fuel demand elasticities for energy and environmental policies indian sample survey evidence india has been running large scale interventions in the energy sector over the last decades still there is a dearth of reliable and readily available price and income elasticities of demand to base these on especially for domestic use of traditional fuels this study uses the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids using micro data of more than 100 000 households sampled across india the la aids model is expanded by specifying the intercept as a linear function of household characteristics marshallian and hicksian price and expenditure elasticities of demand for four main fuels are estimated for both urban and rural areas by different income groups these can be used to evaluate recent and current energy policies the results can also be used for energy projections and carbon dioxide simulations given different growth rates for different segments of the indian population

economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries this study provides an introduction to this special issue of the journal of development studies on economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries in addition to providing a conceptual framework it outlines how the contributions fit into the extant literature a series of regularities emerge across these studies the poor consist of those who are always poor poor at all dates and those who move in and out of poverty with the latter group tending to be strikingly large such movements in and out of poverty are apparent when looking at poverty in either absolute or relative terms changes in returns to endowments can be a potent source of increased incomes finally seemingly transitory shocks can have long term consequences the study concludes by drawing out the policy implications of these regularities

using the downside mean semideviation for measuring vulnerability to poverty abstract this paper introduces a new approach for measuring vulnerability to poverty using the standard downside mean semideviation as a risk parameter we identify vulnerability by comparing the uncertain outcomes of household well being with poverty line in a mean risk behavior framework

consumption vulnerability to risk in rural pakistan abstract as one of the dimensions of vulnerability this paper empirically investigates the inability of rural dwellers to cope with negative income shocks a variable coefficient regression model is applied to a two period household panel dataset collected in the north west frontier province pakistan an area with high incidence of income poverty and low human development the empirical model allows for a different ability to smooth consumption approximated by a linear function of households attributes and controls for the endogeneity of observed changes in income using qualitative information on subjective risk assessment estimation results show that the ability to cope with negative income shocks is lower for households that are aged landless and do not receive remittances regularly

institutions capital and growth the international development community has encouraged investment in physical and human capital as a precursor to economic progress recent evidence shows however that increases in capital do not always lead to increases in output we develop a growth model where the allocation and productivity of capital depends on a country s institutions we find that increases in physical and human capital lead to output growth only in countries with good institutions in countries with bad institutions increases in capital lead to negative growth rates because additions to the capital stock tend to be employed in rent seeking and other socially unproductive activities

impacts of renewables obligation with recycling of the buy out fund tradable green certificate tgc or renewables obligation ro programs typically include a buy out option but only in the uk the buy out fund is redistributed back to the suppliers who have submitted the certificates we show that when the buy out fund is redistributed the supply of renewable energy responds positively to the market conditions and renewables target without it the buy out rate is equivalent to a maximum price however redistribution of the buy out fund may induce strategic behavior from producers who have market power we analyze the impacts of market power and integration on the supply of conventional and renewable energy under the ro program with the buy out fund recycled and devise some empirical tests to predict these impacts policy implications of this study are discussed with special reference to the new fit cfd system

estimating households vulnerability to idiosyncratic and covariate shocks a novel method applied in madagascar households in developing countries are frequently hit by severe idiosyncratic and covariate shocks leading to high consumption volatility a household s currently observed poverty status might therefore not be a good indicator of the household s general vulnerability to poverty in the recent years there has been an emerging literature on the concept and empirical analysis of vulnerability but because of strong data requirements for vulnerability analysis and limited availability of panel and shock data for developing countries static poverty analysis still dominates empirical vulnerability studies in this paper we propose a simple method to empirically assess the impact of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks on households vulnerability which can be applied in a wide context as it relies on more commonly available cross sectional or short panel data we empirically illustrate our approach for madagascar we show that covariate shocks have a relatively higher impact on rural households whereas idiosyncratic shocks have a relatively higher impact on urban households vulnerability

estimation of vulnerability to poverty using a multilevel longitudinal model evidence from the philippines using the panel data for the philippines in 2003 2009 we estimate a three level random coefficient model to measure household vulnerability and to decompose it into idiosyncratic and covariate com

is women s ownership of land a panacea in developing countries evidence from land owning farm households in malawi our analysis of a rich representative household survey for malawi where patrilineal and matrilineal institutions coexist suggests that in matrilineal societies the likelihood of high value crop cultivation by a household increases with the extent of land owned by males while the income generated from high value crop production decreases with the amount of land owned by females and the cultivation of high value crops increases household welfare the policy implication is that facilitating female ownership of assets through informal and formal institutions does not on its own increase welfare when appropriate complementary resources and institutions are absent

social capital and household welfare in south africa 1993 98 the aim in this study is to determine the nature of the causal relationship if any between social capital as measured by household membership in formal and informal groups and household welfare in south africa using a recently collected panel data set in south africa s largest province we estimate per capita expenditure functions including measures of social capital after controlling for fixed effects and simultaneity we find social capital has no effect in 1993 but a positive and significant effect in 1998

are some groups more vulnerable to macroeconomic shocks than others hypothesis tests based on panel data from peru abstract which socio economic groups are most vulnerable to welfare declines during a macroeconomic shock after clarifying the difference between poverty and vulnerability this paper presents an analytical framework and applies it to panel data from peru major findings are 1 households with better educated heads are less vulnerable 2 female headed households are no more vulnerable than male headed households 3 households with more children are more vulnerable 4 transfer networks that assist the poor in relatively stable periods do not protect them during a major shock unless they originate from outside peru and 5 peru s social security program is targeted neither to vulnerable nor to poor households but other transfer programs are better targeted

modelling household energy expenditures using micro data this paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy in the united kingdom at the level of the individual household a two stage budgeting model of household demand for energy conditional on durable ownership is developed at the first stage income is allocated between energy and nonenergy consumption while at the second stage energy expenditure is disaggregated the second stage allocation is assumed to be between gas electricity and a composite good other fuels estimation takes place using a sample of some 50 000 households drawn from the annual u k family expenditure survey for the years 1972 83 a source that has not been fully exploited in the analysis of energy demand to date copyright 1989 by royal economic society

household and industrial electricity demand in europe abstract this paper examines the electricity demand and its determinants in 29 european countries during the liberalization of the electricity market based on panel data for these countries for the years 1995 2015 and using a dynamic partial adjustment model price elasticities are estimated for both residential and industrial electricity demand these elasticities and effects of other variables on electricity consumption are estimated using both gmm generalized method of moments and ml maximum likelihood approaches it is found that the price elasticities are very small especially in the short run while the income elasticities are relatively large especially for households and in the long run

payoffs from panels in low income countries economic development and economic mobility economic development is a dynamic process with a time scale of more than a few years the scarcity of household survey data covering long periods of time has meant that most empirical evidence on hypotheses about growth and development has come from cross country aggregate time series data one important limitation of such data is that they cannot provide information on economic mobility thus little is known about which households and individuals are the beneficiaries of economic growth or about the degree of persistence of poverty over sustained time periods or generations as development proceeds disaggregated within country panels covering different time dimensions have been used to shed light on a number of important development topics that go beyond what can be learned from the cross country database carefully planned social experiments or intensive areaspecific fieldwork including the differentiated effects on households of macroeconomic shocks paul glewwe and gillette hall 1998 elizabeth frankenberg et al 2003 the effects of longer term processes such as population growth and technological change on forestation andrew d foster and rosenzweig 2003 and the consequences of institutional change such as local democratization foster and rosenzweig 2002b however household level panel surveys that cover time periods of a decade or more and thus have the potential for studying economic mobility are not only scarce but have design limitations that may bar unbiased inferences about economic mobility for example the indian village level studies of the international crop research institute for the semi arid tropics icrisat which followed households in six villages starting in 1975 for ten years thomas walker and james ryan 1984 dropped the 14 percent of households that divided similarly the 1982 rural economic development survey reds of indian households prem s vashishtha 1989 excluded the one third of 1971 baseline households that had split by 1982 indeed the design of the world bank living standards measurement surveys lsms includes in the panel component of each survey only those members of sampled residences who do not leave glewwe and m grosh 1999 although there is evidence suggesting that panel survey rules that condition on residence provide nonrandom subsamples of the baseline households duncan thomas et al 2001 foster and rosenzweig 2002a little is known about how these selection rules affect inferences about economic mobility or poverty persistence in this article i use data from a new 18 year panel survey from bangladesh to assess whether and how residence based sampling rules affect estimates of economic mobility in the presence of nonrandom household division the results suggest that the biases are substantial

green hypocrisy environmental attitudes and residential space heating expenditure popular media make claims of a green hypocrisy groups which have the strongest attitude towards the environment also have the highest emissions this study examines whether environmental behaviours beliefs and attitudes are associated with space heating energy use in the uk in order to test for evidence of a green hypocrisy in the uk the largest proportion of household energy use is for space heating we find that environmental behaviours are negatively correlated with heating expenditures while environmentally friendly attitudes and perceptions are not associated with lower heating expenditure further the effect of these attitudes and behaviours does not change as income increase there seems to be little evidence of a green hypocrisy amongst the uk public with respect to space heating

do natural disasters affect the poor disproportionately price change and welfare impact in the aftermath of typhoon milenyo in the rural philippines summary this paper illustrates the sharp contrast in welfare impacts between the rich and the poor caused by typhoon milenyo in a philippine village we find that fish prices dropped sharply due to the damage caused to fish pens near the village leading to positive net welfare gains among the wealthy in contrast the poor do not consume much fish and thus did not gain from the sharp decline in prices finally consumption reallocation played an important role as an ex post risk coping measure albeit only among the wealthy who are relatively well protected against typhoons

consumer choice and competition policy a study of uk energy markets consumer choice is increasingly recognised as a crucial factor in competition policy to illustrate the implications of such choice we present an investment model of the switching choice in the uk residential natural gas market and examine responses to a specially commissioned survey of nearly seven hundred consumers identifying search and switching costs through an assessment of the savings which consumers say they require to switch supplier together with an evaluation of consumer switching behaviour we deduce that the incumbent retained considerable market power suggesting that some continued regulation may be necessary

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

residential energy expenditures and the relevance of changes in household circumstances this paper analyses the impact that dwelling characteristics and characteristics and behaviours of household members have on per capita energy expenditures it also analyses whether changes in household socio economic circumstances translate in changes in energy expenditures socio economic characteristics have a moderate impact while dwelling characteristics and especially household size have much larger impacts the largest changes in energy expenditures are due to changes in household size the recent socio demographic trends will make it harder to design policies to effectively reduce the carbon footprint of a country while policies influencing cohabitation and family size may have positive indirect effects

the dynamics of livelihood diversification in post famine ethiopia abstract based on data for almost 300 households this paper explores associations among income diversification household perceptions of livelihood risks and changes in consumption outcomes across two points in time in post famine ethiopia four key questions are addressed i to what extent did households emerging from the famine period with relatively higher income and calorie consumption levels also have a more diversified income base ii was higher income diversification in 1989 associated with higher income and consumption levels by 1994 iii which households increased their share of income from non cropping activities most during the inter survey years and iv did household heads perceive a lack of non farm income activities to be an important risk factor in famine vulnerability we find that wealthier households tended to have more diversified income streams those initially more diversified subsequently experienced a relatively greater increase in both income and calorie intake households with a greater concentration of assets were more likely to fall in their relative outcome ranking as were female headed households and initially less diversified households subsequently realized greater gains in income diversification we also find suggestive evidence that personal perceptions of risk factors guided subsequent diversification decisions

examining behavioral patterns in household fuel consumption using two stage budgeting framework for energy and environmental policies evidence based on micro data from pakistan abstract prime objective of this study is to analyze fuel consumption patterns at national as well as at provincial level for pakistan dynamic patterns in household fuel choices have been examined under two stage budgeting framework through quadratic approximation of almost ideal demand system quaids using hies data for year 2015 16 to obtain reliable estimates of price and budget elasticities quadratic engel estimates reflect households energy expenditures allocation decisions while the probit estimates explore how alternate fuels are chosen by households for consumption the engel estimates highlight that the share of fuel expenditures in total household expenditures is higher in rural areas than in urban areas the computed compensated price elasticities suggest that firewood and kerosene are relatively more price inelastic in rural areas as compared to the urban areas furthermore our estimates also indicate that cleaner fuels are more price inelastic in urban areas than in rural areas with inter provincial variations in computed elasticities these estimates can be used as an effective policy making tool for transition towards cleaner fuels energy policy simulations to evaluate taxation and subsidy frameworks and energy system forecasting to prevent environmental degradation

achieving low carbon urban passenger transport in china insights from the heterogeneous rebound effect abstract the rapid increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions in china s passenger transportation sector threatens both the environment and the nation s energy security energy efficiency improvements leading to lower fuel consumption are therefore of considerable interest to policymakers trying to achieve low carbon travel however it is well established that higher miles per gallon efficiencies can by reducing the costs of travel lead to some level of increased personal travel the so called rebound effect this paper describes an empirical study to measure the size and also the variability in this effect at the provincial level and what this variability implies for a carbon tax policy this rebound effect is quantified using a two stage almost ideal demand system aids model a backfire effect i e the rebound is 100 is observed in urban passenger transport with disparities in the size of the rebound effect ranging from 114 to 153 among china s provinces the differences in economic development as well as related differences in consumers behavior especially in the behavior of marginal consumers have contributed to this heterogeneity with a larger carbon tax more than 110yuan tonne needed in richer provinces such as jiangsu zhejiang guangdong and fujian in order to bring about similar levels of carbon reductions nationwide

pathways into and out of poverty a study of rural household wealth dynamics in kenya this study identifies the factors associated with smallholder farm households that have risen out of poverty or descended into poverty between 1997 and 2007 in kenya the study uses data from a nationwide balanced panel of 1 275 households and data from detailed retrospective life history survey of 84 households that had experienced either an appreciable improvement or decline in their asset wealth over the 10 year panel period the results indicate that household welfare dynamics are associated with a disparate set of idiosyncratic and unexpected shocks such as death and chronic illness demographic factors proximity to infrastructural facilities as well as intergenerational wealth transfers

the formation of risk sharing networks this paper examines the formation of risk sharing networks in the rural philippines we find that geographic proximity possibly correlated with kinship is a major determinant of mutual insurance links among villagers age and wealth differences also play an important role in contrast income correlation and differences in occupation are not determinants of network links reported network links have a strong effect on subsequent gifts and loans gifts between network partners are found to respond to shocks and to differences in health status from this we conclude that intra village mutual insurance links are largely determined by social and geographical proximity and are only weakly the result of purposeful diversification of income risk the paper also makes a methodological contribution to the estimation of dyadic models

price sensitivity of residential energy consumption in norway abstract the main aim of this paper is to test the stability of the results of a model which focus on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and the residential energy consumption the results for the income and energy price variables are of special interest stability in the time dimension is tested by applying the model on micro data for each of the years 1993 1995 the parameter estimates are stable within a 95 confidence interval however the estimated impact of the energy price variable on energy consumption was considerably weaker in 1994 than in 1993 and 1995 the results for two different income groups in the pooled data set are also subject to stability testing the energy price sensitivity in residential energy consumption is found to be higher for high income households than for low income households

market structure and organizational form this paper studies the determinants of a firm s organizational form in the context of an imperfectly competitive industry there are two kinds of organizational forms the multi divisional form m form and the unitary form u form an m form firm suffers from ignorance of demand externalities among different products and double marginalization is eliminated in contrast in a u form firm demand externalities are taken into consideration and double marginalization exists a firm s optimal choice of organizational form depends on the market structure

a life cycle consistent empirical model of family labour supply using cross section data this paper estimates a utility maximising model of the joint determination of male and female labour supplies using a sample of married couples from the u k family expenditure survey the emphasis is on the estimation of within period preferences that are consistent with intertemporal two stage budgeting under uncertainty however the approach we adopt provides an alternative method of estimating certain aspects of life cycle behaviour to the fixed effects constant approach of heckman and macurdy 1980 macurdy 1981 and browning deaton and irish 1985 moreover it relaxes some of the underlying restrictions that are implicit in these constant models under uncertainty

internal rebellions and external threats a model of government organizational forms in ancient china in ancient china a ruler needed to handle both internal rebellions and external threats to decrease the possibility of internal rebellions a ruler could organize the government to establish the balance of power among ministers while effective in preventing internal rebellions this approach could make the defense of the country against external threats less effective the tradeoff between preventing internal rebellions and dealing with external threats in a ruler s choice of government organizational form is affected by the size of the population the level of coordination efficiency and the degree of increasing returns in the military sector if the magnitude of external threats increases regardless of the type of equilibrium organizational form the equilibrium level of the concentration of power among division heads increases

income shocks consumption wealth and human capital evidence from russia abstract using the russia longitudinal monitoring survey this article investigates how russian households consumption responds to income shocks and in particular how household wealth and human capital affect the households ability to smooth consumption an instrumental variable estimation method with household fixed effects is implemented after correcting for potential problems of sample attrition using the inverse probability weighting method the article finds that household consumption in russia is only partially protected from idiosyncratic shocks the analysis also provides evidence that wealthier households can better smooth their consumption furthermore changes in income have less impact on consumption when households have members with higher education levels wealth effects are more pronounced in rural areas while education effects are stronger for urban households

assessing the extent and nature of chronic poverty in low income countries issues and evidence discussions of chronic poverty have mostly considered its monetary dimensions with current evidence suggesting that such poverty is much more transient than chronic but chronic poverty is a real and important phenomenon potentially more important quantitatively than it first appears once account is taken of different methodological approaches and inevitable measurement difficulties the chronic poor have distinctive characteristics such as lack of assets or high dependency rates which may account for their persistent poverty the paper argues that it is also necessary to develop concepts of chronic poverty further covering relevant nonmonetary dimensions and not just relying on panel data

remittances liquidity constraints and human capital investments in ecuador summary over the last decade ecuador has experienced a strong increase in financial transfers from migrated workers this paper investigates how remittances via trans national networks affect human capital investments through relaxing resource constraints and facilitate households in consumption smoothing by reducing vulnerability to economic shocks our results show that remittances increase school enrollment and decrease incidence of child work especially for girls and in rural areas furthermore we find that aggregate shocks are associated with increased work activities while remittances are used to finance education when households are faced with these shocks 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

housing wealth and residential energy consumption abstract the housing wealth effect often manifests as a positive relationship between consumption and perceived housing wealth e g the perceived value of houses when the perceived value of a property rises homeowners may feel more comfortable and secure about their wealth causing them to spend more this study adopts a behavioural approach to verify if this relationship holds true for residential energy consumption in the uk while controlling for property characteristics and a large number of demographic socioeconomic and energy use behaviour variables we identified a significant relationship between housing wealth and energy consumption our models also considered psychological biases in energy consumption behaviours such as the framing effect our findings shed light on the behavioural aspects of housing wealth effect on residential energy consumption and demonstrate the potential to nudge households towards energy conservation most importantly we provide empirical evidence on the intriguing relationship among housing wealth residential energy consumption and fuel poverty the findings of this study are particularly helpful in designing and implementing energy consumption policies that can strike a balance between social justice and economic efficiency

a feminization of vulnerability female headship poverty and vulnerability in thailand and vietnam summary this article investigates whether heterogeneous subgroups of female headed households are worse off than households headed by men it analyzes the correlates of consumption shock exposure and severity as well as vulnerability to poverty using panel data of over 4000 rural households from thailand and vietnam strong evidence of heterogeneity among subgroups of female headed households are found in particular in comparison with male headed households de facto female headed ones are found to be richer in thailand but prone to more severe shocks in both countries furthermore our results suggest that in thailand single female headed households are less vulnerable to poverty than households headed by men however in vietnam these households are particularly poor and vulnerable to poverty we show that this is mostly due to their greater poverty rather than their higher risk exposure our findings suggest that differentiation by subgroups of headship is important for policy development and targeting as well as future research

domestic fuel expenditure an analysis of three national surveys abstract this paper analyses the fuel expenditure data in three surveys looking particularly at the importance of household income multivariate data analysis techniques show that household size the size and type of accomodation and the presence of central heating are more direct influences on fuel expenditure than income changes in income have little independent effect on fuel expenditure once the size of the house size of household and heating system are determined

household energy demand in kenya an application of the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids abstract this paper estimates price and fuel expenditure elasticities of demand by applying the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids to 3665 households sampled across kenya in 2009 the results indicate that motor spirit premium msp automotive gas oil ago and lubricants are price elastic while fuel wood kerosene charcoal liquefied petroleum gas lpg and electricity are price inelastic kerosene is income elastic while fuel wood charcoal lpg electricity msp and ago are income inelastic the results also reveal fuel stack behaviour that is multiple fuel use among the households main policy implications of the results include increasing the penetration of alternative fuels as well as provision of more fiscal incentives to increase usage of cleaner fuels this not withstanding however the household income should be increased beyond a certain point for the household to completely shift and use a new fuel

income dynamics in argentina during the 1990 s mobiles did change over time in this paper we seek to determine the principal observed socioeconomic factors correlated with household income dynamics in argentina during the nineties in other words we want to identify who got ahead who fell behind and who kept up economic position in argentina in order to determine if they were always the same type of individuals households or if on the contrary their characteristics changed during the distressing 1990 s such analysis is relevant since the rises and falls in income or consumption experienced by households are the most direct indicators available of who benefits how much from economic development although there is a vast literature on income distribution analysis from a cross sectional perspective studies offering insights into the dynamics of income or more generally of economic well being and the factors associated with it are still on the research agenda for many countries such work has been particularly delayed in developing countries chiefly because of a lack of panel data surveys which have only recently begun to be carried out in a more systematic way 4 moreover and again due to data restraints even less is known about the possible changes in the dynamics of income over time if mobility analysis requires at least two observations over time from the same household or

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

how serious is the neglect of intrahousehold inequality in this report the authors develop a framework for assessing the consequences of ignoring intrahousehold inequality in the measurement and analysis of poverty and inequality they apply this framework to data for the philippines and conclude that 1 the result of neglecting intrahousehold inequality will probably be considerable understatement of the levels of poverty and inequality with the philippine data measured levels of inequality and poverty were off 30 percent as a result of ignoring intrahousehold variation and 2 patterns of inequality revealed by household level data are somewhat different from patterns revealed by individual level data but the differences seem not to be dramatic to confirm these results the exercise should be repeated with data from other countries

the distribution of income shocks during crises an application of quantile analysis to mexico 1992 95 moving beyond the simple comparisons of averages typical of most analyses of household income shocks this article employs quantile analysis to generate a complete distribution of such shocks by type of household during the 1995 crisis in mexico it compares the distributions across normal and crisis periods to see whether observed differences were due to the crisis or are intrinsic to the household types alternatively it asks whether the distribution of shocks during normal periods was a reasonable predictor of vulnerability to income shocks during crises it finds large differences in the distribution of shocks by household types both before and during the crisis but little change in their relative positions during the crisis the impact appears to have been spread fairly evenly households headed by people with less education poor single mothers or people working in the informal sector do not appear to experience disproportionate income drops either in normal times or during crises

engel curves household characteristics and low user tariff schemes in natural gas abstract we explore the relative importance of income and household characteristics such as family size in explaining differences in household consumption of natural gas and lpg in a simple model of vertically willingness to pay ordered households we posit that the relative importance of the income elasticity of demand vs the family size elasticity depends positively on the price faced by households thus very low prices tend to depress the across households income elasticity of demand relative to the characteristic elasticity and the opposite holds for under high prices we test this hypothesis using for the first time in argentina data from the household expenditure survey on natural gas and lpg and compare the cross consumption equations for both fuels which have quite different price regimes finally we explore welfare implications for low user tariff scheme reforms in natural gas

human capital and economic development abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital human capital accumulation lowers mortality inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling and the rate of return to schooling and positively to fertility the data indicate a negative relationship between tfp growth and schooling accumulation the model fits the data on country populations per capita incomes human capital total fertility rates infant mortality life expectancy and conditional life expectancy

assessing the effect of microfinance on vulnerability and poverty among low income households we empirically investigate whether participation in the indian self help group shg microfinance programme has helped reduced poverty and household vulnerability using cross sectional shg rural household survey data the potential selection bias is eliminated by propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment on treated effect using nearest neighbour matching and a local linear regression algorithm we find that vulnerability in shg members is not significantly higher than in non shg members even though the shg members have a high incidence of poverty however vulnerability declines significantly for those that have been shg members for more than one year these results are found to be robust using sensitivity analysis and the rosenbaum bounds method

the distribution of income shocks during crises moving beyond the simple comparisons of averages typical of most analyses of household income shocks this article employs quantile analysis to generate a complete distribution of such shocks by type of household during the 1995 crisis in mexico it compares the distributions across normal and crisis periods to see whether observed differences were due to the crisis or are intrinsic to the household types alternatively it asks whether the distribution of shocks during normal periods was a reasonable predictor of vulnerability to income shocks during crises it finds large differences in the distribution of shocks by household types both before and during the crisis but little change in their relative positions during the crisis the impact appears to have been spread fairly evenly households headed by people with less education poor single mothers or people working in the informal sector do not appear to experience disproportionate income drops either in normal times or during crises

measuring vulnerability to asset poverty in sub saharan africa summary this paper presents a methodology to measure vulnerability to asset poverty using repeated cross section data age cohort decomposition techniques focusing on second order moments can be used to identify and estimate the variance of shocks on assets and therefore the probability of being poor in the future estimates from the ghana living standard surveys show that expected asset poverty is a reliable proxy for expected consumption poverty applying the methodology to eight demographic health surveys countries households in rural areas are found to be unambiguously more vulnerable to poverty than those in urban areas

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

demand for space heating in apartment blocks measuring effects of policy measures aiming at reducing energy consumption abstract panel data covering the period 1984 1995 on energy consumption and technical characteristics of apartment blocks from denmark are analysed in order to measure effects of policy measures aimed at reducing the consumption of energy for space heating results indicate that building regulations have been important in reducing energy consumption in new buildings furthermore conditional price responses are estimated to be relatively small or non existent indicating small short run effects of fuel taxes on energy consumption in apartment blocks finally a consultancy scheme implemented with the purpose of improving knowledge about the potential for energy savings is found to have had moderate effects

the effects of the energy price reform on households consumption in iran abstract the substantial subsidizing of energy prices over the years has led to high energy consumption inefficiencies fiscal pressures and environmental problems in iran to address the increasing socio economic problems associated with the energy subsidies the government embarked on an aggressive energy price reform through which energy subsidies were removed and cash handouts were given to all households in 2010 in this paper i analyze the effectiveness of the energy price reform in iran by estimating energy demand elasticities for households in different income groups i apply a two stage consumer optimization model and estimate the system of energy expenditures shares using the household budget survey data for the period 2001 2008 the results show that the overall price elasticities of demand are small but income elasticities are close to one the results also indicate heterogeneous responses to energy price and income changes in different income groups specifically the urban households show stronger response to price changes but rural households particularly mid income households to income changes these findings suggest that the current policy of price increases would not solely be able to reduce energy consumption and therefore it should be geared towards increasing energy efficiency through a series of price and non price measures

markets in china and europe on the eve of the industrial revolution prevailing views suggest the industrial revolution began in europe because markets had gradually become more efficient and by the 18th century the scope of economic activity was far larger than in other parts of the world this paper compares the actual performance of markets in europe and china two regions of the world that were relatively advanced in the pre industrial period but would start to industrialize about 150 years apart the analysis covers economies that account for about two fifths of the world s population in the mid 18th century and it considers some three centuries of data our findings suggest that relative levels of market function in china and europe were similar prior to the industrial revolution higher efficiency in europe is seen only in the nineteenth century when industrialization was already underway moreover these improvements occurred in a dramatic and sudden fashion further casting doubt on an evolutionary view of market development rather than being a key condition for subsequent growth gains in efficiency appeared simultaneously with the turning point of modern growth we discuss the implications of these findings for a number of explanations for long run growth and the industrial revolution

interactions in swiss households energy demand a holistic approach abstract this article analyzes the interactions and possible trade offs between direct energy consumption and embodied energy requirement of households in switzerland in order to assess the net impacts of standard energy policies focusing exclusively on direct energy use direct and embodied energy demand of swiss households are estimated by combining consumption data of a national expenditure survey with data on energy intensity from life cycle analysis using a system of equations and an instrumental variable approach we find that both domains are driven by same determinants but that there is no evidence for significant substitution between them we also find an increasing effect of income on both domains with particularly important effects on embodied energy from a policy perspective our findings highlight a concern that economic growth could bring about an increasing global energy demand through energy requirement for non energy commodities however the wide spread policies targeting direct energy are unlikely to cause a substantial shift in household consumption to embodied energy

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

the needham puzzle why the industrial revolution did not originate in china one of the most intriguing issues for students of chinese history and comparative economic history is why did the industrial revolution not occur in china in the fourteenth century at that time almost every element that economists and historians usually considered to be a major contributing factor to the industrial revolution in late eighteenth century england also existed in china chinese civilization like the civilizations of mesopotamia egypt and india originated from agriculture the first unified empire qin was formed in 221 b c by 300 b c chinese society had developed into a form that had many characteristics of a market economy with most land privately owned a high degree of social division of labor fairly free movement of labor and well functioning factor and product markets this comparatively developed market economy probably created important attitudes toward profit and contributed to the swift diffusion of the best technology in the han dynasty 206 b c a d 220 the iron tipped plow moldboard and seed drill were widely used in the northern part of china where the main crops were millet and wheat the most significant improvements in chinese agriculture came with the population shift from the north to the rice growing areas south of the yangtze river that started at the beginning of the ninth century and especially after the introduction of a new variety known as champa rice from indochina at the beginning of the eleventh century 2 this variety characterized by better drought resistance and faster ripening enabled farmers to extend the agricultural frontier from the lowlands deltas basins and river valleys to the better watered hill areas and allowed production of two and even three crops a year 3

one kind of freedom poverty dynamics in post apartheid south africa abstract a 1993 south african living standards survey documented the legacy of apartheid in the form high levels of inequality and human insecurity drawing on a 1998 re survey of households in the 1993 study this paper explores whether this legacy has been superseded or whether apartheid s end has been only one kind of freedom that has left households in a poverty trap from which they cannot escape after proposing a theoretically grounded dynamic poverty typology that distinguishes stochastic from structural poverty transitions the paper goes on to estimate that significant numbers of the south african poor are potentially trapped in a structural poverty trap and lack the means to escape poverty over time

identifying vulnerability to poverty a critical survey in the economic literature on poverty various methods have been proposed for measuring a phenomenon known as vulnerability however after more than a quarter century of research no consensus has been reached on how to identify such vulnerable individuals within a given population some misunderstandings have also arisen from the overlapping of other closely related concepts such as the expectation of being poor expected poverty multi period poverty and risk exposure this paper offers a detailed conceptual discussion on vulnerability to poverty and its related elements reviewing a wide range of identifying criteria provided in the literature it is found that according to the state of the art in this field of research two key elements stand out in identifying vulnerable individuals an expected well being below the poverty line and a relevant risk of falling into poverty due to downside deviation from a reference level of well being the traditional classification of vulnerability approaches has been updated into four groups i those that stress the element of exposure to risk ii those that emphasize the element of expected poverty iii those that define vulnerability through a utility gap and iv those that are supported by a mean risk dominance criterion

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

the response of latino immigrants to the great recession occupational and residential im mobility during the great recession in the us there were distinct housing and labour markets that were particularly hard hit this was primarily due to the fact that the housing industry had fueled much of the recent economic growth this article takes advantage of the shock to the construction industry to investigate the responses of latino immigrants in metropolitan areas that were most heavily concentrated with latino immigrants in the construction industry as expected there were large declines in the proportion of the latino immigrant population that was working in the construction industry during the recession there were some shifts of employment in the industry after the recession but the biggest change was in the number of unemployed while declines in construction jobs did predict moving out of a metropolitan area decline in the overall job market had a larger impact on mobility finally we find evidence that those who moved out of the metropolitan area were less likely to be employed although it i

household level consumption in urban ethiopia the effects of a large food price shock summary we use survey data to investigate how urban households in ethiopia coped with the food price shock in 2008 qualitative data indicate that the high food price inflation was by far the most adverse economic shock between 2004 and 2008 and that a significant proportion of households had to adjust food consumption in response regression results indicate that households with low asset levels and casual workers were particularly adversely affected by high food prices we interpret the results as pointing to the importance of growth in the formal sector so as to generate more well paid and stable jobs

a three dimensional model of residential energy consumer archetypes for local energy policy design in the uk this paper reviews major studies in three traditional lines of research in residential energy consumption in the uk i e economic infrastructure behaviour and load profiling based on the review the paper proposes a three dimensional model for archetyping residential energy consumers in the uk by considering property energy efficiency levels the greenness of household behaviour of using energy and the duration of property daytime occupancy with the proposed model eight archetypes of residential energy consumers in the uk have been identified they are pioneer greens follower greens concerned greens home stayers unconscientious wasters regular wasters daytime wasters and disengaged wasters using a case study these archetypes of residential energy consumers demonstrate the robustness of the 3 d model in aiding local energy policy intervention design in the uk

does access to formal finance matter for welfare and inequality micro level evidence from nigeria using a treatment effects model decomposition techniques and representative household data from nigeria we study the welfare and inequality implications of access to formal finance while improving household welfare formal access to finance increases inter household inequalities despite ameliorating the inequality enhancing effect of urban residence and enhancing the inequality ameliorating effect of greater educational attainment the positive effect of access to formal finance on inequality is smaller than the effect of unobserved household characteristics indicating that welfare and equality enhancing strategies should follow a holistic approach as opposed to one focusing on one isolated policy variable at a time

saving in developing countries theory and review in the literature on economic development much of the interest in saving has been focused on the relation between saving and growth but saving is not only about accumulation it is about smoothing consumption in the face of volatile and unpredictable income and helping to ensure the living standards of poor people whose lives are difficult and uncertain this paper develops a model of households which cannot borrow but which accumulate assets as a buffer stock to protect consumption when incomes are low such households dissave as often as they save do not accumulate assets over the long term and have on average very small asset holdings but their consumption is markedly smoother than their income much of the evidence is as consistent with this view of saving as it is incosistent with standard views of smoothing over the life cycle and with explanations of the link between saving and growth in terms of life cycle saving behavior consumption smoothing is also a useful way of thinking about government policy where volatility in the world prices of taxed commodities can generate sharp fluctuations in government revenues as well as reallocations of revenue between the private and public sectors many important policy issues in developing countries hinge on issues of consumption and smoothing and research on these issues is currently likely to be more productive than work on the relation between saving and growth

consumption smoothing and vulnerability in russia applying bootstrapped quantile regression to the russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms data we examine the channels through which individuals experience and seek to cope with changes in consumption we find that married individuals living in small households with educated heads in urban areas are better equipped to smooth consumption investigating the impact of idiosyncratic shocks we find that the labour market is an important transmission mechanism allowing households to smooth their consumption but also exposing them to risk mainly through job loss outside of pension payments the formal social safety net does not facilitate consumption smoothing thus heightening the importance of informal coping institutions it transpires that both support from relatives friends and home production act as important insurance mechanisms for the most vulnerable

data watch the world bank s living standards measurement study household surveys since 1985 the world bank has been collecting household survey data in developing countries that provide a rich source of information for assessing household welfare understanding household behavior and evaluating the impact of government policies this article describes these household surveys known as living standards measurement study lsms surveys and explains how to obtain their data lsms surveys have been implemented in over twenty developing countries and have been used to analyze poverty labor markets health and education pricing policies determinants of school performance savings and consumption smoothing health and nutrition policies and gender and fertility issues

economic reform growth and the poor evidence from rural ethiopia abstract a new decomposition of poverty changes is developed to analyse the determinants of poverty changes during a period of economic reform 1989 1995 in villages in ethiopia poverty fell substantially but with diverse experiences across villages shocks mattered but the main factors driving consumption changes were relative prices changes resulting in changes in the returns to land labour human capital and location the experience of the poor is mixed one group of the poor in 1989 with relatively good land and location outperformed all other households while another group with much poorer endowments and location experienced virtually unchanged and persistent poverty

consumer demand and the role of labour supply and durables in this article i test empirically whether intratemporal preferences between 1 nondurables and labour supply and 2 nondurables and housing are separable in doing so careful attention is paid to the potential endogeneity of the total budget labour supply and housing for housing i offer two separate solutions to the problem of correlation between house size proxied by number of rooms and unobserved heterogeneity first instrument with a children s sex composition dummy and second select on households residing in public housing the results strongly reject separability between nondurables and labour supply for nondurables and housing the results are more mixed

price and income elasticities of demand for passenger transport fuels in spain implications for public policies abstract the significant increase in passenger transport activity cars experienced by spain and its associated increase in energy consumption have several associated negative aspects including a greater dependence on foreign energy sources and higher ghg emissions therefore reducing the level of transport activity would bring important socioeconomic and environmental benefits the aim of this paper which focuses on energy consumption in the passenger transport is fourfold 1 to provide a diagnostic of energy consumption in the spanish passenger transport system and the related problems 2 to develop a model to calculate price and income elasticities of demand for transport fuel 3 to apply this model to the spanish passenger transport sector 4 to infer policy recommendations derived from the results of the diagnostic and the model it is claimed that in view of those low price elasticities and high income elasticities and if a reduction in the scale of transport activity is deemed socially desirable a combination of instruments is necessary fuel taxes play an important role within this combination apart from their long term effects the low price elasticity of demand for transport fuel would allow the collection of a significant amount of revenues which could eventually be earmarked to encourage reductions in private transport demand and modal shifts with other instruments

transport costs and the geography of arbitrage in eighteenth century china trade has been considered a condition for growth and development a view that might have merits in explaining the rise of the western world i use a new data set from archival sources of eighteenth century china to revisit this question this analysis suggests previous studies of market integration which attribute much growth to a reduction in transport costs have overestimated these effects ifind the overall level of market integration in china was higher than previously thought and intertemporal effects are important substitutes for trade both factors reduce the importance of trade as a unique explanation for subsequent growth jel 013 018 r1l n25

nobel lecture the economic way of looking at behavior an important step in extending the traditional theory of individual rational choice to analyze social issues beyond those usually considered by economists is to incorporate into the theory a much richer class of attitudes preferences and calculations while this approach to behavior builds on an expanded theory of individual choice it is not mainly concerned with individuals it uses theory at the micro level as a powerful tool to derive implications at the group or macro level the lecture describes the approach and illustrates it with examples drawn from my past and current work

price and income elasticities of residential energy demand in germany we apply a quadratic expenditure system to estimate price and expenditure elasticities of residential energy demand electricity and heating in germany using official expenditure data from 1993 to 2008 we estimate an expenditure elasticity for electricity of 0 3988 and of 0 4055 for space heating the own price elasticity for electricity is 0 4310 and 0 5008 in the case of space heating disaggregation of households by expenditure and demographic composition reveals that the behavioural response to energy price changes is weaker stronger for low income top income households there are considerable economies of scale in residential energy use but scale effects are not well approximated by the new oedc equivalence scale real increases in energy prices show a regressive pattern of incidence implying that the welfare consequences of direct energy taxation are larger for low income households the application of zero elasticities in assessments of welfare consequences of energy taxation strongly underestimates potential welfare effects the increase in inequality is 22 smaller when compared to the application of rich and disaggregated behavioural response patterns as estimated in this paper