large scale deployment of renewables for electricity generation comparisons of resource assessments suggest that sufficient renewable energy resources are available to allow for large scale deployment of renewable energy technologies economic analysis identifies barriers to the adoption of renewable energy sources resulting from i market structure ii competition in an uneven playing field and iii various non marketplace barriers however even if these barriers are removed the problem of technology lock out remains the key policy response is strategic deployment coupled with increased r d support to accelerate the pace of improvement through market experience this paper suggests significant contributions from various technologies are possible but does not assess their optimal or maximal market share copyright 2005 oxford university press

support systems for the diffusion of renewable energy technologies an investor perspective concern over climate change impacts and the projected depletion of fossil fuels has urged more governments to adopt policies that stimulate the diffusion of renewable energy technologies ret with an increasingly diverse suite of support instruments the question emerges as to which instruments or combinations are able to achieve faster more substantial diffusion results although various support instruments were extensively addressed in policy studies there is still no consensus this is partly because many policy studies take a policy maker approach in comparing support instruments leaving relationships between policy design and policy results as a black box this paper proposes an investor oriented perspective to analyze the diffusion potential of support systems for ret the main argument is that it is not the type of support instrument but rather its risk profitability characteristics that influence investor behavior and the rate of diffusion the two instruments most frequently discussed and compared are the feed in tariff and the quota model the analysis in this paper concludes that policy design is crucial while often feed in tariffs are applauded and quota system feared feed in tariffs may also bring about disappointing diffusion results when poorly designed while quota systems may be also conceived as attractive instruments for independent power producers

optimal production lot with imperfect production process under permissible delay in payments and complete backlogging abstract the traditional economic production quantity epq model assumes that the production products are all perfect it is not always true in the real production system due to imperfect production process or other factors imperfect quality items may be produced furthermore it is well known that the total production inventory costs can be reduced by reworking the imperfect quality items produced with a relatively smaller additional reworking and holding costs in addition the permissible delay in payments offered by the supplier is widely adopted in the practical business market in this study we explore the effects of the reworking imperfect quality items and trade credit on the epq model with imperfect production processes and complete backlogging a mathematical model which includes the reworking and shortage costs interest earned and interest charged is presented besides an arithmetic geometric mean inequality approach is employed and an algorithm is developed to find the optimal production policy furthermore some numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are provided to demonstrate the proposed model

european schemes for promoting renewables in liberalised markets abstract the paper describes possibilities and problems for penetration of supply systems based on renewable energy sources in liberalised markets the analysis is based on recent development in eu with different models for support of installations based on renewable energy these include feed in models with guaranteed minimum tariffs tender models for different bands of technologies and green certificates trading models with obligatory consumer quota the paper describes the market situation in selected european countries including germany the uk holland and denmark an eu directive from september 2001 has postponed the decision on a possible harmonisation of promotional models until at least 2005 in order to obtain more practical experience with the different support schemes a critical evaluation is given in this paper of the different models with proposals for a balanced development between environmental and trading concerns it is argued that too much emphasis is presently given to the side of free trade at the expense of long range planning for a sustainable energy development

are hazard models superior to traditional bankruptcy prediction approaches a comprehensive test abstract in recent years hazard models using both market and accounting information have become state of the art in predicting firm bankruptcies however a comprehensive test comparing their performance against the traditional accounting based approach or the contingent claims approach is missing in the literature using a complete database of uk main listed firms between 1979 and 2009 our receiver operating characteristics roc curve analysis shows that the hazard models are superior to the alternatives further our information content tests demonstrate that the hazard models subsume all bankruptcy related information in the taffler 1983 z score model as well as in bharath and shumway 2008 contingent claims based model finally using a mixed regime competitive loan market with different costs of misclassification the economic benefit of using the shumway 2001 hazard model is clear particularly when the performance is judged with return on risk weighted assets computed under basel iii

quantile regression for modelling distributions of profit and loss quantile regression is applied in two retail credit risk assessment exercises exemplifying the power of the technique to account for the diverse distributions that arise in the financial service industry the first application is to predict loss given default for secured loans in particular retail mortgages this is an asymmetric process since where the security such as a property value exceeds the loan balance the banks cannot retain the profit whereas when the security does not cover the value of the defaulting loan then the bank realises a loss in the light of this asymmetry it becomes apparent that estimating the low tail of the house value is much more relevant for estimating likely losses than estimates of the average value where in most cases no loss is realised in our application quantile regression is used to estimate the distribution of property values realised on repossession that is then used to calculate loss given default estimates an illustration is given for a mortgage portfolio from a european mortgage lender a second application is to revenue modelling while credit issuing organisations have access to large databases they also build models to assess the likely effects of new strategies for which by definition there is no existing data certain strategies are aimed at increasing the revenue stream or decreasing the risk in specific market segments using a simple artificial revenue model quantile regression is applied to elucidate the details of subsets of accounts such as the least profitable as predicted from their covariates the application uses standard linear and kernel smoothed quantile regression

vive la difference social banks and reciprocity in the credit market social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non economic i e social ethical and environmental criteria to investigate the behavior of social banks on the credit market this paper proposes both theory and empirics our theoretical model rationalizes the idea that reciprocity can generate better repayment performances based on a unique hand collected dataset released by a french social bank our empirical results are twofold first we show that the bank charges below market interest rates for social projects second regardless of their creditworthiness motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit terms by significantly lowering their probability of default we interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market

levelized cost of electricity lcoe of renewable energies and required subsidies in china newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1305 18257 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10 jbg 013

environmental protection rare disasters and discount rates the stern review s evaluation of environmental protection stresses low discount rates and uncertainty about environmental effects an appropriate model for analysing this uncertainty and the associated discount rates requires sufficient risk aversion and fat tailed uncertainty to account for the observed equity premium calibrations based on epstein zin preferences and existing analyses of rare macroeconomic disasters suggest that optimal environmental investment can be a significant share of gdp even with reasonable rates of time preference optimal environmental investment increases with risk aversion and the probability and typical size of environmental disasters but decreases with uncertainty about policy effectiveness

the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

a new tailored scheme for the support of renewable energies in developing countries abstract historically the promotion of renewable energy technologies in isolated areas has involved international donors or governments subsidising the initial capital investment this paper proposes an alternative support mechanism for remote villages based on the generation of renewable electricity this communication presents an evaluation of the renewable energy premium tariff rpt scheme a locally adapted variation of the feed in tariff tailored for decentralised grids of developing countries the rpt scheme stimulates the deployment of renewable energy technologies by paying for renewable electricity generated a good quality performance is secured since the support is given based on the electricity produced by renewables not for the initial capital investment the mechanism has been designed to provide a cost effective scheme for the introduction of renewable energy technologies to remote villages to provide sustainable and affordable electricity to local users to make renewable energy projects attractive to policy makers and concurrently decrease financial risk to attract private sector investment

credit scoring for profitability objectives in consumer credit markets lending decisions are usually represented as a set of classification problems the objective is to predict the likelihood of customers ending up in one of a finite number of states such as good bad payer responder non responder and transactor non transactor decision rules are then applied on the basis of the resulting model estimates however this represents a misspecification of the true objectives of commercial lenders which are better described in terms of continuous financial measures such as bad debt revenue and profit contribution in this paper an empirical study is undertaken to compare predictive models of continuous financial behaviour with binary models of customer default the results show models of continuous financial behaviour to outperform classification approaches they also demonstrate that scoring functions developed to specifically optimize profit contribution using genetic algorithms outperform scoring functions derived from optimizing more general functions such as sum of squared error

risk based pricing of interest rates for consumer loans abstract by focusing on observable default risk s role in loan terms and the subsequent consequences for household behavior this paper shows that lenders increasingly used risk based pricing of interest rates in consumer loan markets during the mid 1990s it tests three resulting predictions first the premium paid per unit of risk should have increased over this period second debt levels should have reacted accordingly third fewer high risk households should have been denied credit further contributing to the interest rate spread between the highest and lowest risk borrowers for people obtaining loans the premium paid per unit of risk did indeed become significantly larger after the mid 1990s for example for a 0 01 increase in the probability of bankruptcy the corresponding interest rate increase tripled for first mortgages doubled for automobile loans and rose nearly six fold for second mortgages additionally changes in borrowing levels and debt access reflected these new pricing practices particularly for secured debt borrowing increased most for the low risk households who saw their relative borrowing costs fall furthermore while very high risk households gained expanded access to credit the increases in their risk premiums implied that their borrowing as a whole either rose less or sometimes fell

a simple model of credit contagion abstract we propose a simple model of credit contagion in which we include macro and microstructural interdependencies among the debtors within a credit portfolio the microstructure captures interdependencies between debtors that go beyond their exposure to common factors e g business or legal interdependencies we show that even for diversified portfolios moderate microstructural interdependencies have a significant impact on the tails of the loss distribution this impact increases dramatically for less diversified microstructures

the prediction of bankruptcy of small and medium sized industrial firms using large amounts of data from small and medium sized industrial firms this study examines several aspects of bankruptcy prediction we have tested a hypothesis on the predictive power of different ratio categories during the successive phases before bankruptcy and one on the relationship between the age of a firm and the predictability of bankruptcy it was found that virtually every ratio investigated had some predictive power and that the univariate and multivariate importance of ratio stability were not very high

reject inference in consumer credit scoring with nonignorable missing data abstract we generalize an empirical likelihood approach to deal with missing data to a model of consumer credit scoring an application to recent consumer credit data shows that our procedure yields parameter estimates which are significantly different both statistically and economically from the case where customers who were refused credit are ignored this has obvious implications for commercial banks as it shows that refused customers should not be ignored when developing scorecards for the retail business we also show that forecasts of defaults derived from the method proposed in this paper improve upon the standard ones when refused customers do not enter the estimation data set

an eoq model with partial backordering and advance payments for an evaporating item abstract in the classic economic order quantity model the purchasing cost of an order is paid at the time of its receipt in some cases retailers ask purchasers to pay all or a fraction of the purchasing cost in advance and may allow them to divide the prepayment into several equal sized parts in this paper an economic order quantity model for an evaporating item with partial backordering and partial consecutive prepayments is developed with a real case study of a gasoline station real numerical examples illustrate the proposed model and the solution method

renewable micro generation of heat and electricity review on common and missing socio technical configurations abstract a widespread adoption of distributed generation dg technologies in energy systems can play a key role in creating clean reliable energy and support the targets of emission reduction a transition from current modes of production to a significant deployment of renewable energy technologies can fundamentally affect the structure of the industry and change the way energy is produced transmitted and sold the current paper provides an extended review of the socio technical configurations of micro generation based on journal publications and reports during the 21st century the paper analyses currently existing and missing configurations and discusses technology and policy implications to support proliferation of micro generation technology and local energy production from renewable sources the potential for new configurations can be found particularly in heat producing micro generation with solar heat heat pumps and biomass developing further the operations and maintenance of distributed generation technologies and business models appears an area that calls for further innovation and corresponding innovation policy measures third party service and community driven deployment models can aide the proliferation of distributed generation and further innovation therein justifying the introduction of feed in tariffs to attract such models during their early diffusion

renewable energy investment by the world bank world bank group lending for renewable energy accelerated in the 1990s and resulted in 17 approved projects with 700 million in bank loans and 230 million in grants by the global environment facility the bank s 1999 energy sector strategy fuel for thought charted new directions for renewable energy investment the present paper considers the implementation challenges of fuel for thought strategies and the opportunities for carrying them out the paper distinguishes between agendas in the energy and rural development sectors and reviews limitations to implementing these agendas lessons from projects are just emerging but suggest ve areas of support for renewable energy by the bank in the future renewable energy nancing electric power policy frameworks rural energy enterprises regulated rural energy concessions and domestic technology manufacturing interviews with the private sector suggest additional forms of support assist with business plans nance pre feasibility studies reduce commercial risks support joint ventures build market volume and stability and pilot and test innovative business models the e ectiveness of the bank in following through on its ambitious agenda fundamentally rests on the willingness and commitment of developing countries to pursue these strategies and the degree to which renewable energy applications are seen to serve countries development priorities 2001 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

renewable energy support mechanisms in the gulf cooperation council states analyzing the feasibility of feed in tariffs and auction mechanisms renewable energy will be a crucial ingredient in the transition to a more sustainable future the renewable energy sector requires a variety of financial support mechanisms in order to further consolidate and expand currently the most prominent renewable energy support mechanisms are feed in tariffs and renewable energy auctions although these mechanisms have been used and analyzed extensively in western countries and more recently economies in transition they have rarely been examined in the arab gulf region yet particularly the gulf cooperation council gcc states have undertaken important steps towards renewable energy adoption which could be greatly facilitated with the use of financial support mechanisms this paper analyzes the feasibility of feed in tariffs and renewable energy auctions adoption in gcc based on an extensive meta analysis of the literature on these two mechanisms in both developed and developing countries the paper identifies a set of conditions necessary for success and evaluates the presence of favorable these conditions in the gcc context our findings reveal that while conditions that would ensure political feasibility are largely absent for both types of mechanisms auctions could be a more successful strategy at the moment

a social and environmental approach to microfinance credit scoring microfinance institutions provide loans to low income individuals their credit scoring systems if they exist are strictly financial although many institutions consider the social and environmental impact of their loans they do not incorporate formal systems to estimate these social and environmental impacts this paper proposes that their creditworthiness evaluations should be coherent with their social mission and accordingly should estimate the social and environmental impact of microcredit thus a decision support system to facilitate microcredit granting is proposed using a multicriteria evaluation the assessment of social impact is performed by calculating the social net present value the system captures credit officers experience and addresses incomplete and intangible information the model has been tested in a microfinance institution the paper shows how a small institution can include social and environmental issues in its decision making systems to evaluate credit applications a gap in the preferences was found between members of the board who are socially driven and managers and credit officers who are financially drifted this mission drift was corrected the approach followed contributed to creating a culture of social and environmental assessment within the institution especially among credit officers thereby translating microfinance institutions social mission into numbers

how to lend like mad and make a profit a micro credit paradigm versus the start up fund in south africa in current debates about micro credit joint liability schemes are often viewed as the only viable way to non collateralised lending and are thus seen as almost synonymous with micro credit this article reports about an alternative non participatory approach to micro credit prompted by the apparent inability of group credit schemes to reign in lending costs the article sets out the institutional requirements for cheap mass produced credit it argues that such credit can be viable if mechanisms are in place enforcing the self selection of potential borrowers and self motivation of existing borrowers the analysis of a mass minimalist micro credit institution from south africa supports the argument

a note on the use of industry relative ratios in bankruptcy prediction abstract the potential for industry relative financial ratios to improve the prediction of firms in financial distress motivated this comparison of model specifications based on either unadjusted or industry relative ratios both specifications yielded stable parameter estimates over the time periods examined however the industry relative specification appeared to add incremental information not contained in the model based on the unadjusted financial ratios the converse case did not hold in addition with the industry relative specification ex post forecast accuracy was slightly improved relative to the ex ante forecast while with the unadjusted model specification ex post forecast accuracy declined from that obtained ex ante

an incentive compatible solution for trade credit term incorporating default risk abstract this paper studies the optimal trade credit term decision in an extended economic ordering quantity eoq framework that incorporates a default risk component a principal agent bilevel programming model with costs minimization objectives is set up to derive the incentive compatible credit term the supplier determines the credit term as the leader in the first level programming by balancing her his financing capacity with the retailer s default risk order behavior and cost shifting at the second level the retailer makes decisions on ordering and payment time by reacting on the term offered by the supplier a first order condition solution procedure is derived for the bilevel programming when credit term is confined within the practically feasible interval two key results are obtained the condition to derive incentive compatible credit term and an equation system to derive threshold default risk criterion filtering retailers suitable for credit granting numerical experiments show that the capital cost of the supplier is the most important factor determining the credit term default risk acts like a filtering criterion for selecting retailers suitable for credit granting empirical evidence supporting our theoretical considerations is obtained by estimating three panel econometric models using a dataset from china s listed companies

alternative bankruptcy prediction models using option pricing theory abstract we examine the empirical properties of the theoretical black scholes merton bsm bankruptcy model we evaluate the predictive ability of various existing modifications of the bsm model and extend prior studies by estimating volatility directly from market observable returns on firm value we show that parsimonious models using our direct market observable volatility estimate perform better than alternative more sophisticated models our findings suggest the adoption of simpler modelling approaches relying on market data when implementing the bsm model

the effect of advertising on the distribution free newsboy problem abstract advertising is very important for the newsboy problem because the shelf life of the newsboy product is short and advertising may increase sales to avoid overstocking in this paper models to study the effect of advertising are developed for the distribution free newsboy problem where only the mean and variance of the demand are known as in khouja and robbins 2003 it is assumed that the mean demand is an increasing and concave function of advertising expenditure three cases are considered 1 demand has constant variance 2 demand has constant coefficient of variation and 3 demand has an increasing coefficient of variation this paper provides closed form solutions or steps to solve the problem numerical results of the model are also compared with those from other papers the effects of model parameters on optimal expenditure on advertising optimal order quantity and the lower bound on expected profit are derived or discussed

nonconventional renewable energy governance in brazil lessons to learn from the german experience abstract this paper presents a comparative analysis of energy governance regarding nonconventional renewable energy sources ncres in brazil and germany brazil is a world leader in the use of conventional renewable energy sources such as hydro power while germany has been achieving outstanding results in fostering ncres the focus is on two critical issues the legal and regulatory framework and the institutions created to support the ncres market development the comparison shows that despite the very different energy situations and policy drivers valuables lessons can be extracted from the german experience the main lesson for brazil is to think ncres as a strategic opportunity to rely less on fossil fuel and large hydroelectric power plants to decentralize the electric power sector to use the huge solar biomass and wind power potential available in the country and to create a environment friendly ncres industry to this end three critical points were identified 1 the legal and regulatory framework should be improved 2 long term energy planning taking into account social economic and climate issues and 3 the current institutions supporting ncres in brazil should be upgraded and or new ones such as more specific energy agencies should be created

fuelwood consumption and forest degradation a household model for domestic energy substitution in rural india this paper disusses domestic en ergy supply and demand in rural india links be tween forest scarcity and household fuel collec tion are analyzed in a non separable household model focusing on substitution of non commer cial fuels from the commons and the private do main based on data from villages bordering a protected area a novel maximum entropy ap proach is used for estimation it is found that households respond to forest scarcity and in creased fuelwood collection time by substituting fuels from private sources for forest fuelwood however the magnitude of the response appears insufficient to prevent current fuelwood collection practices from causing serious forest degrada tion jel q24

social multi criteria evaluation methodological foundations and operational consequences in order to address contemporary issues economics and decision sciences need to expand their empirical relevance by introducing more and more realistic thus more complex assumptions in their models one of the most interesting research directions in the field of public economics is the attempt to introduce political constraints interest groups and collusion effects explicitly j j laffont incentives and political economy 2000 the main argument developed here is the proposal of the concept of social multi criteria evaluation smce as a possible useful framework for the application of social choice to the difficult policy problems of our millennium where as stated by funtowicz and ravetz facts are uncertain values in dispute stakes high and decisions urgent this paper starts from the following main questions 1 why social multi criteria evaluation 2 how should such an approach be developed the foundations of smce are set up by referring to concepts from complex system theory and philosophy such as reflexive complexity post normal science and incommensurability to give some operational guidelines on the application of smce basic questions to be answered are 1 how is it possible to deal with technical incommensurability 2 how can we deal with the issue of social incommensurability to answer these questions using theoretical considerations and lessons learned from real world case studies is the main objective of the present article

celebrating a century of the economic order quantity model in honor of ford whitman harris abstract this writing presents a brief introduction to the papers included in the special issue celebrating a century of the economic order quantity model in honor of ford whitman harris published by the international journal of production economics forty one papers covering an extensive scope of inventory management have been incorporated in this volume from contributing authors from 20 countries located in america asia europe and africa this special issue also provides a basis for new directions in inventory management research

the loss averse newsvendor model with backordering abstract in this paper we study the optimal order quantity in the loss averse newsvendor model with backordering we first obtain the optimal order quantity to maximize the expected utility to hedge against the risk arising from the uncertainty of market demand we introduce the conditional value at risk cvar measure and derive the optimal order quantity to maximize the cvar objective about utility it is found that the optimal order quantity with the cvar objective is decreasing in the confidence level and thus is smaller than the optimal order quantity to maximize the expected utility it is proved that under the optimal order quantity with the cvar objective the loss averse newsvendor s expected utility is decreasing in the confidence level it further confirms that high risk implies high return and low risk comes with low return

economic effects of positive credit information sharing the case of korea in many countries in addition to negative credit information such as loan default and arrears positive credit information is also exchanged on a voluntary and reciprocal basis employing optimal credit decision models of profit maximizing banks and utilizing a unique dataset of 2 million consumer loan obligors in korea we investigate the economic effects of sharing positive credit information in addition to negative credit information already exchanged we find that the discriminatory power of the credit scoring model improves significantly we proceed to investigate the economic effects of the information gap in a competitive credit market by assuming two representative banks that differ only in the level of credit information sharing the bank that utilizes negative information only suffers from deterioration of the borrower pool and reduced profit as high credit risk borrowers are more concentrated on this bank due to underpricing of risks our finding suggests that banks have incentives to volunt

incentives to invest in liberalised electricity industries in the north and south differences in the need for suitable institutional arrangements the issue of investment is all too often underplayed in deregulation reforms focused on market rules and de integration measures this presentation criticises first the optimistic approach of the theory of investment incentives through market signals when it is applied to deregulated electricity industries the greater part of the investment in base load and peak equipment should be made profitable by income from very high prices during peak and extreme peak periods that raises a problem of political acceptability the problem is then addressed in the context of the mature electricity industries in the north given the maturity of markets there a number of modifications to the pure market model could be envisaged to strengthen incentives to invest but none of them is perfect the main way is to focus on adaptation of market rules on the supply of power at peaks and extreme peaks by considering capacity adequacy as a public good with three solutions capacity payment reserve obligations centralised procurement by auctioning for peak capacity observation of reforms suggests also the validity of some other solutions based on a limitation of the competition by allowing long term contracts and vertical integration between production and supply finally the question is extended to the specific problem of developing countries characterised by irregular growth it is argued that reforms must be designed in view of the importance of the need for investment through long term coordination and reduction of investment risks indeed experiences of latin american liberalised industries show that they have to include a number of competition based imperfections and to allow ongoing exercise of market power in order to allow prices to rise above competition prices the single buyer model or some variants of it appear to be good alternatives if one wishes to avoid the twists and turns of the competition paradigm the difficulty with this model arises from the institutional conditions necessary to make it efficient and not overcostly c 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

microfinance in times of crisis the effects of competition rising indebtedness and economic crisis on repayment behavior this paper analyzes repayment determinants for loans from caja los andes a bolivian mi crolender the analysis focuses on the influence of recent changes in the bolivian microfinance market in particular we examine the effects of the rapidly growing supply of funds for micro loans the increasing competition a rising level of indebtedness among micro entrepreneurs and the recent economic crisis our results show a two fold influence structure of competition and indebtedness firstly clients with loans from multiple sources at the same time are found to be more likely to default than others secondly clients with given characteristics have an overall better repayment behaviour in areas with higher competition and a higher supply of micro loans

improved quality setup cost reduction and variable backorder costs in an imperfect production process abstract this paper illustrates the relationship between quality improvement reorder point and lead time as affected by backorder rate in an imperfect production process to reduce the total system cost by optimizing the setup cost lot size lead time reorder point and process quality parameter simultaneously we first consider that the lead time demand follows a normal distribution then we apply the distribution free approach for the lead time demand we prove two lemmas which are used to find optimal solutions for the basic and distribution free models we compare our models with the existing models using numerical examples and show that significant savings over the existing models can be achieved

review of renewable energy investment and financing in china status mode issues and countermeasures abstract with the support of national policies china s renewable energy generation industry has experienced a rapid development period and entered the world forefront level especially in the aspects of installed capacity and speed of newly installed capacity however with the rapid development of renewable energy the power generation industry is facing more and more challenges particularly in investment and financing as for wind power industry there are also some problems such as single financing channels blindness of projects investment and so on which will result in financing difficulties for some advanced projects in addition the problems for the investment of photovoltaic pv power generation leads to vicious competition and a tumble in international market thus the overcapacity of china s entire pv industry emerges generally speaking the renewable energy industry is facing a seemingly contradictory predicament of funding deficiencies and blind investment which is derived from the government centered renewable energy investment and financing this government centered mode has promoted the development of renewable energy industry in the early stage but it cannot be adapted to the requirements of sustainable development in view of these the problems of renewable energy investment and financing are deeply studied in this paper this paper proceeds as follows firstly the overview of the development of china s renewable energy industry is briefly introduced secondly the status quo of china s renewable energy investment and financing is explored in detail based on overview of the following five perspectives investment situation investment and financing bodies investment and financing means sources of funding and financing channels secondly the patterns and characteristics of renewable energy financing are summarized and a comparative analysis of wind power and photovoltaic power generation financing means is carried out finally renewable energy investment and financing issues are discussed and further feasible proposals are put forward in all this paper is of great significance in the sustainable and healthy development of china s renewable energy

escaping carbon lock in this article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in understanding carbon lock in unruh 2000 which posited that industrial countries have become locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale carbon lock in arises through technological organizational social and institutional co evolution culminating in what was termed as techno institutional complex tic in order to resolve the climate problem an escape from the lock in condition is required however due to the self referential nature of tic escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required

financial performance and outreach a global analysis of leading microbanks microfinance contracts have proven able to secure high rates of loan repayment in the face of limited liability and information asymmetries but high repayment rates have not translated easily into profits for most microbanks profitability though is at the heart of the promise that microfinance can deliver poverty reduction while not relying on ongoing subsidy the authors examine why this promise remains unmet for most institutions using a data set with unusually high quality financial information on 124 institutions in 49 countries they explore the patterns of profitability loan repayment and cost reduction the authors find that institutional design and orientation matter substantially lenders that do not use group based methods to overcome incentive problems experience weaker portfolio quality and lower profit rates when interest rates are raised substantially for these individual based lenders one key to achieving profitability is investing more heavily in staff costs a finding consistent with the economics of information but contrary to the conventional wisdom that profitability is largely a function of minimizing cost

power sector renewable energy integration for expanding access to electricity in sub saharan africa abstract a looming energy supply crisis in sub saharan africa ssa raises concerns about a long lasting energy shortage this energy crisis is expected to persist for an indefinite period in the region unless immediate actions are taken to reverse the trend although global aspiration to reduce greenhouse gas ghg emissions into the atmosphere is high such desire is low in ssa regional stakeholders are more worried about increasing power generation capacity to enhance better access to different sorts of development to progress in line with advanced patterns of energy development globally to increase the availability of electrical energy and to sustain emissions reductions exploitation of local renewable energy re resources is inevitable consequently this paper presents a comprehensive review of re integration for expanding access to electricity in ssa the review covers the sustainability of re resources in ssa the regional status of re applications and the necessity of re power generation integration planning from a management aspect finally the benefits of re integration into the power sector of ssa and some conceptual challenges affecting its integration in the region are highlighted

nigeria s energy poverty insights and implications for smart policies and framework towards a smart nigeria electricity network a thorough and exhaustive review of relevant literature and associated works is carried out to critically examine energy poverty in nigeria with respect to ownership and income using the desktop approach and empirical formulas the persistent failure of public infrastructure like healthcare education and security to the poor electricity generation transmission and distribution capacity in the country is examined alongside current government s contribution to buoying our generation capacity and electricity access through policies and investment the findings of the review reveal the urgent need for the smart roll out of distributed generation units in order to stimulate and encourage the ongoing diversification of the economy and also the need for a sustainable road map that incorporates the successes of countries faced with similar challenges this review paper also proposes the need for palliatives in form of subsidized solar home systems shss through a sustainable and economically viable means for off grid homes to assuage the effects of non availability of grid electricity

granting and managing loans for micro entrepreneurs new developments and practical experiences abstract we present a methodology to grant and follow up credits for micro entrepreneurs this segment of grantees is very relevant for many economies especially in developing countries but shows a behavior different to that of classical consumers where established credit scoring systems exist parts of our methodology follow a proven procedure we have applied successfully in several credit scoring projects other parts such as cut off point construction and model follow up however had to be developed and constitute original contributions of the present paper the results from two credit scoring projects we developed in chile one for a private bank and one for a governmental credit granting institution provide interesting insights into micro entrepreneurs repayment behavior which could also be interesting for the respective segment in countries with similar characteristics

how many parts to make at once reprinted from factory the magazine of management volume 10 number 2 february 1913 pp 135 136 152 interest on capital tied up in wages material and overhead sets a maximum limit to the quantity of parts which can be profitably manufactured at one time set up costs on the job fix the minimum experience has shown one manager a way to determine the economical size of lots

assessing the impact of derived behavior information on customer attrition in the financial service industry the value of the customer has been widely recognized in terms of financial planning and efficient resource allocation including the financial service industry previous studies have shown that directly observable information can be used in order to make reasonable predictions of customer attrition probabilities however these studies do not take full account of customer behavior information in this paper we demonstrate that efficient use of information can add value to financial services industry and improve the prediction of customer attrition to achieve this we apply an orthogonal polynomial approximation analysis to derive unobservable information which is then used as explanatory variables in a probit hazard rate model our results show that derived information can help our understanding of customer attrition behavior and give better predictions we conclude that both researchers and the financial service industry should gather and use derived financial information in addition to directly observable information

a sustainable production inventory model for a controllable carbon emissions rate under shortages abstract carbon emissions are the key factor of global warming nowadays some countries have focused on reducing carbon emission carbon tax and cap policies are the key mechanism utilized in many countries to achieve this keeping this issue in mind a sustainable economic production quantity sepq carbon tax and cap model has considered for a controllable carbon emissions rate by investing in green technology gt efforts under different with and without shortage situations this study has three models a a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap model with no shortages b a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap with partial backordering and c a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap with full backordering with and without green technology investment a solution methodology has been proposed for determining the optimal strategies of cycle time green technology investment and the fraction period length in positive inventory level several numerical examples have studied to validate the sustainable economic production quantity models the results of this paper are a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap partial backlogging case has a better justifiable profit with the highest cycle time and the lowest value of the fraction length period as well as the lower green technology investment cost compared with other models finally sensitivity analysis has provided with the managerial implication of the optimal feasible solution with respect to some key parameters

the relationship between default prediction and lending profits integrating roc analysis and loan pricing abstract in evaluating credit risk models it is common to use metrics such as power curves and their associated statistics however power curves are not necessarily easily linked intuitively to common lending practices bankers often request a specific rule for defining a cut off above which credit will be granted and below which it will be denied in this paper we provide some quantitative insight into how such cut offs can be developed this framework accommodates real world complications e g relationship clients we show that the simple cut off approach can be extended to a more complete pricing approach that is more flexible and more profitable we demonstrate that in general more powerful models are more profitable than weaker ones and we provide a simulation example we also report results of another study that conservatively concludes a mid sized bank might generate additional profits on the order of about 4 8 million per year after adopting a moderately more powerful model

minimax distribution free procedure with backorder price discount abstract the inventory models analyzed in this paper explore the problem in which the lead time and ordering cost reductions are inter dependent in the continuous review inventory model with backorder price discount the objective is to minimize total related cost by simultaneously optimizing the order quantity reorder point lead time and backorder price discount moreover we assume that the mean and variance of the lead time demand are known but its probability distribution is unknown we apply a minimax distribution free procedure to find the optimal solution and three numerical examples are given to illustrate the results

can carbon pricing support onshore wind power development in china an assessment based on a large sample project dataset abstract there is much discussion about whether the rapid expansion of onshore wind power in china is sustainable given the decrease in feed in tariffs fit it is unclear whether the recently launched nationwide carbon pricing system which will include 1700 power companies can compensate for decreasing fits and possibly provide new incentives for wind power developments this paper investigates the ability of carbon pricing policies to compensate for declining fits in support of onshore wind power investment in china first we constructed a dataset of 2059 onshore wind power projects from china s thirty provinces between 2006 and 2015 to estimate the levelized costs of electricity lcoe this dataset was used to assess the profitability of each wind project for different carbon prices varying levels of fits curtailment rate and discount rate our findings suggest that the carbon price can compensate partially for the revenue loss caused by declining fits as well as improving the profitability of projects however current carbon prices in china s carbon emission trading pilots are not sufficiently high to compensate for the revenue losses especially under the grid parity scenario consequently without fits the sustainable development of onshore wind power in china is uncertain a sensitivity analysis of the effect of the carbon pricing policy demonstrates that in the case of higher investment risk and more serious curtailment the effect of carbon pricing policy on promoting the wind power investment seems to be more significant

determining commercially viable two way and one way contract for difference strike prices and revenue receipts abstract in this article we investigate the role that a contract for difference cfd might play in increasing investment in renewable energy in australia two cfd schemes are investigated two way and one way cfd a financial model is developed that determines commercially viable cfd strike prices account is taken of revenue from wholesale electricity market and renewable energy certificate sales capital and operational costs of the project including distribution of funds to holders of equity and debt are also included findings based on analysis of the solar array located at the university of queensland gatton campus in australia is presented employing a typical meteorological year framework the major finding was that government will prefer a two way cfd scheme and single axis tracking solar pv array technology in contrast project proponents will strongly prefer a one way cfd design

the viability of solar photovoltaics abstract this paper summarises the contributions to a special issue of energy policy aiming to assess the viability of solar photovoltaics pvs as a mainstream electricity supply technology for the 21st century it highlights the complex nature of such an assessment in which technical economic environmental social institutional and policy questions all play a part the authors summarise briefly the individual contributions to the special issue and draw out a number of common themes which emerge from them for example the vast physical potential of pvs the environmental and resource advantages of some pv technologies and the fluidity of the market most of the authors accept that the current high costs will fall substantially in the coming decade as a result of improved technologies increased integration into building structures and economies of scale in production in spite of such reassurances energy policy makers still respond to the dilemma of pvs with some hesitancy and prefer to leave its evolution mainly in the hands of the market this paper highlights two clear dangers inherent in this approach firstly that short term cost convergence may not serve long term sustainability goals and secondly that laggards in the race to develop new energy systems may find themselves faced with long term penalties

updating a credit scoring model based on new attributes without realization of actual data abstract funding small and medium sized enterprises smes to support technological innovation is critical for national competitiveness technology credit scoring models are required for the selection of appropriate funding beneficiaries typically a technology credit scoring model consists of several attributes and new models must be derived every time these attributes are updated however it is not feasible to develop new models until sufficient historical evaluation data based on these new attributes will have accumulated in order to resolve this limitation we suggest the framework to update the technology credit scoring model this framework consists of ways to construct new technology credit scoring model by comparing alternative scenarios for various relationships between existing and new attributes based on explanatory factor analysis analysis of variance and logistic regression our approach can contribute to find the optimal scenario for updating a scoring model

lead time reduction strategies in a single vendor single buyer integrated inventory model with lot size dependent lead times and stochastic demand this paper studies alternative methods for reducing lead time and their impact on the safety stock and the expected total costs of a q s continuous review inventory control system we focus on a single vendor single buyer integrated inventory model with stochastic demand and variable lot size dependent lead time and assume that lead time consists of production and setup and transportation time as a consequence lead time may be reduced by crashing setup and transportation time by increasing the production rate or by reducing the lot size we illustrate the benefits of reducing lead time in numerical examples and show that lead time reduction is especially beneficial in case of high demand uncertainty further our studies indicate that a mixture of setup time and production time reduction is appropriate to lower expected total costs

random effects logistic regression model for default prediction of technology credit guarantee fund korean government has been funding the small and medium enterprises sme with superior technology based on scorecard however high default rate of funded smes has been reported in order to effectively manage such governmental fund it is important to develop accurate scoring model for smes in this paper we provide a random effects logistic regression model to predict the default of funded smes based on both financial and non financial factors advantage of such a random effects model lies in the ability of accommodating not only the individual characteristics of each sme but also the uncertainty that cannot be explained by such individual factors it is expected that our study can contribute to effective management of government funds by proposing the prediction models for defaults of funded smes

the distribution free newsboy problem extensions to the shortage penalty case abstract in the classical newsboy problem no cost is assumed if the ordered quantity is less than the demand however in reality failure to meet demand is always associated with a penalty the aim of this work is to extend the analysis of the distribution free newsboy problem to the case when shortage cost is taken into consideration the analysis is based on the assumption that only the mean and variance of demand are known but its particular probability distribution is not a model is presented for determining both an optimal order quantity and a lower bound on the profit under the worst possible distribution of the demand the following cases are considered the single product case the fixed ordering cost case the random yield case and the resource constrained multi product case

economic benefit of powerful credit scoring abstract we study the economic benefits from using credit scoring models we contribute to the literature by relating the discriminatory power of a credit scoring model to the optimal credit decision given the receiver operating characteristic roc curve we derive a the profit maximizing cutoff and b the pricing curve using these two concepts and a mixture thereof we study a stylized loan market model with banks differing in the quality of their credit scoring model even for small quality differences the variation in profitability among lenders is large and economically significant we end our analysis by quantifying the impact on profits when information leaks from a competitor s scoring model into the market

development and application of consumer credit scoring models using profit based classification measures abstract this paper presents a new approach for consumer credit scoring by tailoring a profit based classification performance measure to credit risk modeling this performance measure takes into account the expected profits and losses of credit granting and thereby better aligns the model developers objectives with those of the lending company it is based on the expected maximum profit emp measure and is used to find a trade off between the expected losses driven by the exposure of the loan and the loss given default and the operational income given by the loan additionally one of the major advantages of using the proposed measure is that it permits to calculate the optimal cutoff value which is necessary for model implementation to test the proposed approach we use a dataset of loans granted by a government institution and benchmarked the accuracy and monetary gain of using emp accuracy and the area under the roc curve as measures for selecting model parameters and for determining the respective cutoff values the results show that our proposed profit based classification measure outperforms the alternative approaches in terms of both accuracy and monetary value in the test set and that it facilitates model deployment

green entrepreneurship in transition economies a case study of bosnia and herzegovina abstract the countries with transition economies are under pressure to increase entrepreneurial activities that will enable fast growth with minimum impact on natural resources despite specific challenges the economies in transition face development of sustainable entrepreneurship has not been in focus of the academic research this leaves some open questions such as those concerning the role and mode of operation of public policies level of risk and its influence on entrepreneurship creativity role of knowledge in diffusing entrepreneurial values and fostering aspirations externalities created for the society and the connection between sustainability and entrepreneurship this paper aims to introduce a discussion on sustainable entrepreneurship in countries with economies in transition the research carried out included i review of literature and statistical data on entrepreneurial environment ii structured interviews with representatives of government civil society business sector and academia to understand the society s perception of green entrepreneurship and iii analysis of case studies on green entrepreneurs it can be concluded that entrepreneurs in economies in transition do not seem to be ready to respond to the challenges or to take any risks by investing in green business but also that the government and educational institutions do not recognize their own role and fail to support the development of green entrepreneurship for those green oriented businesses the key sociological constructs are personal motivation and mission locality and a forward thinking orientation in terms of sustainability all businesses managed to achieve the economic environmental and social value creation without any support from the government

renewable energy costs potentials barriers conceptual issues renewable energy can become the major energy supply option in low carbon energy economies disruptive transformations in all energy systems are necessary for tapping widely available renewable energy resources organizing the energy transition from non sustainable to renewable energy is often described as the major challenge of the first half of the 21st century technological innovation the economy costs and prices and policies have to be aligned to achieve full renewable energy potentials and barriers impeding that growth need to be removed these issues are also covered by ipcc s special report on renewable energy and climate change to be completed in 2010 this article focuses on the interrelations among the drivers it clarifies definitions of costs and prices and of barriers after reviewing how the third and fourth assessment reports of ipcc cover mitigation potentials and commenting on definitions of renewable energy potentials in the literature we propose a consistent set of potentials of renewable energy supplies

an energy pricing scheme for the diffusion of decentralized renewable technology investment in developing countries the purpose of this paper is to investigate price support for market penetration of renewable energy in developing nations through a decentralized supply process we integrate the new decentralized energy support renewable premium tariff to analyze impacts of tariff incentives on the diffusion of renewable technology in senegal based on photovoltaic and wind technologies and an assessment of renewable energy resources in senegal an optimization technique is combined with a cash flow analysis to investigate investment decisions in renewable energy sector our findings indicate that this support mechanism could strengthen the sustainable deployment of renewable energy in remote areas of senegal although different payoffs emerged profits associated with a renewable premium tariff are the highest among the set of existing payoffs moreover in analyzing impacts of price incentives on social welfare we show that price tariffing schemes must be strategically scrutinized in order to minimize welfare loss associated with price incentives finally we argue that a sustainable promotion of incentive mechanisms supporting deployment of renewable technology in developing nations should be carried out under reliable institutional structures the additional advantage of the proposed methodology is its ability to integrate different stakeholders producers investors and consumers in the planning process