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

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

cost sharing design matters a comparison of the rebate and deductible in healthcare since 2006 the dutch population has faced two different cost sharing schemes in health insurance for curative care a mandatory rebate of 255 euros in 2006 and 2007 and since 2008 a mandatory deductible using administrative data for the entire dutch population we compare the effect of both cost sharing schemes on healthcare consumption between 2006 and 2013 we use a regression discontinuity design which exploits the fact that persons younger than eighteen years old neither face a rebate nor a deductible our fixed effect estimate shows that for individuals around the age of eighteen a one euro increase of the deductible reduces healthcare expenditures 18 eurocents more than a euro increase of the rebate these results demonstrate that differences in the design of a cost sharing scheme can lead to substantial different effects on total healthcare expenditure

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

determinants of import demand for non renewable energy petroleum products empirical evidence from nigeria abstract this study estimated determinants of import demand for refined petroleum products in nigeria for the period 1984 2013 it employed the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test cointegration method and analysed both long run and short run determinants of import demand for total and specific petroleum products in the long run aggregate and sectoral incomes are significant determinants of import of refined kerosene further real effective exchange rate reer aggregate income gdp manufacturing sector s income domestic energy production dep and population growth rate pgr are drivers of import of refined motor spirit moreover reer dep and manufacturing sector s income are propellers of import of refined distillate fuel also reer and total output of petroleum products are major drivers of total import of refined petroleum products short run results show that previous period gdp pgr and manufacturing and service sectors incomes are determinants of import demand for refined kerosene moreover reer gdp previous pgr and manufacturing sector s income exert significant effects on the import of refined motor spirit further significant effects of reer dep previous pgr domestic output of the product and manufacturing and service sectors incomes on the import demand for distillate fuel were found policy implications of the foregoing are articulated in the paper

price and income elasticities of electricity demand evidence from jamaica abstract jamaica s electricity sector faces supply side challenges demand side policies have the potential to improve electricity use efficiency and reduce the likelihood of electricity disruptions in this paper i use the bounds testing approach to cointegration to obtain long run price elasticity of demand estimates for the period 1970 2014 the analysis focuses on aggregate electricity demand and three categories of consumers residential commercial and industrial the findings suggest that residential and industrial consumers are most responsive to price changes with long run price elasticities of demand of 0 82 and 0 25 respectively price based approaches are likely to be more successful in slowing electricity demand growth in these sectors

is the energy led growth hypothesis valid new evidence from a sample of 85 countries abstract the energy growth literature contains a large number of discussions on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth the central debate focuses on whether energy consumption contributes or not to economic growth since it has direct implications for the formulation of strategic policies nevertheless current studies cannot provide a conclusive suggestion due to mixed causality results this inconclusive evidence is potentially attributed to model specifications and the stage of economic development of the countries under investigation hence this study attempts to empirically re investigate the validity of the energy led growth hypothesis using a different model specification and different stages of economic development for 85 selected countries around the globe overall although the causality results are mixed among countries we do find a systematic pattern in particular granger causality models with three and four variables are more likely to support the hypothesis compared to their counterparts that contain only two variables in addition both developed and developing countries are more likely to support the energy led growth hypothesis compared to the less developed or low income countries therefore causality results are very sensitive to the choice of the model specification along with the stages of economic development finally energy conservation policies should only focus on low income countries as these policies may not retard the process of economic growth

using maimonides rule to estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement the twelfth century rabbinic scholar maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40 this same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in israeli public schools today maimonides rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores the resulting identiecation strategy can be viewed as an application of donald campbell s regression discontinuity design to the class size question the estimates show that reducing class size induces a signiecant and substantial increase in test scores for fourth and efth graders although not for third graders when asked about their views on class size in surveys parents and teachers generally report that they prefer smaller classes this may be because those involved with teaching believe that smaller classes promote student learning or simply because smaller classes offer a more pleasant environment for the pupils and teachers who are in them mueller chase and walden 1988 social scientists and school administrators also have a longstanding interest in the class size question class size is often thought to be easier to manipulate than other school inputs and it is a variable at the heart of policy debates on school quality and the allocation of school resources in many countries see e g robinson 1990 for the united states ofsted 1995 for the united kingdom and moshel ravid 1995 for israel this broad interest in the consequences of changing class size

the demand for residential electricity in south africa abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in south africa as a function of real gross domestic product per capita and the price of electricity during the period 1978 2005 we make use of the bounds testing approach to cointegration within an autoregressive distributed framework suggested by pesaran et al 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 3 289 326 following the literature we use a linear double logarithmic form using income and price as independent variables in the empirical analysis in the long run we find that income is the main determinant of electricity demand while electricity price is insignificant

how effective is lifetime health cover in raising private health insurance coverage in australia an assessment using regression discontinuity the australian government introduced three major private health insurance policy initiatives in recent years these are in chronological order i the private health insurance incentives scheme phiis which imposes a tax levy on high income earners who do not have private health insurance and provides a means tested subsidy schedule for low income earners who purchase phi ii a 30 premium rebate for all private health insurance policies to replace the means tested component under phiis and iii lifetime health cover which permits a limited form of age related risk rating by insurance funds together these policy changes have been effective in encouraging the uptake of phi the percentage of the population covered by phi rose from 31 in 1999 to 45 at the end of 2001 the difficult issue however is in disentangling the effects of the three policy changes given that they were introduced in quick succession this article attempts to evaluate the effect of lifetime health cover using a regressi

relatively weak increases in risk and their comparative statics abstract we propose in this paper a new condition on increases in risk to obtain the desirable comparative statics properties for non linear payoffs our new concept of relatively weak increases in risk extends the definition of relatively strong increases in risk black and bulkley international economic review 1989 30 119 130

do urbanization income and trade affect electricity consumption across chinese provinces abstract the aim of this paper is to investigate the short and long run links among urbanization output gross domestic product gdp trade openness and electricity consumption in china using a rich dataset at the provincial level the short run granger causality analysis discloses a unidirectional causal relationship running from electricity to output and weak feedback effects between trade and urbanization the long run granger causality analysis shows output urbanization and trade trigger electricity consumption whereas trade urbanization and electricity cause output the group mean and lambda pearson causality tests reveal a large heterogeneity in the long run effects which suggests there is no one size fits all policy and each region should formulate a differentiated urbanization growth strategy based on its own characteristics to control electricity utilization

higher order generalizations of arrow pratt and ross risk aversion a comparative statics approach abstract we analyze comparative risk aversion in a new way through a comparative statics problem in which for a cost agents can shift from an initial probability distribution toward a preferred distribution the ross characterization arises when the original distribution is riskier than the preferred distribution and the cost is monetary and the arrow pratt characterization arises when the original distribution differs from the preferred distribution by a simple mean preserving spread and the cost is a utility cost higher order increases in risk lead to higher order generalizations and the comparative statics method yields a unified approach to the problem of comparative risk attitudes

assessing the energy saving effect of urbanization in china based on stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model abstract the rapid urbanization process has posed great challenges to china s energy system this paper uses the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model to evaluate the energy saving effect of china s urbanization based on provincial panel data the results suggest that 1 the urbanization induces the energy consumption with a notable negative energy saving effect 2 the heterogeneity of urbanization impact on energy consumption is analyzed in different stages of urbanization showing that the energy saving effect of urbanization follows a u shaped path 3 considering the heterogeneity of the energy saving effect of urbanization at different income levels the energy saving effect increases with income level the outcome may draw a causation picture on the relationship between energy consumption and urbanization in addition an in depth causation analysis on energy inefficiency of china s urbanization is carried out and policy recommendations are put forward accordingly

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

electricity consumption and economic growth exploring panel specific differences abstract in this paper we examine the long and short run dynamics between electricity consumption and economic activities using panel data of per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp of 160 countries for the period of 1980 2010 accounting for the degree of electricity dependence and the level of urbanization furthermore in order to capture the differences in this relationship the full sample is divided into various subsamples based on countries income levels regional locations and oecd memberships this framework is argued and found to be appropriate since the causal links and inferences arising therefrom differ considerably among the subsamples which led us to conclude that the electricity growth nexus is highly sensitive to regional differences countries income levels urbanization rates and supply risks

dynamic demand for residential electricity in taiwan under seasonality and increasing block pricing abstract this paper studies the dynamic demand for residential electricity in taiwan employing a monthly panel data set composed of 19 counties and spanning the period from 2007 01 to 2013 12 the partial adjustment model used addresses the endogeneity of the electricity price that results from the increasing block pricing the estimated results show that there is a significant seasonal difference in the demand for electricity between the summer and non summer periods both the adjustment speed and own price elasticity during the summer months are found to be lower than those in the non summer months due to the hot weather in summer it is easier for consumers to adjust their electricity consumption in response to the changes in electricity pricing during the non summer time the estimated inelastic short run and long run income effects show that electricity is a necessity for consumers moreover the controversial electricity conservation policies are found to be ineffective measures for reducing electricity consumption in taiwan

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

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

electricity demand for south korean residential sector abstract this study estimates the electricity demand function for the residential sector of south korea with the aim of examining the effects of improved energy efficiency structural factors and household lifestyles on electricity consumption in the study time series data for the period from 1973 to 2007 is used in a structural time series model to estimate the long term price and income elasticities and annual growth of underlying energy demand trend uedt at the end of the estimation period the result shows a long term income elasticity of 1 33 and a long term price elasticity of 0 27 with 0 93 as the percentage growth of uedt at the end of the estimation period this result suggests that in order to encourage energy efficiency in the residential sector the government should complement the market based pricing policies with non market policies such as minimum energy efficiency standards and public enlightenment

does urbanization lead to more direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions evidence from china during 1996 2012 china is experiencing a stage of rapid urban development the energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions of households continue to increase this paper calculates direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households based on the input output method in china from 1996 to 2012 the results reveal that there were more total carbon dioxide emissions from urban households than from rural households far more indirect emissions from urban households than from rural households slightly more direct emissions from urban households than from rural households and differences in direct carbon dioxide emissions from various fuels and in indirect emissions from various sectors between urban and rural households to examine the causal relationship between urbanization and the carbon dioxide emissions of households cointegration and granger causality tests are applied a unidirectional causal relation was found running from urbanization to both direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions and the direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households would increase 2 9 and 1 1 respectively for every increase of one percent in urbanization we discuss the reasons of why the development of urbanization will lead to more household direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions and suggest certain policy implications for urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions based on the results of this study

socioeconomic development and electricity consumption a cross country analysis using the random coefficient method this paper analyses the relationship between electricity consumption and socioeconomic variables by estimating the electricity consumption function on the basis of single year cross country data and using ols and random coefficient rc methods the latter method yields both mean response as well as country specific coefficients while electricity consumption is found to rise with socioeconomic development it is found to be inelastic with respect to changes in all the variables the estimated country specific coefficients with respect to per capita gnp and share of industry in gdp are found not to vary across countries indicating that the impact of these variables on electricity consumption is similar across countries on the other hand the impact of other variables years of schooling gdp growth urbanization and population density is found to vary substantially across countries

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

outside risk aversion and the comparative statics of increasing risk in quasi linear decision models necessary and sufficient conditions are derived to determine the effect of increases in rothschild stiglitz risk on optimal decisions in a class of competitive models with price uncertainty outside risk aversion and composite outside risk aversion are defined the effect of increased risk on the optimal decision is controlled by composite outside risk aversion it is decomposed into a wealth effect controlled by downside risk aversion and an uncertainty effect controlled by outside risk aversion composite outside risk aversion is shown to be equivalent to outside risk aversion so that the uncertainty effect controls the overall effect copyright 1995 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

how do urban households in china respond to increasing block pricing in electricity evidence from a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach abstract china is the largest electricity consumption country after it has passed the united states in 2011 residential electricity consumption in china grew by 381 35 12 85 per annum between 2000 and 2013 in order to deal with rapid growth in residential electricity consumption an increasing block pricing policy was introduced for residential electricity consumers in china on july 1st 2012 using difference in differences models with a fuzzy regression discontinuity design we estimate a causal effect of price on electricity consumption for urban households during the introduction of increasing block pricing policy in guangdong province of china we find that consumers do not respond to a smaller approximately 8 increase in marginal price however consumers do respond to a larger increase in marginal price an approximately 40 increase in marginal price induces an approximately 35 decrease in electricity use 284 kw h per month our results suggest that although the increasing block pricing could affect the behavior of households with higher electricity use there is only a limit potential to overall energy conservation

putting risk in its proper place this paper examines preferences toward particular classes of lottery pairs we show how such concepts as prudence and temperance can be fully characterized by a preference relation over these lotteries if preferences are defined in an expected utility framework with differentiable utility the direction of preference for a particular class of lottery pairs is equivalent to signing the nth derivative of the utility function what makes our characterization appealing is its simplicity which seems particularly amenable to experimentation

private sector training and graduate earnings this paper uses a survey of british graduates to estimate the impact of employer provided training on the earnings of men and women graduates the results indicate that although the training impact is reduced after controlling for endogeneity some forms of training have a considerable impact however there are substantial gender differences in the earnings impact of various typ es of training moreover men graduates are more likely to receive training than otherwise identical women

an analysis of the implications of china s urbanization policy for economic growth and energy consumption abstract china intends to rely on urbanization policies to increase its economic growth even against the backdrop of new constraints on energy consumption this paper investigates the impact of urbanization on economic growth and energy consumption using data from china s 266 prefecture level cities over the 2000 2010 period and examines the heterogeneity of this impact across income and urbanization groups the main results of our empirical estimation indicate that 1 the effect of urbanization on economic growth is positive and significant for the entire sample although it is positive and significant only for high and middle income groups and not the low income group 2 the impact of urbanization on energy consumption is positive and significant for all groups when the sample is divided into three urbanization groups based on the northam curve indicating that urbanization will lead to large increases in energy consumption in summary our empirical results show that urbanization targets will be difficult to achieve in terms of increasing gdp per capita under energy consumption constraints

the impact of urbanization on residential energy consumption in china an aggregated and disaggregated analysis abstract although the relationship among urbanization energy consumption and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to the effect of urbanization on residential energy consumption china as the largest developing country still has tremendous potential for urbanization in the future and this paper thus explores the effect of urbanization on the changes of residential energy consumption during 1996 2012 for china both from aggregated and disaggregated perspectives using the divisia decomposition method the findings on aggregated energy show that the urbanization contributes 15 4 to the increase of residential energy consumption during 1996 2012 but with a diminishing trend over time meanwhile from the disaggregated perspective the urbanization process contributes to an improvement of residential energy consumption structure specifically 1 of increase in urbanization rate may result in a decrease of 420 thousand million tonnes of residential coal consumption and an increase of 301 thousand tonnes of oil consumption

evaluating the effect of tax deductions on training dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees older than age 40 this discontinuity in a firm s training cost is exploited to identify the tax deduction s effects on training participation and of training participation on wages the results show that the training rate of workers just above age 40 is 15 20 higher than that of workers just below age 40 this difference mainly results from the postponement of training and is not a stimulating effect of the measure the two stage least squares estimate of the wage effect of training is not statistically different from zero

estimation of residential electricity demand in hong kong under electricity charge subsidies abstract over the past decade the hong kong hk government provided electricity charges subsidies for residential accounts to alleviate the burden of inflation and later the burden of economic downturn in this study we estimate an econometric model of residential electricity demand and test the existence of a stable long run relationship for the period 1980 2016 while accounting for the relief measures set out by the hk government since 2008 empirical results suggest that there exists a long run relationship among residential electricity consumption electricity price income per capita and weather variables temperature or cooling degree days in the absence of electricity charge subsidies the demand is found to be both price and income inelastic on the other hand hk s residential electricity consumers are unresponsive to price and income changes when electricity subsidies are in place following its new carbon reduction plan hk is gradually phasing out coal for electricity generation to replace it mainly with natural gas our results suggest that new residential electricity charge subsidies can lessen the effectiveness of6 climate policies aimed at reducing electricity consumption through increases in the electricity price

change in consumer sensitivity to electricity prices in response to retail deregulation a panel empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity in the united states abstract about ten years have passed since the deregulation of the u s retail electricity market and it is now generally accepted that the available data is adequate to quantitatively assess and compare conditions before and after deregulation this study therefore estimates the changes in price elasticity in the residential electricity market to examine the changes if any in household sensitivity as a result of retail electricity market deregulation policies to residential electricity rates specifically six types of panel data are prepared based on three cross sections all states except for alaska and hawaii and the district of columbia deregulated states and non deregulated states and two time series the period before deregulation and the period after deregulation the panel empirical analysis techniques are used to determine whether or not the variables are stationary and to estimate price elasticity we find that there is no substantial difference in the price elasticity between deregulated and non deregulated states for both periods before deregulation and after deregulation thus it can be said that the deregulation of the retail electricity market has not made consumers more sensitive to electricity rates and that retail deregulation policies are not the cause of price elasticity differences between deregulated and non deregulated states

modelling electricity demand in ghana revisited the role of policy regime changes as policy regime changes demand elasticities are unlikely to be constant since individuals change how they form their expectations and this will change the estimated decision rules in this paper the time varying nature of electricity demand elasticities prior to and post the economic reform period in ghana is analysed using the fm ols three different sample periods pre reform post reform and full period was used in the analysis the result from the full sample period revealed that in the long run electricity demand is significantly affected by industry efficiency industry value added and real per capita gdp urbanization rate however has no significant effect the pre reform estimate showed lower income output and urbanization elasticities but higher industry energy efficiency elasticity relative to the post reform period this suggests that technological change in the pre reform period has been energy saving whilst technological change in the post reform period has been energy consuming the result further showed evidence of changing structure of the economy from the more energy intensive sector to the less energy intensive sector after the reform government should renew her effort in promoting energy saving technologies in the industrial sector and adjust the industrial structure to encourage the expansion of low energy intensive industries or high technology efficient industries

sources of training and their impact on wages using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth from 1986 to 1990 the author investigates the wage impact of various sources of training among them company training programs apprenticeships business schools vocational and technical institutes correspondence courses and seminars outside the workplace time spent in training of whatever kind apparently did not affect 1990 wage levels the incidence of two kinds of training however company training and seminars outside work was positively related to wage levels as well as to wage change between 1986 and 1990 that is workers who undertook such training enjoyed higher wages than those who did not time spent in vocational schools was also positively associated with wage change though not with 1990 wage levels the other forms of training had no apparent impact on either wage levels or wage change

china s energy demand and its characteristics in the industrialization and urbanization process a reply zhang and qin 2013 argued that in jiang and lin 2012 the equation form and variable selection should be altered and it was problematic to use regression equation to project the future in this reply we disagree with and will refute some of the points raised in their comments the model that we established was based on the mature economic theory with the variable selections all having economic implications considering the economic development stage china s urbanization will speed up and this will have significant effect on energy consumption therefore urbanization is an indispensable variable for analyzing energy demand in china the scenario design only in terms of the gdp is sufficient for illustrating energy demand trend in china to be understood in a way by most of the people although energy forecast is not that precise it has an important implication for energy policy design especially for china which is in transition and china s energy demand will keep high growth in the mid term

electricity demand in tunisia this paper examines the global electricity demand in tunisia as a function of gross domestic product in constant price the degree of urbanization the average annual temperature and the real electricity price per kwh this demand will be examined employing annual data over a period spanning almost thirty one years from 1976 to 2006 a long run relationship between the variables under consideration is determined using the vector autoregressive regression the empirical results suggest that the electricity demand in tunisia is sensitive to its past value any changes in gross domestic product and electricity price the electricity price effects have a negative impact on long run electricity consumption however the gross domestic product and the past value of electricity consumption have a positive effect moreover the causality test reveals a unidirectional relationship between price and electricity consumption our empirical findings are effective to policy makers to maintain the electricity consumption in tunisia by using the appropriate strategy

impacts of urbanization and industrialization on energy consumption co2 emissions does the level of development matter urbanization and industrialization have significant impacts on energy consumption and co2 emissions but their relationship varies at different stages of economic development taking cognizance of heterogeneity and the ratchet effect this paper adopts the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat framework as a starting point and re estimates the relationship using different panel date models the main results are obtained by dynamic panel threshold regression models which divide a balanced panel dataset of 73 countries over the period of 1971 2010 into four groups according to their annual income levels the key results are 1 in the low income group urbanization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions 2 in the middle low income and high income groups industrialization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions while urbanization significantly increases both energy consumption and co2 emissions 3 for the middle high income group urbanization does not significantly affect energy consumption but does hinder the growth of emissions while industrialization was found to have an insignificant impact on energy consumption and co2 emissions 4 from the population perspective it produces positive effects on energy consumption and also increases emissions except for the high income group these novel methodology and findings reveal that different development strategies of urbanization and industrialization should be pursued depending on the levels of income in a bid to conserve energy and reduce emissions

estimation of residential electricity demand function in seoul by correction for sample selection bias abstract this paper attempts to estimate the residential electricity demand function in seoul to this end we collected the data from a survey of households in seoul and employed the bivariate model to rectify the undesirable impacts of non response data the results show that the size of family the size of house dummy for having a plasma display panel television dummy for having an air conditioner and the household s income have positive relationships with the residential electricity demand on the other hand electricity price contributes negatively to the residential electricity demand in addition the price and income elasticities were estimated as 0 2463 and 0 0593 respectively implying that residential electricity demand in seoul is price and income inelastic such useful information is expected to help policy makers regulate the residential electricity supply and predict the effect of the price on the residential electricity demand in the future

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

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

increases in risk and linear payoffs this paper is concerned with the effect of increases in risk on optimal decision variables for the class of linear payoffs the authors show that for this class of payoffs one can extend the class of admissible increases in risk and obtain the desirable comparative statics properties they propose the definition of a relatively weak increase in risk and apply it to the case of the competitive firm with constant marginal costs the standard portfolio model and the coinsurance problem copyright 1993 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the comparative statics of cumulative distribution function changes for the class of risk averse agents abstract the primary question addressed is when does a particular change in the cumulative distribution function cdf describing a random variable always cause all risk averse decision makers to adjust the choice variable in the same direction a necessary and sufficient condition involving both the decision model and the cdf change is derived this condition allows the researcher to determine the tradeoff between assumptions on the economic model and the cdf changes which are necessary and or sufficient to yield determinate comparative static results several applications are included

income and substitution effects for mean preserving spreads a sandmo has ascribed the indeterminancy of the comparative static result for a mean preserving spread to the presence of both an income and a substitution effect in this note the compensation method needed to isolate the substitution effect identified by sandmo is made precise the compensation method is derived from a model that is sufficiently general to include many important applications of the theory of uncertainty the method is used to identify the substitution effect in sandmo s model of the competitive firm under output price uncertainty copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

price elasticities of residential electricity demand estimates from household panel data in bangladesh abstract we collect a household level panel dataset to estimate the price elasticities of electricity demand for different types of urban households in bangladesh we use an instrumental variable estimation strategy which exploits exogenous variation in average electricity prices induced by a value added tax shock the results indicate significant heterogeneity in price elasticities by electricity consumption levels we conduct a number of simulations under alternative policy scenarios to illustrate how incorporating the heterogeneous nature of price elasticities into pricing policy can help decrease electricity demand supply mismatch and inequality in electricity consumption the results have important policy implications for developing countries aiming to address major energy issues by implementing tariff reforms

household electricity and gas consumption for heating homes energy consumption has been drastically changed because of energy source depletion price fluctuations development and penetration of alternative energy sources and government policies household energy sources are interrelated and energy price and household characteristics such as income level and dwelling size affect the usage to supply energy consistently and achieve a balance between production and consumption stakeholders must understand consumer energy consumption behavior therefore this study identifies household heating energy usage patterns and the substitutive and or complementary relationships between electricity and gas based on a multiple discrete continuous extreme value model household utility structure is identified from data on gas heating usage results show greater utility and the smallest satiation values for gas boilers than for electric heaters and electric heating beds the effects of consumer socioeconomic and environmental characteristics on the choice of heating energy sources were analyzed also for further comparison the respondents were split into high and low categories for income heating degree days dwelling size and gas usage gas was found to be the most economical heating choice for households

residential energy demand in the united states analysis using static and dynamic approaches abstract the residential sector is the main consumer of energy in the united states and reducing energy consumption is an important goal for policymakers in each state to know how reducing residential energy demand could be achieved this study develops a set of static and dynamic models to investigate and identify the impact of socio economic and demographic characteristics building age energy prices and weather conditions on residential energy demand at the state level from 2005 to 2013 next this study proposes two alternative scenarios to reduce residential energy demand based on the most precise model for every 10 000 dollars of per capita income in each state 1 increasing residential electricity price by 1 cent per kw h and 2 decreasing average building age by 1 in the first scenario the findings indicate that annual residential electricity demand would decrease by 7 3 on average with the highest reductions in washington 11 9 north dakota 10 9 and idaho 9 7 in the second scenario residential gas demand would decrease by an average of 15 8 annually with the highest reduction in connecticut 33 2 followed by new york 33 0 and massachusetts 30 7 these proposed scenarios assist policymakers in optimizing decisions and investments to reduce residential energy consumption

exploring higher order risk effects higher order risk effects play an important role in examining economic behavior under uncertainty a precautionary demand for saving has been linked to the property of prudence and the property of temperance has been used to show how the presence of an unavoidable risk affects one s behavior towards a second risk these two properties also play key roles in aversion to negative skewness and to kurtosis respectively both properties recently have been characterized by preferences over lottery pairs in simple 50 50 gambles the simplicity of this characterization is ideal for experimental investigation this article reports the results of such experiments and concludes that there is behavioral evidence for prudence but not for temperance implications of these results for both expected utility and non expected utility models are examined

rural household energy consumption with the economic development in china stages and characteristic indices abstract this paper discusses history variance and general features on rural household energy consumption with the economic development in china energy shortage has been a long standing problem in rural areas of china the average effective energy consumption was 0 46 0 54 kgce per day per household in the 1960s and 1970s the reason for this is that the rural household energy supply mainly relies on the available amounts of local natural energy resources the problem of cooking fuel shortage was basically solved in the early 1980s since more straw and stalks were produced due to the rapid development of agriculture the process of energy commercialization also started from the early 1980s due to the availability of coal fuel oil and other energy sources in the market and the reconstruction of rural power supply network energy consumption was 369 8 kgce per capita with 30 of commercial energy consumption and the effective heat per capita per day was 0 64 kgce in 1995 a closer relationship was found between household energy consumption level structure and family income along with the economic development this paper analyzed the rural household energy consumption of three typical regions i e out of poverty well off and rich regions in terms of effective heat per capita per day percentage of commercial energy consumption in total effective heat electricity consumption per capita and room temperature of northern areas in winter

why do low educated workers invest less in further training several studies document that low educated workers participate less often in further training than high educated workers this article investigates two possible explanations low educated workers invest less in training because of 1 the lower economic returns to these investments or 2 their lower willingness to participate in training controlling for unobserved heterogeneity we find that the economic returns to training for low educated workers are positive and not significantly different from those for high educated workers however low educated workers are significantly less willing to participate in training we show that this lesser willingness to train is driven by economic preferences and personality traits

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

determinants of electricity demand for newly electrified low income african households access to clean affordable and appropriate energy is an important enabler of development energy allows households to meet their most basic subsistence needs it is a central feature of all the millennium development goals mdgs and while a lack of access to energy may not be a cause of poverty addressing the energy needs of the impoverished lets them access services which in turn address the causes of poverty while much is known about the factors affecting the decisions made when choosing between fuel types within a household few quantitative studies have been carried out in south africa to determine the extent to which these factors affect energy choice decisions it is assumed that the factors traditionally included in economic demand such as price and income of the household affect choice tastes and preferences as well as external factors such as distance to fuel suppliers are expected to influence preferences this study follows two typical low income rural sites in south africa antioch and garagapola where the electricity basic services support tariff ebsst was piloted in 2002 the ebsst is set at 50 kwh month per household for low domestic consumers this is worth approximately r20 1 7us 3 this subsidy is a lifeline tariff where households receive the set amount of units per month free of charge irrespective of whether more units are purchased these data collected in 2001 and 2002 recently collated with detailed electricity consumption data allow us to determine the drivers of electricity consumption within these households the sample analysed is taken from the initial phase of the study when no fbe had been introduced to the households this enabled the study presented here to make use of the well populated datasets to assess what affects the electricity use decision in these households this paper attempts to assess which factors affected the decision making process for electricity consumption within these households a brief history of the electricity industry and the electrification is provided and the theoretical background for the electricity consumption model is provided it was found that income woodfuel usage iron ownership and credit obtained were significant in determining consumption levels within these households price and cross price elasticities were difficult to assess due to lack of data within the sample the results have many possible implications for policy including the effect that easily obtained credit has for low income households

estimating the effect of financial aid offers on college enrollment a regression discontinuity approach an important problem faced by colleges and universities that of evaluating the effect of their financial aid offers on student enrollment decisions is complicated by the likely endogeneity of the aid offer variable in a student enrollment equation this article shows how discontinuities in an east coast college s aid assignment rule can be exploited to obtain credible estimates of the aid effect without having to rely on arbitrary exclusion restrictions and functional form assumptions semiparametric estimates based on a regression discontinuity rd approach affirm the importance of financial aid as an effective instrument in competing with other colleges for students

residential electricity consumption in portugal findings from top down and bottom up models an econometric study of the portuguese residential electricity consumption is presented with a focus on the influence of dwelling characteristics on consumption the relationship between the dwelling and household characteristics on per capita residential electricity consumption is estimated at two different scales involving two distinct databases the first includes data at the municipality level for 2001 the second is the most recent portuguese consumer expenditure survey that was collected in 2005 and 2006 the results of the analysis at both scales are consistent and indicate that household and dwelling characteristics have a significant influence on residential electricity consumption our results show that in portugal the direct effect of income on electricity consumption is low and becomes smaller when more relevant control variables are included in the analysis future demand of electricity in portugal will be significantly influenced by trends in socioeconomic factors as well as changes in the building stock these trends should be taken in consideration in the formulation of policy measures to reduce electricity consumption

market power and heterogeneous pass through in german electricity retail abstract we analyze the pass through of cost changes to retail tariffs in the german electricity market over the 2007 2014 period we find an average pass through rate of around 60 this significantly varies with demand factors while the pass through rate to baseline tariffs where firms have greater market power because customers are less willing to switch is only 50 it increases to 70 in the competitive segment of the market although the pass through rate of independent firms is significantly higher than that of other firms in the competitive market segment the extent of supply side heterogeneity is limited thus the firms ability to exercise market power and reduce pass through appears to be constrained by competition and largely determined by demand side factors finally we find that the pass through rate in the competitive market segment has been approaching unity over the past years indicating a rise in competitive pressure

substitution and income effects for increases in risk abstract comparative statics effects for rothschild stiglitz increases in risk can be decomposed into substitution and income effects associated with diamond stiglitz compensated increases in risk and first degree deterministic transformations providing an avenue for understanding conflicting responses to increases in risk

china s future energy mix and emissions reduction potential a scenario analysis incorporating technological learning curves abstract this paper examines the impacts of co 2 emission reduction targets and carbon taxes on the structure of power generation in china a model is developed to minimize the total electricity generation cost and select the optimal energy technology and resource mix for china the model contributes to existing work by utilizing the learning curve concept which manifests as diminishing costs of production and includes constraints for minimum energy generation and also an emissions cap the result shows that the introduction of the co 2 emission reduction targets and carbon taxes both shift energy production technologies away from high carbon content fossil fuels towards low carbon content fossil based and renewable energies co 2 emission reduction targets turn out to be more effective in the early years while carbon taxes become more effective in the later periods perhaps unsurprisingly all options result in a net increase in total production costs in addition some scenario analyses are conducted to consider the possible roles of shale gas and improved carbon capture and storage technologies showing the general conclusions to be robust

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

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

the electricity consumption and gdp nexus for the fiji islands fiji is a small open island economy dependent on energy for its growth and development hence the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is crucial for fiji s development in this paper we investigate the nexus between electricity consumption and economic growth for fiji within a multivariate framework through including the labour force variable we use the bounds testing approach to cointegration and find that electricity consumption gdp and labour force are only cointegrated when gdp is the endogenous variable we use the granger causality f test and find that in the long run causality runs from electricity consumption and labour force to gdp implying that fiji is an energy dependent country and thus energy conservation policies will have an adverse effect on fiji s economic growth

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

a literature survey on energy growth nexus abstract this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of energy consumption economic growth and electricity consumption economic growth causality nexus the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of energy electricity in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of energy on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies a general observation from these studies is that the literature produced conflicting results and there is no consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of causality between energy consumption electricity consumption and economic growth as a policy implication to avoid from conflicting and unreliable results the authors may use the autoregressive distributed lags bounds test two regime threshold co integration models panel data approach and multivariate models including new variables such as real gross fixed capital formation labor force carbon dioxide emissions population exchange rates interest rates etc thus the authors should focus more on the new approaches and perspectives rather than by employing usual methods based on a set of common variables for different countries and different intervals of time

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