an analysis of the optimum renewable energy portfolio using the bottom up model focusing on the electricity generation sector in south korea abstract the deployment of renewable energy is considered as one of the important alternative solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by electricity generation as one of the key measures for promoting the deployment of renewable energy the renewable portfolio standard rps which obligates power operators with a power equipment capacity of 500 mw or larger excluding renewable energy equipment to supply over a specific portion of their total electricity generation output in the form of renewable energy was enacted in south korea in 2012 however there are still many disputes concerning the appropriate renewable energy deployment goal and the optimum portfolio for each renewable energy source which enable to minimize the economic burden while achieving the deployment target therefore this paper intends to deduce the optimum portfolio up to 2050 based on explicit representation of renewable energy technologies and analyze the cost effect using the bottom up energy system analysis model of electricity generation sector in south korea the result indicates that the potential for a reduction of the cost of pv was the highest and that in the long term it would account for the highest portion of the renewable energy portfolio as it was the most cost competitive technology the additional cost for increasing the renewable deployment target 20 compared with the 3rd energy basic plan was predicted to be between 107 and 115 usd mw h therefore the renewable energy will be able to play a greater role in reducing ghg emission if the r d to reduce investment and operation cost of pv and wind power is conducted successfully

green spillovers of outward foreign direct investment on home countries evidence from china s province level data abstract in recent years there has been substantial outward foreign direct investment ofdi from china to other countries meanwhile china has taken green development as one of its core future strategies questions arise as to whether the ofdi of china brings green spillovers towards home and should the government encourage ofdi to further promote the domestic green economy to answer these questions this study examines empirically the reverse spillovers of china s ofdi on its domestic green development based on a panel dataset involving 30 provinces provincial green total factor productivity gtfp is calculated and its relationship with ofdi is discussed for the period of 2006 2015 then the main results demonstrate whether china s ofdi has green spillovers on the domestic economy and to what extent they depend on provincial heterogeneity in terms of absorptive capability and environmental regulation stringency at the national level it is only either when employees in every province have more than 12 years of schooling on average or the environmental legal construction index reaches approximately 611 that china s ofdi can generate significant spillovers towards its green economic growth such that a rise of 1 unit of ofdi is associated with 2 4 and 3 2 increases in gtfp respectively moreover green benefits from ofdi cannot be found in the home country unless the stock of ofdi reaches a certain level i e beyond approximately 3361 chinese yuan rmb per capita at the 2005 constant price at the provincial level the influence of ofdi on the green economy in the eastern provinces is greater than that in other provinces additionally this study finds that the relationships between ofdi absorptive capability environmental regulation stringency and green economic growth are robust to multiple econometric methods and alternative proxies for threshold variables overall it is indicated that china s ofdi does bring green spillovers to china but the current effects show large heterogeneities across provinces and are still very limited due to the lack of necessary supporting conditions even with the dramatically rising scale ofdi in most of chinese provinces has only small effects on local transition to the green economy calling for the formulation of proper policies to encourage ofdi and enhance its green spillover effect

res and risk renewable energy s contribution to energy security a portfolio based approach abstract during the first decade of the 21st century renewable energy sources res had been gaining momentum due to environmental issues concerns about pollution and climate change have raised public awareness encouraging governments to adopt policies to preserve and protect the environment regarding energy res promotion together with energy efficiency measures has been the main policy response to address such concerns as a consequence res development during the first decade of the 21st century has been remarkable although res deployment has been mainly focused on achieving environmental goals its potential contribution to energy security went not unnoticed however it is worth noting that while the trade off between environmental goals and the use of res to accomplish them and competitiveness has been widely explored the relationship between energy security and res has received less attention both at the conceptual and energy policy levels this article tries to address such a relationship the present article focuses on renewable electricity imports as illustrated by the case of the mediterranean solar plan after introducing the energy security energy risk concept and its dimensions the article focuses on the contribution of res in terms of security of supply for a given energy mix using the portfolio theory most of the analyses of the interactions between res and energy security focus on the national level with res being mainly conceived as a substitute for fuel imports to produce electricity and reduce so called energy dependence however new transmission technologies allow the import of electricity directly from neighbouring countries far out of the range of regular electricity lines therefore this article tries to broaden the analysis of energy security to international res trade flows applying the previous discussion to the main project involving significant international green electricity trade the mediterranean solar plan

public prioritisation of energy affordability in the uk much research has focused on the so called energy trilemma i e three leading energy policy issues energy security affordability and climate change mitigation whilst substantial understanding exists of why people support climate friendly energy policies little is known about why they think affordability is important particularly what leads members of the public to identify this policy goal as more important than other objectives here we examine this question via a nationally representative survey of 2441 uk residents and demonstrate that concerns about personal costs explain a small amount of variation in the prioritisation of affordability as an energy policy goal a range of other factors also significantly contribute one such factor is beliefs about who is responsible for energy transitions these findings suggest policy actions to address affordability concerns should go beyond energy prices and include additional considerations such as distributive justice and equality

measuring contagion between energy market and stock market during financial crisis a copula approach abstract in this paper we apply time varying copulas to investigate whether a contagion effect existed between energy and stock markets during the recent financial crisis using the wti oil spot price the s p500 index the shanghai stock market composite index and the shenzhen stock market component index returns evidence was found for a significantly increasing dependence between crude oil and stock markets after the failure of lehman brothers thus supporting the existence of contagion in the sense of forbes and rigobon s 2002 definition moreover increased tail dependence and symmetry characterize all the paired markets this indicates that significant increases in tail dependence are an actual dimension of the contagion phenomenon and that crude oil and stock prices are linked to the same degree regardless of whether markets are booming or crashing during the sample period finally the contagion effect is found to be much weaker for china than the us the empirical results have potentially important implications for risk management

exploring the effect of producer services agglomeration on china s energy efficiency under environmental constraints abstract this paper makes an empirical analysis of the effect of producer services agglomeration on china s energy efficiency under environmental constraints eee by using spatial durbin model the results show that at the national level the urbanization agglomeration of producer services not only improves the local eee significantly but also has an obvious spatial spillover effect on the surrounding regions while the localization agglomeration of producer services is only beneficial to the improvement of the local eee from the regional perspective both the urbanization and localization agglomeration of producer services show significant promotion effect and spatial spillover effect on china s eee in the east region and the promotion effect of the urbanization agglomeration of producer services is greater while the improvement of eee in the central and west regions mainly depend on the mar externality of producer services agglomeration and its spatial spillover effects are not obvious moreover the above empirical results exhibit strong robustness based on these empirical findings this paper puts forward some specific suggestions for improving china s eee so as to achieve the multi win of economic growth energy conservation and environmental protection the study contributes to improving the environmental quality and speeding up the construction of beautiful china

estimating value at risk of crude oil price and its spillover effect using the ged garch approach estimation has been carried out using garch type models based on the generalized error distribution ged for both the extreme downside and upside value at risks var of returns in the wti and brent crude oil spot markets furthermore according to a new concept of granger causality in risk a kernel based test is proposed to detect extreme risk spillover effect between the two oil markets results of an empirical study indicate that the ged garch based var approach appears more effective than the well recognized hsaf i e historical simulation with arma forecasts moreover this approach is also more realistic and comprehensive than the standard normal distribution based var model that is commonly used results reveal that there is significant two way risk spillover effect between wti and brent markets supplementary study indicates that at the 99 confidence level when negative market news arises that brings about a slump in oil price return historical information on risk in the wti market helps to forecast the brent market conversely it is not the case when positive news occurs and returns rise historical information on risk in the two markets can facilitate forecasts of future extreme market risks for each other these results are valuable for anyone who needs evaluation and forecasts of the risk situation in international crude oil markets

persistence in natural gas consumption in the us an unobserved component model abstract this article re examines the persistence in natural gas consumption using an alternative methodology in particular we report estimates of an unobserved components model in which hysteresis exists if cyclical and natural gas consumptions do not evolve independently in addition this framework is also extended by using the nonlinear approach in which nonlinearities are introduced by allowing past cyclical component to have a different impact on the natural component depending on the regime in a linear framework our results seem to indicate that hysteresis does not exist however when non linearity is taken into account we provide evidence in favor of hysteresis in natural gas consumption when the variations in natural gas consumption are above the threshold value we also selectively survey the empirical literature that examines the long term properties of energy series in order to put our contribution in perspective

great expectations the subjective well being of rural urban migrants in china summary this paper is among the first to link the literatures on migration and on subjective well being in developing countries it poses the question why do rural urban migrant households settled in urban china have an average happiness score lower than rural households three basic hypotheses are examined migrants had false expectations about their future urban conditions or about their future urban aspirations or about their future selves estimated happiness functions and decomposition analyses based on a 2002 national household survey indicate that certain features of migrant conditions make for unhappiness and that their high aspirations in relation to achievement influenced by their new reference groups also make for unhappiness although the possibility of selection bias among migrants cannot be ruled out it is apparently difficult for migrants to form unbiased expectations about life in a new and different world

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

determining factors of curtailment and purchasing energy related behaviours changing people s behaviour in relation to energy consumption will be one of the most important challenges in the near future we analyzed the determinants behind individuals decisions to adopt curtailment behaviour or to purchase energy saving products using data from 213 university students we explored the influence of personal capabilities and moral norms along with trust in information on energy saving actions provided by different entities on two energy saving behaviours the results of the statistical model emphasise how personal norms and trust in information provided by private companies on the one hand and family and friends on the other strongly influence the adoption of energy saving actions and curtailment behaviours the paper reveals the pivotal role of private companies in developing the market demand for energy saving products by providing credible and scientifically based information on environmental performance the paper also contributes to strengthening the reliability of value belief norm theory and emphasizes the role of trust in information as a contextual factor that influences the adoption of a pro environmental behaviour

labor migration and earnings differences the case of rural china this article presents empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that the decision of chinese rural people to migrate is affected by noneconomic forces using the 1820 rural household survey from sichuan province migration behavior and earnings are analyzed logistic probability models show that the decision to migrate is driven largely by the availability of rural non farm employment opportunities however if jobs are available in the province even at lower wages rural people will choose to stay rather than to migrate the major deterrent to migration is the lack of safety during transportation and in destination cities as well as forced separation from families moreover rural migrants are denied the legal right to reside permanently in cities furthermore findings reveal that although labor productivity in migrant activities is higher than it is in local non farm sectors the economic cost of migration in china is so high as to significantly limit reallocation one implication of this study is that without artificial barriers to labor migration the number of migratory workers would be higher since the important objective of the chinese government is to control rural to urban migration it is likely that restrictive migration policies will continue however putting aside the issue of social justice the economic efficiency loss under the chinese system should not be ignored

scaling up local energy infrastructure an agent based model of the emergence of district heating networks abstract the potential contribution of local energy infrastructure such as heat networks to the transition to a low carbon economy is increasingly recognised in international national and municipal policy creating the policy environment to foster the scaling up of local energy infrastructure is however still challenging despite national policy action and local authority interest the growth of heat networks in uk cities remains slow techno economic energy system models commonly used to inform policy are not designed to address institutional and governance barriers we present an agent based model of heat network development in uk cities in which policy interventions aimed at the institutional and governance barriers faced by diverse actors can be explored three types of project instigators are included municipal commercial and community which have distinct decision heuristics and capabilities and follow a multi stage development process scenarios of policy interventions developed in a companion modelling approach indicate that the effect of interventions differs between actors depending on their capabilities successful interventions account for the specific motivations and capabilities of different actors provide a portfolio of support along the development process and recognise the important strategic role of local authorities in supporting low carbon energy infrastructure

portfolio performance evaluation in a mean variance skewness framework abstract astronomical amounts of money are being invested in financial markets consequently the evaluation of portfolio performance has created a great deal of interest among practitioners as well as academic researchers the literature suggests that portfolio efficiency based on mean variance skewness is more desirable than the one based on mean variance however there are no well established procedures to measure efficiency in this framework mainly due to the computational difficulties the aim of this paper is to develop a portfolio performance measure based on mean variance skewness framework by utilizing a non parametric efficiency analysis tool namely data envelopment analysis

a portfolio risk analysis on electricity supply planning abstract conventional electricity planning selects from a range of alternative technologies based on the least cost method without assessing cost related risks the current approach to determining energy generation portfolios creates a preference for fossil fuel consequently this preference results in increased exposure to recent fluctuations in fossil fuel prices particularly for countries heavily depend on imported energy this paper applies portfolio theory in conventional electricity planning with taiwan as a case study the model objective is to minimize the risk weighted present value of total generation cost both the present value of generating cost and risk variance of the generating cost are considered risk of generating cost is introduced for volatile fuel prices and uncertainty of technological change and capital cost reduction the impact of risk levels on the portfolio of power generation technologies is also examined to provide some valuable policy suggestions study results indicate that replacing fossil fuel with renewable energy helps reduce generating cost risk however due to limited renewable development potential in taiwan there is an upper bound of 15 on the maximum share of renewable energy in the generating portfolio in the meantime reevaluating the current nuclear energy policy for reduced exposure to fossil fuel price fluctuations is worthwhile

share green growth regional evaluation of green output performance in china abstract reducing carbon emissions is much more difficult than reducing other pollutants through current technology promoting the efficiency of energy use and developing clean energy are the only two economically feasible approaches for the future however without low carbon technology pursuing green growth could negatively affect production activities in this study we develop a directional distance function ddf model based on the slacks of the output oriented slack based measure along an endogenously determined directional vector we can calculate the efficiency scores by reducing the undesirable output and expanding desirable output simultaneously the global malmquist index is integrated with the ddf model to capture the dynamic change of output performance based on the output performance of green growth we use counterfactual thinking to evaluate gdp losses caused by limiting carbon emissions the empirical study using the provincial data of china shows that technological progress not efficiency change pushes green growth in china we also find that pursuing green growth in china would lead to a gdp loss of 7 8 furthermore a sub regional analysis shows that the eastern regions were almost immune to the strict carbon control policy while the midwestern regions were affected severely to alleviate the gdp loss we offer suggestion on setting up a green growth sharing mechanism among regions

economic implications of using a mean var model for portfolio selection a comparison with mean variance analysis abstract we relate value at risk var to mean variance analysis and examine the economic implications of using a mean var model for portfolio selection when comparing two mean variance efficient portfolios the higher variance portfolio might have less var consequently an efficient portfolio that globally minimizes var may not exist surprisingly we show that it is plausible for certain risk averse agents to end up selecting portfolios with larger standard deviations if they switch from using variance to var as a measure of risk therefore regulators should be aware that var is not an unqualified improvement over variance as a measure of risk

optimal portfolio selection in a value at risk framework abstract in this paper we develop a portfolio selection model which allocates financial assets by maximising expected return subject to the constraint that the expected maximum loss should meet the value at risk limits set by the risk manager similar to the mean variance approach a performance index like the sharpe index is constructed furthermore when expected returns are assumed to be normally distributed we show that the model provides almost identical results to the mean variance approach we provide an empirical analysis using two risky assets us stocks and bonds the results highlight the influence of both non normal characteristics of the expected return distribution and the length of investment time horizon on the optimal portfolio selection

wages and employment in a segmented labor market this paper analyzes the impact of business cycle fluctuations on a labor market segmented into a unionized primary sector and a competitive secondary sector either permanent or temporary changes in real aggregate demand are shown to widen the intersectoral wage differential in recession and under reasonable specifications of key parameters to cause greater fluctuations of primary sector employment than secondary sector employment this pattern agrees with the stylized facts of the u s economy

optimal investment portfolio in renewable energy the spanish case abstract this article presents a model for investing in renewable energies in the framework of the spanish electricity market in a way that risk is minimised for the investor while returns are maximised the model outlined here is based on an economic model for calculating cash flows intended to obtain the internal rate of return irr of the different energies being studied wind photovoltaic mini hydro and thermo electrical the irrs obtained are considered the returns on investments while their standard deviations are considered associated risks in order to minimise risk a comprehensive portfolio of investments is created that includes all of the available energies by means of a system of linear equations the solution of the linear system is graphically checked using the efficient frontier method for the different financing options several case studies within the renewable energies plan per is its spanish abbreviation that is in force in spain in the period 2005 2010 are analysed in order to illustrate the method as are other case studies using different types of financing helping us to reach the pertinent conclusions

a data envelopment analysis based framework for the relative performance evaluation of competing crude oil prices volatility forecasting models abstract forecasts of crude oil prices volatility are important inputs to many decision making processes in application areas such as macroeconomic policy making risk management options pricing and portfolio management despite the fact that a large number of forecasting models have been designed to forecast crude oil prices volatility so far the relative performance evaluation of competing forecasting models remains an exercise that is unidimensional in nature to be more specific most studies tend to use several criteria and their measures to assess the relative performance of these models but competing models are always ranked by performance measure thus leading in general to different rankings for different criteria and to a situation where one cannot make an informed decision as to which model performs best with respect to all criteria under consideration the purpose of this paper is to propose a single ranking that takes account of several criteria using a data envelopment analysis framework our empirical results reveal that the unidimensional rankings for different criteria might differ significantly and that the multidimensional ranking of some models could be substantially different from their unidimensional rankings which highlights the importance of the proposed performance evaluation tool

a participatory approach to sustainable energy strategy development in a carbon intensive jurisdiction the case of nova scotia the need for governments to reduce the exposure of energy consumers to future increases in fossil fuel prices places urgent pressure on policy makers to deliver fundamental transformations in energy strategies particularly in jurisdictions with high dependency on fossil fuel sources dorian et al 2006 this transformation is unlikely without a high level of stakeholder engagement in the policy development process this paper describes two policy development processes recently undertaken in nova scotia in which the inclusion of stakeholder views was central to the approach the first delivered a new institutional framework for electricity energy efficiency involving the inception of an independent performance based administrator the second required the delivery of a strategy to significantly increase renewable energy generation in the province it involved recommendations for changes in institutional arrangements financial incentives and technological options this process was followed by new commitments to renewable energy developments new infrastructure for the importation of hydro electricity and the announcement of fits for ocean energy in both cases recommendations were made by an independent academic institution and the government responded directly to a majority of recommendations the paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and the implications for future energy policy making in carbon intensive jurisdictions

explaining the role of incumbent utilities in sustainable energy transitions a case study of the smart grid development in china abstract smart grids sgs have been widely recognized as an enabling technology for delivering sustainable energy transitions such transitions have given rise to more complex government utility consumer relationships however these stakeholder relationships remain largely under researched this paper critically examines and explains the role of incumbent utilities in sustainable energy transitions using sg developments in china as a case study we have three major findings first china has developed an incumbent led model for deploying sgs second two incumbents the major state owned grid companies act as enablers of sg deployment they are strategic first movers and infrastructure builders of sgs they have also developed five types of networks as they increasingly reach out to other state actors businesses and electricity consumers thirdly these two grid companies also act as a fundamental block to structural changes in socio technical regimes disincentives to these large existing grid companies coupled with excessive reliance on them to provide public goods have resulted in major weaknesses in china s incumbent led model our findings have clear policy implications innovation in regulating incumbents is needed in order to provide sufficient regulatory incentives for advancing sg developments in china

a distributional analysis of wage discrimination against migrant workers in china s urban labour market chinese internal migrants without a local hukou household registration are often discriminated against in the urban labour market this study examines the impacts of such discrimination on wage differentials and the distribution among urban locals urban migrants and rural migrants it uses an extended analytical framework of segmented labour market to examine the multiple segmentations between urban residents and rural migrants and between locals and non locals the results show that compared with urban locals rural migrants only face discrimination above the medium wage level while urban migrants face discrimination below the medium wage level but to a much lesser degree owing to structural differences in employment urban locals rather than migrant workers are discriminated against at other wage levels the results suggest that the hukou system still plays an important role in segmenting china s urban labour market the degree of discrimination against urban migrants relative to urban locals is greater than that against rural migrants relative to urban migrants this suggests that nowadays china s urban labour market is mainly characterised by the segmentation between locals and non locals rather than the segmentation between urban residents and rural migrants which was the case in the past

value at risk estimation of energy commodities a long memory garch evt approach abstract in this paper we evaluate value at risk var and expected shortfall es for crude oil and gasoline market we adopt three long memory models including figarch hygarch and fiaparch to forecast energy commodity volatility by capturing some volatility stylized fact such as long range memory heteroscedasticity asymmetry and fat tails then we consider extreme value theory which concentrates on the tail distribution rather than the entire distribution evt is considered as a potential framework for the separate treatment of tails of distributions which allows for asymmetry our results show that the fiaparch model with extreme value theory performs better in predicting the one day ahead var using the fitted long memory garch model and a simulation approach to estimate var for horizons over than one day backtesting results show that our approach still performs for lower estimation frequencies overall our findings confirm that taking into account long range memory asymmetry and fat tails in the behavior of energy commodity prices returns combined with filtering process such as evt are important in improving risk management assessments and hedging strategies in the high volatile energy market

segmentation or competition in china s urban labour market in china urban residents have traditionally been protected against labour marketcompetition from rural urban migrants over the period of urban economic reform rural urban migration was allowed to increase in order to ll the employment gap asgrowth of labour demand outstripped that of the resident labour force in urbanareas however as reforms gained pace and controls were lifted it is plausible thatcompetition for work between migrants and urban residents would have increased the paper examines whether the relationship is one of segmentation or competitionin the labour market it uses attitudinal responses from two urban surveys theurban workers who perceive competition from migrants are those who are mostvulnerable the ndings are consistent with the presence of continued labourmarket segmentation but suggest also that competition between the two groups isincreasing key words labour markets wages migration labour market segmentation chinajel classi cations j30 j40

performance replication of the spot energy index with optimal equity portfolio selection evidence from the uk us and brazilian markets abstract this paper reproduces the performance of a geometric average spot energy index by investing only in a subset of stocks from the dow jones composite average the ftse 100 and bovespa composite indexes and in two pools that include only energy sector stocks from the us and the uk respectively daily data are used and the index tracking problem for passive investment is addressed with two evolutionary algorithms the differential evolution algorithm and the genetic algorithm the performance of the suggested investment strategy is tested under three different scenarios buy and hold quarterly and monthly rebalancing accounting for transaction costs where necessary

the assessment the new energy paradigm during the 1980s and 1990s energy policy concentrated on privatization liberalization and competition in response to the underlying conditions of excess supply and low fossil fuels these conditions changed around 2000 in response to the coincidence of a structural upward shift in oil prices the aging of the assets network failures and greater import dependency the focus moved from asset sweating towards investment and has been accompanied by a paradigm shift in the objectives of energy policy towards security of supply and climate change this article sets out the implications for the choice of instruments and institutions in the context of liberalized markets in respect of security of supply and climate change market based instruments are advanced in the former capacity markets and in the latter carbon taxes and permits finally consideration is given to the case for a single integrated energy agency both to enhance credibility and to ensure consistency copyright 2005 oxford university press

a multi factor model with time varying and seasonal risk premiums for the natural gas market abstract in this paper we develop a quantitative model of the us natural gas market that explores its multi factor structure and its time varying and seasonal risk premiums with weekly spot and futures prices we show that three factors are preferred to describe the futures term structure and the time varying risk premiums are also significant moreover we found that the market implies a seasonal risk premium with two peaks and troughs in one year which is important to correctly price the futures by maturity month finally we link this seasonal risk premium to the uncertainty of the us natural gas demand and find a positive relationship between them these results reveal the complex aspect of the market and may have useful applications for other commodity sectors

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

an empirical analysis of the risk of crude oil imports in china using improved portfolio approach abstract this paper quantifies the diversification index of china s crude oil imports during the period 1996 2004 and explores the relationship between the monthly prices and brent crude oil cash prices accordingly we calculate the systematic and specific risks using portfolio theory of china s crude oil import over the period 1996 2004 because china s crude oil import increased rapidly since 1996 we improve upon the traditional portfolio theory and develop a risk index model of portfolio theory for crude oil imports in order to explore objectively the changes in china s crude oil import risks the results show that china s crude oil import risk is affected extensively by the fluctuation of international oil prices so the traditional portfolio theory is insufficient to measure china s crude oil import risk the improved portfolio theory risks index model reflects the effect of international oil prices diversification imports and geopolitics factors etc on crude oil import risk and changes in crude oil import risk therefore the risk index model of portfolio theory provides greater theoretical and methodological robustness as an indicator of china s crude oil import security than that offered from the application of traditional measures of dependence

evaluating the dynamic performance of energy portfolios empirical evidence from the dea directional distance function abstract in recent years the complex global energy commodity market has led to increased uncertainty for energy investment returns and tremendous challenges for investors to design appropriate energy portfolios therefore we employ four popular portfolio methods to determine energy portfolios based on daily fossil fuel futures prices during 2006 2015 moreover we use the dea window analysis method and dea directional distance function to comprehensively evaluate the dynamic performance of these energy portfolios based on the efficiency perspective the empirical results indicate that first to increase investment returns the mean variance method that exclusively emphasizes the maximization of returns shows the best performance however in order to decrease the volatility and risk of investment returns the mean variance method that aims to resist risk more than make profits and the bootstrap historical simulation value at risk var method have the best performance second when the global financial crisis broke out in the second half of 2008 and energy markets experienced a sharp downturn in the second half of 2014 the dea efficiency of energy portfolios appeared relatively lower than those of their neighboring periods regardless of which portfolio method is employed finally the average dea efficiencies of energy portfolios are all higher than those of single energy investment throughout the sample period except when the equally weighted method and the information entropy comprehensive index method are used meanwhile the mean variance method that prefers profit making to risk resisting possesses the highest average dea efficiency among various methods concerned

towards trust in regulation moving to a public value regulation abstract the uk government has committed itself to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions the challenge of successfully achieving a transition to a sustainable energy system in the context of the uk s largely privately owned energy industry rests on the ability of policy makers to encourage and enable the necessary changes or innovation at all levels of the energy system this paper argues that the uk s current dominant political paradigm or framework the regulatory state paradigm rsp and within it the role of the economic regulator ofgem acts as a fundamental block to this challenge the current economic regulatory system is based on trust in the market or on predicted albeit theoretical known outcomes to expand our regulatory system to one which can deliver a sustainable energy system requires innovation in a certain direction as opposed to any innovation that is the antithesis of the current process of regulation trust is required that ofgem the economic regulator will develop rules and incentives which deliver an agreed sustainable energy goal which is trusted to be the right goal this requires ofgem moving away from ex ante regulation to a type of regulation where all costs benefits and outcomes cannot be known beforehand and where they cannot necessarily be quantifiable this has very provisionally been called public value regulation pvr

a conditional dependence approach to co2 energy price relationships abstract this paper uses the conditional vine copula approach to model the dependence structure between european based carbon allowances and major energy prices it makes two central contributions to the related literature first we extend the previous works of reboredo 2013 2014 by allowing for complete coverage of energy markets including natural gas coal and electricity beyond the carbon oil dependencies second we simultaneously investigate the multivariate dependence among all variables in the system so that each of them can interact with the others based on a rich variety of bivariate copula functions the consideration of the electricity market in this context offers the possibility to gauge its influences through the computation of the fuel switching mechanism we mainly find that there is a reliable and positive link between coal and gas prices and between coal and oil prices with or without the presence of electricity prices while a weak and positive link is detected between brent and gas prices carbon prices co move only weakly with energy prices and their link to oil and gas prices is negative moreover the switch from coal to gas does not occur when the relative price of fuels taking into account carbon costs is assessed this happens because the fuel switching mechanism is still more costly than carbon abatement our findings remain intact when alternative electricity prices are used

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

a test of dual labor market theory despite substantial differences in their views of the appropriate policy response to the existence of poverty neither the proponents of dual market theory nor its critics have proposed potentially conclusive tests of the dual market hypothesis this paper presents a test of the two central propositions of dual market theory 1 the existence of two distinct labor markets with different wage setting mechanisms and 2 the existence of barriers to mobility between the labor markets we find considerable support for both hypothesis estimation of a switching model of wage determination with unknown regimes yields two distinct wage equations the one which most workers are associated with closely resembles the standard human capital regression with significant returns to education and experience the other equation is flat with no returns to human capital these two equations resemble the predictions of dual market theory for the primary and secondary markets respectively further we present evidence that at least some non white workers are involuntarily confined to the secondary market this crowding of minority workers into the low wage labor market accounts for a substantial portion of white non white wage differences we interpret these results as providing empirical support for the dual market hypothesis and for recent theoretical work on efficiency wagemodels in addition combining the efficiency wage argument with the observation that much of the white non white wage difference is explained by the exclusion of non whites from the primary sector suggests an explanation for the persistance of wage differences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

returns to scale and most productive scale size in dea with negative data abstract non parametric evaluation of returns to scale of production units in standard dea models becomes problematic when their underlying technologies involve negative data the methodology recently offered by allahyar and rostamy malkhalifeh 2015 hence after called arm model is of some help to deal with this issue however there are two shortcomings underlying the arm model first it may not be capable of locating all the production units exhibiting constant returns to scale and second it is also not able to determine most productive scale size in order to deal with these two shortcomings the current paper contributes to the dea literature in two ways first it makes a unifying attempt to propose a general non radial dea model to determine both the most productive scale size and the returns to scale characterizations of production units in the presence of negative data second the proposed model can be adapted in a dynamic dea technology setting to determine growth efficiency and returns to growth behavior of production units facing hyper competition in a new economy

the reemergence of segmented labor market theory according to dual labor market theory the labor market can be usefully described as consisting of two sectors a high wage primary sector with good working conditions stable employment and substantial returns to human capital variables such as education and experience and a low wage secondary sector with the opposite characteristics moreover primary jobs are rationed that is not all workers who are qualified for primary sector jobs and desire one can obtain one finally the sector of the labor market in which an individual is employed directly influences his or her tastes behavior patterns and cognitive abilities thus the dual labor market model or more generally segmented labor market models is simultaneously a description of the income distribution a claim about the absence of market clearing and a radical departure from the standard neoclassical assumption of fully rational actors and exogenously determined preferences while this last element is potentially the most interesting even its proponents fail to give it the attention it deserves and related work has not been incorporated into the segmented labor market model in this paper we therefore concentrate on the first two elements of the model segmented labor market theory was sufficiently popular in the late 1960 s and early 1970 s to be taken seriously by prominent mainstream labor economists however two influential and largely negative reviews glenn cain 1976 michael wachter 1974 portrayed the segmented labor market hypothesis as largely atheoretical and based at best on questionable statistical analysis it seems fair to say that even sympathetic mainstream critics felt that key insights from the segmented labor model could be incorporated into neoclassical analysis and that the remaining elements of the model did not form a sufficiently coherent theory to pose a challenge to the neoclassical model whatever the merits of this perception it is clear that advocates of the segmented labor market approach did not develop a formal theory which conformed to the standards of mainstream economists with some notable exceptions michael piore 1975 david gordon 1972 the work was atheoretical moreover the empirical methods used tended to fall outside the norm for example interviews observational studies and historical and institutional analysis advocates of the segmented labor market perspective mostly radical political economists chose instead to develop their own research program outside the mainstream the reemergence of segmented labor market theory is linked with the reversal of these two tendencies the theory has been pursued by economists using modern tools of imperfect information theory and state of the art econometrics as a result the approach has again attracted the attention of the mainstream even a few years ago it would have been a clairvoyant observer who predicted that lawrence summers would be working on a theoretical model of labor market duality with jeremy bulow 1986 that robert solow would count among his recent work a dual market model with ian mcdonald 1985 and that james heckman would publish an article in which he undertook an empirical test of a dual market model failed to reject the model and then devoted much of the rest of the article to attacking his and other tests of the dual labor market view see his article with v joseph hotz 1986 since the theoretical developments are largely associated with efficiency wage and departments of economics university of california berkeley ca 94720 and nber and boston university 270 bay state road boston ma 02215 and nber respectively this study was supported in part by nsf grant no ses 8606139 lang acknowledges support from a sloan faculty research fellowship dickens acknowledges support from the institute of industrial relations at berkeley

market power in renewable portfolio standards abstract renewable portfolio standard rps which requires a certain percentage of electricity production from renewables has received considerable attention one emerging issue is the possibility of strategic behavior in the renewable energy certificate credit rec market and its spillover effects on the electricity market this paper develops dominant firm competitive fringe models that account for market power we show that market power could have significant impacts on the rec and power prices in particular when a nonrenewable generator is a dominant firm and a renewable generator is a competitive fringe the nonrenewable firm has a strong incentive to lower the rec price even to zero for avoiding rec costs the zero rec price would negate price impacts in the power market thereby mitigating market power of the dominant firm however this could lead to an underinvestment in renewables in the long run as subsidies received by renewables in form of recs vanish therefore regulatory agencies need to carefully oversee the market performance to ensure a healthy development of renewable industries under the rps policies

public policy influence on renewable energy investments a panel data study across oecd countries this paper examines the impact of public policy measures on renewable energy re investments in electricity generating capacity made by institutional investors using a novel combination of datasets and a longitudinal research design we investigate the influence of different policy measures in a sample of oecd countries to suggest an effective policy mix which could tackle failures in the market for clean energy the results call for technology specific policies which take into account actual market conditions and technology maturity to improve the conditions for institutional investments advisable policy instruments include economic and fiscal incentives such as feed in tariffs fit especially for less mature technologies additionally market based instruments such as greenhouse gas ghg emission trading systems for mature technologies should be included these policy measures directly impact the risk and return structure of re projects supplementing these with regulatory measures such as codes and standards e g rps and long term strategic planning could further strengthen the context for re investments

portfolio optimization under loss aversion abstract we present an integrated methodological approach for selecting portfolios the proposed methodology is focused on incorporation of investor s preferences in the mean risk framework we propose a risk measure calculated with the downside part of the portfolio return distribution which we argue captures better the practical behavior of the loss averse investor we establish its properties study the link with stochastic dominance criteria point out the relations with conditional value at risk and lower partial moment of first order and give the explicit formula for the case of scenario based portfolio optimization the proposed methodology involves two stages firstly the investment opportunity set efficient frontier is determined and secondly one single preferred efficient portfolio is selected namely the one having the highest expected utility value three classes of utility functions with loss aversion corresponding to three types of investors are considered the empirical study is targeted on assessing the differences between the efficient frontier of the proposed model and the classical mean variance mean cvar and mean lpm1 frontiers we firstly analyze the loss of welfare incurred by using another model instead of the proposed one and measure the corresponding gain loss of utility secondly we assess how much the portfolios really differ in terms of their compositions using a dissimilarity index based on the 1 norm we describe and interpret the optimal solutions obtained and emphasize the role and influence of loss aversion parameters values and of constraints three types of constraints are studied no short selling allowed a certain degree of diversification imposed and short selling allowed

an investigation of the labor market earnings of panamanian males evaluating sources of inequality this paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of labor market earnings and inequality for males in panama using newly available microdata we estimate earnings equations based on the measurement framework of mincer 1974 and compare them with those for other countries at various stages of economic development we present evidence on two aspects of inequality in less developed economies labor market segmentation and social stratification we present tests of the segmentation hypothesis including several of the dual labor market hypotheses and discuss their inherent ambiguity we also present evidence on the importance of family background for earnings determination and educational attainment

on socioeconomic causes of wait unemployment abstract this paper discusses implications of wait unemployment in a two sector model with a dual labour market primary sector firms pay efficiency wages the wage rate in the secondary sector is determined by labour supply and demand most queueing models assume that workers for the primary sector are only recruited from the pool of unemployed instead this paper explains wait unemployment by assuming that people care about their relative status in society the model is presented in general terms and a closed form solution is obtained by specifying functional forms the results emphasize the need for proper manpower policies to reduce structural unemployment

the dynamic volatility spillover between european carbon trading market and fossil energy market abstract with the rapid spread of carbon trading in the world the interaction of carbon prices and fossil energy prices has raised growing attention but little research has discussed their time varying correlation and dynamic volatility spillover this paper employs the threshold dynamic conditional correlation dcc generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity garch model and the full baba engle kraft and kroner bekk garch model to explore these issues for the daily data of european carbon futures prices and the three fossil energy prices coal natural gas and brent oil from january 2 2008 to september 30 2014 the results indicate that first there is significant unidirectional volatility spillover from coal market to carbon market and from carbon market to natural gas market whereas there exists no significant volatility spillover between carbon market and brent oil market second carbon market and fossil energy markets have significantly positive correlation across time specifically among the three fossil fuels coal market has the highest correlation with carbon market followed by natural gas and brent oil markets finally as for the three fossil fuels their price decrease may have stronger impact on carbon price volatility than their price increase with the same degree while there is asymmetric impact of carbon price increase and decrease only on brent oil price volatility these results may help investors to well configure their portfolios and manage their investment risks and help emission trading installations to join in carbon market in a cost effective way

a monte carlo based decision support tool for assessing generation portfolios in future carbon constrained electricity industries abstract this paper presents a novel decision support tool for assessing future generation portfolios in an increasingly uncertain electricity industry the tool combines optimal generation mix concepts with monte carlo simulation and portfolio analysis techniques to determine expected overall industry costs associated cost uncertainty and expected co 2 emissions for different generation portfolio mixes the tool can incorporate complex and correlated probability distributions for estimated future fossil fuel costs carbon prices plant investment costs and demand including price elasticity impacts the intent of this tool is to facilitate risk weighted generation investment and associated policy decision making given uncertainties facing the electricity industry applications of this tool are demonstrated through a case study of an electricity industry with coal ccgt and ocgt facing future uncertainties results highlight some significant generation investment challenges including the impacts of uncertain and correlated carbon and fossil fuel prices the role of future demand changes in response to electricity prices and the impact of construction cost uncertainties on capital intensive generation the tool can incorporate virtually any type of input probability distribution and support sophisticated risk assessments of different portfolios including downside economic risks it can also assess portfolios against multi criterion objectives such as greenhouse emissions as well as overall industry costs

the environmental and cost implications of solar energy preferences in renewable portfolio standards abstract many state level renewable portfolio standards rps include preferences for solar generation with goals of increasing the generation diversity reducing solar costs and encouraging local solar industries depending on their policy design these preferences can impact the rps program costs and emissions reduction this study evaluates the impact of these policies on costs and emissions coupling an economic dispatch model with optimized renewable site selection three policy designs of an increased rps in michigan are investigated 1 20 solar carve out 2 5 distributed generation solar carve out and 3 3 solar multiplier the 20 solar carve out scenario was found to increase rps costs 28 while the 5 distributed generation solar carve out increased costs by 34 both of these solar preferences had minimal impact on total emissions the 3 solar multiplier decreases total rps program costs by 39 but adds less than half of the total renewable generation of the other cases significantly increasing emissions of co 2 no x and so 2 relative to an rps without the solar credit multiplier sensitivity analysis of the installed cost of solar and the natural gas price finds small changes in the results of the carve out cases with a larger impact on the 3 solar multiplier

cornucopia or curse reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing fracking this study assesses the overall technical economic environmental and social costs and benefits of the hydraulic fracturing fracking of natural gas drawn from a review of more than 100 studies looking at shale gas in the past 10 years most of them peer reviewed this article begins by briefly explaining the process of hydrofracking and summarizing recent market trends up until late 2013 then the study discusses a series of advantages and disadvantages to hydrofracking it notes that done properly shale gas development can enhance energy security and the availability of energy fuels lower natural gas prices offer a cleaner environmental footprint than some other fossil fuels and enable local economic development however done poorly production can be prone to accidents and leakage contribute to environmental degradation induce earthquakes and when externalities are accounted for produce more net economic losses than profits the study concludes that the pursuit and utilization of shale gas thus presents policymakers planners and investors with a series of pernicious tradeoffs and tough choices

evaluating the performance of chinese fossil fuel power plants by data environment analysis an application of three intermediate approaches in a time horizon abstract to our knowledge the previous studies did not answer the following questions how much does window analysis differ from the original data envelopment analysis dea approaches and how to develop dea window analysis to address these questions we propose three intermediate approaches cross sectional approach window efficiency analysis and window index approach and statistically compare their performances the underlying concern is that we need to examine whether a metrological bias exists in our study the concern is important in guiding policy issues such as energy policy and climate change empirically the proposed approaches are applied to measure the unified efficiency of fossil fuel power plants at a provincial level in china from 2007 to 2017 since these plants are important energy consumers and co2 emitters we obtain two important implications first considerable differences were confirmed among the three approaches thus implying an existence of the methodological bias second beijing the capital of china outperformed the other provinces in terms of their measures since the government has paid serious attention to air pollution emitted from fossil fuel power plants the governmental regulation in beijing is a good example of pollution prevention in china it is expected that the success on beijing will be disseminated to the other provinces

segmented labour markets in australia the concept and measurement of segmented labour markets has received little attention in australia here a method for establishing a taxonomy of occupaions according to characteristics associated with the segmented labour market hypothesis is presented using this taxonomy the distribution of workers in australia according to gender migrant status and trade union membershipis examined

who invests in renewable electricity production empirical evidence and suggestions for further research transforming energy systems to fulfill the needs of a low carbon economy requires large investments in renewable electricity production res e recent literature underlines the need to take a closer look at the composition of the res e investor group in order to understand the motives and investment processes of different types of investors however existing energy policies generally consider res e investments made on a regional or national level and target investors who evaluate their res e investments according to least cost high profit criteria we present empirical evidence to show that res e investments are made by a heterogeneous group of investors that a variety of investors exist and that their formation varies among the different types of renewable sources this has direct implications for our understanding of the investment process in res e and for the study of motives and driving forces of res e investors we introduce a multi dimensional framework for analyzing differences between categories of investors which not only considers to the standard economic dimension which is predominant in the contemporary energy literature but also considers the entrepreneurship innovation adoption and institutional dimensions the framework emphasizes the influence of four main investor related factors on the investment process which should be studied in future research motives background resources and personal characteristics

uk innovation systems for new and renewable energy technologies drivers barriers and systems failures abstract a better understanding of the systemic processes by which innovation occurs is useful both conceptually and to inform policy making in support of innovation in more sustainable technologies this paper analyses current innovation systems in the uk for a range of new and renewable energy technologies and generates policy recommendations for improving the effectiveness of these innovation systems although incentives are in place in the uk to encourage innovation in these technologies system failures or gaps are identified in moving technologies along the innovation chain preventing their successful commercialisation sustained investment will be needed for these technologies to achieve their potential it is argued that a stable and consistent policy framework is required to help create the conditions for this in particular such a framework should be aimed at improving risk reward ratios for demonstration and pre commercial stage technologies this would enhance positive expectations stimulate learning effects leading to cost reductions and increase the likelihood of successful commercialisation