valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments increasing the proportion of power derived from renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important part of many countries s strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions however renewable energy investments can often have external costs and benefits which need to be taken into account if socially optimal investments are to be made this paper attempts to estimate the magnitude of these external costs and benefits for the case of renewable technologies in scotland a country which has set particularly ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy the external effects we consider are those on landscape quality wildlife and air quality we also consider the welfare implications of different investment strategies for employment and electricity prices the methodology used to do this is the choice experiment technique renewable technologies considered include hydro on shore and off shore wind power and biomass welfare changes for different combinations of impacts associated with different investment strategies are estimated we also test for differences in preferences towards these impacts between urban and rural communities and between high and low income households

assessment of public acceptance and willingness to pay for renewable energy sources in crete abstract the aim of this study is to analyse and to evaluate the citizens public acceptance and willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy sources res in crete for this purpose a contingent valuation study was conducted using a double bound dichotomous choice format to elicit people s wtp and factors affecting it residents of 1440 households all over crete were interviewed face to face major conclusions can be used as a basis for sustainable energy planning for policies and the formulation of awareness campaigns and for res investment programs and projects in order to prepare implementation conditions and enhance public acceptance of renewable energy investments and programmes mean wtp per household was found to be 16 33 to be paid quarterly as an additional charge on the electricity bill larger willingness to pay was reported by those with high family income and residence size those having a higher level of energy information and awareness concerning climatic change those who have invested in some energy saving measures and those who suffer from more electricity shortages than others

a target group specific approach to green power retailing students as consumers of renewable energy an extensive body of literature exists on the obstacles that have to be overcome in green power retailing in this article target group specific marketing is evaluated as a strategy to increase the share of residential customers of green power a sample of students in the city of freiburg germany was interviewed in order to assess their awareness of environmental issues their willingness to change to green power products and to better understand individual hindrances in changing the power supplier the analysis shows that students are highly positive towards green power products but for several reasons difficult to reach in marketing campaigns aspects to be considered in addressing this consumer group include the students particular expectations towards green products their living conditions price sensitivity and their perception of the relative effort involved in changing the power provider

personal traits and individual choices taking action in economic and non economic decisions abstract in a large number of decisions the option that does not require a specific action such as filling in a form is chosen frequently it is a stylized fact that opt in or opt out designs for otherwise identical choices lead to vastly different outcomes choice options are chosen more frequently simply because they are the no action alternative or default option however direct empirical evidence on the reasons for the popularity of defaults is scarce we devised a special survey module for the dutch dnb household survey to study potential explanations for default choices we find that the popularity of the default option is related to different personal traits in economic and non economic decisions financially literate individuals are more likely to take action and opt out the default option in economic decision making in non economic decisions procrastination increases the popularity of the default while individuals who care much about the opinion of others are more inclined to deviate from the default

benefit estimates for landscape improvements sequential bayesian design and respondents rationality in a choice experiment a multi attribute stated preference approach is used to value low and high impact actions on four major landscape components addressed by the rural environment protection scheme in ireland several methodological issues are addressed the use of prior beliefs on the relative magnitudes of parameters standardized description of different levels of landscape improvements via image manipulation software adoption of efficiency increasing sequential experimental design and sensitivity of benefit estimates to inclusion of responses from irrational respondents results suggest that bayesian design updating delivers significant efficiency gains without loss in respondent efficiency and estimates are upward biased when irrational respondents are included

social demand for electricity from forest biomass in spain does payment periodicity affect the willingness to pay in this article we analyze social preferences for a partial substitution programme of electricity generated by conventional energy sources for energy generated from a local renewable energy source such as forest biomass this analysis sets arguments in favour of accelerating the introduction of this renewable technology in the spanish electricity system simultaneously two methodological goals concerning the contingent valuation method are discussed in the first one we analyze if there are statistical differences in the willingness to pay wtp when a single or a double bounded format is employed to ask the valuation question results show that wtp estimates from single and double bounded significantly differ in the second one we analyze the effect of the periodicity of the payment vehicle on the estimates of welfare change the timeframe specification of the payment vehicle has been scarcely studied and this fact constitutes the main contribution of this paper to the specialized literature results show that periodicity influences upon the probability to favour the proposed change the periodicity does not affect to the mean wtp obtained in the single bounded format but there are statistical differences in the double bounded format these results might be explained by the presence of yea saying and payment scale bias

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

incorporating discontinuous preferences into the analysis of discrete choice experiments data from a discrete choice experiment on improvements of rural landscape attributes are used to investigate the implications of discontinuous preferences on willingness to pay estimates using a multinomial error component logit model we explore differences in scale and unexplained variance between respondents with discontinuous and continuous preferences and condition taste intensities on whether or not each attribute was considered by the respondent during the evaluation of alternatives results suggest that significant improvements in model performance can be achieved when discontinuous preferences are accommodated in the econometric specification and that the magnitude and robustness of the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to discontinuous preferences

the impact of inequality on the transmission of monetary policy abstract we consider a model to detect the relation between household debt and the transmission of monetary policy in an eu member state with independent monetary policy and high income inequality romania we find that households response to changes in monetary conditions depends on their income and indebtedness profile the transmission of monetary policy is more effective for middle income households which are more indebted and have adjustable rates as lower policy rates ease the consumption constraints on these households low income households respond mainly to budgetary policies as the increase in disposable income matters most for the bottom quintile top income quintile reacts more to monetary policy than bottom quintile but less than middle income quintiles lower inequality is associated with stronger effectiveness and higher homogeneity of monetary policy transmission in turn higher inequality is associated with less effectiveness and higher heterogeneity of the impact of the monetary policy

overview of the special issue on policy implications of and lessons from the global financial crisis this paper reviews the special issue policy implications of and lessons from the global financial crisis and its themes global liquidity and the use of international reserves real and financial economic patterns before and during the global financial crisis

citizen versus consumer challenges in the uk green power market abstract this paper investigates the potential advantages and disadvantages of green power products as opposed to the traditional fossil fuel levy which was the uk s chosen tax regime as a means of developing renewable energy in the uk willingness to pay for electricity generated from renewables is investigated results indicate that willingness to pay varies with social status and income however results demonstrate that there is a significant minority in full support of some sort of fiscal initiative electricity generated from renewables is a concept supported by the majority however given the stated willingness to pay it is unlikely that any new renewable capacity will result from green tariff schemes in the near term it is concluded that the green citizen must continue to co exist with the green power purchaser if the uk is to make any significant improvement in the contribution of renewable energy to electricity demand the authors would like to acknowledge the support of irene lorenzoni and jane powell of the centre for social and economic research on the global environment university of east anglia leicester energy efficiency advice centre and leicester energy agency

using contingent valuation to explore willingness to pay for renewable energy a comparison of collective and voluntary payment vehicles abstract this study uses a split sample dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of 1574 u s residents to explore willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy under collective and voluntary payment vehicles and under government and private provision of the good we also evaluate the impact of participation expectations on stated wtp we find some evidence that when confronted with a collective payment mechanism respondents state a somewhat higher wtp than when voluntary payment mechanisms are used similarly private provision of the good elicits a somewhat higher wtp than does government provision we also find that contingent valuation responses are strongly correlated with expectations for the wtp of others our results shed light on strategic response behavior and the incentive compatibility of different cv designs and offer practical insight into u s household preferences for how to support renewable energy

can renewable energy be financed with higher electricity prices evidence from a spanish region abstract in this paper we estimate the willingness to pay for mix of renewable sources of electric power by means of a discrete choice experiment survey conducted in spain in 2010 two main categories of power supply attributes are explored source of renewable power wind solar and biomass and the origin of such power the findings suggest that most consumers are not willing to pay a premium for increases in the shares of renewable in their electricity mix for two of the three renewable sources considered wind and biomass an increase of the renewable mix would require a discount instead we record positive willing to pay for increases in the share of both solar power and locally generated power however preferences for types of renewable solar and wind are found to be heterogeneous by classifying respondents in two groups according to the implied importance of the share of renewable sources in their power mix we identify a market segment consisting of 20 of respondents that could promote renewable energy in the absence of subsidies this is because such a segment shows willingness to pay higher than the current feed in tariffs

bayesian conjoint choice designs for measuring willingness to pay in this paper we propose a new criterion for selecting efficient conjoint choice designs when the interest is in quantifying willingness to pay wtp the new criterion which we call the wtp optimality criterion is based on the c optimality criterion which is often used in the optimal experimental design literature we use a simulation study to evaluate the designs generated using the wtp optimality criterion and discuss the design of a real life conjoint experiment from the literature the results show that the new criterion leads to designs that yield more precise estimates of the wtp than bayesian d optimal conjoint choice designs which are increasingly being seen as the state of the art designs for conjoint choice studies and to a substantial reduction in the occurrence of unrealistically high wtp estimates

lifecycle consumption plans social learning and external habits experimental evidence abstract we report results from a laboratory experiment exploring the extent to which individuals can solve a deterministic intertemporal lifecycle consumption optimization problem and the effect of revealing social information on past average consumption amounts as all individuals have identical induced preferences and lifetime incomes such social information could be useful in solving for the optimal consumption path instead we find that the provision of social information on past average levels of consumption results in a greater deviation of consumption from both the unconditional and the conditionally optimal paths we find some improvement in consumption planning relative to the conditional optimum when social concerns external habits are explicitly incorporated into subject s period utility functions as in external habit formation preference specifications our results on the effects of social information on consumption behavior may help to explain the phenomenon of over consumption and under saving that has been observed in many developed countries in recent decades as social information on the behavior of others has become more readily available

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

the economics of ccs why have ccs technologies not had an international breakthrough abstract eleven years on since the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change was awarded the nobel peace prize in recognition of its efforts in combating climate change fossil fuels remain the most dominant global energy source as the total replacement of fossil fuel energy is not expected to take place immediately in the near future the international energy agency has repeatedly declared carbon capture and sequestration ccs as a key technology for mitigating climate change however ccs lacks the scale required for substantial reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power generation even though ccs is one of the key technologies for mitigating climate change why has this technology not had an international breakthrough to shed light on this question this paper employs a simple model of energy generation scrutinizes the economic drivers of ccs based on the analytical results and discusses the possible obstacles that can prevent a widespread rollout of the technology this is followed by a state of the art in literature pertaining to the economics of ccs and a discussion that points to a dichotomy between the economic theory and reality the study concludes with some policy suggestions and directions for future research

valuing a wind farm construction a contingent valuation study in greece abstract our analysis is based on data from a double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation study implemented to elicit public attitudes towards renewable energy generation and their willingness to pay for the construction of a wind farm in the area of messanagros in the island of rhodes greece results indicate that there are significant positive values deriving from the proposed project respondents report a mean willingness to pay a premium in their bi monthly electric bills of 8 86 for the sole purpose of the construction of the wind farm the estimated economic benefits to the local population are weighed against the investment cost in a cost benefit analysis to inform policy making and implications for eu energy policy are provided

baby boomer retirement security the roles of planning financial literacy and housing wealth abstract we compare wealth holdings across two cohorts of the health and retirement study the early baby boomers in 2004 and individuals in the same age group in 1992 levels and patterns of total net worth have changed relatively little over time though boomers rely more on housing equity than their predecessors most important planners in both cohorts arrive close to retirement with much higher wealth levels and display higher financial literacy than non planners instrumental variables estimates show that planning behavior can explain the differences in savings and why some people arrive close to retirement with very little or no wealth

using conjoint analysis to quantify public preferences over the environmental impacts of wind farms an example from spain this paper focuses on the effect on people s utility of the potential environmental impacts of wind farm developments we report on research designed to provide insight into their preferences and we show how two alternative choice modelling techniques can be used to estimate them our results show that significant social costs in the form of environmental impacts can be associated with wind farm developments as relative environmental values are revealed by these methods it would be possible to develop wind farms in such a way that minimises the total social costs of the investment and which maximises its net benefits

household financial planning and savings behavior greater personal responsibility toward financial decision making is being advocated on a global basis individuals and households are encouraged to take a more active approach to personal finance in this paper we examine behavioral factors which lead households toward savings and financial planning across a panel of 1253 dutch households in line with the available literature we find that an individual s propensity to save decreases with age and is higher among the financial literate moreover we find that saving behavior varies across generations and is significantly dominant among baby boomers this generation effect however weakens once we account for more individual specifics our results offer evidence for parental influence and for the effects of the psychological and behavioral metrics of numeracy self efficacy locus of control and future orientation a good understanding of these personality variables helps to explain why some take financial responsibility while others do not

the life cycle model of consumption and saving a central implication of life cycle models is that agents smooth consumption we review the empirical evidence on smoothing at frequencies from within the year up to across a lifetime we find that life cycle models particular those which incorporate realistic features of markets and goods have more empirical successes than failures we also show that some apparent deviations from theoretical predictions imply very small welfare losses for agents finally we emphasize that the coherence of life cycle models imposes an important discipline when incorporating new features into models

landscape externalities from onshore wind power the expansion of renewable energy is a central element of the german federal government s climate and energy policy the target for 2020 is to produce 30 of the electricity from renewable energies wind power has been selected to be a major contributor to this change replacing old wind turbines by modern ones and building new turbines on land will be crucial in meeting this target however the expansion of onshore wind power is not universally accepted in several regions of germany residents are protesting against setting up new wind turbines to determine the negative effects two choice experiments were applied in westsachsen and nordhessen germany in both regions the externalities of wind power generation until 2020 based on today s state of technology were measured the results show that negative landscape externalities would result from expanding wind power generation using latent class models three different groups of respondents experiencing different degrees of externalities were identified

understanding the heterogeneity of savings and asset allocation a behavioral economics perspective why do saving rates and the proportion of savings invested in stocks substantially increase with income this paper sheds light on this question from the perspective of a new bounded rationality life cycle model it has been shown elsewhere that this model is better than existing ones at predicting how savings and asset allocation choices vary over the life cycle in this paper it is shown that a very simple version of the same model also allows for a better understanding of the variation in savings and asset allocation choices across income groups

valuation for renewable energy a comparative review abstract environmental cost benefit analysis is applied for the evaluation of renewable energy projects since some benefits and costs do not have monetary values economic valuation techniques are applied to estimate them this paper reviews the literature on the valuation evaluation of renewable energy resources and summarizes the methods used in them it discerns four main streams of valuation in renewable energy the first is economic welfare oriented and comprises stated and revealed preference methods the second is the financial option analysis with a financial background the third is emergy analysis which is mostly an ecological engineering based method with capable economic links and the fourth is again economic but not welfare based the paper discusses the main directions discerned in these studies and recognizes first that proper valuation takes place only in the first method while the other methods describe only evaluation procedures and second that there is a research gap that has yet to be filled in as compared to other areas of environmental resource and energy economics

political factors in international economics an overview abstract the intellectual interaction between politics and economics is not new theolder term to describe what economists do political economy which until recently survived only in french translation and on the masthead of one of the premier professional journals is a case in point a more pertinent example is provided by developments over the past two decades in the field of industrial organization the shift from an exclusively public interest view of economic regulation to one in which regulation is seen as the result of interaction between utility maximizing politicians and various interest groups 1 the extension of such ideas to international economics is i believe both necessary and desirable and as these papers indicate with the right experimental design it can also prove highly illuminating

the impact of choice inconsistencies in stated choice studies a new test procedure revealing mutuallyinconsistent choices has been developed andapplied to stated choice data our analysisshows that inconsistent choices commonly occurin several stated choice tasks an applicationof the test to the norwegian value of timestudy data shows that failing to excludeinconsistent choices resulted in asubstantially higher value of time theinconsistent choices were made by less educatedparticipants as the tasks were undertaken inthe easy context of choosing travelalternatives with three attributes practitioners of more complex and cognitivedemanding designs should be particularilyconcerned with these results

rural versus urban preferences for renewable energy developments development of renewable energy resources such as wind farms and hydro electric schemes are being promoted as a new method of expanding and diversifying employment in rural areas however such energy projects are associated with a range of environmental impacts which might be detrimental to other economic activities such as those based on nature tourism the authors use a choice experiment to quantify peoples preferences over environmental and employment impacts that may result from the deployment of renewable energy projects in rural areas of scotland focussing in particular on any differences between the preferences of urban and rural dwellers and on heterogeneity within these groups rural and urban households are shown to have different welfare gains which are dependent on the type of renewable energy technology and on the scale of project under consideration