liquid biofuels in china current status government policies and future opportunities and challenges abstract china like many other countries is promoting the development of liquid biofuel including bioethanol and biodiesel the chinese government has set biofuel development targets for the coming decade and sanctioned a series of supportive policies this paper provides a comprehensive overview of current liquid biofuel development in china related government policies and the potential opportunities and challenges for its future expansion our assessment is based on two rounds of in depth fieldwork and a thorough literature review the assessment shows that the prevailing concern on food security has pushed china to move from cereal based to non cereal based biofuel production emphasis has also been put on utilizing new marginal land for feedstock production our assessment indicates that the targets of china s biofuel development are cautious and feasible but on the other hand there are still severe challenges for the sustainability of such development a better understanding of china s experience in striking a balance between energy security food security and environmental protection would inform the debates across country boundaries and contribute to the efforts for global sustainability

changing energy intensity of economies in the world and its decomposition abstract this paper decomposes energy intensity change across countries into five components attributable to technological catch up technological progress and changes in capital energy ratio labor energy ratio and output structure it is found that 1 technological progress capital accumulation and output structure change contributed to the decline of energy intensity from 1980 to 2010 2 changes in labor energy ratio drove up energy intensity and 3 spatial and temporal heterogeneity existed regarding relative importance of the five components

economic assessment of eucalyptus spp for biomass production as alternative crop in southern italy the increase in energy prices and the stagnation of sales prices of the main agricultural commodities required a rethinking of farm production strategies since during the last years thanks to a series of policies aimed at promoting renewable sources it has been a rapid diffusion of lignocellulosic biomass species this paper aimed at evaluating the economic feasibility of the introduction of eucalyptus eucalyptus spp as energy crop for farmers of southern italy by comparing it with traditional crop rotations in particular economic analysis has been carried out in a representative case study located in the sicilian hilly hinterland where in 2013 it has been built a biomass plant for energy production however results showed that introduction of eucalyptus for biomass production is less profitable for farmers than traditional crops considering the incompressibility of production costs and the actual market price of woodchips

overconfidence and asymmetric information the case of insurance this paper contributes to the recent behavioral economics literature by showing that whether or not overconfidence changes qualitative predictions in asymmetric information markets may depend on the market structure itself we first show that overconfidence may overturn fundamental relations between observable variables in perfect competition asymmetric information insurance markets in monopolistic insurance markets in constrast we find that overconfidence may be observationally equivalent to variations in the risk composition of the economy our analysis provides a number of novel testable implications on i price heterogeneity within and across risk classes ii the relationship between ex post risk and insurance coverage iii the fact that a significant fraction of agents chooses to be uninsured and iv the relationship between underinsurance and age

modelling the joint determination of household labour supplies and commodity demands in addition to choosing the allocation of total expenditure between commodities households may also be able to make decisions over the allocation of their time between market work and leisure in both theoretical and empirical work it has often been the case that these decisions have been analysed separately in this paper we stress the theoretical attractions of considering the joint determination of the allocation of time between work and leisure and the allocation of total expenditure between commodities in a utility maximising framework using a sample of individual households we attempt to evaluate the empirical importance of the joint determination model over the separate determination of labour supplies and commodity demands our approach follows that of abbott and ashenfelter i976 phlips i978 barnett i979 deaton and muellbauer i980 and atkinson and stern i980 here we pay particular attention to the following four important aspects of household decision making over commodity demand and labour supply the first concerns the commonly assumed restriction on the household s preferences of weak separability between goods and leisure this assumption allows the estimation of commodity demand systems and engel curves that exclude wage rate variables in cross section household budget data with large variation in wage rates across the sample the invalidity of this assumption would involve a serious mis specification any correlation between the excluded wage variable and the included price income and demographic variables would lead to biased parameter estimates and hence biased estimated elasticities similarly this assumption allows the estimation of labour supply curves that exclude relative price variables and its invalidity could produce biased labour supply elasticities a second aspect of household decision making which we wish to highlight arises from the suspicion commonly alluded to in labour economics texts that primary male workers may not be free to choose their hours of work thus we estimate a matched pair of rationed and unrationed systems following the work of neary and roberts i 980 and deaton and muellbauer i 979 the separability restriction is not unrelated to this point since without it we will see that the rationed hours of work enter demand systems in a complex fashion in effect

does asymmetric information matter in the early insurance market evidence from the auto insurance market in the late 1960s the performance of automobile insurance declined dramatically in japan in spite of rapid growth in the diffusion rate and the premiums were sharply raised several times in order to improve the situation this observation indicates the possible presence of adverse selection death spiral and provides an ideal situation for assessing informational asymmetry using bodily injury liability bil insurance data from 46 japanese prefectures over the period 1966 to 1975 this article tests two hypotheses of adverse selection i high risk drivers were more likely to join the bil insurance market and ii sharp premium increases drove low risk policyholders away various empirical analyses show that there is little evidence for either type of adverse selection we also test whether a risk misperception hypothesis can explain our results and find some evidence that the population density have a significantly positive impact on the demand for bil insurance an earlier version of this artic

agro energy districts contributing to environmental and social sustainability in rural areas evaluation of a local public private partnership scheme in greece abstract the current economic downturn has put public budgets under pressure reducing investments and revenues for local stakeholders to cope among other things with contemporary demands of environmental protection local based partnerships may provide an efficient tool by adopting integrating and implementing actions based on awareness and participation of a set of different players this need is even more evident in rural areas in which a proposed decentralized bio energy production model established in agro energy districtscan provide incentive and create a comfortable ground for the development of an energy production plant based on a mixed public private partnership drawing on the implementation of a european co funded research project the paper presents the efforts being made to build a partnership at a local level in order to cover the lack of an institutional plan and public investment for handling biomass production our aim is not primarily to present the best technical solution to bio energy production but rather to illustrate the networking between different players the public consultation and the agreements being made under the form of public private partnerships as well as the levels of commitment and the risks taken the gist of this study is that despite the civic engagements the inconsistent administrative environment the dominance of the public sector and the state intervention through legislation and different political decisions makes it still difficult for local partnerships to exercise their power and turn from government to governance in order to cope with the environmental challenges and tackle inequalities faced in rural areas

allocation of individuals to job levels under rationing summary we augment an ordered response model for the job level at which individuals desire to work with allowance for individual reporting of a discrepancy between actual and desired job level and we also investigate possible biases from restricting the observations to the employed and omitting the unemployed we find that the latter bias can be ignored and interpret this as evidence that the unemployed are not choosier than the employed people claiming inadequate capability utilization are not markedly differently allocated than those claiming a proper match women s lower job levels cannot be explained from rationing by capability utilization

the effects of minimum wages on wage dispersion and employment evidence from the u k wages councils using data on wages council coverage from the united kingdom new earnings survey the authors examine the impact of mandated minimum wages on wage dispersion and employment in the united kingdom in the 1980s they find evidence that a dramatic decline in the toughness of the regulation imposed by the wages councils through the 1980s a decline that is in the level of the minimum wage relative to the average wage significantly contributed to widening wage dispersion over those years there is however no evidence of an increase in employment resulting from the weakening bite of the wages council minimum pay rates instead consistent with the conclusions of several recent u s studies the findings suggest that the minimum wage had either no effect or a positive effect on employment

profitability of wind energy investments in china using a monte carlo approach for the treatment of uncertainties abstract china is the global leader in terms of installed wind capacity further wind energy development is expected for the next years and decades to meet the continuously increasing electricity demand and the need of using clean domestic energy since 2009 china is divided into four geographical regions each assigned with a different benchmark on grid tariff moreover the existing infrastructures are not equally developed throughout the country making investment decisions more complicated and risky the scope of this paper is to apply an innovative methodology and evaluate the attractiveness of each region for wind energy development by taking into consideration all relevant investment risks such as wind potential wind curtailment access to the grid and macroeconomic parameters to this purpose a monte carlo simulation approach integrated into a typical financial model is implemented in each of the four regions performing many hundreds of iterations each characterized by a randomly selected set of the examined uncertain parameters this approach intends to provide information to private investors doing a first exploratory research in the huge country s area in order to decide whether and where to invest as well as to policy makers to help them assess critical policy parameters and investigate different scenarios of wind energy development the evaluation of the current framework for wind energy development in china verifies that the existing system of feed in tariffs in china is very effective for the balanced deployment of wind energy in the whole country however it is shown that the risk of curtailment and grid accessibility may significantly reduce the potential profitability of wind energy investments in all four regions priority for development of infrastructures should be given in isolated northern windy areas with high accumulation of wind farms

welfare analysis of tax reforms using household data abstract this paper discusses a methodology for calculating the distribution of gains and losses from a policy change using data for a large sample of households estimates are based on the equivalent income function which is money metric utility defined over observable variables this enables calculations to be standardised and a computer program to compute the statistics presented in the paper is available for a general demand system equivalent income is related to measures of deadweight loss and standard errors are computed for each of the welfare measures an application to u k data for 5 895 households is given which simulates a reform that involves eliminating housing subsidies

a utility based analysis of the wage subsidy program abstract because the poverty line is usually defined in terms of income two families may be classified as having poverty level incomes even though their hours of work and therefore their utilities may be very different this paper compares a government income support program that defines the poverty line in terms of utility with several other support programs that define the poverty line in terms of income through the use of the wage solution of the indirect utility function we find the amount of wage subsidy required to raise a subpoverty line family to the poverty line as defined by the utility function this subsidy is compared with wage subsidies based on directly observable quantities such as income

unemployment and female labour supply the definition of labour force participation in the standard labour supply model stands in sharp contrast to that used in compiling the labour force statistics in the labour supply models only those supplying positive hours of work are considered to be labour force participants on the other hand participation in the labour force statistics is often defined to include not only those supplying positive hours but also those actively searching for work this paper is an attempt to reconcile these concepts by allowing unemployed workers to enter a generalisation of the standard labour supply model this turns out to be a convenient way to enter demand side factors directly into the determination of an individual s labour market position the model is applied with some success to the working behaviour of married women in the uk family expenditure survey

some analytics of the laffer curve abstract it is shown that in a general equilibrium model with one private good one public good labour and an income tax certain widely assumed properties of the laffer curve do not necessarily hold for well behaved functional forms it may not be continuous and may not have an interior maximum its slope depends on technology as well as on the tax elasticity of labour supply for certain technologies a more negative elasticity may imply a more positive slope moreover the relevant tax elasticity is a general equilibrium one which may differ in sign from the widely quoted partial equilibrium one

the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea choosing pigs prostitutes and poker chips over panels this study explores the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea the authors collected primary data through semi structured research interviews conducted over the course of february 2010 april 2010 respondents included government officials financiers planners commercial distributors and companies teachers and rural villagers in addition to members of civil society academics consultants and trainers these interviews were supplemented with site visits to port moresby goroka and madang and field research in the villages of akameku asaroka lufa kundiawa okifa simbu and talidig the study draws from these interviews and visits to discuss four types of barriers technical barriers relate to substandard equipment and logistical problems economic barriers include high rates of poverty misconceptions about the role of currency and lack of financing political barriers include poor institutional capacity and a government commitment to fossil fueled grid electrification social barriers encompass unrealistic expectations about what shs can provide along with jealousy theft vandalism and unfamiliarity with solar technology

a life cycle consistent empirical model of family labour supply using cross section data this paper estimates a utility maximising model of the joint determination of male and female labour supplies using a sample of married couples from the u k family expenditure survey the emphasis is on the estimation of within period preferences that are consistent with intertemporal two stage budgeting under uncertainty however the approach we adopt provides an alternative method of estimating certain aspects of life cycle behaviour to the fixed effects constant approach of heckman and macurdy 1980 macurdy 1981 and browning deaton and irish 1985 moreover it relaxes some of the underlying restrictions that are implicit in these constant models under uncertainty

matching with interviews abstract this paper explores how interviews affect the matching process when worker productivity is private information wages are determined by a single round of strategic bargaining after the worker is interviewed the implications of this hiring process for the efficiency of matching and the incidence and severity of statistical discrimination are considered the better are firms at identifying productive workers the worse the average quality of the unemployment pool so interviewing tends to slow down matching for every one multiple pareto rankable equilibria are possible such that any social group in a bad equilibrium faces stricter hiring standards longer spells of unemployment and lower welfare

labour force participation timing and persistence this paper examines the relative importance of timing and persistence elements in explaining cyclical fluctuations in labour supply data from the natural experiment provided by world war ii and cross sectional data on american local labour markets as well as aggregate time series data are used in the empirical work we find little evidence that timing effects play an important role in labour market dynamics the evidence suggests that views emphasizing persistence are more accurate and that previous employment tends to raise the probability of subsequent employment much of the development of applied economic theory within the past 25 years has emphasized the importance of viewing economic decisions in a life cycle context consumption decisions are today frequently viewed as being determined by wealth or permanent income the human capital revolution has brought life cycle considerations to the forefront of modern labour economics while the life cycle dynamics of labour force participation decisions have important implications for macroeconomic theory and policy they have received relatively little empirical attention with the notable exceptions of lucas and rapping 1969 and hall 1980 none of the large body of work on cyclical fluctuations in employment has explicitly relied on a dynamic model of labour supply this paper uses several types of data to examine two elements of participation dynamics the first is the aspect of timing which is implicit in the work of lucas and rapping and in mincer s 1966 early discussion of hidden unemployment the timing argument which is presented most explicitly in ghez and becker 1975 holds that leisure is easily substitutable across periods hence relatively small transitory movements in the perceived real wage or real rate of return can have large effects on the path of labour supply as individuals time their participation to coincide with periods of high transitory wages on the other hand permanent changes because they do not affect the timing decision are expected to have a much smaller effect on participation it is this view of labour supply which underlies new classical macroeconomic models the dependence is made explicit in lucas 1975 who claims that what we do know indicates that leisure in one period is an excellent substitute for leisure in other nearby periods the ability of classical macroeconomic models to explain fluctuations in employment depends on the presence of strong intertemporal substitution effects unless

why is automobile insurance in philadelphia so damn expensive the authors document and attempt to explain the observation that automobile insurance premiums vary dramatically across cities the authors argue that high premiums can be attributed at least in part to large numbers of uninsured motorists in some markets while uninsured motorists can be attributed to high premiums the authors construct a simple noncooperative equilibrium model that can generate inefficient equilibria with uninsured drivers and high yet actuarially fair premiums for certain parameterizations an efficient full insurance equilibrium and inefficient high price equilibria with uninsured drivers exist simultaneously helping to explain price variability across otherwise similar cities policy implications are discussed

the underground economy in spain an alternative to unemployment this paper analyses the factors which determine whether an individual works in the formal sector in the informal sector or remains unemployed in the spanish labour market we highlight the implications of high unemployment on an individual s decision to work in the underground economy we postulate that an individual decides or is chosen whether to work in the formal sector or not in a first stage and if not in a second stage decides whether to work in the underground sector or to remain unemployed we estimate a bivariate probit model which controls for selectivity bias in the second stage the result indicates on the one hand that heads of household who benefit more from social security provisions obtained in formal sector jobs are more likely to work in such sector than others besides demand restrictions seem to operate as well individuals with higher education have easier access to the formal sector on the other hand among those who do not work in the formal sector the probability of wor

simultaneously modeling the supply of weeks and hours of work among female household heads this paper explores the differential nature of labor supply decisions regarding weeks of work per year and hours of work per week among female household heads a model of labor supply that separates the weeks hours decision is presented and estimated allowing for simultaneity in the weeks hours decision as well as for the presence of either fixed costs or weeks and hours constraints the results indicate that not only are weeks and hours decisions separate from the labormarket participation decision but they are also quite different from each other although they appear to be simultaneously determined

are people inequality averse or just risk averse individuals preferences for risk and inequality are measured through choices between imagined societies and lotteries the median relative risk aversion which is often seen to reflect social inequality aversion is between 2 and 3 most people are also found to be individually inequality averse reflecting a willingness to pay for living in a more equal society left wing voters and women are both more risk and inequality averse than others the model allows for non monotonic swfs implying that welfare may decrease with an individual s income at high income levels which is illustrated in simulations based on the empirical results

the sensitivity of an empirical model of married women s hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions this study undertakes a systematic analysis of several theoretic and statistical assumption s used in many empirical models of female labor supply using a singl e data set psid 1975 labor supply data the author is able to replic ate most of the range of estimated income and substitution effects fo und in previous studies in this field he undertakes extensive specif ication tests and finds that most of this range should be rejected du e to statistical and model misspecifications the two most important assumptions appear to be the tobit assumption used to control for sel f selection into the labor force and exogeneity assumptions on the wi fe s wage rate and her labor market experience copyright 1987 by the econometric society

labour supply incentives and the taxation of family income taxing family income richard blundell and ian walker will lower marginal rates of income tax increase incentives to work the traditional theoretical argument ignores the fact that many individuals are members of households with more than one potential participant in paid employment the theory of optimal income tax is utilized to argue that the tax system should discriminate between individuals in the same household if their labour supply responses are different empirically the response of labour supply to changes in after tax wages is largest for secondary workers particularly married women hence the largest beneficial incentive effect is obtained if such individuals face lower tax rates since these individuals typically have below average pre tax earnings this suggests a simple way to implement our proposal establish a progressive income tax with individual earnings as the basis of assessment this might have additional advantages of fairness but its primary purpose would be to ensure that low earning but highly responsive individuals face low marginal tax rates while high earning but relatively unresponsive individuals face higher marginal tax rates contrary to popular wisdom a flat rate tax system would be less favourable for work incentives we illustrate this theoretical argument using an empirical model of labour supply embedded in a micro computer programme capable of simulating alternative tax systems

eu and russian discourse on energy relations the paper explores the dominant interpretations of the eu russian energy relations by identifying three dominant concepts around which these interpretations revolve 1 integration 2 liberalization and 3 diversification building on a detailed discourse analysis of 97 textual units produced by eu leaders and institutions and 104 documents and speeches by russian policy makers the paper argues that these three discourses differ widely in their assessment of the two partners mutual ties both in terms of the relationship s symmetry and the perceived benefits for each partner the paper comes up with two basic arguments first in spite of the shared usage of the three basic notions by both sides the interpretations of each of the discourses are widely different in the eu and in russia which causes continuous frictions and misunderstandings second and surprisingly the discourse of integration is dominant both in the eu and russia which shows that the claims about the alleged securitization of eu russian energy relations are clearly exaggerated

enabling private sector investment in microgrid based rural electrification in developing countries a review access to electricity is widely recognized as an important factor for economic and social development low rates of access particularly in remote rural areas in regions such as sub saharan africa south asia and southeast asia have led developing nations and international organizations to set ambitious goals to expand the reach of electricity decentralized solutions such as microgrids have been proposed as cost effective solutions to reaching communities located far from central grid infrastructure lack of capital from public and donor sources has severely impeded achieving access goals leading to calls for greater private sector participation in electrification activities however due to the high level of risk associated with decentralized electrification projects in low income areas marginal expected returns on investment and a lack of clear and effective public policy the private sector has not shown significant interest in participating in such projects the purpose of this paper is to review barriers to private sector participation in decentralized electrification projects and to identify solutions that have been implemented and proposed to overcome these barriers the barriers discussed include unsecure revenue streams inability to finance projects and long term project risks such as grid encroachment the range of interventions and business models reviewed include methods to secure reliable demand subsidy models risk guarantees and different revenue models this paper does not include an analysis of the effectiveness of the different interventions described future research should evaluate the relative costs and benefits of these interventions in order to provide robust policy guidance to decision makers in developing countries

adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector an empirical analysis based on energy survey data this paper empirically explores factors driving the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector which mainly consists of public and private services trade commerce and some small industries the measures considered include switching off installations or lighting managing energy use and routinely considering energy efficiency for new purchases our statistical analysis employs single and multivariate probit models relying on more than 1500 observations from a recent representative survey of the tertiary sector in germany the findings suggest that the landlord tenant dilemma holds for the adoption of all low cost energy efficiency measures considered they further imply that financial incentives such as higher energy prices accelerate the diffusion of low cost energy measures our findings also provide some evidence that knowledge transfer from the mother company to a subsidiary enhances the diffusion of low cost energy efficiency measures likewise public sector organizations are more likely to adopt energy management by and large though sectoral heterogeneity appears to have little impact on the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures

the prime criteria for private sector participation in renewable energy investment in the middle east case study iran abstract to have sustainable electricity generation from renewable energy resources economically competitive more privatization is needed in this sector true understanding based on transparent information is one of the salient necessities for the private sector to invest in the energy business in this article the researchers are to recognize the targeted factors considered by the private sector in order to improve their participation in the electricity generation markets from renewable sources in the middle east the results illustrate that the most important factors are governmental policies consumption markets and engineering efficiency these recognized factors then are classified from different aspects such as techno engineering business and relevant policies and the environment

review of taiwan s climate policy after copenhagen abstract the copenhagen accord in 2009 initiated new opportunities for international cooperation in reducing greenhouse gas ghg emissions the purpose of this study was to review taiwan s current climate policy and in response to the copenhagen accord to deliberate this policy in the light of new strategic thinking the study proposes a two stage approach with a dividing line in 2020 in the first stage from now until 2020 strategy should be based on cost constraints with a suggested reduction cost below 60 t co 2 and implementation of domestic ghg emissions trading scheme and reduction strategies in the second stage from 2020 and beyond action by taiwan should accord with international cooperative actions to link its domestic emissions trading scheme with the international carbon market

quantifying the premium externality of the uninsured in some insurance markets the uninsured can generate a negative externality on the insured leading insurance companies to pass on costs as higher premia using a novel panel data set and a staggered policy change that exogenously varied the rate of uninsured drivers at the county level in california we quantitatively investigate the effect of uninsured motorists on automobile insurance premia consistent with predictions of theory we find uninsured drivers lead to higher insurance premia specifically a 1 percentage point increase in the rate of uninsured drivers raises insurance premia by between 1 2 we also discuss corrective pigouvian taxes

a regional analysis of labour force participation rates across the member states of the european union elhorst j p 1996 a regional analysis of labour force participation rates across the member states of the european union reg studies 30 455 465 this study investigates the causes of variation in labour force participation rates in a regional europe two participation rate equations are estimated one for men and one for women using annual data derived from eurostat 1983 1989 the explanatory variables are based on previous studies on the subject of the neoclassical formulation of the individual s labour supply function extended by the situation in which an individual who wishes to work cannot find a job and becomes involuntarily unemployed the consistency of the parameter estimates to different estimation models is investigated it turns out that heterogeneity between the member states of the eu is so important that it is almost impossible to find an overall regression equation for the whole eu elhorst j p 1996 une analyse regionale des taux d activite dans les pays membres de l union europ

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

on the contribution of external cost calculations to energy system governance the case of a potential large scale nuclear accident abstract the contribution of nuclear power to a sustainable energy future is a contested issue this paper presents a critical review of an attempt to objectify this debate through the calculation of the external costs of a potential large scale nuclear accident in the externe project a careful dissection of the externe approach resulted in a list of 30 calculation steps and assumptions from which the 6 most contentious ones were selected through a stakeholder internet survey the policy robustness and relevance of these key assumptions were then assessed in a workshop using the concept of a pedigree of knowledge overall the workshop outcomes revealed the stakeholder and expert panel s scepticism about the assumptions made generally these were considered not very plausible subjected to disagreement and to a large extent inspired by contextual factors such criticism indicates a limited validity and useability of the calculated nuclear accident externality as a trustworthy sustainability indicator furthermore it is our contention that the externe project could benefit greatly in terms of gaining public trust from employing highly visible procedures of extended peer review such as the pedigree assessment applied to our specific case of the external costs of a potential large scale nuclear accident

the need for improved financial reporting of a developing country energy utility abstract some consideration has been given to regulatory and institutional reforms to facilitate sustainable development in electricity usage in papua new guinea but little attention has been paid to bringing about full compliance of financial reporting expectations of the country s main energy utility examining documentary evidence of the audit reports of the auditor general s office of papua new guinea this study considers the financial reporting compliance of png power for the period 2007 2013 and the means by which compliant reporting may be improved the results of the study reveal that the financial statements of png power are late and receive disclaimers of opinion from the auditor general s office which suggest that png power s stakeholders are not receiving accurate and reliable financial information to make informed decisions about sustainable development of electricity usage and planning in papua new guinea the study reveals that it would take little resources to improve png power s reporting which in turn could enhance national energy policy decision making and energy utility accountability

a model of female labour supply in which supply is dependent upon the chances of finding a job in this paper we extend a model of female labour supply by considering the impact of the local labour market thus in our model a woman supplies her labour if she has both made the decision to participate and found a job this extension is of particular importance in times of high unemployment when discouraged worker effects will be at their strongest we also consider the contribution of such a model to the debate concerning the labour supply of women married to men who are unemployed

selection criteria for a microeconometric model of labour supply the wide variety of observed behaviour that is displayed in survey data suggests that microeconometric models should allow a reasonable degree of flexibility in specification however since these models are generally used for policy analysis they are required to satisfy some degree of theoretical consistency this requirement has generally led to the adoption of rather simple inflexible models based on additive preferences or linear labour supply responses we estimate and test a sequence of models for the labour supply of married working women emphasizing the importance of testing both the thecretical and statistical assumptions underlying the models

statistical models for zero expenditures in household budgets household budget surveys are an important source of data on consumer s expenditure not just for individual consumers but also for estimating national aggregates however it is a widespread finding that for certain commodities most notably tobacco and alcohol the estimate from the household survey falls short of the known consumption total calculated with some confidence from data on production imports exports and excise duties for example in the british family expenditure survey with which we shall largely be concerned total tobacco expenditure was underestimated in 1976 by 21 percent see kemsley redpath and holmes 1980 p 51 much of this understatement together with that on alcohol is thought to occur because of the design of the survey which excludes many persons amongst whom consumption of such items is thought to be atypically high e g prisoners hoteliers and their residents merchant seamen even so the possibility remains that some of the understatement is due to various types of misreporting by households included in the survey in this paper we consider a model in which the standard tobit specification tobin 1958 is supplemented by the operation of a simple binary censor the tobit model is essentially a linear regression model in which non positive observations of the dependent variable are replaced by zero we take this specification as our starting point but add a second censoring process that randomly replaces a fraction of the observations generated by the tobit model bv zeroes the combined model can serve as a representation of several types of

transfers targeting and poverty poverty ravi kanbur in spite of poverty alleviation programmes in the uk and the us poverty still exists in both countries and a significant share of welfare funds do not even reach the poor this is partly because funds are simply limited and shrinking but there are also fundamental problems in designing programmes of poverty alleviation maximum effectiveness would seem to suggest that transfers ought to be targeted as precisely as possible at those who most need them unfortunately this is socially costly for two reasons first means based transfers imply that the poor face a very high marginal tax rate sometimes in excess of 100 which is a major disincentive to work effort the second difficulty is the stigma attached to means testing and the low take up rate this may induce this article presents the salient features of the us and uk poverty programmes discusses the principles behind poverty alleviation and considers various reform proposals among the alternatives is the idea of shifting even further away from means testing towards contingent benefits making transfers dependent on the characteristics most often associated with poverty the author argues that the present programmes reflect some essential considerations on which it is possible to build and that wholesale reform would be inappropriate nor is it clear that public support exists for a major extension of transfers to the poor indeed existing inefficiencies may be part of the price of public acceptance of the transfer programmes already in place

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

access to electricity in small island developing states of the pacific issues and challenges abstract energy poverty is widespread in small island developing states sids of the pacific it is estimated that 70 percent of pacific islander households do not have access to electricity which is equivalent to access rates in sub saharan africa and slightly below the average for low income countries pacific sids face unique challenges in expanding access to electricity given that their populations are spread across tens of thousands of islands governments and development partners in pacific sids continue to prioritise development of electricity grids as is evident in ongoing subsidisation of grid based power consumption and the establishment of ambitious grid based renewable energy targets this paper argues that traditional approaches to rural electrification which prioritise grid extension are not suited to the pacific islands region increased funding should be directed by both governments and development partners towards rural electrification especially in off grid areas where isolated systems are more appropriate institutional reform is also important regulatory reform is needed for power utilities to extend electricity grids into rural areas institutional arrangements that facilitate the sustainable operation and maintenance of off grid systems also need to be established past donor and government funded off grid rural electrification projects have rarely been sustainable alternative approaches involving payment of output based subsidies to energy service companies are worth exploring although will only succeed where sound regulatory arrangements are in place

social interactions and habit formation in a model of female labour supply this paper investigates the influence of habit formation and preference interdependence on labour supply behaviour of married females a novelty of the paper is that we incorporate direct survey information on reference groups of individuals in a neoclassical labour supply model for that purpose we first estimate a latent variables model relating the direct information to the true but unobserved reference groups one of the most interesting features of the model is that the presence of young children becomes an insignificant factor in the hours equation while it remains a significant factor in the participation decision in addition the labour supply curve is much flatter in a model with habit formation and preference interdependence than in a model without it both habit formation and preference interdependence contribute significantly to the explanation of female labour supply 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

economic and socio economic assessment methods for ocean renewable energy public and private perspectives this paper provides a comprehensive review of the current state of the art of the economics and socio economics of ocean renewable energy ore the many ways in which the viability and impacts of an ore project are assessed and an analysis of the current weaknesses issues or inappropriateness of the metrics and methodologies used in their definition and presentation the outcomes of this paper are anticipated to benefit the ore and wider renewable sector as a whole the review revealed that for the most part the current study of economics and socio economics of ore remain separate and discrete areas of research the economic methods utilised appear to be comprehensive but are limited to project or private investor level the methods identified for socioeconomic assessment fall between traditional and now routine environmental assessment approaches and more novel holistic approaches such as ecosystem services and life cycle assessment the novel section of the paper explored the connectivity between the economics and socio economics of ore in relation to project developments and policy planning a visualisation method was created of concentric rings intersected by related axis of economic socio economic and environment and enabled the examination of the benefits arising from the connectivity between the two spheres the concept of sustainable development process and the integration of environmental assessment for ore was also explored and how it responds to differing stakeholder aspirations and interpretations the analysis revealed that there was a divergence between public and private economic and socioeconomic assessments for ore environmental assessment is primarily a public responsibility but with significant inputs from the private developer involved while economic assessments are conducted primarily by the developer and or investor at their own behest however the two spheres of economic and socio economic for ore are highly connected and synergistic and must be examined in a holistic manner

are fluctuations in energy consumption per capita transitory evidence from a panel of pacific island countries this study applies the panel stationarity test developed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 breaking the panels an application to gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 to examine the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for a panel of 13 pacific island countries over the period 1980 2005 this test has the advantage that it allows for multiple structural breaks at unknown dates that can differ across countries and can account for all forms of cross sectional correlation between countries the conclusion from the study is that energy consumption per capita in approximately 60 of countries is stationary and that energy consumption per capita for the panel as a whole is stationary the study offers several suggestions for modelling energy consumption and policy making in the pacific islands

female participation and male unemployment duration in greece evidence from the labour force survey the work reported in this paper is part of a project financed by the centre for planning and economic research kepe athens we should like to thank kepe s scientific director louka katseli for her help and encouragement and the staff of kepe for their help with the data we should like to thank d karantinos for the insights he provided on the greek labour market finally we should like to thank neils westergaard nielsen for his comments all errors and shortcomings remain our responsibility

a qualitative factor analysis of renewable energy and sustainable energy for all se4all in the asia pacific this study assesses the factors responsible for the success and failure of renewable energy access programs in bangladesh china laos mongolia nepal sri lanka india indonesia malaysia and papua new guinea based on 441 research interviews over the course of four years site visits to 90 renewable energy facilities and focus groups with almost 800 community members in 10 countries this study develops a series of overarching qualitative factors that correlate with programs that met their targets sometimes ahead of schedule and produced measurable benefits exceeding costs the inverse of these factors is associated with programs that did not meet their targets were behind schedule and or produced measurable costs exceeding benefits it concludes by offering 10 lessons for energy analysts and development practitioners concerning appropriate technology income generation financing political leadership capacity building programmatic flexibility marketing and awareness stakeholder engagement community ownership and technical standardization

asset life and pricing the use of electricity transmission infrastructure in chile abstract beyond the different approaches to set regulated prices for the use of infrastructure a key parameter to determine regulated tariffs is the concept of asset life and how it changes with changes in the economic and regulatory context which determines the optimal infrastructure investment and replacement policies in this paper we look at the effects that changes in demand the presence of substitutes and complements the regulatory framework both a pro or an anticompetitive framework scale economies and the investment planning horizon have on the economic service life of an asset and the tariffs for its use we find that as the electric industry becomes more competitive a negative effect on the economic service life of electric electricity transmission should be expected also numerical experiments illustrate an inverse relation between scale economies on investment and the esl of electricity transmission infrastructure further we look at the biases on optimal investment that happen when optimal plans do not observe the life cycle of the investments and the esl of the equipment as well as the inconsistency and biases on optimal investment and replacement policies that might result when the social planner optimal investment plan lacks of a long term commitment

the politico economics of electricity planning in developing countries a case study of ghana abstract off grid technologies are increasingly being proposed as a way of ensuring cost efficient universal access to electricity in many developing countries however many un electrified communities would prefer access to electricity via the national grid rather than off grid technologies electricity planning based on cost efficiency alone could therefore be undermined by political pressure from discontented communities that are assigned off grid technologies using a case study of un electrified communities in ghana we develop an electricity planning algorithm based on hierarchical lexicographic programming and consider specifications where the priorities are adjusted to give weight to 1 cost efficiency and 2 political economy considerations so that communities with larger populations and therefore votes are given priority in terms of grid electrification the results emphasise the need to incorporate the political economy considerations in the national planning of universal electrification showing significant regional differences in terms of where grid extensions ought to be placed incorporating a political economy perspective in national planning also suggests that the most important policy trade offs shift from considering the grid versus off grid balance to focussing more on the effectiveness of grid investment in providing universal access

independent regulatory agencies and rules harmonization for the electricity sector and renewables in the mediterranean region the paper analyses the existing regulatory framework for the electricity and renewables sectors and the role of regulatory agencies in northern africa and middle east countries under the promotion by the european union using data collected through an original survey directed at regulators ministry departments and energy companies of the southern mediterranean the study is aimed at assessing the extent of agencies independence looking at three main dimensions of independence regulatory instruments available to regulators and decision making autonomy regulators organizational autonomy and regulators accountability results show that those countries having established an independent regulator have a more credible regulatory framework than those countries in which such a body does not exist in particular the analysis shows that turkey croatia and jordan have defined a regulatory framework that limits administrative expropriation and consequently creates an environment more suitable for attracting investments in the electricity and renewables sector on the institutional ground this is probably related with the harmonization of regulatory standards promoted by the european union through the neighboring policy for the jordan case and the membership perspective in the turkish and croatian cases

energy policy and cooperation in southeast asia the history challenges and implications of the trans asean gas pipeline tagp network this article explores the proposed multibillion dollar trans asean gas pipeline tagp network in southeast asia focusing on the interests that have promoted the tagp and why based on extensive field research textual analysis of government reports and more than 100 research interviews at government institutions multilateral development banks universities consulting firms energy companies and nongovernmental organizations this article assesses the challenges facing the tagp in terms of promotion implementation and operation it explores the genesis of the tagp project and the drivers pushing southeast asian investment in natural gas with a special emphasis on the development needs of the region it also investigates the numerous technical economic legal political social and environmental impediments to the tagp project the article concludes that the rhetoric of regional energy cooperation touted by the association of southeast asian nations asean does not match its actual practice and that in many cases discussions of regionalism and energy security are intended to obscure opportunistic thinking within individual countries

reform despite politics the political economy of power sector reform in fiji 1996 2013 abstract attempts to reform the electricity sector in developing countries have achieved mixed results despite the implementation of similar reforms in many developed countries and concerted effort by donors to transfer reform models in many cases political obstacles have prevented full and effective implementation of donor promoted reforms this paper examines the political economy of power sector reform in fiji from 1996 to 2013 reform has been pursued with political motives in a context of clientelism policy inconsistency and reversal is explained by the political instability of ethnic based politics in fiji modest success has been achieved in recent years despite these challenges with fiji now considered a model of power sector reform for other small islands developing states sids in the pacific the experience demonstrates that reform is possible within difficult political environments but it is challenging takes time and is not guaranteed the way in which political motives have driven and shaped reform efforts also highlights the need for studies of power sector reform to direct greater attention toward political drivers behind reform

testing whether unemployment represents intertemporal labour supply behaviour in the lucas rapping 1969 model of the labour market fluctuations in unemployment represent individuals optimally adjusting their labour supply behaviour in response to fluctuations in wage rates over the business cycle in this paper i propose and implement a misspecification test of the lucas rapping treatment of unemployment as labour supply behaviour using panel data this test extends previous such work with micro data by simultaneously allowing for intertemporal substitution uncertainty and endogenous unemployment using the standard specification of intertemporal labour supply behaviour i find strong evidence against this interpretation of unemployment there are two possible interpretations of the test results the first is that it is necessary to turn to alternative models of the labour market in which unemployed workers are off a supply function the second is that the test results indicate the necessity of moving to more complex models of intertemporal substitution however given current econometric techniques and data sets these alternative models of intertemporal substitution will be extremely difficult to test

the diagnosis of an electricity crisis and alternative energy development in pakistan abstract the electricity sector in pakistan is currently facing the formidable challenges of an insufficient installed capacity a suboptimal infrastructure circular debt and revenue shortage all of these problems hamper socioeconomic activities this paper diagnoses the overall condition of the electricity sector as well as the potential and recent progress in the implementation of alternative energy projects in the context of the targets set in the national energy security plan nesp the assessment reveals the unsatisfactory overall progress of the implementation of the nesp in general and alternative energy in particular we assess that if the short term measures contained in the nesp have been adequately executed were enough to bridge the existing electricity supply demand gap and the country might not be facing an ongoing electricity crisis further we investigated the specific alternative energy policy issues that hinder this sector s development in pakistan we conclude that fuel diversification by means of the maximum utilisation of alternative energy resources would help in solving the crisis and would also furnish the long term energy needs of the country finally we recommend a comprehensive strategy for revamping the electricity sector and developing the alternative energy resources needed to tackle the ongoing electricity crisis in pakistan

the framing of unconventional natural gas resources in the foreign energy policy discourse of the russian federation the advent of unconventional resources of natural gas has altered the order on global as well as continental gas markets with rising liquidity the position of established dominant suppliers is eroding we focus on the initial response of russia the leading supplier of natural gas to europe to the new situation building the research on unit level constructivism and discourse analysis we use frame analysis to reveal what image of unconventional resources was constructed in russian foreign energy policy discourse fepd in the period between 2009 and 2011 when the unconventional revolution did not yet have any sharp contours we conclude that in russian fepd the unconventionals are considered as a distinctive and inferior source of energy compared to conventional natural gas emphasis is put on their economic irrationality and environmental hazards the bottom line of the discourse is the idea that there is a choice between conventional and unconventional sources with this choice being framed as one between good and bad or right and wrong

estimation of a labour supply model with censoring due to unemployment and underemployment this study proposes and implements a method of labour supply estimation which is appropriate when the sample contains unemployed and underemployed workers the estimation method consists of excluding unemployed and underemployed workers from the sample and then using to avoid selection bias an extension of heckman s approach to the case where two correlated selection rules generate the sample hausman s specification test is then used to determine whether ignoring constrained workers has led to biases in traditional labour supply estimates and the empirical results suggest that previous estimates of several important parameters are biased since the biases go in the direction that would be predicted by the hypothesis that the unemployed and underemployed are constrained the results support this hypothesis

reserve reporting in the united states coal industry united states energy policymaking can be better supported with accurate and consistent data on coal reserves both in the public and private sectors in particular reserve data for coal and other energy resources should be directly comparable so that decision makers can easily understand the relationship among available resources long term policy and investment choices regarding energy security the environment and resource allocation depend on accurate information but existing and easily available data on the magnitude of geologically environmentally economically socially and legally accessible coal reserves are of insufficient quality to guide such decisions even still these data are often presented for use in policy and energy analysis currently coal reserves are overstated relative to competitor energy resource reserves in part because coal reporting standards have historically been more liberal and vague than standards for resources like natural gas overstating the marketable coal resource could lead to inefficient allocation of limited capital investment that can be difficult to reverse us government bodies like the energy information administration united states geological survey securities and exchange commission and bureau of land management can help correct deficiencies by clarifying standards and collecting data that are relevant for decision makers such as energy based reserve information