the renewables portfolio standard in texas an early assessment texas has rapidly emerged as one of the leading wind power markets in the united states this development can be largely traced to a well designed and carefully implemented renewables portfolio standard rps the rps is a new policy mechanism that has received increasing attention as an attractive approach to support renewable power generation though replacing existing renewable energy policies with an as of yet untested approach in the rps is risky early experience from texas suggests that an rps can effectively spur renewables development and encourage competition among renewable energy producers initial rps targets in texas were well exceeded by the end of 2001 with 915 mw of wind installed in that year alone rps compliance costs appear negligible with new wind projects reportedly contracted for well under 3 us cent k wh in part as a result of a 1 7 us cent kwh production tax credit an outstanding wind resource and an rps that is sizable enough to drive project economies of scale obliged retail suppliers have been willing to enter into long term contracts with renewable generators reducing important risks for both the developer and the retail supplier finally the country s first comprehensive renewable energy certificate program has been put into place to monitor and track rps compliance c 2002 published by elsevier science ltd less

the distribution of income in china preface notes on the contributors introduction k griffin z renwei part 1 the distribution of income household income and its distribution a r khan k griffin c riskin z renwei three features of the distribution of income during the transition to reform z renwei part 2 income and wealth in rural china the determinants of household income in rural china a r khan the distribution of wealth in rural china t mckinley income distribution and poverty in rural china c riskin part 3 employment and human capital workers in china s rural industries j knight s lina why urban wages differ in china j knight s lina the determinants of educational attainment j knight l shi annex the 1988 household sample survey m eichen z ming index

regional variation in earnings inequality in reform era urban china this article studies the regional variation in earnings inequality in contemporary urban china focusing on the relationship between the pace of economic reforms and earning determination through

evaluating the impacts of real time pricing on the usage of wind generation one of the impediments to large scale use of wind generation within power systems is its nondispatchability and variable and uncertain real time availability operating constraints on conventional generators such as minimum generation points forbidden zones and ramping limits as well as system constraints such as power flow limits and ancillary service requirements may force a system operator to curtail wind generation in order to ensure feasibility furthermore the pattern of wind availability and electricity demand may not allow wind generation to be fully utilized in all hours one solution to these issues which could reduce these inflexibilities is the use of real time pricing rtp tariffs which can both smooth out the diurnal load pattern in order to reduce the impact of binding unit operating and system constraints on wind utilization and allow demand to increase in response to the availability of costless wind generation we use and analyze a detailed unit commitment model of the texas power system with different estimates of demand elasticities to demonstrate the potential increases in wind generation from implementing rtp

measuring the benefits of delayed price responsive demand in reducing wind uncertainty costs demand response has benefits in mitigating unit commitment and dispatch costs imposed on power systems by wind uncertainty and variability we examine the effect of delays in consumers responding to price signals on the benefits of demand response in mitigating wind uncertainty costs using a case study based on the ercot power system we compare the cost of operating the system with forecasts of future wind availability to a best case scenario with perfect foresight of wind we demonstrate that wind uncertainty can impose substantive costs on the system and that demand response can eliminate more than 75 of these costs if loads respond to system conditions immediately otherwise we find that with a 30 min lag in the response nearly 72 of the value of demand response is lost

comparing feed in tariff incentives in taiwan and germany abstract the current development of clean energy in taiwan is in the embryonic stage even though in recent times taiwan s development of renewable energy has emphasized wind power and photovoltaic power current statistics show they supply only a small portion of total national power needs and that wind power and solar power are still in development in order to promote the growth of clean energy it is necessary to compare the support mechanisms of developing clean energy in different countries the success of implementing clear energy in germany is often followed by other countries including taiwan thus this paper explores the german experience of implementing a feed in tariff hereafter fit and compared it with the fit system in taiwan to illustrate the differences and similarities between these countries the results could be used as a reference for the future modification of the fit system in taiwan

hearing the voices of the poor assigning poverty lines on the basis of local perceptions of poverty a quantitative analysis of qualitative data from participatory wealth ranking in rural south africa summary we applied a mixed methods approach to participatory wealth ranking pwr to identify the number of poor households in eight villages of rural south africa and describe how poor they are we generated a household wealth index on the basis of the ranking process and statements made on standard of living descriptions from pwr identified households as very poor poor but a bit better off or doing ok of 9 671 households 3 113 32 2 could be considered very poor or poor the paper presents a novel approach to wealth ranking that generates a rich appraisal of poverty

on measuring child costs with applications to poor countries the theoretical basis for measuring child costs is discussed and detailed consideration is given to two straightforward procedures for calculation engel s food share method and rothbarth s adult good method each of these methods embodies different definitions of child costs so that the same empirical evidence can generate quite different estimates depending on the method used it is shown that true costs are generally overstated by engel s method and understated by rothbarth s procedure although the latter unlike the former can provide a sensible starting point for cost measurement our estimates from sri lankan and indonesian data suggest that children cost their parents about 30 40 percent of what they spend on themselves

collective action initiatives to improve marketing performance lessons from farmer groups in tanzania this study aims to examine the extent to which certain characteristics and asset endowments of smallholder farmer groups facilitate collective action initiatives to improve group marketing performance this is approached through an evaluation of a government led programme in tanzania which is attempting to increase smallholder farmers incomes and food security through a market oriented intervention findings suggest that more mature groups with strong internal institutions functioning group activities and a good asset base of natural capital are more likely to improve their market situation gender composition of groups also affects group marketing performance as an enabling factor for male dominated groups structural social capital in the form of membership in other groups and ties to external service providers and cognitive social capital in the form of intra group trust and altruistic behaviour are not significant factors in a group s ability to improve its market situation

impact of institutions on social network formation communist party membership and social network investment in china using the 2003 wave of china general social survey 2003cgss we study the influence of the communist party on individual s social networks in urban china and thereby present a case of socio political institutions being an important ingredient in social network formation we adopt a counterfactual framework and estimate the effect of communist party membership on social network investment as an average treatment effect we find the treatment to be significant

redistribution and government tactical behaviour an analysis of local public expenditure in china after the 1994 tax reform during the last few decades significant changes have affected chinese public finance in 1994 a major tax reform was undertaken and central local sharing arrangements were deeply modified the evolutions of regional public expenditure in the years following the reform deserve to be analysed the issue is relevant for two additional reasons first income inequality is becoming a relevant issue and it is therefore important to understand whether the chinese government is pursuing some kind of redistribution policy second an analysis of the local expenditure dynamics might provide some important information concerning the objectives and the behaviour of the chinese government the article considers a set of structural political and socio economic variables to analyse the determinants of local public expenditure in 30 chinese regions over the period 1995 2007 the results reveal that redistribution seems not to be a priority for the chinese government expenditure is higher in richer and more internationally open regions and the only redistribution evidence that emerges is related to urban rural disparities

how well do static indicators identify the chronically poor abstract we investigate how well the most widely used static welfare indicators perform in identifying the chronically poor we propose a normative measure of performance the cost of a given impact on chronic poverty when transfers are contingent upon a purely static indicator using longitudinal household data from rural india we find that current consumption is not always a better indicator of chronic poverty than current income both however perform much better than other common indicators such as food share and access to land

socioeconomic stratification by wealth ranking is it valid abstract this paper validates a rapid rural appraisal wealth ranking technique using standard socioeconomic indicators from a household survey in rural bangladesh key informants stratified 1 637 households into three wealth groups according to a number of broad criteria and a questionnaire was subsequently administered to each household health demographic and economic variables derived from the questionnaire were found to differ significantly according to wealth group analysis supports the construct validity and empirical validity of the wealth ranking technique as a means of stratifying households by socioeconomic status the requirements for external validity as assessed through the comparison of findings with similar studies elsewhere in south asia are also satisfied

optimal generation mix with short term demand response and wind penetration demand response defined as the ability of load to respond to short term variations in electricity prices plays an increasingly important role in balancing short term supply and demand especially during peak periods and in dealing with fluctuations in renewable energy supplies however demand response has not been included in standard models for defining the optimal generation technology mix three different methodologies are proposed to integrate short term responsiveness into a generation technology mix optimization model considering operational constraints elasticities are included to adjust the demand profile in response to price changes including cross price elasticities that account for load shifts among hours as energy efficiency programs also influence the load profile interactions of efficiency investments and demand response are also modeled comparison of model results for a single year optimization with and without demand response shows peak reduction and valley filling effects impacting the optimal amounts and mix of generation capacity increasing demand elasticity also increases the installed amount of wind capacity suggesting that demand response yields environmental benefits by facilitating integration of renewable energy

on the efficiency of connection charges part ii integration of distributed energy resources this two part paper addresses the design of retail electricity tariffs for distribution systems with distributed energy resources ders part i presents a framework to optimize ex ante two part tariffs for a regulated retailer who faces stochastic wholesale prices on the one hand and stochastic demand on the other in part ii the integration of ders is addressed by analyzing their effect on the optimal two part tariff and the induced welfare gains two der integration models are considered a decentralized model involving behind the meter ders and a centralized model with retailer integrated ders it is shown that ders integrated under either model can achieve the same social welfare and that net metering is optimal the retail prices for both models are equal and reflect the expected wholesale prices the connection charges differ and are affected by the retailer s fixed costs and the statistical dependencies between wholesale prices and behind the meter ders these charges are higher under the decentralized model an empirical analysis is presented to estimate the impact of der on welfare distribution and cross subsidies it shows that with the prevailing net metering tariffs consumer welfare decreases with the level of der integration issues of cross subsidy and practical drawbacks of decentralized integration are also discussed

reaching the poor cash transfer program targeting in cameroon identifying and selecting poor households with efficient targeting methods is essential for effective poverty alleviation programs this paper assesses the ex post performance of two popular targeting mechanisms proxy means testing pmt and community based targeting cbt in a pilot cash transfer program in cameroon several indicators and metrics to measure each method s performance in terms of inclusion of poor households and exclusion of non poor households are employed results consistently show that cbt performs poorly in terms of selecting households with low per capita consumption when compared to pmt cbt appears to select households with low physical and human capital regardless of actual consumption level however cbt also shows more variability in the selection decision than pmt even when alternative poverty definitions are used as robustness tests the pmt method used in the pilot slightly outperforms other targeting methods hybrid alternative pmt and universal targeting with equal budget but errors remain high when selecting 35 of the population for program participation the results suggest caution is needed in employing cbt methods to select households with low per capita consumption in an environment where poverty levels are high and administrative capacities are limited cbt performance may be improved through more uniform and consistent guidance on program selection criteria and process including explicit criteria that enable cbt monitoring as well as a better integration between pmt and cbt

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

identifying the poor in developing countries do different definitions matter abstract this paper compares several commonly used definitions of poverty household survey data from cote d ivoire are examined to see whether different definitions choose the same people as poor we find that they often do not choose the same people even though we a priori set all the definitions so that 30 of the population is classified as poor this implies that different definitions of poverty may lead to different policy recommendations which suggests that more attention should be given to the choice of a particular definition of poverty when analyzing the effects of economic policies on the poor

microfinance and household poverty reduction new evidence from india the objective of the present study is to examine whether household access to microfinance reduces poverty using national household data from india treatment effects model is employed to estimate the poverty reducing effects of micro finance institutions mfis loans for productive purposes such as investment in agriculture or non farm businesses on household poverty levels these models take into account the endogenous binary treatment effects and sample selection bias associated with access to mfis despite some limitations such as those arising from potential unobservable important determinants of access to mfis significant positive effect of mfi productive loans on multidimensional welfare indicator has been confirmed the significance of treatment effects coefficients has been verified by both tobit and propensity score matching psm models in addition we found that loans for productive purposes were more important for poverty reduction in rural than in urban areas however in urban areas simple access to mfis has larger average poverty reducing effects than the access to loans from mfis for productive purposes this leads to exploring service delivery opportunities that provide an additional avenue to monitor the usage of loans to enhance the outreach

membership has its privileges the socioeconomic characteristics of communist party members in urban china this article compares the relative importance of political capital in the form of membership in the chinese communist party and human capital in the form of higher education in urban china survey data from urban china strongly support two key elements of the intellectual new class theory intellectuals will have privileged access into the party and the importance of education relative to political reliability will increase over time the data also show how political capital and human capital are converted into high paying and prestigious jobs there is also evidence of a separate path of career mobility for the most socially prestigious jobs a college degree not a party card is the key economic reforms of the post mao era are creating a gap between political power on one hand and social prestige and economic power on the other this gap can be expected to grow as the reforms continue

retail electricity tariff and mechanism design to incentivize distributed renewable generation abstract this paper examines the question of how to incentivize the adoption and use of renewable energy resources with particular attention on distributed renewable energy dre prior experience suggests that price and quantity based programs such as feed in tariffs provide more efficient renewable adoption and use and lower program costs than programs that set quantity targets only we also examine some cost allocation issues raised by the use of dre systems and fixed time invariant retail pricing this combination can result in customers with dre systems paying a disproportionately small portion of system capacity costs we suggest two retail pricing schemes real time pricing and a two part tariff with demand charges to address these issues

traditional wealth modern goods and demographic behavior in rural senegal summary the study investigates the relationships of demographic indicators fertility mortality marriage education with modern and traditional wealth in rural senegal data were based on rural households interviewed in the 2011 dhs survey an absolute wealth index was computed from a list of 15 modern goods a traditional wealth index was computed from data on land and livestock per capita modern wealth was always associated with modern demographic behavior lower fertility lower mortality higher age at marriage higher level of education whereas traditional wealth was not associated with fertility and mortality and was negatively associated with marriage and education

social welfare orderings a life cycle perspective life cycle theories emphasize the fact that consumption is allocated intertemporally on the basis of a long term concept of resources that differs from household income because life cycle income is unobserved the distribution of this variable cannot be recovered it is shown that within a suitably defined class a predictor of life cycle income based on household income and expenditure entails a distribution dominated in a social welfare sense by the distribution of life cycle incomes a predictor constructed from socio demographic variables induces a distribution that welfare dominates the distribution of life cycle incomes

a critical review of china s rapidly developing renewable energy and energy efficiency policies renewable energy and energy efficiency reee policies have far reaching implications for energy security climate change economic competitiveness pollution and human livelihood for these reasons reee has become a national priority for the chinese government particularly since 2005 this paper aims to critically review china s reee policies in six sectors electricity industry transportation buildings and local government in addition to examining the progress china has made in the development and implementation of reee policies this review also identifies limitations and room for improvement finally five policy recommendations are presented

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

external support during the transition phase roles for humanitarian aid and development assistance from a village perspective summary development orthodoxy based on macroeconomic theory stresses the importance of physical and human capital accumulation as necessary elements for economic growth growing concern among development practitioners that textbook economic theory and results from formal questionnaires may not converge with the perceptions of the recipients of aid however has lead to an increase in the use of participatory appraisals and related approaches to explore resettled villagers perceptions of aid and its role in reducing poverty the research followed two techniques described in the literature on participatory rural appraisal a a wealth ranking exercise to examine villagers concepts of poverty and the determinants of growth and b semi structured group discussions to explore villagers thoughts on the role of aid what is reassuring from this exercise is the convergence between villagers perceptions of poverty and the role of aid with the implications of the economics literature and the results from administration of a formal household questionnaire

ten years of q squared implications for understanding and explaining poverty summary over the past decade there have been a number of initiatives to promote a more systematic integration of quantitative and qualitative or q squared approaches to poverty analysis in the global south and a large body of literature had emerged the objective of the article is to present a selective review of this empirical work with a view to demonstrate the value it has added for understanding and explaining poverty the evidence strongly suggests that q squared approaches have aided our understanding of the characteristics of the poor and the causes of poverty

demystifying nonparticipation in microcredit a population based analysis abstract given the current popularity of microcredit schemes as a means of poverty alleviation their accessibility to the poorest is of obvious concern this paper examines a targeted microcredit program in bangladesh to assess its coverage among the poor and to identify program and client related barriers impeding participation a population survey of over 24 000 households reveals that although three quarters are eligible for microcredit less than one quarter participate rates of participation in microcredit are higher among poorer households multivariate analysis identifies lack of female education small household size and landlessness as risk factors for nonparticipation based on a 7 random sample of this population the implications of these findings for poverty alleviation policies and programs are discussed

financing large scale wind and solar projects a review of emerging experiences in the indian context renewable energy can play a strategic role in india in meeting the country s growing energy demands as well as combating climate change policymakers have recognized this potential and over the last decade have intensified their efforts towards creating a conducive regulatory and policy framework policy instruments such as renewable obligations feed in tariffs and generation based incentives have specially aided the transformation towards large scale generation enabling higher efficiency and lower costs of generation however financing has emerged as a significant barrier for sustaining the momentum gained in recent years given this background this paper provides an overview on the evolution of large scale generation and the consequent changes in financing requirements it further reviews the emerging trends and barriers in the financing landscape and analyses the impact of policy performance in this context finally it considers the design of a national renewable finance framework complete with targeted finance push instruments that can complement existing demand pull policies in facilitating investment

generating disaggregated poverty maps an application to vietnam abstract previous research shows that geographic targeting in poverty programs is not accurate unless the geographic units are small household surveys however can rarely estimate poverty rates for more than 5 10 regions this study uses data from vietnam to illustrate a method for generating disaggregated poverty maps first the relationship between poverty and household indicators is estimated using survey data then census data on those same indicators are used to estimate poverty rates for each of the 543 rural districts the results indicate that vietnamese poverty is concentrated in the north and in districts furthest from the coast and cities

evaluating the impacts of real time pricing on the cost and value of wind generation one of the costs associated with integrating wind generation into a power system is the cost of redispatching the system in real time due to day ahead wind resource forecast errors one possible way of reducing these redispatch costs is to introduce demand response in the form of real time pricing rtp which could allow electricity demand to respond to actual real time wind resource availability using price signals a day ahead unit commitment model with day ahead wind forecasts and a real time dispatch model with actual wind resource availability is used to estimate system operations in a high wind penetration scenario system operations are compared to a perfect foresight benchmark in which actual wind resource availability is known day ahead the results show that wind integration costs with fixed demands can be high both due to real time redispatch costs and lost load it is demonstrated that introducing rtp can reduce redispatch costs and eliminate loss of load events finally social surplus with wind generation and rtp is compared to a system with neither and the results demonstrate that introducing wind and rtp into a market can result in superadditive surplus gains