yuracare mojeno tsimane and chiquitano indians in the bolivian lowlands results of multivariate tobit regressions suggest that 1 among the yuracare tsimane and mojeno rates of private time preference had a small economic and statistical effect on the use of natural resources and 2 tenure security proxied by residence duration in the village and by conflict with abutters only affected the consumption of wildlife principally of game results suggest that public policies to improve property rights over natural resources among indigenous people might have greater immediate impact on the conservation of wildlife than on the conservation of forest cover

relationships and traders in madagascar this article documents the role that personal relationships play in economic exchange original survey data show that agricultural traders in madagascar perceive relationships as the most important factor for success in their business evidence details the extent to which relationships are used to serve a variety of purposes such as the circulation of information about prices and market conditions the provision of trade credit the prevention and handling of contractual difficulties the regularity of trade flows and the mitigation of risk of these the regularity of supply and demand and the sharing of risk appear particularly important larger and more prosperous traders are those with quantitatively and qualitatively better relationships family plays little role in business beyond assistance at start up

income maintenance schemes under wage rate uncertainty economists thinking on taxation schemes and work incentives is usually founded on a set of propositions concerning the supply of labor under perfect certainty insofar as labor is supplied under a regular fixed wage contract with no risk of involuntary unemployment this neglect of uncertainty seems reasonable however if one applies tax theory to income maintenance schemes for the poor the assumption of perfect certainty could be misleading accordingly we need to know whether risk on the seller s side in the labor contract significantly alters the market response to tax and subsidy schemes if it does then how does this affect a government s choice of design of an income maintenance scheme in this article i shall concentrate specifically on wage rate uncertainty as a preliminary it is interesting to note the number of ways in which such uncertainty affects poor people s incomes 1 those who are self employed receive a random return to the weekly hours they devote to their job 2 piecework or other productivity related employment contracts clearly have an uncertainty component 3 promotion and bonus schemes can have a similar effect in the life cycle of poverty many currently low paid workers know that the prospect of a higher wage through career ladder advancement may be obtained by currently working more hours or at a greater intensity at the time that the labor supply decision is made of course the returns to this marginal effort are uncertain 4 the possibility of unemployment can also be interpreted in the context of a random wagethough more care is needed here if the hours of work decision is made collectively for example via union representation although the going wage rate may be known with certainty for each individual it may be uncertain whether he will be able to find employment or not or indeed keep his job at the going rate why does wage rate uncertainty raise special problems there are in fact a number of issues involved2 but let me anticipate the formal argument of section i to iv by some reasoning on basic neoclassical theory i do so in two steps first take the standard case of an individual with a determinate wage where utility is a function of consumption and leisure increase the marginal tax rate mtr and his her nonlabor income if this is done so as to ensure exact compensation in utility terms then obviously we isolate a conventional pure substitution effect and labor supply is reduced if the compensation is such that ex post consumption remains constant then again labor supply is reduced as long as consumption is a superior good if the compensation is such that ex post net tax liability remains constant labor supply is reduced as long as leisure is a superior good second take the standard pure portfolio problem an individual is deciding how to allocate a fixed total wealth between a safe asset bearing a given rate of return and an asset with a higher but risky rate of return i assume that utility depends on disposable income that the individual aims to maximize london school of economics research reported here was supported in part by funds granted to the institute for research on poverty by the department of health education and welfare i thank members of the staff seminars at the university of reading and the institute for research on poverty madison and i garfinkel j r kesselman and d de meza for comments on earlier versions of this paper examples of the theory of taxation and labor supply under certainty are m g allingham and henry cassidy one paper that has dealt with the general problem of wage rate uncertainty is by m j block and j m heineke 2for a more general treatment see my forthcoming article

the tragedy of the commons in international fisheries an empirical examination abstract historically all capture fisheries have proven hard to manage internationally shared stocks face an additional impediment to effective management previous fisheries studies estimate gains from cooperation for particular species or locations but evidence is lacking on the wider effect that international sharing has in relation to other variables that affect stock status this paper is an attempt to shed a broader light on the effect of sharing by identifying whether shared fish stocks are systematically more exploited i compile exploitation status biological and economic data into a unique two period panel of more than 200 fish stocks from around the globe with which i test the theoretical implications of sharing the empirical results from ordered category estimation suggest that shared stocks are indeed more prone to overexploitation

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

fishery management under multiple uncertainty abstract among others who point to environmental variability and managerial uncertainty as causes of fishery collapse roughgarden and smith proc natl acad sci 93 1996 5078 argue that three sources of uncertainty are important for fisheries management variability in fish dynamics inaccurate stock size estimates and inaccurate implementation of harvest quotas we develop a bioeconomic model with these three sources of uncertainty and solve for optimal escapement based on measurements of fish stock in a discrete time model among other results we find 1 when uncertainties are high we generally reject the constant escapement rule advocated in much of the existing literature 2 inaccurate stock estimation affects policy in a fundamentally different way than the other sources of uncertainty and 3 the optimal policy leads to significantly higher commercial profits and lower extinction risk than the optimal constant escapement policy by 42 and 56 respectively

the renewable energy policy paradox abstract one major avenue for policymakers to meet climate targets is by decarbonizing the power sector one component of which is raising the share of renewable energy sources renewables in electricity generation however promoting renewables in liberalized power markets creates a paradox in that successful penetration of renewables could fall victim to its own success with the current market architecture future deployment of renewable energy will necessarily be more costly and less scalable moreover transition towards a full 100 renewable electricity sector is unattainable paradoxically in order for renewable technologies to continue growing their market share they need to co exist with fossil fuel technologies ignoring these findings can slow adoption and increase the costs of deploying new renewable technologies this paper spots the incompatibility between electricity liberalization and renewable policy regardless of the country location or renewable technologies the paradox holds as long as market clear prices with short term marginal costs and renewable technology s marginal cost is close to zero and not dispatchable

modeling renewable energy company risk abstract the renewable energy sector is one of the fastest growing components of the energy industry and along with this increased demand for renewable energy there has been an increase in investing and financing activities the tradeoff between risk and return in the renewable energy sector is however precarious renewable energy companies are often among the riskiest types of companies to invest in and for this reason it is necessary to have a good understanding of the risk factors this paper uses a variable beta model to investigate the determinants of renewable energy company risk the empirical results show that company sales growth has a negative impact on company risk while oil price increases have a positive impact on company risk when oil price returns are positive and moderate increases in sales growth can offset the impact of oil price returns and this leads to lower systematic risk

the economics of changing course implications of adaptability and inertia for optimal climate policy this paper reviews evidence that energy technologies and systems adapt over time to accommodate external pressures that technical innovation and systemic change in the energy sector is largely induced by need and restrained by potentially large transitional costs a simple integrated model of optimal greenhouse gas abatement over time is presented in which the abatement cost depends on both fixed and transitional elements it is shown that the optimal current response and long run prospects differ radically between the classical economic case in which the cost of a given cutback in emissions is fixed exogenously and the adaptive case in which the response is ultimately adaptive but heavily constrained by inertia ie low fixed but high transitional cost if energy systems are indeed to a large degree adaptive the results demonstrate that as compared with the classical non adaptive case long run stabilization of atmospheric co2 may be optimal even with moderate damages from climate change greater near term abatement efforts are justified and the cost of a given delay in response may be several times higher neglect of the issue of induced technical change and other adaptive responses may invalidate the policy implications drawn from most integrated assessment models developed to date

when bureaucrats meet entrepreneurs the design of effective public venture capital programmes recently public efforts to finance small high technology firms have proliferated we review the motivations for these efforts and make some preliminary observations about their design we explore the underlying challenges that the financing of young growth firms poses the ways that specialised financial intermediaries address them and the rationales for public efforts to finance these companies the final section makes a set of observations about the ways in which the structure of these efforts can most effectively complement private sector activity a frequent fault in programme design is the presumption that technological criteria can be divorced from business considerations when evaluating firms the federal government has played an active role in financing new firms particularly in high technology industries since the soviet union s launch of the sputnik satellite in recent years european and asian nations and many us states have adopted similar initiatives while these programmes precise structures have differed the efforts have been predicated on two shared assumptions i that the private sector provides insufficient capital to new firms and ii that the government either can identify investments which will ultimately yield high social and or private returns or can encourage financial intermediaries to do so in contrast to other government interventions designed to boost economic growth such as privatisation programmes these claims have received little scrutiny by economists the neglect of these questions is unfortunate while the sums of money involved are modest relative to public expenditures on defence procurement or retiree benefits these programmes are very substantial when compared to contemporaneous private investments in new firms government programmes in this arena have been divided between those efforts that directly fund entrepreneurial firms and those that encourage or subsidise the development of outside investors in this paper i will focus on public venture capital initiatives programmes that make equity or equity like investments in young firms or encourage other intermediaries to make such investments in some such programmes such as the advanced technology program and the small business innovation research programmes discussed below the funds are provided as a contract or outright grant while these efforts have proliferated a consensus as to how to structure these programmes remains elusive while the design of regulatory agencies has been extensively studied from a theoretical and empirical perspective little work has

which renewable energy policy is a venture capitalist s best friend empirical evidence from a survey of international cleantech investors governments around the world have adopted ambitious targets to increase the share of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions they pursue a variety of policy approaches to achieve these targets it has been a popular theme for contributions in energy policy to investigate the effectiveness of such policies this article adds a new perspective to the debate namely looking at the policy preferences of private investors in innovative clean energy technology firms we surveyed 60 investment professionals from european and north american venture capital and private equity funds and asked them to assess the effectiveness of various policies in terms of stimulating their interest to invest in innovative clean energy technologies in addition to quantitative rankings we use qualitative interview data to capture additional information on why investors prefer some policies over others the combined analysis compensates for the inherent limitations of a quantitative ranking using generic policy types the results of this exploratory analysis demonstrate that all other things being equal investors in our sample perceived feed in tariffs to be the most effective renewable energy policy the overall preference for feed in tariffs is even more pronounced among investors based in europe and with higher exposure to clean energy

a regional analysis of labour force participation rates across the member states of the european union elhorst j p 1996 a regional analysis of labour force participation rates across the member states of the european union reg studies 30 455 465 this study investigates the causes of variation in labour force participation rates in a regional europe two participation rate equations are estimated one for men and one for women using annual data derived from eurostat 1983 1989 the explanatory variables are based on previous studies on the subject of the neoclassical formulation of the individual s labour supply function extended by the situation in which an individual who wishes to work cannot find a job and becomes involuntarily unemployed the consistency of the parameter estimates to different estimation models is investigated it turns out that heterogeneity between the member states of the eu is so important that it is almost impossible to find an overall regression equation for the whole eu elhorst j p 1996 une analyse regionale des taux d activite dans les pays membres de l union europ

the price of policy risk empirical insights from choice experiments with european photovoltaic project developers managing the transition to a renewable energy future is an important policy priority in many countries solar photovoltaic pv technology is expected to make an important contribution but due to relatively higher cost its growth to date has been largely driven by public policy notably feed in tariffs feed in tariffs have been implemented in various countries however with widely differing outcomes in terms of installed pv capacity previous research indicates that the level of policy risk may be an important driver for differences in renewable energy policy effectiveness more specifically we suggest that investors who take a decision between pv investment opportunities in different countries carefully weigh feed in tariff induced returns against a set of policy risks and choose the country with the most favorable risk return profile we empirically test this model based on a stated preference survey among european pv project developers consisting of 1575 choice decisions by 63 investors the findings of our study demonstrate that risk matters in pv policy design and that a price tag can be attached to specific policy risks such as the duration of administrative processes or uncertainty induced by an approaching capacity cap governments can build on our empirical results to design policies that will be effective in attracting private pv investment while at the same time maintaining efficiency by providing an adequate compensation for policy risk

ownership risk investment and the use of natural resources the effect of insecure ownership on ordinary investment and natural resource use is examined insecure ownership is postulated to depend on the type of government regime in power and the prevalence of political violence or instability the political determinants of economy wide investment are estimated from cross country data and the results are used to form an index of ownership security when introduced into empirical models of natural resource use this index has a significant and quantitatively important effect on the use of forests and petroleum contrary to conventional wisdom ownership risk slows resource use in some circumstances

subsidies buybacks and sustainable fisheries abstract most fisheries subsidies which on a worldwide scale are immense are probably detrimental to resource conservation however payments used to buy out excess fishing capacity are often represented as useful subsidies on the grounds that overcapacity encourages overfishing and causes economic waste some commentators on the other hand assert that most buyback subsidies are ineffective because additional capacity tends to seep back into the fishery over time in this paper we take the latter argument further and demonstrate that buyback subsidies if they come to be anticipated by fishermen will generally have a negative effect on economic performance and resource conservation consequently buyback subsidies are perhaps over rated as a management tool

robust incentives and the design of a climate change governance regime in building a governance regime to address climate change should we prioritize the development of global institutions or national ones this paper focuses on two neglected characteristics to inform the governance problem the incentives for investment in low carbon energy technology and the influence of historical policy volatility examining a case study of an important low carbon energy technology wind power this study finds 1 policy volatility has been substantial 2 policy changes were uncorrelated across jurisdictions suggesting that 3 investors could have substantially reduced their exposure to the risk of policy volatility by operating globally while it also has downsides a poorly coordinated international policy regime has the advantage of reducing the risk associated with a global policy failure beyond this case study the importance of this positive effect depends on the probability of policy failures in each country the correlations among them and the probability of a global policy failure

the effect of the discount rate on depletion of exhaustible resources this paper argues that despite its widespread acceptance in the literature the basic proposition that a reduction an increase in the discount rate leads to greater conservation faster depletion of an exhaustible resource is not generally valid it shows that the effect of the discount rate on the rate of resource depletion depends on capital requirements for production of the substitute and extraction of the resource and on the size of the resource stock in fact it shows that there always exist at least two ranges of the resource stock size for which the effect is opposite to that conventionally believed

african evidence on the relation of poverty time preference and the environment abstract it is typically argued in the economics literature that the poor operate with a higher rate of time preference than their wealthier counterparts the poor it is suggested have a higher rate of time preference because they are more concerned about present survival than they are about saving for the future such thinking is also central to the economic growth for environmental conservation and the poverty induced environmental degradation arguments according to these assertions wealth allows people to consider the future and invest in environmental conservation and poverty leaves people with no alternative but to exploit the environment so that they may feed their families today evidence from the food security and famine early warning fields suggests that households in many african contexts behave quite to the contrary during periods of food shortage poor households will often undertake extreme measures in the present including depriving the family of needed calories in order to preserve productive capital for the future such as a plough oxen or seed stock this evidence suggests that poor african households may in fact have very low rates of time preference this calls into question our general assumptions about discount rates for developing countries for which rates of time preference are a theoretical determinant

a network analysis using metadata to investigate innovation in clean tech implications for energy policy abstract clean technology clean tech is a large and increasing sector research and development r d is the lifeline of the industry and innovation is fostered by a plethora of high tech start ups and small and medium sized enterprises smes any empirical based attempt to detect the pattern of technological innovation in the industry is challenging this paper proposes an investigation of innovation in clean tech using metadata provided by crunchbase metadata reveal information on markets products services and technologies driving innovation in the clean tech industry worldwide and for san francisco the leader in clean tech innovation with more than two hundred specialised companies a network analysis using metadata is the employed methodology and the main metrics of the resulting networks are discussed from an economic point of view the purpose of the paper is to understand specifically specializations and technological complementarities underlying innovative companies detect emerging industrial clusters at the global and local metropolitan level and finally suggest a way to realize whether observed start ups smes and clusters follow a technological path of complementary innovation and market opportunity or instead present a risk of lock in the discussion of the results of the network analysis shows interesting implications for energy policy particularly useful from an operational point of view

limits to the privatization of fishery resources a debate is emerging over the extent to which privatization of fishery resources is socially desirable the pessimists argue that there are strict limits to socially optimal privatization of such resources the optimists maintain that there are no effective limits to privatization and that the decades old fear that privatization could in some cases lead to resource extinction are of theoretical interest only we argue here that these fears are regrettably not baseless and that there are definite limits to socially desirable privatization we discuss means by which such limits could be identified on a fishery by fishery basis

when patience leads to destruction the curious case of individual time preferences and the adoption of destructive fishing gears abstract the use of destructive fishing methods is a serious problem especially for tropical and developing countries due to inter temporal nature of fisheries extraction activities standard economic theory suggests that an individual s time preference can play a major role in determining the gear choice decision based on earlier theoretical work we identify two ways in which individual time preferences can impact the adoption of destructive extraction methods i the conservation effect which posits that patient individuals as indicated by relatively high discount factor are less likely to use destructive extraction methods since they are more likely to account for the loss of future income that is accompanied by using these methods ii the disinvestment effect which argues that patient individuals are more likely to use destructive extraction methods since they have greater investment capability using an agent based model we clarify the conditions under which one of these effects is more dominant than the other one our model suggests that the nature of destructive gear along with the level of social dilemma determines whether patient or impatient individuals relatively lower discount factor are more likely to adopt such a gear additionally agent s beliefs regarding future resource condition and other agent s extraction level can have a major influence in some cases

not only the tragedy of the commons misperceptions of bioeconomics an exploratory search for explanations of mismanagement of renewable resources other than the theory of the commons was performed by an experiment eighty three subjects mostly recruited from the fisheries sector in norway were asked to manage the same simulated virgin fish stock one subject at a time exclusive property rights were granted to rule out the commons problem despite perfect property rights subjects consistently overinvested leading to an average overcapacity of 60 the resource was reduced by an average of 15 below its optimal level overcapacity and tough quotas resemble the situation in norwegian and other fisheries during the past few decades the likely explanation of the observed behaviour is misperception of feedback a phenomenon that occurs in many experimental studies of dynamically complex systems such misperceptions add a new and important dimension to the problem of renewable resource management beyond the commons problem