an empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures abstract models of government formation processes in multi party democracies are usually highly sensitive to the rules that govern the selection of formateurs i e the parties selected to propose a potential government the theoretical literature has focused on two selection rules selection proportional to seat share and selection in order of seat share in this paper we use a new data set on government formations in 11 parliamentary democracies to empirically assess which selection rule most closely approximates the data we find that while there is little empirical support for selection in order of seat share proportional selection fits the data well however we also find that a simple alternative that combines the insights of the two selection rules outperforms both of them in their ability to explain the data

eco labeling in commercial office markets do leed and energy star offices obtain multiple premiums this paper investigates the effect of eco labeling on rental rates sale prices and occupancy rates the consensus emerging from previous studies appears to be that investors in and occupiers of eco labeled buildings obtain a bundle of benefits related to lower operating costs reputation benefits and productivity higher in this study a hedonic model is used to test whether the presence of an eco label has a significantly positive effect on rental rates sale prices and occupancy rates of commercial office buildings in the us the results suggest that office buildings with energy star or leed eco labels obtain rental premia of approximately 3 5 dual certification produces an additive effect with rental premia estimated at 9 respective sale price premia for energy star and leed labeled office buildings are 18 and 25 the sale price premium for dual certification is estimated at 28 29 an occupancy premium could not be confirmed for leed labeled office buildings and only a small positive occupancy premium was found for energy star

a theory of voting equilibria a voting equilibrium arises when the voters in an electorate acting in accordance with both their preferences for the candidates and their perceptions of the relative chances of various pairs of candidates being in contention for victory generate an election result that justifies their perceptions voting equilibria always exist and the set of equilibria can vary substantially with the choice of voting system we compare equilibria under the plurality rule approval voting and the borda system we consider a candidate positioning game and find that the plurality rule imposes little restriction on the position of the winning candidate in three candidate races while approval voting leads to a winner positioned at the median of the voter distribution we contrast campaign activities intended to influence voter preferences with activities meant to influence only perceptions of candidate viability

combining intended demand and yes no responses in the estimation of contingent valuation models abstract the contingent valuation method cvm has limitations arising from the lack of a direct link between estimated willingness to pay and consumer behavior regarding the use of the good being evaluated to estimate the total value of a resource under a capacity constraint information on intended use is introduced as an integral part of the cvm this combined approach allows use and non use values to be distinguished for a sample of users and non users the econometric specification is applied to estimate the benefits of reducing water pollution on beaches located near an important metropolitan area of south america

new hedonic technique for estimating attribute demand an application to the demand for automobile fuel efficiency a new hedonic procedure is applied to estimate the effects of gasoline price on the demand for automobile attributes and fuel efficiency direct application of a comparative statics analysis circumvents the problems of identification and severe multicollinearity affecting previous hedonic studies the results indicate that the effect of induced changes in automobile attributes in response to increases in the price of gasoline is to substantially increase fuel efficiency the estimated elasticities of fuel efficiency with respect to the price of gasoline imply that the long run own price elasticity of demand for gasoline is greater than unity 31 references

coalition and party formation in a legislative voting game we examine a legislative voting game where decisions are being made over both ideological and distributive dimensions and legislators preferences are separable over the two dimensions in equilibrium legislators prefer to make proposals for the two dimensions together rather than offering sequential proposals on the two dimensions separately the equilibria exhibit interaction between the ideological and distributive dimensions and in any equilibrium there is a positive probability that a proposal is made and approved which excludes the median legislator as defined over the ideological dimension in contrast with a game where no distributive decision is being made moreover in any stationary equilibrium there is more than one ideological decision that has a positive probability of being proposed and approved we show that legislators can gain from forming political parties and consider examples where predictions can be made about the composition of parties we discuss the impact of political parties on the outcome

a hedonic approach to estimating the supply of variety attributes of a subsistence crop the article extends the household hedonic model by estimating a supply function for variety attributes of a subsistence crop in a developing economy the model is applied to bananas in uganda making use of disaggregated data on variety specific farm gate banana bunch prices and attributes while accounting for the semisubsistence nature of banana producing households the article is motivated by the need to understand the attribute trade offs made by farmers at the farm gate in light of targeted variety improvement efforts and their impact on banana markets whether variety improvement will pay off at the market level requires a more detailed examination of the relative worth of banana attributes within the structure of consumer preferences and production technologies related to bananas in uganda the results confirm the importance of consumption and production attributes in selling behavior quality and bunch size are found to be complements at the farm gate banana bunches that capture a premium at the market will be those that provide bundles of desirable consumption and production attributes simultaneously by revealing important price attribute relationships the findings provide guidance for crop improvement efforts and diversification choices while taking into account implicit market signals for output attributes

doing good but not that well a dilemma for energy conserving homeowners abstract in this paper the issue of market capitalization of energy efficient buildings is addressed by considering single family housing in sweden and through analyzing as to what extent the market price for a house is influenced by its energy performance are swedish homeowners doing well by doing good we make use of information provided by the swedish energy performance certificates for single family homes matched with data on the corresponding transaction prices household characteristics and attributes of the neighborhood the resulting database covering about 77 000 individual observations is used to analyze the relationship between the price of a house and its energy performance by means of a hedonic model unlike most other studies the energy performance is decomposed into energy consumption and several other variables characterizing the energy system the main question addressed is if there is a price premium for energy efficient housing in sweden our results differ from earlier studies and indicate no price premium related to the energy consumption but substantial premiums for housing attributes that improve the energy efficiency a likely explanation is that prospective buyers of new homes base their expectations about future energy consumption on those attributes rather than on the energy consumption of the previous owner

a theory of strategic voting in runoff elections abstract this paper analyzes the properties of runoff electoral systems when voters are strategic a model of three candidate runoff elections is presented and two new features are included the risk of upset victory in the second round is endogenous and many types of runoff systems are considered three main results emerge first runoff elections produce equilibria in which only two candidates receive a positive fraction of the votes second a sincere voting equilibrium does not always exist finally runoff systems with a threshold below 50 percent produce an ortega effect that may lead to the systematic victory of the condorcet loser jel c72 d72

residential consumption of gas and electricity in the u s the role of prices and income abstract we study the residential demand for electricity and gas working with nationwide household level data that cover recent years namely 1997 2007 our dataset is a mixed panel multi year cross sections of dwellings households in the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the united states as of 2008 we estimate static and dynamic models of electricity and gas demand we find strong household response to energy prices both in the short and long term from the static models we get estimates of the own price elasticity of electricity demand in the 0 860 to 0 667 range while the own price elasticity of gas demand is 0 693 to 0 566 these results are robust to a variety of checks contrary to earlier literature metcalf and hassett 1999 reiss and white 2005 we find no evidence of significantly different elasticities across households with electric and gas heat the price elasticity of electricity demand declines with income but the magnitude of this effect is small these results are in sharp contrast to much of the literature on residential energy consumption in the united states and with the figures used in current government agency practice our results suggest that there might be greater potential for policies which affect energy price than may have been previously appreciated

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

the estimation of demand parameters in hedonic price models this paper shows that the econometric problem of estimating hedonic demand parameters is not a standard identification problem caused by demand supply interaction as has been often assumed estimation procedures based on this assumption lead to biased results the hedonic estimation problem is instead caused by the endogeneity of both prices and quantities when households face a nonlinear budget constraint an instrumental variables solution to this problem is suggested using instruments that exogenously shift the budget constraint

estimating the implicit price of energy efficiency improvements in the residential housing market a hedonic approach abstract in this study a hedonic price model has been used to examine the impact which efficiency improvements have on housing values our study represents an improvement over a previous attempt to examine this issue in that the independent variable used in our analysis is designed to reflect variation in structural efficiency levels among sample homes rather than variation in occupant lifestyles and preferences in addition a flexible functional form is used to prevent bias due to misspecification of the hedonic price equation the study results reveal that efficiency improvements are capitalized into housing prices in des moines iowa at the average efficiency level of homes in the sample an efficiency improvement which results in a 1 decrease in the level of expenditures necessary to maintain the house at 65 f in the average heating season will increase the expected selling price of the house by 11 63 the premium obtained for an equivalent efficiency improvement will be greater than 11 63 in a relatively efficient home and less than 11 63 in a relatively inefficient home without further information concerning the price expectations and discount rates utilized by des moines home buyers and the average remaining life of fuels saving investments in the sample it cannot be determined whether the housing market is pricing fuel savings efficiently regardless of whether or not the implicit price of fuel savings is the outcome of an efficient market information on this implicit price facilitates the estimation of an average resale value of fuel saving investments in addition the results of this study refute the hypothesis that efficiency improving investments are not capitalized into housing prices

elections coalitions and legislative outcomes predictions of electoral behavior in a multiparty setting should be a function of the voters beliefs about how parties will perform following an election similarly party behavior in a legislature should be a function of electoral promises and rewards we develop a multistage game theoretic model of three party competition under proportional representation the final policy outcome of the game is generated by a noncooperative bargaining game between the parties in the elected legislature this game is essentially defined by the vote shares each party receives in the general election and the parties electoral policy positions at the electoral stage parties and voters are strategic in that they take account of the legislative implications of any electoral outcome we solve for equilibrium electoral positions by the parties and final policy outcomes

automobile prices and quality did the gasoline price increases change consumer tastes in the u s a hedonic model of automobile prices that takes gasoline costs into account is developed and used to examine whether gasoline price increases especially those related to the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks changed consumer evaluations of the relative qualities of used cars in the u s during 1970 1981 we test the null hypothesis that the characteristics coefficients remained constant over time it is rejected if gasoline costs are excluded from the model but not if they are included alternative approaches are developed to show that the gasoline price increases alone can explain much of the observed changes in the coefficients

a study on the implementation of renewable heating technologies in the domestic sector in ireland with implications on consumers decision making abstract the paper critically reviews and explores the impact of renewable energy heat policies to induce technological change in ireland it is in response to the challenge of better understanding the broad effects and attributes of renewable energy policy instruments in ireland and beyond using the irish residential sector as a case study and analysing data of more than 31 600 technology installations under the irish government s greener homes scheme ghs the paper assesses the extent to which policy makers may be informed of the willingness of consumers to adopt these technologies in their homes in doing so it attempts to provide valuable guidance for policy evaluation in relation to renewable energy in the residential sector it represents investment decisions and technological choice by the end user and reflects the growing concern among energy policy markets regarding the representation of user preferences the overall intent is to investigate the implications of analysing different variables and their contribution to making more balanced renewable energy policies it provides a critical analysis of the greener homes scheme the key instrument for implementing ireland s renewable heating policy from 2006 to 2010 established to induce technological change within the residential sector in assessing the impact of the scheme attention focuses on decision frameworks for technological choice and the treatment of market and behavioural failures it considers how consumers have responded to new technological policies aimed at deploying renewable heat technologies and the specific policies aimed at advancing certain technologies over others through a case study investigation the paper explores the relationship and dependencies that influence consumers decision making regarding the choice of renewable energy heating technologies in the domestic sector in ireland consumer preferences and their subsequent investment decisions motives and technological choice are reflected it concludes that while economic factors are important a much broader variety of determinants is required when analysing the process of adoption of technology

elections governments and parliaments in proportional representation systems this paper presents a theory of parliamentary systems with a proportional representation electoral system a formateur selected based on party representation in parliament and parties that cannot commit to the policies they will implement once in government government formation involves efficient proto coalition bargaining and elections yield unique strong nash equilibrium outcomes depending on the status quo minimal majority surplus or consensus governments can form if parties and voters are myopic and the status quo is subject to shocks consensus governments and centrist policies occur only in a crisis otherwise governments are minimal winning and policies reflect only the preferences of the government parties

a structural model of government formation in this paper we estimate a bargaining model of government formation in parliamentary democracies we use the estimated structural model to conduct constitutional experiments aimed at evaluating the impact of institutional features of the political environment on the duration of the government formation process the type of coalitions that form and their relative stability

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

a semi parametric estimator for revealed and stated preference data an application to recreational beach visitation abstract we present a semi parametric approach for jointly estimating revealed and stated preference recreation demand models the discrete factor method dfm allows for correlation across demand equations and incorporates unobserved heterogeneity our model is a generalized negative binomial with random effects the random effect is composed of a discrete representation of unobserved heterogeneity and a factor loading that translates the heterogeneity measure into a demand effect our empirical application is to beach recreation demand in north carolina statistical evidence supports our dfm specification which imposes less restriction on model dispersion and incorporates unobserved heterogeneity in a flexible manner elasticity estimates are smaller than those derived from models with parametric specifications for unobserved heterogeneity and welfare estimates are slightly larger and less precise while parametric models clearly dominate if the specification of unobserved heterogeneity is correct the semi parametric dfm provides a flexible alternative in cases where mis specification is a potential problem

government turnover in parliamentary democracies in this paper we consider a dynamic model of government formation and termination in parliamentary democracies that accounts for the following phenomena 1 cabinet terminations due to replacement or early election 2 cabinet reshuf es 3 minority and surplus governments 4 the relative instability of minority governments

a bargaining model of collective choice we present a general model of legislative bargaining in which the status quo is an arbitrary point in a multidimensional policy space in contrast to other bargaining models the status quo is not assumed to be bad and delay may be pareto efficient we prove existence of stationary equilibria the possibility of equilibrium delay depends on four factors risk aversion of the legislators the dimensionality of the policy space the voting rule and the possibility of transfers across districts if legislators are risk averse if there is more than one policy dimension and if voting is by majority rule for example then delay will almost never occur in one dimension delay is possible if and only if the status quo lies in the core of the voting rule and then it is the only possible outcome this core selection result yields a game theoretic foundation for the well known median voter theorem our comparative statics analysis yield two noteworthy insights i if the status quo is close to the core t hen equilibrium policy outcomes will also be close to the core a moderate status quo produces moderate policy outcomes and ii if legislators are patient then equilibrium proposals will be close to the core legislative patience leads to policy moderation

improving environmental valuation estimates through consistent use of revealed and stated preference information abstract environmental valuation data from stated and revealed preference methods are integrated into a unified model of preferences for environmental quality improvement that identifies the use and nonuse components of the total value estimate this articulates clearly what parts of the total value estimate come from each type of data and permits tests of whether estimated preferences satisfy weak complementarity between the environmental good of interest and related private goods the statistical advantages of using more information for the valuation problem are exploited while retaining flexibility to identify value estimates from any individual method of analysis

hedonic amenity valuation and functional form specification this paper uses gis data to develop variables representing the physical extent and visibility of surrounding land use cover features in a hedonic model of a rural suburban residential housing market three equations are estimated to determine if views

the value of domestic building energy efficiency evidence from ireland abstract following the transposition of the eu energy performance of buildings directive into irish law all properties offered for sale or to let in ireland are obliged to have an energy efficiency rating this paper analyses the effect of energy efficiency ratings on the sale and rental prices of properties in the republic of ireland using the heckman selection technique we model the decision to advertise the energy efficiency rating of a property and the effect of energy efficiency ratings on property values our results show that energy efficiency has a positive effect on both the sales and rental prices of properties and that the effect is significantly stronger in the sales segment of the property market we also analyse the effect of energy efficiency across different market conditions and we find that the effect of the energy rating is generally stronger where market conditions are worse

doing well by doing good green office buildings this paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of green buildings in the commercial sector value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates we match publicly available information on the addresses of energy star and leed rated office buildings to a commercial data source detailing the characteristics of u s office buildings and their rental rates we analyze the micro data on 694 certified green buildings and on 7489 other office buildings located within a quarter mile of the certified buildings we find systematic evidence that rents for green offices are about two percent higher than rents for comparable buildings located nearby effective rents i e rents adjusted for the occupancy levels in office buildings are about six percent higher in green buildings than in comparable office buildings nearby at prevailing capitalization rates conversion of the average non green building to an equivalent green building would add more than 5 million in market value these results are robust to the statistical models employed

the price of energy efficiency in the spanish housing market the housing sector is a substantial consumer of energy and therefore a focus for energy savings efforts the energy performance certificate epc is the main eu policy to improve the energy performance of buildings following the implementation of the epc directive into spanish law from june 2013 all properties offered for sale or rented out in spain are required to have an epc given that this is a recently introduced regulation unlike other european housing markets the spanish one lacks market data on energy efficiency ee labels and their impact on housing price in order to overcome this gap we determine the ee ratings of a sample of 1 507 homes across spain on the basis of information collected previously through household surveys this information allowed us to answer the question of whether or not and to what extent spanish housing markets capitalise the value of ee we apply the hedonic price technique and observe that more energy efficient dwellings meaning higher ee rating have a price premium between 5 4 and 9 8 compared to those with the same characteristics but lower ee level

on the use of hedonic regression models to measure the effect of energy efficiency on residential property transaction prices evidence for portugal and selected data issues abstract using a unique dataset of 256 000 residential property sales for portugal this paper reveals a clear sales premium for energy efficiency which is more pronounced for apartments 13 than for houses 5 to 6 price premiums tend to increase from 2009 to 2013 a period in which the portuguese housing market was depressed quantile regression reveals that when compared with the rest of the sample the group of the most energy efficient properties receives a statistically relevant price premium that is mostly stable across the entire spectrum of the conditional price distribution cross country comparisons suggest that energy efficiency price premiums are higher than those found for central and northern european markets illustrations on the effect of data issues in hedonic regression models are provided they show how the use of appraisal prices and explanatory variables with measurement errors may seriously bias energy efficiency partial effect estimates in contrast the omission of variables associated with the quality of the properties has not produced relevant distortions finally it became apparent that the use of smaller datasets would have produced similar results as no significance inflation was produced by the portuguese large scale dataset

combining revealed and stated preference data to estimate the nonmarket value of ecological services an assessment of the state of the science this paper reviews the marketing transportation and environmental economics literature on the joint estimation of revealed preference rp and stated preference sp data the rp and sp approaches are first described with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each recognizing these strengths and weaknesses the potential gains from combining data are described a classification system for combined data that emphasizes the type of data combination and the econometric models used is proposed a methodological review of the literature is pursued based on this classification system examples from the environmental economics literature are highlighted a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of jointly estimated model is then presented suggestions for future research in particular opportunities for application of these models to environmental quality valuation are presented

the production of housing services and the derived demand for residential energy most studies of residential energy usage treat energy as a final consumer good this study explicitly considers the production of housing service flows from stocks of real estate and flows of operating inputs and considers the demand for residential energy as a factor input the empirical results based upon analysis of a sample of newly constructed dwellings and their occupants are used to evaluate the effects of energy price changes on the price of housing services and on the demand for housing and real estate thus indicating the extent of residential energy conservation in response to higher prices finally the results are used to analyze federal and state tax subsidies for residential energy conservation

building energy efficiency a research branch made of paradoxes abstract the literature dealing with building energy efficiency has long since debated about the possible occurrence of the so called jevons paradox in a nutshell benefiting from energy savings due to transition to high performance buildings may the same savings cause a kind of rebound effect by acting as an incentive to increase consumptions on closer inspection this is not the only paradox affecting the research branch that focuses on the energy used by the buildings and the building industry a second paradox is that investments in energy efficient solutions may contribute to energy price control which in turn lends itself to make the same investments not profitable a third paradox lies in the need to adopt energy intensive materials in order to achieve substantial energy savings in operation hence sometimes we just substitute a certain amount of operating energy with a more or less commensurate amount of embodied energy here we argue that the joint consideration of the paradoxes mentioned above should not be neglected since it brings with itself several implications needing to be disentangled whether we aim to get further enhancements in this disciplinary field

energy performance ratings and house prices in wales an empirical study this paper investigates the effect of energy performance certificate epc ratings on residential prices in wales drawing on a sample of approximately 192 000 transactions the capitalisation of energy efficiency ratings into house prices is investigated using two approaches the first adopts a cross sectional framework to investigate the effect of epc rating on price the second approach applies a repeat sales methodology to investigate the impact of epc rating on house price appreciation statistically significant positive price premiums are estimated for dwellings in epc bands a b 12 8 and c 3 5 compared to houses in band d for dwellings in band e 3 6 and f 6 5 there are statistically significant discounts such effects may not be the result of energy performance alone in addition to energy cost differences the price effect may be due to additional benefits of energy efficient features an analysis of the private rental segment reveals that in contrast to the general market low epc rated dwellings were not traded at a significant discount this suggests different implicit prices of potential energy savings for landlords and owner occupiers

housing market capitalization of thermal integrity abstract the extent to which housing markets capitalize investments in energy efficiency is important to observe the uncertainty now associated with this process can lead households to allocate resources inefficiently in the production of thermal comfort by substituting more fuel inputs for less capital from a policy perspective the end result of this is the continued construction of units in the housing stock with sub optimal levels of energy efficiency this study is a cross sectional analysis of houses constructed through the energy efficient housing demonstration program of the minnesota housing finance agency values of investments in energy efficiency are derived from a hedonic regression which includes a vector of thermal integrity factors as an independent variable

housing market capitalization of energy saving durable good investments energy conservation in the residential sector depends in large measure upon the willingness of builders and homeowners to invest in the durable goods which result in an energy efficient house since these durable goods generally become attached permanently to the dwelling unit and since ownership of the unit is likely to change within the expected lifetime of the installed equipment the incentive to invest in conservation measures depends upon the efficiency of the housing market in capitalizing the financial benefits of future fuel savings this paper examines housing market efficiency in this regard by first estimating an hedonic price index with the annual fuel bill included as an explicit attribute of the structure then from the estimated hedonic price of a one dollar reduction in annual fuel costs and assumed fuel price escalation rates and remaining lifetimes of the equipment implicit housing market discount rates are calculated the relatively low estimated discount rates indicate that the housing market performs efficiently in capitalizing future fuel savings

unobservables in consumer choice residential energy and the demand for comfort a model of consumption of residential energy in dwellings is developed distinguishing between attributes of housing that provide direct benefits to consumers and attributes that serve as inputs in the production of final goods for example the thermal comfort of dwellings empirical estimates are made of the mode based upon the annual housing survey and the results are used to calculate the effects of changes in energy prices on the consumption of housing residential energy and other goods the analysis suggests that the adjustment process within the housing market permits a great deal of substitution in response to energy price changes copyright 1989 by mit press

a three player dynamic majoritarian bargaining game this file contains two sets of calculations first we report the calculations of demands and continuation values of proposition 1 second the mixing probabilities of proposition 1 are shown to be well defined

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

new estimates of quality of life in urban areas implicit markets capture compensation for intraurban and interregional differe nces in amenities and yield differences in housing prices and wages these pecuniary differences become preference based weights in a qual ity of life index hedonic equations are estimated using microdata fr om the 1980 census and assembled county based amenity data on climati c environmental and urban conditions ranking of 253 urban counties reveals substantial variation within as well as among the 185 urba n areas the quality of life differences across counties within one s msa is almost one half of the difference between the top and bottom ranked counties in the nation copyright 1988 by american economic association

costs and benefits of energy efficiency obligations a review of european programmes abstract the economics of energy efficiency programmes have been subject to considerable academic debate lasting well over three decades now in this paper we contribute to this debate by reviewing the costs and benefits of a specific type of policy instrument that recently gained significant traction in europe energy efficiency obligations eeos following the introduction of the eu energy efficiency directive in 2012 the number of eeos in europe has grown from five schemes to now 16 eeos in operation or planned across the eu there is an emerging body of evidence on the costs and benefits of energy efficiency obligations covering a wider range of eu countries which offers an opportunity to improve our understanding of the economics of energy efficiency obligations in this paper we draw on this new data and provide a a comparative analysis of the costs and benefits of eeos in a number of european countries b discuss the uncertainties and challenges around calculating the costs and benefits of energy efficiency obligations and c provide a categorisation of the multiple benefits often overlooked in cost benefit analyses

model of household electricity conservation behavior in this paper the authors develop a model that explains household choice of electricity conservation modes the model is based on the premise that households will adopt those conservation modes that yield benefits greater than perceived costs they find that households differ in the conservation modes they adopt high income households are more likely to adopt expenditure intensive methods while low income households are more likely to adopt time intensive conservation methods the results suggest a possible explanation as to why high income families and residents of single detached homes are observed to save the largest absolute amount of energy a popular explanation is that these households consume the most energy and thus would be most likely to benefit the authors suggest an alternative explanation 37 references 4 tables

the econometrics of nonlinear budget sets traditional empirical analysis of consumer demand has usually made the assumption of linear budget sets that is the consumer is assumed to purchase any desired quantity at a constant price subject to a budget constraint the major exception to this framework is the analysis of demand when some goods are rationed 2 in the rationed case the price is constant up to a quantity limit in contrast to the rationed case here i consider the situation where the price varies with the amount of the good purchased empirical situations with nonconstant prices come readily to mind and of course they have received much recent attention from theorists since mirrlees 44 paper on optimal nonlinear taxation the following examples are meant to give a partial listing of cases when nonlinear budget sets occur i electricity prices many electric utilities engage in declining block pricing that is the marginal price of successive kwh s of electricity decrease at a given number of points determined by total demand thus the budget set is piecewise linear houthakker 36 was the first to propose an approach to this problem taylor 51 analyzes the problem at length and hausman kinnucin and mcfadden 31 use an instrumental variables estimator to provide consistent estimates of the demand function

integration of price depending demand reactions in an optimising energy emission model for the development of co2 mitigation strategies abstract optimising techno economic energy emission models are applied to develop and analyse cost effective co2 mitigation strategies on national and international levels one shortcoming of existing models is the missing integration of behavioural changes due to an increase in energy prices caused by the structural changes in the energy sector in order to reach the political targets for a co2 emission reduction therefore a partial equilibrium approach based on an iterative algorithm is created and applied in a co2 study for the federal republic of germany frg the results show that cost effective energy strategies avoiding co2 emissions have to consider the consumer price reactions

the economics of green building we analyze the economics of green building finding that recent increases in the supply of green buildings and the volatility in prop erty markets have not affected the returns to green buildings we then analyze a large cross section of office buildings demonstrating that eco nomic returns to energy efficient buildings are substantial finally we relate the economic premiums for green buildings to their relative effi ciency in energy use the attributes rated for thermal efficiency as well as sustainability contribute to premiums in rents and asset values among green buildings increased energy efficiency is fully capitalized into rents and asset values

sensitivity of price elasticity of demand to aggregation unobserved heterogeneity price trends and price endogeneity evidence from u s data abstract price elasticity estimates of residential electricity demand vary widely across the energy economics and policy literature in this paper we seek to explain these findings using three nationwide datasets from the u s the american housing survey forms eia 861 and the residential energy consumption survey we examine the role of the sample period level of aggregation use of panel data use of instrumental variables and inclusion of housing characteristics and capital stock our findings suggest that price elasticities have remained relatively constant over time upon splitting our panel datasets into annual cross sections we do observe a negative relationship between price elasticities and the average price whether prices are rising or falling appears to have little effect on our estimates we also find that aggregating our data can result in both higher and lower price elasticity estimates depending on the dataset used and that controlling for unit level fixed effects with panel data generally results in more inelastic demand functions addressing the endogeneity of price and or measurement error in price with instrumental variables has a small but noticeable effect on the price elasticities finally controlling for housing characteristics and capital stock produces a lower price elasticity

demand competition and policy compromise in legislative bargaining i propose a new majoritarian bargaining model in which more than one implicit proposal can be on the table at the same time institutional differences from system to system affect the order of play the equilibrium majorities and the policy outcome the ex post distribution of payoffs within a winning coalition is however invariant to fundamental institutional differences and it is always proportional to the distribution of relative ex ante bargaining power the bargaining process is modeled as a sequential demand game in which players are called to propose a policy and to specify their desired share of the private benefits related to being in office the order of play is endogenous and the distribution of payoffs within an equilibrium majority usually does not depend on who is the proposal maker the role of the head of state and the advantages to center parties are also studied

the value of energy efficiency and the role of expected heating costs the german energy performance of buildings directive requires sellers on the housing market to provide detailed information on expected yearly energy consumption per square meter energy performance eps this paper uses variation in local fuel prices and climate fuel types and building ages to analyse the relationship between expected energy cost savings from energy efficient building structure and house prices in a data set of listing prices from all regions of germany results suggest that heating cost considerations are less relevant than previously thought

negotiation in legislatures over government formation we question results claiming to extend non cooperative models of legislative bargaining to the theoretically general and substantively typical case with an arbitrary number of disciplined parties we identify problems with both the derivation of formal results and empirical evaluation of these no empirically robust formateur advantage is observed in field data on bargaining over government formation given this theoretical and empirical impasse we reconsider the substantive premises that should form the foundation for any new attempt to model this fundamental political process arguing that models should be grounded in binding constitutional constraints on the government formation process in parliamentary democracies

willingness to pay for quality improvements should revealed and stated preference data be combined abstract in this article we propose theoretically consistent welfare measurement of use and nonuse values for an improvement in environmental quality with revealed and stated preference data an analytical model based on the comparative static analysis of the variation function that describes the relationship between recreation demand and dichotomous choice contingent valuation models is estimated our results show that revealed and stated data should not be combined under the same assumed preference structure unless the two decisions imply the same change in behavior induced by the quality change in addition our results indicate scope effects in willingness to pay measures estimated with stated preference data

the impact of energy labels and accessibility on office rents abstract energy consumption in the commercial property sector offers an important opportunity for conserving resources in this study we evaluate the financial implications of two elements of sustainability energy efficiency and accessibility in the market for commercial real estate an empirical analysis of some 1100 leasing transactions in the netherlands over the 2005 2010 period shows that buildings designated as inefficient with an eu energy performance certificate d or worse command rental levels that are some 6 5 percent lower as compared to energy efficient but otherwise similar buildings labeled a b or c furthermore this study shows that office buildings in multi functional areas with access to public transport and facilities achieve rental premiums over mono functional office districts for policymakers the results documented in this paper provide an indication on the effectiveness of the eu energy performance certificate as a market signal in the commercial property sector the findings documented here are also relevant for investors in european office markets as the importance of energy efficiency and locational diversification is bound to increase following stricter environmental regulation and changing tenant preferences

on the theory of strategic voting many analyses of plurality rule elections predict the complete coor dination of strategic voting and hence support for only two candidates here i suggest that stable multi candidate support will arise in equilibrium a group of voters must partially coordinate behind one of two challenging candidates in order to dislodge a disliked incumbent in a departure from existing models the popular support for each challenger is uncertain this support must be inferred from the private observation of informative signals such as the social communication of pref erences throughout the electorate or the imperfect observation of opinion polls the uniquely stable voting equilibrium entails only limited strategic voting and hence incomplete coordination this is due to the surprising presence of negative feed back an increase in the degree of strategic voting by others reduces the incentives for an individual to vote strategically the incentive to vote strategically is lower in relatively marginal elections after controlling for the distance from contention of a trailing preferred challenger a calibration of the model applied to the uk general election of 1997 is consistent with the impact of strategic voting and the reported accuracy of voters understanding of the electoral situation it suggests that nearly 50 seats may have been lost by the conservative party due to strategic voting 1 plurality rule elections and strategic voting 1 1 strategic voting and duverger s law plurality rule elections where the winner is the candidate who receives the largest number of votes are vulnerable to strategic voting a voter might well switch away from her preferred candidate and toward a perceived leader in the hope of exerting a greater influence over the outcome of the election this phenomenon has long been the focus of both economic and political scientific study in an influential essay riker 1982b cited droop s 1871 eloquent exposition of the strategic voting problem 1 i oer my grateful thanks to the many friends colleagues seminar participants referees and editors who have oered insightful comments during the long gestation of this paper its antecedents and companion work special thanks go to steve fisher whose empirical analysis of strategic voting raised many of the questions that i seek to answer in this paper and to chris wallace this particular paper brings together much of the analysis previously circulated in the papers a new theory of strategic voting strategic voting under the qualified majority rule and idiosyncrasy information and the impact of strategic voting

stability and coordination in duverger s law a formal model of preelection polls and strategic voting this paper investigates the dynamics of the wasted vote phenomenon and duverger s law i construct a theoretical model in order to consider how preelection polls serve to inform the electorate about the relative chances of the candidates and how that information acts over time to decrease the support of the trailing candidate the results shed light on how public opinion polls can aggregate information in the electorate and coordinate voters on the viable candidates in the election specifically i show that in a bayesian game model of strategic voting there exist non duvergerian equilibria in which all three candidates receive votes in the limit these equilibria require extreme coordination however and any variation in beliefs leads voters away from them to one of the duvergerian equilibria thus non duvergerian equilibria are unstable while two party equilibria are not in addition i describe how preelection polls provide information to voters about the viability of candidates and can thus be used by voters to coordinate on a duvergerian outcome

uniqueness of stationary equilibria in a one dimensional model of bargaining abstract we prove uniqueness of stationary equilibria in a one dimensional model of bargaining with quadratic utilities for an arbitrary common discount factor for general concave utilities we prove existence and uniqueness of a minimal stationary equilibrium and of a maximal stationary equilibrium we provide an example of multiple stationary equilibria with concave nonquadratic utilities

hedonic prices property values and measuring environmental benefits a survey of the issues this paper provides a review of the theoretical basis and the assumptions required in order to use hedonic price equations derived from property value data to obtain measures of the prices and the inverse demand functions for environmental amenities such as air quality it also includes a review and assessment of existing empirical applications of the technique to problems of air and water quality and urban noise

does energy efficiency matter to home buyers an investigation of epc ratings and transaction prices in england abstract this paper investigates whether energy performance ratings as measured by mandatory energy performance certificates epcs are reflected in the sale prices of residential properties this is the first large scale empirical study of this topic in england involving 333 095 dwellings sold at least twice in the period from 1995 to 2012 applying hedonic regression and an augmented repeat sales regression we find a positive relationship between the energy efficiency rating of a dwelling and the transaction price per square metre the price effects of superior energy performance tend to be higher for terraced dwellings and flats compared to detached and semi detached dwellings the evidence is less clear cut for rates of house price growth but remains supportive of a positive association overall the results of this study suggest that energy efficiency labels have a measurable and significant impact on house prices in england

inferring strategic voting we estimate a model of strategic voting and quantify the impact it has on election outcomes because the model exhibits multiplicity of outcomes we adopt a set estimator using japanese general election data we nd a large fraction 75 3 80 3 of strategic voters only a small fraction 2 4 5 5 of whom voted for a candidate other than the one they most preferred misaligned voting existing empirical literature has not distinguished between the two estimating misaligned voting instead of strategic voting accordingly while our estimate of strategic voting is high our estimate of misaligned voting is comparable to previous studies

hedonic prices and implicit markets estimating demand and supply functions for differentiated products in choosing the level of quality to purchase the buyer of a differentiated product also chooses a point on the marginal price schedule for that product hence in general the demand functions for product characteristics cannot be consistently estimated by ordinary least squares market equilibrium results in a matching of characteristics of demanders and suppliers this matching restricts the use of buyer and seller characteristics as instruments when estimating demand and supply functions for product characteristics the paper develops these issues a stochastic structure for hedonic equilibrium models is then proposed identification results are presented and estimation procedures are outlined

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables

voting in legislative elections under plurality rule conventional models of single district plurality elections show that with three parties anything can happen extreme policies can win regardless of voter preferences i show that when there are multiple district elections for a legislature we get back to a world where the median voter matters an extreme policy will generally only come about if it is preferred by the median voter in a majority of districts while the existence of a centrist party can lead to moderate outcomes even if the party itself wins few seats furthermore i show that while single district elections always have misaligned voting i e some voters do not vote for their preferred choice equilibria of the legislative election exist with no misaligned voting in any district finally i show that when parties are impatient a xed rule on how legislative bargaining occurs will lead to more coalition governments while uncertainty will favour single party governments