collective labor supply and household production this paper emphasises the importance of incorporating household production into the collective model of the household and considers how and to what extent the results of chiappori 1992 can be extended to this case this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

introducing household production in collective models of labor supply in a recent paper chiappori 1992 i proposed a model of labor supply based on a collective representation of household behavior in this framework each household member is characterized by his or her own utility function and decisions are only assumed to result in pareto efficient outcomes i showed that these simple assumptions were sufficient to i generate testable restrictions on labor supply functions and ii recover individual preferences and the outcome of the decision process from observed behavior for the sake of simplicity the results were derived in the simplest possible case namely a static labor supply model with private consumptions such a framework was appropriate only for the purpose of the paper that is a preliminary exploration of the properties of collective models of labor supply the next step is to evaluate the robustness of the results to various extensions of the basic model this opens a general research program and generates a wide range of particular problems that it is hoped will be considered in the future among the most serious shortcomings of the 1992 model is the absence of household production as in most labor supply models agents were assumed to divide their time between market activities and leisure as apps and rees 1997 in this issue very rightly point out in their comment the absence of domestic production is far from innocuous as soon as welfare issues are considered for instance a low level of market labor supply will automatically be interpreted as a large consumption of leisure whereas it may in fact reflect the specialization of one of the members in domestic

pigou meets ramsey gender based taxation with non cooperative couples abstract this paper explores the implications of gender based income taxation in a non cooperative model of household behavior in a first step we show how gender based taxes can act as pigou taxes and correct the externality induced by a non cooperative household equilibrium we find that the first best pigou tax rules are solely determined by spouses relative marginal rates of substitution between the public household good and private consumption breaking down this general rule into the primitives of the model the spouse with a comparative advantage in home production should be taxed at a higher rate in a second step we embed our non cooperative framework in a standard second best planning problem in which taxes serve a revenue raising purpose in this case the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is partly determined by a ramsey type inverse elasticity rule and partly by a pigouvian tax element we show that these two forces work in opposite directions in determining whether men or women should be taxed at a higher rate and that either one could be dominant depending on the revenue raising position of the government this result is robust to the introduction of two groups of households that differ in their mode of decision making which can be either cooperative or non cooperative

individual versus joint taxation in models with household production in a recent paper piggott and whalley 1996 challenge the conventional wisdom that says that the individual rather than the household should be the unit of taxation and argue instead for joint taxation their point of departure is a point well taken the literature on which this wisdom is based in particular boskin and sheshinski 1983 ignores the existence of household production the general argument is a nice one in the theory of the second best in the absence of taxation of market wage income the marginal rates of technical substitution between primary and secondary labor in market and in household production would be equal to each other and the marginal rate of substitution between the market and household good would be equal to the marginal rate of transformation between them thus achieving pareto efficiency introduction of income taxation leads to a distortion of the relation between the marginal rate of substitution and the marginal rate of transformation which is the focus of concern in the literature 2 and given the differing econo

perception of risks in renewable energy projects the case of concentrated solar power in north africa the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent climate change while meeting the energy needs of developed and developing economies recent studies suggest that generation of electricity from concentrated solar power in north african countries and its transmission to europe could provide european and north african partners with low carbon electricity the private capital will be likely required to achieve the scale of new investment and yet the north african region experience difficulties with sustaining high levels of foreign direct investment from the private sector the literature identifies a number of risks as barriers to investment and we examine these in the particular context of renewable energy development we conducted three stages of interviews with stakeholders to learn their perceptions of the risks most likely to affect renewable energy projects three class of risks regulatory political and force majeure which includes terrorism stand out as being of high concern of these regulatory risks are perceived as being the most consequential and the most likely to occur this suggests that attention to building the capacities of north african countries to develop implement and enforce sound regulations in a transparent manner could be an important step in promoting renewable energy cooperation with europe

electricity transition in the middle east and north africa a de risking governance approach high upfront costs and investment risks constitute critical barriers for investments in low carbon infrastructure technologies in the middle east and north africa this article uses a case study of morocco s solar strategy for the electricity sector in order to explore how domestic versus regional multilateral governance structures impact upon the downside risk of clean energy investments and translate into lower financing costs we firstly process trace the differential effects of governance on policy and financial de risking intended as risk reduction and risk transfer then we quantify the impact of policy and financial de risking on the financing costs of the ouarzazate csp noor 1 project our results suggest that i policy and financial de risking depended on a clear policy commitment of the government to develop solar electricity a strong domestic institutional capacity to transform commitment into concrete projects as well as a strong commitment of development finance institutions at project level our results suggest that ii lower financing cost depended on concessional finance provided by multiple lenders proactive policy de risking efforts taken at domestic level and the competitive auction besides the expected impact of concessional finance these findings lend qualitative quantitative support to the argument that domestic policy de risking pay off unlocking concessional finance and reducing the private investors required return from the project therefore governments of the middle east and north africa countries should pursue any efforts in implementing or enhancing policy de risking measures under the emerging post 2020 climate policy regime new instruments might also incorporate a focus on investment risks through country specific technical and financial assistance however our analysis suggests that electricity policy legacies and practices are hard to change in the middle east and north africa therefore technical and financial assistance should target especially those areas that have a particular policy de risking potential namely capacity building on project assessment project finance and grid management

the tax unit and household production under a progressive income tax conventional wisdom is that taxing individuals rather than households is preferred from an efficiency point of view the reason is that secondary workers whose labor supply elasticity is high will be taxed at a lower marginal rate than primary workers whose labor supply elasticity is low here we argue that once household production is taken into account things are more complicated since tax design should also not distort the input of family members time in household production factor input distortions as well as ramsey considerations thus need to enter the choice of the tax unit we provide a numerical example of an economy for which a move from an individual to a household basis in the income tax can be efficiency improving we then use a general equilibrium model parameterized using australian tax rates and data whose results clearly show that welfare gains can occur under changes from an individual to a household basis for an existing income tax our results th

love and taxes and matching institutions we study a setting with search frictions in the marriage market and with incomplete contracting inside the family everyone prefers a partner that has high income and is a perfect emotional match but compromises must often be struck a high income earner may abstain from marrying a low income earner even though they would be a perfect match emotionally because the highincome earner may dislike the implicit income redistribution implied by the marriage redistributive income taxation may ease this problem income matching institutions that secure that people largely from the same income groups meet each other can substitute for redistribution so that optimal redistribution is reduced we also introduce a divorce option redistributive taxation is shown both to further and stabilize marriage

peer effects in the diffusion of solar photovoltaic panels social interaction peer effects are recognized as a potentially important factor in the diffusion of new products in the case of environmentally friendly goods or technologies both marketers and policy makers are interested in the presence of causal peer effects as social spillovers can be used to expedite adoption we provide a methodology for the simple straightforward identification of peer effects with sufficiently rich data avoiding the biases that occur with traditional fixed effects estimation when using the past installed base of consumers in the reference group we study the diffusion of solar photovoltaic panels in california and find that at the average number of owner occupied homes in a zip code an additional installation increases the probability of an adoption in the zip code by 0 78 percentage points our results provide valuable guidance to marketers designing strategies to increase referrals and reduce customer acquisition costs they also provide insights into the diffusion process of environmentally friendly technologies

revised feed in tariff for solar photovoltaic in the united kingdom a cloudy future ahead abstract the united kingdom uk started implementing a national feed in tariff fit mechanism on the 1 april 2010 which included specific payment tariffs for solar photovoltaic pv installations however a revised fit rate has been put in place starting from 1 april 2012 applicable to any installations with an eligibility date of on or after 3 march 2012 this paper presents first an overview of solar pv installation in the uk this followed by a general concept of the fit in the uk before analyzing the financial impact of the new fit rate on the consumers similar financial analysis is conducted with selected countries in europe the financial analysis investigates the total profit the average rate of return and the payback period it is found that the new fit rate generates very low profit minimum rate of return and a longer payback period suggesting a downward trend of solar pv uptake in the future

wage dispersion and productive efficiency evidence for sweden the swedish record of enormous compression of relative wages under centralized solidarity bargaining followed by substantial decompression of wages after central bargaining broke down supplies observations well suited to empirical evaluation of arguments about the response of productive efficiency to shifts in wage distribution we obtain no results supporting fairness morale and cohesiveness theories implying that wage leveling within workplaces and industries may enhance productivity reduction of interindustry wage differentials evidently did however contribute positively to aggregate output and productivity growth most likely for the structural reasons first emphasized by swedish trade union economists almost a half century ago

optimal tax treatment of the family married couples abstract this paper examines the appropriate tax treatment of the family in a series of analytical models and numerical examples for a population of taxpaying couples which differ in earning capacity we drive the optimal tax rates for each potential earner these rates depend crucially upon own and cross labor supply elasticities and the joint distribution of wage rates our results suggest that the current system of income splitting in the united states under which husbands and wives face equal marginal tax rates is nonoptimal using results from recent econometric studies and allowing for a sensitivity analysis the optimal tax rates on secondary workers in the family are much lower than those on primary earners indeed our best estimate is that the secondary earner would face tax rates only one half as high as primary earners

income splitting specialization and intra family distribution income splitting for tax purposes results in more specialization of wives but does this in turn generate more gender inequality in my dynamic bargaining model with a divorce threatpoint i find that who controls the couple s labour supply plays a crucial role in establishing this link if spouses choose their labour supply non cooperatively only the husband s increase but not her own decrease in labour supply introduces a negative term in the wife s change in welfare if the wife does not control her own labour supply a decrease in her own labour supply introduces an additional negative term la fragmentation du revenu aux fins d impot resulte en une plus grande specialisation des epouses mais est ce que cela engendre davantage d inegalite entre genres dans un modele de marchandage dynamique avec menace de divorce a la cle on decouvre que la personne qui controle l offre de travail du couple joue un role crucial dans la reponse a cette question si les epoux choisissent leurs offres de travail de maniere non cooperative seul l accroissement de l offre de travail de l epoux et non le declin de l offre de travail de l epouse introduit un terme negatif dans le changement de niveau de bien etre de l epouse si l epouse ne controle pas sa propre offre de travail un declin dans son offre de travail introduit un element negatif additionnel

taxing family size and subsidizing child specific commodities abstract the effects and optimal choice of policy instruments directly affecting the welfare of parents and children are examined within the context of a household economics model if fertility were exogenous and households differed in number of children only a first best could be implement through a grant conditional on family size outside this very special case public intervention is either not justifiable on distributional grounds or involves taxing child specific commodities less than adult specific commodities if fertility is endogenous family size must be taxed or subsidized according to whether household expenditure on children is decreasing or increasing in the mother s wage rate

regional distribution of photovoltaic deployment in the uk and its determinants a spatial econometric approach abstract photovoltaic pv panels offer significant potential for contributing to the uk s energy policy goals relating to decarbonisation of the energy system security of supply and affordability the substantive drop in the cost of panels since 2007 coupled with the introduction of the feed in tariff fit scheme in 2010 has resulted in a rapid increase in installation of pv panels in the uk from 26 5mwp in 2009 to over 5gw by the end of 2014 yet there has been no comprehensive analysis of the determinants of pv deployment in the uk this paper addresses this gap by employing spatial econometrics methods to a recently available data set at a fine geographical detail following a traditional regression analysis a general to specific approach has been adopted where spatial variations in the relationships have been examined utilising the spatial durbin model using the cross sectional data relating to the uk nuts level 3 data empirical results indicate that demand for electricity population density pollution levels education level of households and housing types are among the factors that affect pv uptake in a region moreover lagrange multiplier test results indicate that the spatial durbin model may be properly applied to describe the pv uptake relationship in the uk as there are significant regional spillover effects

geographies of energy transition space place and the low carbon economy this paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity the paper draws on a seminar series on the geographies of energy transition security climate governance hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011 which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography focussing on the uk government s policy for a low carbon transition the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy six concepts are introduced and explained location landscape territoriality spatial differentiation scaling and spatial embeddedness examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent and contending potential geographical futures are in play more attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low carbon economy will be like it also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available

the forecasting properties of survey based wage growth expectations weevaluate survey based wage growth expectations and find that they are neither unbiased nor efficient forecasts concerning out of sample forecast precision survey participants generally perform

on the taxation of trade within and between households abstract tax reform proposals affect individual welfares in ways which strongly depend on the nature of specialisation in household production and the pattern of trade within households variation in the degree of specialisation in domestic production across households strongly influences the impacts on individual tax burdens of a given tax reform the standard models of the economics literature cannot be used to analyse these issues because they ignore the two person nature of households and the existence of household production and trade this paper proposes a simple and tractable model to remedy this and uses it to analyse the impacts of the types of tax reform that have been the subject of recent policy debate

de risking concentrated solar power in emerging markets the role of policies and international finance institutions abstract concentrated solar power csp is a promising technology for low carbon energy systems as combined with thermal storage it can store solar energy as heat and deliver power more flexibly and when most needed by the grid however its high cost prevents its rapid deployment and affects its affordability in emerging economies international financial institutions ifis have emerged as key players to enable csp in emerging economies especially when cooperating with national policymakers through the analysis of two csp plants in india and morocco where ifis provided the lion s share of finance this paper aims to assess the effectiveness of their support and estimate the impact of ifis financing on electricity production costs and mobilization of private investments the two case studies show that public financial institutions can play a leading role in reducing the cost of csp support on public budgets by providing concessional loans in countries where public and or private finance would be too expensive or extending maturities where commercial investors are present but poorly suited for project finance finally we show that combined with competitive tariff setting mechanism tenders and auctions public financial support can also be a cost effective tool to engage private investors in csp

solar pv where the sun doesn t shine estimating the economic impacts of support schemes for residential pv with detailed net demand profiling abstract countries with low irradiation and solar pv adoption rates are increasingly considering policy support for solar pv although consumer electricity demand and solar generation profiles are often mismatched this paper presents a methodology for policymakers in such conditions to examine more precisely the financial performance of residential solar pv from the consumer perspective as part of an ex ante policy assessment we model a range of prospective policy scenarios and compare policy mechanisms that compensate homeowners for generation those that reduce their upfront costs and those that assist with financing using ireland as a case study the results confirm the intuitive notion that more generous financial remuneration schemes provide quicker payback however we observe that in low irradiance regions there is little difference between upfront grants and feed in tariffs to accelerate payback timeframes we also show the importance of retail tariff structure in consumer payback for solar pv systems with one part tariffs generating shorter paybacks than two part tariff structures although the latter is more likely to secure revenue for electricity infrastructure investment drawing from this analysis the paper proposes some options for the design of policy supports and tariff structures to deliver a sustainable residential renewable electricity system in low irradiance regions

growth unemployment and labour market institutions evidence from a cross section of eu regions the responsiveness of unemployment to growth is an issue of ongoing political and academic interest economic growth is supposed to be the key to increase labour demand and reduce unemployment departing from okun s law most research on the unemployment intensity of growth has focused on national disparities and the role of labour market institutions empirical evidence at the regional level is scarce we investigate differences in regional labour market responsiveness and their potential determinants for a cross section of european regions the data set covers the nuts 2 regions in the eu15 for the period 1980 to 2002 following a spatial modelling approach interaction among neighbouring labour markets is taken into account our findings point to substantial differences in labour market effects of output growth among european countries and regions both national labour market institutions and regional characteristics such as structural change explain a significant part of these disparities

fertility taxation and family policy historically there is clear evidence of an inverse relationship between female labour supply and fertility however the relationship across countries is now positive countries like germany and italy with the lowest fertility also have the lowest female participation rates this paper analyses the extent to which this can be explained by public policy in particular taxation and the system of child support the results suggest that countries which have individual rather than joint taxation and which support families through child care facilities rather than child payments are likely to have both higher female labour supply and higher fertility

financing renewable energy in africa key challenge of the sustainable development goals abstract given the challenge of offering a development perspective to a rapidly growing population it might be tempting for africa to pursue a strategy of fueling growth with the cheapest source of energy available and take care of the environment later such an approach however would disregard the social cost of fossil fuels which the population would have to bear using the sustainable development goals as a benchmark for inclusive and sustainable growth we identify the synergy effects provided by renewable energy already substantial efforts of financing the additional cost of re are under way an analysis of possible leverage points available instruments and involved actors shows that there remains a large additional potential

alleged instability of the okun s law relationship in australia an empirical analysis the determinants of the long run equilibrium unemployment rate are modelled through a cointegrating regression the residual term which represents the error correction mechanism is used in the testing of a general dynamic model to obtain a simplified representation of the data generation process over the period 1968 2 1989 2 the long period equilibrium unemployment rate which is i 1 is shown to be related to the rate of capacity utilization a structural change variable and the rate of capacity growth steady state rates of unemployment are calculated which are based on different assumptions about the magnitudes of the independent variables in contrast to the other two variables changes in the rate of capacity utilization are shown to have only modest effects on the steady state unemployment rate the okun coefficient is inversely related to the steady state unemployment rate which accords with intuition the statistically significant decline in the trend growth rate of non farm gdp in the 1970

photovoltaic power stations in germany and the united states a comparative study by data envelopment analysis abstract this study compares photovoltaic pv power stations between germany and the united states to examine which country more efficiently provides renewable energy in their usages for the comparative analysis this study utilizes data envelopment analysis dea as a methodology to evaluate the performance of pv power stations from the perspective of both solar and land usages a total of one hundred sixty pv power stations eighty in germany and eighty in the united states are used for this comparison the demand for sustainable energy and energy security has been rapidly increasing over the past decade because of concerns about environment and limited resources pv solutions are one of many renewable technologies that are being developed to satisfy a recent demand of electricity germany is the world s top installer and consumer of pv power and the united states is one of the top five nations germany leads the way in installed pv capacity even though the nation has less solar resources and land area due to limited solar resources low insolation and sunshine and land area the united states should have a clear advantage over germany however the empirical result of this study exhibits that pv power stations in germany operate more efficiently than those of the united states even if the latter has many solar and land advantages the surprising result indicates that the united states has room for improvement when it comes to utilizing solar and land resources and needs to reform the solar policy for such a purpose feed in tariff fit may be an effective energy policy at the state level in the united states because the fit provides investors such as utility companies and other types of energy firms with financial incentives to develop large pv power stations and generation facilities for other renewable energy it may be true that the fit is a powerful policy tool to promote pv and other renewable installation and support a reduction of an amount of greenhouse gases however the fit poses a large financial burden to consumers with a massive increase in renewable energy installation like in germany and spain therefore it is necessary for the united states to consider how to align a policy with a speed of technology innovation to balance between the benefit and the cost derived from the policy implementation on renewable energy in addition this study discusses policy issues regarding cost allocation due to fit among stakeholders related to the electric power industry at the end this study proposes a new type of wholesale electricity market that provides simultaneous trading on electricity and greenhouse gas emissions by fully utilizing modern computer science technology that exists in universities and national laboratories of the united states

exploring domestic energy saving the role of environmental concern and background variables abstract the main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether residents environmental concern has any effect on their energy saving curtailments and efficiency investments the novelty of the present work lies in the fact that it seeks to investigate this topic in a multi country setting exploiting data from nine oecd countries australia canada czech republic france italy south korea netherlands norway and sweden and also in that it employs a latent variable model which allows us to examine the conditions necessary for the results to be comparable across different countries novel in this paper is also the focus on the role of environmental concern as a factor of several curtailments and efficiency investments our results suggest that people with higher environmental concern are on average more likely to perform energy saving curtailments and also are more likely to have some energy efficiency retrofits installed in dwellings most of the socio economic and demographic variables have mixed effects on efficiency investments and curtailments however some interesting patterns emerged with respect to the age of respondents household income education and gender of respondents and also the size of household

labour supply household production and intra family welfare distribution abstract this paper demonstrates the importance in conceptual and empirical terms of incorporating household production in models of labour supply to avoid misleading results concerning the intra family distribution of income and behavioural responses to economic policy

taxation and the household abstract previous analyses of demand systems and the welfare effects of taxing male and female labour supplies suppress the analysis of household resource allocation by assuming a household utility function to analyse the implications of assuming this is not the case we construct a simple but fairly general model of household resource allocation and use the properties of the equilibrium of this model to characterise the effects of tax policy on individual utilities as determined by the household resource allocation process

taxation and the earnings of husbands and wives evidence from sweden i examine the response of husbands and wives earnings to a tax reform in which husbands and wives tax rates changed independently allowing me to examine the effect of both spouses incentives on each spouse s behavior i analyze the large swedish tax reform of 1990 1991 and find that in response to a compensated fall in one spouse s tax rate each spouse s earnings rise i compare these results to those of simplified econometric models used in the typical setting in which independent variation in each spouse s tax rate is unavailable i find that standard econometric specifications may produce substantially biased estimates

responsive feed in tariff adjustment to dynamic technology development abstract this paper reviews the adjustments of the feed in tariffs for new solar photovoltaic pv installations in germany as pv system prices declined rapidly since 2009 the german government implemented automatic mechanisms to adjust the remuneration level for new installations in response to deployment volumes this paper develops an analytic model to simulate weekly installations of pv systems of up to 30 kw based on project profitability and project duration the model accurately replicates observed market developments and is used to assess different adjustment mechanisms against multiple scenarios for pv system price developments the analysis shows that responsive feed in tariff schemes with frequent tariff adjustments and short qualifying periods reach deployment targets most effectively

solar power investment in north africa reducing perceived risks abstract climate protection targets for mid century imply a need to scale up european renewable power production to a level that may exceed the available land area within europe s borders one attractive solution from a cost and feasibility perspective is the development of large scale concentrating solar power plants in north africa and the middle east however these developments are seen by many people as risky in terms of both european energy security and in terms of the risks faced by project developers in this paper we focus on the latter of theses issues first we examine the risks that project developers are most concerned about and identify these as being associated not with terrorism and rogue state behavior but rather with corruption and inefficient and unpredictable bureaucracies second we identify a range of policy approaches that can reduce these risks either by mitigating their consequences or by seeking to eliminate their underlying causes third we investigate the financial benefits of taking such steps to reduce or eliminate investment risks we find the potential savings to european electricity consumers to exceed 200 billion

gender time use and public policy over the life cycle patricia apps and ray rees compare gender differences in the allocation of time to market work domestic work child care and leisure over the life cycle using survey data for three countries australia the uk and germany they discuss the extent to which gender differences and life cycle variation in time use can be explained by public policy focusing on the tax treatment of the female partner and on access to high quality affordable child care

consumer attitudes towards domestic solar power systems the success of the uk policy to reduce carbon emissions is partly dependent on the ability to persuade householders to become more energy efficient and to encourage installation of domestic solar systems solar power is an innovation in the uk but the current policy of stimulating the market with grants is not resulting in widespread adoption this case study using householders in central england investigates householder attitudes towards characteristics of solar systems and identifies some of the barriers to adoption the study utilises diffusion of innovations theory to identify attitudes towards system attributes and isolates the characteristics that are preventing a pragmatic early majority from adopting the technology a group of early adopters and a group of assumed early majority adopters of solar power were surveyed and the results show that overall although the early majority demonstrate a positive perception of the environmental characteristics of solar power its financial economic and aesthetic characteristics are limiting adoption differences exist between the two groups showing support for the concept of a chasm between adopter categories after moore crossing the chasm marketing and selling high tech products to mainstream customers second ed harper perennial new york however if consumers cannot identify the relative advantage of solar power over their current sources of power which is supplied readily and cheaply through a mains system it is unlikely that adoption will follow recommendations concerning the marketing and development of solar products are identified

spatially uneven development and low carbon transitions insights from urban and regional planning the ageing of existing energy system infrastructure the threat of climate change and uncertainty in the movement of energy prices have resulted in a widespread agreement on the need for a transition to a low carbon energy system yet the nature of this transition i e what when how and where and its socio economic outcomes at different scales are not well understood the interdependence of the energy sector and economic growth has been mostly studied at the national level via some general equilibrium or econometric models whilst sub national studies at community or urban levels mostly focus on the governance of transitions hence we suggest that a regional perspective to energy policy and research promises to integrate these two approaches by providing a more robust and comprehensive understanding of the implications of low carbon transitions as well as contributing to the development of more effective policies by building on recent ideas on geographical aspects of energy transitions this article offers insights on the changing relationship between the spatial organisation of economic activities and energy systems and identifies tools and methods from urban and regional planning to help with the delivery of efficient and equitable policy outcomes

an assessment of the optimal timing and size of investments in concentrated solar power we extend the witch model to consider the possibility to produce and trade electricity generated by large scale concentrated solar power plants csp in highly productive areas that are connected to demand centers through high voltage direct current cables we test the attractiveness of the csp option by imposing a global cap on greenhouse gases concentration equal to 535 ppm co2 eq in 2100 with and without constraints to the expansion of nuclear power and igcc coal with carbon capture and storage ccs we find that it becomes optimal to produce with csp from 2040 and to trade csp electricity across the mediterranean from 2050 therefore projects like desertec seem to be premature after 2050 csp electricity shares become significant csp has a high stabilization cost option value depending on the constraints it ranges between 2 1 and 4 1 of discounted gdp in the middle east and north africa mena between 1 1 and 3 4 in china between 0 2 and 1 2 in the usa between 0 1 and 1 3 in eastern europe and between 0 1 and 0 4 in western europe a moderate level of subsidy to invest more and earlier in csp might increase welfare however large scale deployment should occur after 2040 we also show that mena countries have the incentive to form a cartel to sell electricity to europe at a price higher than the marginal cost this suggests that a hypothetical mediterranean market for electricity should be carefully regulated

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

institutional inequality and tax incidence abstract this paper analyses the effects of taxation when inequality is not innate a theory of institutional inequality is presented which employs a trade model with circular production and the theory of clubs inequality is introduced by constraints on entry into sectors and local groups within sectors individual time is treated as a fixed factor of production and work and leisure are re defined the analysis suggests that when inequality is institutional and government policy does not alter the mechanisms by which institutions translate the distribution of power into the distribution of income a redistribution of income by conventional tax transfer schemes may not always be feasible

taxes and time allocation evidence from single women and men the classic model of becker 1965 suggests that labor supply decisions should be analyzed within the broader context of time allocation and market good consumption choices but most empirical work on policy has focused exclusively on measuring impacts on market work this paper examines how income taxes affect time allocation during the entire day and how these time allocation decisions interact with expenditure patterns using the panel study of income dynamics from 1975 to 2004 we analyze the response of single women s housework labor supply and other time to variation in tax and transfer schedules across income levels number of children states and time we find that when the economic reward to participating in the labor force increases market work increases and housework decreases with the decrease in housework accounting for approximately two thirds of the increase in market work analysis of repeated cross sections of time diary data from 1975 to 2004 shows that home production decreases substantially when market hours of work increase in response to policy changes data on expenditures from the consumer expenditure survey from 1980 to 2003 show some evidence that expenditures on market goods likely to substitute for housework increase in response to a greater incentive to join the labor force the baseline estimates imply that the elasticity of substitution between consumption of home and market goods is 2 61 the results are consistent with the becker model meanwhile single men show little response to changes in tax policy and we are able to rule out an elasticity of substitution between home and market goods for this group of more than 1 52

assessing the strength and effectiveness of renewable electricity feed in tariffs in european union countries in the last two decades feed in tariffs fit have emerged as one of the most popular policies for supporting renewable electricity res e generation a few studies have assessed the effectiveness of res e policies but most ignore policy design features and market characteristics e g electricity price and production cost that influence policy strength we employ 1992 2008 panel data to conduct the first econometric analysis of the effectiveness of fit policies in promoting solar photovoltaic pv and onshore wind power development in 26 european union countries we develop a new indicator for fit strength that captures variability in tariff size contract duration digression rate and electricity price and production cost to estimate the resulting return on investment we regress this indicator on added res e capacity using a fixed effects specification and find that fit policies have driven solar pv development in the eu however this effect is overstated without controlling for country characteristics and is concealed without accounting for policy design we do not find robust evidence that fit policies have driven wind power development overall we show that the interaction of policy design electricity price and electricity production cost is a more important determinant of res e development than policy enactment alone

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

employment unemployment and output growth in booms and recessions time series evidence from finland 1970 1996 the finnish economy experienced dramatic changes in the early 1990s the collapse of the economy in 1991 resulted in a 12 decline in gdp over the years 1991 1993 leading to a significant fall in the demand for labour and a rise in unemployment the study contributes to the discussion on possible changes in the functioning of the finnish economy by scrutinizing the stability of the employment unemploymentoutput relation the empirical analysis based on aggregate variables from the period 1975 1996 suggests that the relationship between aggregate level employment unemployment and output growth remained relatively stable throughout the investigation period

the market value of variable renewables the effect of solar wind power variability on their relative price this paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the market value of variable renewable energy vre the inherent variability of wind speeds and solar radiation affects the price that vre generators receive on the market market value during windy and sunny times the additional electricity supply reduces the prices because the drop is larger with more installed capacity the market value of vre falls with higher penetration rate this study aims to develop a better understanding on how the market value with penetration and how policies and prices affect the market value quantitative evidence is derived from a review of published studies regression analysis of market data and the calibrated model of the european electricity market emma we find the value of wind power to fall from 110 of the average power price to 50 80 as wind penetration increases from zero to 30 of total electricity consumption for solar power similarly low value levels are reached already at 15 penetration hence competitive large scale renewable deployment will be more difficult to accomplish than as many anticipate

wages and productivity growth in the nordic countries abstract the study examines growth in productivity and real wages in four nordic countries viz denmark finland norway and sweden thus extending gordon s 1987 analysis concentrating on the u s japan and europe the results confirm certain key findings of gordon s 1987 study in particular the cyclically adjusted measures of productivity growth confirm the slowdown in productivity growth in the mid 1970s gordon s finding that there are considerable differences across the different sectors of the economy is similarly supported as far as country specific development in productivity growth is concerned the results imply that there are considerable inter country differences which gordon s study fails to reveal in this respect gordon s estimates for europe if taken at face value can be somewhat misleading furthermore contrary to gordon the results suggest that the decline in the underlying productivity trend in the 1970s was not permanent but showed a recovery in the 1980s

learning from experience the development of the renewables obligation in england and wales 2002 2010 abstract the uk has enviable renewable resources both onshore wind and offshore wind wave and tidal the offshore valuation group 2010 the government has had policy mechanisms in place since 1990 to encourage these resources to be developed the current mechanism the renewables obligation ro was specifically designed to emphasise competition and therefore to fit in with the uk s overall strategic approach to energy policy however as yet it has not delivered the capacity that it was designed to do and as a result the uk faces a difficult challenge in attempting to meet european wide renewable energy targets for 2020 as well as longer term decarbonisation targets this paper explores some of the major reasons why the ro has performed so poorly to date and considers the prospects for improvement up to 2020 it concludes that the strategic emphasis on competition in the support mechanisms has played a key role in limiting renewables development but that the mechanism has changed significantly since it was introduced however these changes together with proposals for electricity market reform still do not address important elements of risk in comparison with a standard feed in tariff

network charging and residential tariffs a case of household photovoltaics in the united kingdom abstract currently about one million households in the united kingdom uk have installed solar photovoltaic pv panels with about two thirds of them are using the panels for self generating power according to the uk department of energy climate change solar pv deployment in the uk measured in megawatt has grown considerably from 95 mw in 2010 when the feed in tariff was introduced to 11 429 mw in 2016 the popularity of the solar pv among the uk households made the government to introduce major changes to the scheme our paper focuses on the two major questions could it be that the system already favours richer consumers or certain types of network user who do not bear either the efficient or fair share of the total system distribution and transmission costs does the apportionment of charges between fixed per kw peak and per kwh use of system charges need to be changed to be more cost reflective we employ the data from the smart meters readings provided by the customer led network revolution monitoring trial conducted with the 199 households in the northern england that provides the data for the household electricity use and tariff behaviour between october 2012 and july 2014 our analysis demonstrates that similar to other studies conducted around the world the increase in the solar pv resulted in a transfer of wealth and costs between customer groups due to their own production uk solar pv consumers yield a lower share of the per kwh costs of the distribution system which leads to the increase of per unit charges as well as the changes in the distribution of their payment between different types of households

residential energy efficient technology adoption energy conservation knowledge and attitudes an analysis of european countries abstract relationships between measures of household energy use behavior and household characteristics are estimated using a unique dataset of approximately 5000 households in 10 eu countries and norway family age composition patterns are found to have a distinct impact on household energy use behavior households with young children are more likely to adopt energy efficient technologies and energy conservation practices and place primary importance on energy savings for environmental reasons by contrast households with a high share of elderly members place more importance on financial savings and have lower levels of technology adoption energy conservation practice use and knowledge about household energy use education levels also matter with higher levels associated with energy efficient technology adoption and energy conservation practice use similarly university education increases the stated importance of energy savings for greenhouse gas reductions and decreases the stated importance for financial reasons education impacts also vary greatly across survey countries and there is some evidence of an eastern western european divide with respect to attitudes towards energy savings these cross country differences highlight the need to balance a common eu energy efficiency policy framework with flexibility for country specific policies to address unique constraints to energy efficient technology and conservation practice adoption

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

spot market wages implicit contracts and technological change skill level evidence from finland this article investigates the relevance of the theories of implicit contracts and spot market model to the skill level wages in finland we use linked worker firm panel data over the period from 1991 to 2004 which included major institutional and technological changes we find similar patterns in the wage flexibility of primary and highly educated workers their wages increased with the decreasing spot market unemployment rate after the eu membership still exhibiting some weak backward linkages the wages of the secondary educated did not follow the decreasing spot market unemployment but instead some signs of the full commitment risk sharing were found

optimal tax and transfer programs for couples with extensive labor supply responses this paper analyzes the optimal design of general nonlinear tax transfer schedules for couples under unitary and collective approaches to family decision making we consider a double extensive model of labor supply where each spouse makes a labor force participation choice for given hours of work we present simple and intuitive optimal tax rules that generalize existing findings on the optimal taxation of single person households with extensive responses saez 2002 to the case of two person households with double extensive responses without income effects on labor supply optimal tax rules as a function of sufficient statistics are the same under the unitary and collective approaches with income effects on labor supply optimal tax rules under the two approaches continue to depend on the same sufficient statistics but the collective model features an additional pigouvian term arising from a within family participation externality finally we present microsimulations of tax reform for 15 european countries suggesting that a reduction of tax rates on secondary earners relative to primary earners is associated with strong welfare gains in all countries

optimal commodity taxation and redistribution within households using a collective model of consumption we characterize optimal commodity taxes aimed at targeting specific individuals within the household the main message is that distortionary indirect taxation can circumvent the agency problem of the household essentially taxation should discourage less the consumption of a certain group of goods those for which the slope of the engel curves is larger for the targeted person

economic and environmental effectiveness of renewable energy policy instruments best practices from india abstract renewable energy re has been identified as a key tool to counter climate change and enhance energy security countries across the globe have been promoting this sector by several policy measures however limited research has been undertaken on the economic and environmental efficacy of re policy instruments especially in context of emerging economies like india which have witnessed substantial capacity addition and have set ambitious targets to de carbonize their economy this paper identifies 25 innovative practices followed in india which have enabled accelerated re capacity addition with minimal financial obligations these include energy entrepreneurship energy democratization private sector participation hedging and apportioning re procurement use of auctions with stringent participatory norms creditworthy counter party leverage of risk capital by developmental institutions regular revision of tariffs environmental cess on polluting industries long term re purchase trajectory and incentivizing green power output results indicate high financial impact of instruments support of us 3 5 mw h over applicable tariff which gets neutralized when tax inflow is considered lower carbon abatement cost us 3 6 tco2eq depicts high environmental efficacy the paper shares best practices from india in terms of efficient use of re policy enablers which may be contextualized in other emerging economies as per the local requirements