estimating residential demand for electricity in greece abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in greece the issues of structural stability price and income sensitivity of both long and short run residential demand for electricity in greece were examined employing monthly data over the period 1986 1999 the long run residential demand for electricity is estimated taking into account changes in weather conditions weighted by the size of the population employing multivariate framework analysis a long run residential demand function for electricity sensitive to real income price level and weather conditions is found to exist and the importance of short run deviations is presented using vector error correction model vecm estimation the empirical evidence suggests the presence of a stable residential demand for electricity in greece both in the long and short run periods and the policy implications of such a relationship are presented

involuntary defection in two level games ratification failures are prevalent in international relations but due to the assumption of unitary actors in international relations theory theoretical analysis has been underdeveloped in formalizing putnam s metaphor of two level games this article shows that incomplete information about the preferences of domestic actors is crucial for understanding ratification failures furthermore institutional mechanisms affect bargaining outcomes through their impact on information revelation in particular it is found that two sided constraints lead to relatively equitable bargaining outcomes and that renegotiation and pre negotiation poll taking can induce strategic voting by domestic constituents thereby exacerbating domestic constraints

effects of demand side management on chinese household electricity consumption empirical findings from chinese household survey abstract china s residential electricity demand has grown rapidly over the last three decades and given the expected continued growth demand side management dsm can play an important role in reducing electricity demand by using micro level data collected from 1450 households in 27 provinces in the first ever china residential energy consumption survey in 2012 this study estimates the effects of three dsm measures empirically tiered household electricity pricing china energy label program and information feedback mechanisms we find these measures have contributed to moderating residential electricity demand growth but additional policy reform and tools are needed to increase their effectiveness and impact residential electricity demand is found to be price and income inelastic and tiered pricing alone may not be as effective in electricity conservation the statistically significant relationship between china energy label efficient refrigerators but not televisions and lowered residential electricity consumption reflect mixed program effectiveness lastly of the information feedback currently available through electricity bills payment frequency and meters only meter reader is estimated to be statistically significant important policy implications and recommendations for improving each of these three dsm measures to expand their impact on reducing residential electricity consumption are identified

electricity demand response to price changes the portuguese case taking into account income differences abstract in this paper we study the behavior of electricity use in portuguese households using microdata from five independent surveys our sample covers the period from 1989 to 2010 which was characterized by major changes in the country we adopt the pseudo panel methodology creating 350 cohorts based on the size of the household the type of location rural or urban the region and the income quintile our results show relatively high medium long run own price elasticities indicating that an increase in the electricity price due to for instance policy intervention would in fact decrease electricity use cross price elasticities indicate that electricity and gas are substitutes additionally the income quintiles analysis shows significant differences in the elasticities depending on the income group hence political interventions in the electricity sector may have important redistributive effects

rain and the democratic window of opportunity according to the economic approach to political transitions negative transitory economic shocks can give rise to a window of opportunity for democratic change we examine this hypothesis using yearly rainfall variation over the 1980 2004 period in 41 sub saharan african countries we find that a 25 drop in rainfall increases the probability of a transition to democracy during the following two years by around 3 percentage points a 5 fall in income due to low rainfall raises the probability of democratization by around 7 percentage points we also find that rainfall does not affect transitions from democracy to autocracy

central bankers in government appointed committees abstract i study the policy choices of members of a central bank committee who are appointed by the government central bankers balance their desire to protect the central bank s reputation against their interest to be reappointed committees can be more successful than single central bankers at reducing inflation and insulating policy from government pressures these gains are only achieved if the turnover rate of committee members is low and the committee is small the former is associated with a low risk of being replaced for not supporting the government s preferred policy the latter meanwhile implies high probability that a single vote affects policy making any individual member more weary of potentially affecting the central bank s reputation through his vote

energy consumption and urban sprawl evidence for the spanish case residential electricity consumption constitutes one of the largest sources of spanish final energy demand to improve electricity savings policies oriented towards efficiency in residential consumption such as replacement of appliances or the construction of nearly zero energy buildings have been suggested and implemented however the potential relevance of urban structural characteristics such as the increase in detached houses in sprawling residential areas has not often been considered the aim of this research is to analyse the relevance of living in a detached house located in a dispersed urban area to household electricity consumption thus an electricity consumption model is estimated by using household socioeconomic variables and including urban characteristics as its determinants such us the level of urban agglomeration or whether families live in detached sprawling homes the model is estimated by using 2014 household budget survey hbs microdata and applying ordinary least squares ols as well as quantile regressions qr as econometric procedures endogeneity problems are corrected by means of instrumental variables the results confirm that living in a detached house significantly increases electricity consumption whereas urban agglomerations have the opposite effect sprawl is occurring rapidly in spanish cities and according to our results it could constitute a relevant source of increase in electricity demand in the following years

macroeconomic policy in a two party system as a repeated game this paper considers the interaction of two parties with different objectives concerning inflation and unemployment and rational and forward looking wage setters if discretionary policies are followed an economic cycle related to the political cycle results in equilibrium this cycle is significantly different from the traditional political business cycle reputational mechanisms due to the repeated interaction of the two parties and the public or commitments to a common policy rule can improve upon the discretionary outcome by reducing or eliminating the magnitude of the economic fluctuations

policymakers horizon and the sustainability of international cooperation abstract this paper examines the impact of policymakers horizon on the sustainability of international cooperation we describe a prisoners dilemma game between two infinitely lived countries run by policymakers we show that re election incentives can act as a discipline device making it easier to sustain cooperation between policymakers with finite but potentially renewable mandates than between infinitely lived policymakers we also show that when voting suffers from a recency bias policymakers may have incentives to collude to get re elected and term limits may help international cooperation

government spending cycles ideological or opportunistic this paper examines whether partisan and opportunistic motives affect government expenditure growth in the netherlands the time series analysis covering the period 1953 1993 allows for different types of government spending in general spending is inspired by ideological and opportunistic motives all government expenditure categories show an upward drift during election times and the partisan motives behind government spending are clearly revealed left wing cabinets attach greater importance to social security and health care than right wing cabinets and right wing cabinets value expenditure on infrastructure and defense more than left wing parties

modelling household energy expenditures using micro data this paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy in the united kingdom at the level of the individual household a two stage budgeting model of household demand for energy conditional on durable ownership is developed at the first stage income is allocated between energy and nonenergy consumption while at the second stage energy expenditure is disaggregated the second stage allocation is assumed to be between gas electricity and a composite good other fuels estimation takes place using a sample of some 50 000 households drawn from the annual u k family expenditure survey for the years 1972 83 a source that has not been fully exploited in the analysis of energy demand to date copyright 1989 by royal economic society

the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan a panel cointegration analysis abstract this paper examines the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan at the aggregate and sectoral levels over the period 1978 2012 panel cointegration test and fully modified ordinary least squares method is employed to determine the long run relationship between electricity consumption real income real price of electricity and domestic price of non energy products the results reveal that electricity demand is more responsive to changes in income than changes in prices at the aggregate and disaggregate levels short run and long run income elasticities are positive and statistically significant supporting the conservation hypothesis it appears from the results that long run price elasticities are negative and significant at the aggregate level and for the agriculture commercial residential sectors and public utilities the short run price elasticities are significant but low in magnitude which implies that changes in electricity price exert minimal effect on the electricity consumption in pakistan the domestic price of non energy products is positive and significant for aggregate sample in the short run the domestic price of non energy products exert significant negative positive impact on electricity demand in the agriculture industrial sectors the results thus provide important information to the agents operating in the electricity market regarding the income and pricing policies and helps in planning the future strategy of electricity demand management

voluntary agreements in the field of energy efficiency and emission reduction review and analysis of experiences in the european union abstract a number of member states of the eu have introduced voluntary agreements vas that aim to deliver energy savings and emission reductions via increased energy efficiency in different end use sectors mainly targeting industry where there is a successful track record of cooperation between public authorities and the private sector vas can offer advantages to public authorities in comparison to legislation most importantly better flexibility when introduced or updated greater acceptance by industry possibility for tailor made solutions e g at the level of industrial sectors and opportunity to overcome the information asymmetry between public authorities and private actors nevertheless vas have been criticized for lack of specific obligations and lenient targets as well as for deficiencies in compliance monitoring and self reporting and difficulty in establishing the policy additionality of va activity this paper analyses the design of existing vas in terms of general framework targets and sectors obligations and commitments motivation to join reporting and monitoring provisions and results of existing vas as reported by national authorities the paper summarizes the key characteristics of voluntary agreements and gives recommendations for the successful application of this policy tool

household electricity end use consumption results from econometric and engineering models information about total electricity consumption is available for most households however the electricity consumption related to different end uses e g space heating lighting and services from household appliances are usually not metered metering data are costly to achieve and in this paper we study two methods for end use estimation which can be applied on household data for appliance holdings demographic and economic variables the first method is the engineering model which has been used to calculate the so far only documented norwegian end use results applied on data from a norwegian energy survey the second method is an econometric conditional demand model applied on data from the same survey we compare the numerical results from the two models and give some recommendations regarding choice of end use approach and what questions to implement in household surveys designed to disaggregate electricity consumption

issues in new political economy an overview a brief overview of the historical background nature and rapid growth in volume and scope of new political economy since the early 1980s is provided the paper continues with some general reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the new political economy approach illustrated by the other contributions to this special issue of the journal of economic surveys the final section summarises these contributions

wage indexation and time consistency note this note presents a simple model where the decision on the degree of wage indexation is taken by a large agent such as the government the optimal degree of indexing is shown to depend on the variance of real shocks and on the inflations bias of the government due to the incentive to raise employment above the market clearing level wage indexation will be low if real shocks are large and if the government is inflation averse the ability of monetary policy to offset monetary disturbances makes them irrelevant to the determination of the optimal degree of indexing copyright 1994 by ohio state university press

the demand for residential industrial and total electricity 1973 1998 this paper estimates residential industrial and total electricity demand by a partial adjustment approach and by a simultaneous equation approach simultaneous equation models are more appropriate since they provide negative price elasticity estimates for the residential industrial and total electricity samples flow adjustment models yield positive price elasticity estimates in some cases suggesting they fail to identify proper supply considerations that may be influencing prices the simultaneous equation approach suggests that residential customers are more price sensitive than industrial customers weather seems to have the greatest impact on the residential sector and cold weather appears to affect demand more than hot weather

political uncertainty and public financing costs evidence from u s gubernatorial elections and municipal bond markets this research investigates how political uncertainty around u s gubernatorial elections in uences the borrowing costs of public debt measured by yields of municipal bonds our evidence from both the new issuance market and the secondary market shows that yields of municipal bonds increase sharply by 6 to 8 basis points before elections and then reverse afterward elections have more pronounced impact during economic downturns when outcomes are less predictable and when states have more outstanding debt several state institutions such as gaap budgeting spending limits and tax increase limits help to mitigate the adverse impact of political uncertainty

an overlapping generations model of electoral competition this paper presents a dynamic model of political competition between two parties with different policy preferences a party is explicitly modeled as a sequence of overlapping generations of candidates all of whom face finite decision horizons in general there is a conflict between the interests of the individual policymakers and those of the party which includes subsequent generations of candidates we characterize this conflict and suggest a scheme of intergenerational transfers within the party which can resolve or mitigate this conflict the paper shows how the overlapping generations model can be usefully applied to the political arena this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

electricity generation from renewables in madagascar opportunities and projections climate change is the greatest challenge of our time for development adaptation to this change combined with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can help to boost the economic transformation which stimulates growth fills the energy gap and reduces poverty this paper focuses on the potential of renewable energy sources res for electricity generation in madagascar which is a lower income country a large accessibility to electricity could be a driving force for the economic development of this fourth worldwide island the electricity mix is currently heavily dependent to fossil fuel imports indeed most of the electric demands are fulfilled by diesel power plants an overview of the power situation and renewable energy potential of madagascar is first presented then different scenarios for the evolution its electricity mix are proposed

policies for eliminating low efficiency production capacities and improving energy efficiency of energy intensive industries in china abstract china faced the greatest challenge in balancing its economic growth energy and resource security as well as environmental pollution the energy intensive industries which used to be the major force driving china s economic growth had seriously exhausted the countries natural resources and energy and at the same time polluted the environment because of the severe surplus of low efficiency production capacities as a result the chinese government had initiated multiple economic and administrative policies to eliminate these low efficiency production capacities intended to improve the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries these policies are summarized in this paper along with export tax rebating rate resource tax administrative audit and approvals differential electric power pricing and shutting down the low efficiency production capacities the paper also evaluates the effects of these policies by analyzing several key indicators about the energy intensive industries including fixed asset investment growth rate energy intensity of industrial added value waste gas emission intensity of industrial added value the valdex methodology is selected to examine the improving trends of energy efficiency for energy intensive industries the analyzing results show that firstly the development of low efficiency capacities tends to be more sensitive to the policies so the policies that china had enacted really exert very important effects on improving the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries however the effects of economic policies seem more faster and obvious than the fiscal policies besides the results also show that polices which are designed to reserve energy may not necessarily exert the same effects on reducing emissions there is still large room for improving the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries substantial improvement still needs to be done for current policies system some suggestions for future work are provided

optimal transition from coal to gas and renewable power under capacity constraints and adjustment costs this paper studies the optimal transition from existing coal power plants to gas and renewable power under a carbon budget it solves a model of polluting exhaustible resources with capacity constraints and adjustment costs to build coal gas and renewable power plants it finds that optimal investment in renewable energy may start before coal power has been phased out and even before investment in gas has started because doing so allows for smoothing investment over time and reduces adjustment costs gas plants may be used to reduce short term investment in renewable power and associated costs but must eventually be phased out to allow room for carbon free power one risk for myopic agents comparing gas and renewable investment is thus to overestimate the lifetime of gas plants e g when computing the levelized cost of electricity and be biased against renewable power these analytical results are quantified with numerical simulations of the european commission s 2050 energy roadmap

the development of policy instruments in supporting low carbon governance in china abstract this paper examines the development of policy instruments that support the low carbon governance in china the instruments are analysed in five aspects in relation to the key policies in low carbon governance in china including energy conservation developing new energy reforestry developing circular economy and industry restructuring each aspect is discussed in three instrument groups which are 1 law and regulations 2 industry standard and 3 finance and taxation this research suggests that law enforcement for the new established laws should be further strengthened and stricter supervision systems should be in place to safeguard effective implementation of low carbon policies measures and standards especially for those energy condensed sectors more rigorous industry standards regarding energy efficiency should be considered to help eliminate outdated equipments in industries and promote the introduction of more climate friendly technologies the industrial standards should be given strong legal support in accountability in order to enforce their complete application once in operation new policies and instruments need to be introduced in order to reduce carbon print by landfill the backward law and industrial standards in china should be upgraded more regularly therefore to support the low carbon development strategy

tourism and temperature effects on the electricity consumption of the hospitality sector abstract the european union has recently presented a strategic long term vision for a climate neutral economy by 2050 considering that climate change is a serious concern for europeans a great socio economic transformation is necessary affecting all economic sectors on the one hand the european union considers that it is necessary to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 on the other hand sectors need to adapt to a warming climate focusing on the tourism sector and using panel data referring to 12 spanish mediterranean provinces and the 1999 2014 time period this study tests the tourist stays and temperature effects on the electricity consumption of the hospitality sector by estimating extended energy environmental kuznets curves for the sector the results show that this curve is not supported instead electricity consumption progressively increases as tourism grows in addition the results indicate that temperature variables have notable influence over electricity use with a positive influence of global warming on electricity consumption finally results also show positive relationships between overnight stays in hotels with higher star ratings and electricity use while no significant price effects are observed electricity saving measures and renewable electricity generation promotion are recommended especially in the highest energy consuming establishments

elasticities of electricity demand in urban indian households abstract in the past several electricity demand studies have been published for india based on aggregate macro data at the country or sub national state level since the underlying theory of consumer demand is based on the behaviour of individual agents the use of micro data which reflects individual and household behaviour more closely can shed greater light on the nature of consumer responses in this paper seasonal price and income elasticities of electricity demand in the residential sector of all urban areas of india are estimated for the first time using disaggregate level survey data for about 30 000 households three electricity demand functions have been econometrically estimated using monthly data for the winter monsoon and summer season in order to understand the extent to which factors like income prices household size and other household specific characteristics influence variations observed in individual households electricity demand the results show electricity demand is income and price inelastic in all three seasons and that household demographic and geographical variables are significant in determining electricity demand

residential electricity demand in spain new empirical evidence using aggregate data this paper presents an empirical analysis on residential demand for electricity this analysis has been performed using aggregate panel data at the province level for 47 spanish provinces for the period from 2000 to 2008 for this purpose we estimated a log log demand equation for electricity consumption using a dynamic partial adjustment approach this dynamic demand function has been estimated using a two step system gmm estimator proposed by blundell and bond 1998 the purpose of this empirical analysis is to highlight some of the characteristics of spanish residential electricity demand particular attention has been paid to the influence of price income and weather conditions on electricity demand the estimated short and long run own price elasticities are negative as expected but lower than 1 furthermore weather variables have a significant impact on electricity demand

counterfiscal policies and partisan politics evidence from industrialized countries according to partisan theories of macroeconomic policy left wing parties are more concerned with unemployment while right wing parties tend to weigh the costs of inflation higher an implication of partisan theories is that partisan policy differences should depend on the state of the economy with left wing governments conducting relatively more expansive policies during recessions we test whether left wing governments are more favourably inclined towards countercyclical fiscal policies than their right wing counterparts using a panel data set of 18 oecd countries from 1980 to 1992 the results are supportive of partisan theories the structural deficit is significantly higher under left wing governments when unemployment is high or rising while the ideology of the government party parties has no significant impact on the structural deficit when unemployment is low or falling

a rational voter explanation of the cost of ruling it is well known that the average government loses votes the so called cost of ruling we show that the loss can be explained as a perfectly rational demand for change in a median voter model once the model is amended to let the two parties be visibly different

the electoral dynamics of human development this paper analyses the impact of elections on the dynamics of human development in a panel of 82 countries over the period 1980 2013 the incidence of partisan and political support effects is also taken into account a gmm estimator is employed in the empirical analysis and the results point out to the presence of an electoral cycle in the growth rate of human development majority governments also influence it but no clear evidence is found regarding partisan effects the electoral cycles have proved to be stronger in non oecd countries in countries with less frequent elections with lower levels of income and human development in presidential and non plurality systems and in proportional representation regimes they have also become more intense in this millennium

us presidential elections and implied volatility the role of political uncertainty abstract this paper focuses on the effects of political uncertainty and the political process on implied stock market volatility during us presidential election cycles using monthly iowa electronic markets data over five elections we document that stock market uncertainty as measured by the vix volatility index increases along with positive changes in the probability of success of the eventual winner the association between implied volatility and the election probability of the eventual winner is positive even after controlling for changes in overall election uncertainty these findings indicate that the presidential election process engenders market anxiety as investors form and revise their expectations regarding future macroeconomic policy

partisan conflicts and parliamentary dominance the norwegian political business cycle this is the author s final accepted and refereed manuscript to the article the final publication is available at www springerlink com

new energy strategies in the swedish pulp and paper industry the role of national and eu climate and energy policies the swedish pulp and paper industry has gone through a strategic change in its approach to electricity production and consumption over the past decade this paper documents this reorientation which includes increased on site electricity production investments and investment plans for wind power and new partnerships concerning investments in electricity production assets we also assess the extent to which these changes can be attributed to key energy and climate policies our analysis shows that this strategic reorientation has been driven by changes in the underlying economic conditions for the pulp and paper industry in particular increases in the price of electricity following the swedish energy market reform in 1996 and the introduction of the eu ets the scheme for tradable renewable electricity certificates on the other hand has provided a new source of income while these market based signals and responses are the most dominant drivers of strategic change cognitive changes in the pulp and paper industry have also played a role in the strategic reorientation the cognitive changes concerning the functioning of the electricity market i e the pricing of electricity and influence of the eu ets have been particularly important in this regard

political business cycles and central bank independence this paper develops a dynamic model of rational partisan business cycles in which wage contracts overlap elections and wage setters have to make a prediction about the election result empirical analysis of 20 oecd countries supports the theoretical implication that left wing incumbents increase output but increased expectation of a left wing regime reduces it the model is extended to incorporate the effects of alternative measures of central bank independence cbi the measure of objective independence outperforms the other measures and it is found that cbi reduces politically induced business cycles

presidential popularity and the economy abstract this study tests the hypothesis that the sensitivity of the president s popularity to economic events differs across distinct demographic groups assuming that presidental popularity is negatively related to both the unemployment rate and the inflation rate the electorate is disaggregated according to sex age race education income and political affiliation and separate regressions are estimated for the individual subgroups using quarterly data covering 1976 through 1988 statistically significant differences in the marginal effects of unemployment and inflation on presidential approval are discovered for the various subgroupings

the political determinants of fiscal policies in the states of india an empirical investigation abstract using data from the 14 major states of india we investigate whether state governments fiscal policy choices are tempered by political considerations our principal findings are twofold first we show that certain fiscal policies experience electoral cycles state governments raise less commodity tax revenue spend less on the current account and incur larger capital account developmental expenditures in election years than in all other years second we show that coalition state governments raise less own non tax revenues and spend less on the current account than state governments that are more cohesive in composition in sum the dispersion of political power affects government size

elasticities of electricity demand in india abstract the paper examines econometric relationship between electricity consumption and variables like income price of electricity and diesel used in for captive power generation to meet the shortages and reliability of power supply from utilities in five major consumer categories in india these categories are residential commercial agriculture small and medium industries and large industries income and price elasticities of electricity consumption are estimated at the national level for these consumers by pooling data across 19 states spread over 9 years 1985 86 1993 94 the results show that electricity consumption in commercial and large industrial sectors are income elastic 1 while residential agricultural and small and medium industries are income inelastic

political cycles fiscal deficits and output spillovers in europe this paper investigates whether national elections in europegenerate political cycles in other european countries and ifso whether these spillover effects are likely to surviveinside emu the paper first tests whether elections in germanyaffect macroeconomic outcomes in other european countries andthen investigates the impact of elections on budget deficits the results indicate that german politics significantlyimpacts macroeconomic variables in other european countries and also that politics significantly affects the behaviour ofeuropean budgetary policy the prospect of elections tends toincrease public deficits in recessions whereas left winggovernments tend to be more deficit prone than right winggovernments regardless of the state of the economy moreover the existence of political cycles spillovers among europeancountries suggest that there may be a need for electoralcoordination

analysis on energy intensive industries under taiwan s climate change policy abstract this study addresses the planning and implementation of energy industry and carbon economy policies concerning the development of the taiwan s energy intensive industries from perspective of climate change as a newly industrialized country taiwan attaches greater importance to the development of green energy and low carbon industries in cooperation with global pressure for carbon reduction due to climate changes through energy and industrial conferences thus in the past year the taiwanese government constructed four laws concerning energy and carbon reduction in order to drive the green energy industry furthermore it plans to reduce current carbon emission benchmarks nevertheless statistical analysis found that in the last decade energy intensive industries have presented structural unbalance regarding energy consumption co 2 emissions energy intensity contributions to the gdp and product value industries in the industrial sector have high energy consumption high carbon emissions and increase total domestic consumption and carbon emissions which have disproportionate contributions to industrial added value nevertheless the government continues to approve investments for such energy intensive industries and results in continuous increases in energy consumption and carbon emissions this contradictory phenomenon indicates that newly industrialized countries rely on a manufacturing economic structure which is difficult to adjust and violates the trends of a global low carbon economy hence the government must examine and adjust such unbalanced industrial structures where such adjustments are executed in a fair and just manner and encourage the development of high value added measures for low carbon manufacturing and service sectors to become equal with competitors in a global economy

regional impact of changes in disposable income on spanish electricity demand a spatial econometric analysis this paper presents an empirical analysis of residential electricity demand considering the existence of spatial effects this analysis has been performed using aggregate panel data at the province level for 46 spanish provinces for the period from 2001 to 2010 for this purpose we estimated a log log demand equation using a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances sarar the purpose of this empirical analysis is to determine the influence of price income and spatial spillovers on residential electricity demand in spain we are particularly interested in analyzing the impact of household disposable income variation across provinces observed during the economic crisis period 2009 2010 the estimation results show relatively low income elasticity and an inelastic demand to prices furthermore the results show the presence of spatial effects in spanish residential electricity consumption

another look at the evidence for rational partisan cycles in presenting evidence in favor of rational partisan cycles where electoral victories by leftist parties are expected to create temporary expansions and electoral victories by rightist parties are expected to create temporary recessions alesina cohen and roubini 1999 rely upon autoregressive time series intervention regressions these regressions however are not consistent with their model in this paper a model is derived which is consistent with the intervention approach in its reduced form the differences between the models are highlighted and new empirical estimates are presented on a panel of seven oecd nations which generally does not support the rational partisan cycle implications

energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in china s 11th five year plan a performance evaluation in the 11th five year plan fyp 2005 2010 the chinese government initiated a series of energy saving and emission reduction policies in many key fields in response to environmental pollution and climate change this paper quantitatively evaluates the performance of energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in this period the impact of these policies and potentials by integrating the contributions of energy conversion efficiency and energy utilization efficiency improvement industrial restructuring fuel mix shift and renewable energy development in a unified framework as a first attempt to introduce energy conversion efficiency improvement into a decomposition approach comprehensive and specific policies are summarized as a policy list to be investigated the results show that energy intensity and conversion efficiency effects were mainly responsible for driving down energy consumption by 637 4 mtce and 85 4 mtce respectively and they reduced co2 emissions by 1345 3 mt and 243 8 mt respectively due to a significant improvement in the 11th fyp period most of the contributions made by the conversion efficiency effect 94 come from thermal power generation and the emission coefficient effect reduced co2 emissions by 17 4 mt through developing renewable energy economic growth is still the biggest driver of energy consumption and increasing emissions while industrial restructuring and fuel mix shift effects contributed relatively little developing renewable energy and promoting economic restructuring to limit the increase of energy intensive sectors are still the main challenges and the next policy focus to achieve the targets for energy saving and carbon emission reduction in the 12th five year plan

fulfilling the kyoto protocol in spain a matter of economic crisis or environmental policies abstract in 2008 spain exceeded by 20 9 the co2 emissions allowed by the kyoto protocol for 2012 the financial and economic crisis has transformed these figures as production fell so did energy demand and with it co2 emissions will the spanish economic crisis allow spain to fulfill its commitments with this in mind we have developed an extended input output model able to forecast energy demand and compute co2 emissions linked to the consumption of energy goods petroleum products gas and coal the results show that the crisis and in particularly the stagnation of the construction industry is only one of the pillars which help to contain these emissions at 6 81 the possibility of incorporating environmental policies new technologies and increases in the price of crude oil in these simulations means an even greater reduction of emissions than the impact of the crisis 9 76 the final result of our most pessimistic realistic scenario is that in 2012 spain will exceed its co2 emissions linked to the combustion of energy goods by only 0 9

electoral price cycles in regulated industries abstract peltzman 1976 formalizes the idea that a politically concerned regulator determines a regulated price in trying to maximize his or her political support this paper develops a modified version of peltzman s model incorporating the notion that the regulator s behavior changes with the proximity of elections the addition of a time dimension to the model yields a political price cycle in regulated industries the regulator has incentives to impose higher prices when elections are relatively far ahead and lower real prices in periods that immediately precede an important election econometric analysis indicates that during 1969 1982 the brazilian gasoline market experienced such cycles

governance structures and the durability of economic reforms evidence from inflation stabilizations abstract this paper investigates the relationship between a country s political economic and institutional environment and its ability to implement sustainable economic reform programs the policy issue on which the study focuses is inflation stabilization it consists principally of econometric estimations of the relationship between the success of stabilizations in a large sample of countries and several political and economic explanatory variables the hypotheses tested are drawn both from the recent macroeconomic literature on policy credibility and from political science the major findings include the following 1 a despite the conventional wisdom to the contrary political repression does not appear to be an effective means for implementing sustainable stabilization policies durable economic reforms and political freedoms appear to be complementary 2 b as has been previously argued theoretically and demonstrated empirically political instability is detrimental to policy reform 3 c the political will and popular consensus for stabilization policies are enhanced during a severe economic crisis 4 d there is weak evidence that intervention by the international monetary fund rather than supporting reform programs can undermine their credibility

an empirical analysis of the fiscal incidence of renewable energy support in the european union abstract in liberalised energy markets electricity from renewable energy re using solar pv and wind turbines requires financial support because the expected number of generation hours is insufficient to induce private investment such support has a direct cost from the additional expenditure over what would have been incurred had fossil fuel generation been used and indirect costs arising from the random and distributed nature of the re output comparing european union countries between 2007 and 2017 we find the pricing structure of retail electricity is regressive and correlated to reliance upon re although initially the direct and indirect costs of re affects integrated utilities and aggregators the ultimate burden largely falls upon lower income cohorts given policy objectives for re these finding are worrisome though as a society we may benefit from reducing dependence upon fossil fuels the burden of this transition falls upon those with the lowest income raising questions over fairness explaining the reasons for fiscal regressiveness leads to suggestions on how it may be redressed

optimal contract length in a reputational model of monetary policy we develop a reputational model of monetary policy with endogenous contract length in choosing contract length private sector agents trade off recontracting costs against the expected costs resulting from trading under contracts based on incorrect inflation expectations however due to an externality the private and socially optimal contract lengths differ when selecting individual contract length private agents do not consider the effect of contract length on the surprise inflation output trade off in a reputational model of monetary policy this results in an excessive equilibrium inflation rate the socially optimal outcome may be achieved by public policies that reduce recontracting costs

is german domestic social policy politically controversial this paper investigates empirically the influence of government ideology on social policy using german data examining the funding and the benefits of social security and public healthcare policy my results suggest that policies implemented by governments dominated by left and rightwing parties were similar over the 1951 2007 period leftwing governments however spent more in the 1970s and rightwing governments did so after german reunification in 1990 since policy convergence encourages new parties to enter the political arena and party platforms on social policy matters are likely to undergo further changes in light of demographic change the observed pattern may thus be a transitory phenomenon

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

sensitivity of price elasticity of demand to aggregation unobserved heterogeneity price trends and price endogeneity evidence from u s data abstract price elasticity estimates of residential electricity demand vary widely across the energy economics and policy literature in this paper we seek to explain these findings using three nationwide datasets from the u s the american housing survey forms eia 861 and the residential energy consumption survey we examine the role of the sample period level of aggregation use of panel data use of instrumental variables and inclusion of housing characteristics and capital stock our findings suggest that price elasticities have remained relatively constant over time upon splitting our panel datasets into annual cross sections we do observe a negative relationship between price elasticities and the average price whether prices are rising or falling appears to have little effect on our estimates we also find that aggregating our data can result in both higher and lower price elasticity estimates depending on the dataset used and that controlling for unit level fixed effects with panel data generally results in more inelastic demand functions addressing the endogeneity of price and or measurement error in price with instrumental variables has a small but noticeable effect on the price elasticities finally controlling for housing characteristics and capital stock produces a lower price elasticity

a political model of monetary policy with application to the real fed funds rate abstract we construct an empirical model of u s monetary policy assuming that the federal reserve is an ordinary federal bureaucracy we use the real federal funds rate as our policy measure and show the existence of significant executive legislative and bureaucratic influence on the real rate of interest from 1961 to 1996 we find that presidential party is an adequate statistical measure of executive influence and that the voting scores of the senate banking committee leadership best represent legislative influence we argue that political changes cause systematic and predictable changes in monetary policy

optimum electoral areas should europe adopt a single election day abstract the paper lies at the intersection between the literature on macroeconomics and politics and the literature on coordination it uses models of political business cycles in an open economy setting to investigate the costs and benefits of forming electoral areas i e regions where countries share the same electoral calendar both opportunistic and partisan models are considered the main finding of the paper is that the desirability of an electoral area between two countries is enhanced when the spillovers between these countries are large and positive and when they face symmetric shocks or are of comparable size

policy implications of considering pre commitments in u s aggregate energy demand system abstract linear approximations of the generalized almost ideal demand system and almost ideal demand system for u s energy are compared to contrast the explicit inclusion and exclusion of pre committed consumption levels results indicate that pre commitment levels the quantity of a good that is consumed in the short run with little regard for price helps to better explain energy demand in the u s compared to the system that does not explicitly consider pre commitments policy implications are if pre commitments are a legitimate assumption larger price changes are necessary to achieve a given policy objective than if there are no pre commitments

divided government and u s trade policy theory and evidence if different parties control the u s congress and white house the united states may maintain higher import protection than otherwise this proposition follows from a distributive politics model in which congress can choose to delegate trade policymaking to the president when the congressional majority party faces a president of the other party the former has an incentive to delegate to but to constrain the president by requiring congressional approval of trade proposals by up or down vote this constraint forces the president to provide higher protection in order to assemble a congressional majority evidence confirms that 1 the institutional constraints placed on the president s trade policymaking authority are strengthened in times of divided government and loosened under unified government and 2 u s trade policy was significantly more protectionist under divided than under unified government during the period 1949 90

residential electricity demand in taiwan this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in taiwan as a function of household disposable income population growth the price of electricity and the degree of urbanization short and long term effects are separated through the use of an error correction model in the long run the income elasticity is unit elastic the own price effect is negative and inelastic in an error correction framework the short run income and price effects are small and less than the long run effects cooling degree day effects have a positive impact on short run consumption we have used a proxy variable urbanization to capture economic development characteristics and changes in electricity using capital stocks not explained by income the variable provides significant explanatory power to the model both in the short and long run we interpret it as controlling for economic development factors not captured by the pure income effect and we think it holds promise for explaining residential electricity consumption in other developing countries

estimation of elasticity price of electricity with incomplete information abstract the sharp increase in energy prices and growing concern for environmental issues among other things are behind the renewed interest in energy demand estimation however there is scarce academic literature that takes real situation of energy suppliers into account high quality but incomplete data in this paper we propose a useful and rather simple instrument for estimating electricity demand with the incomplete and or imperfect data currently available to suppliers in particular using real expenditure and consumption data on electricity we employ a model of random effects for panel data to estimate residential and industrial electricity demand in spain

studying the role of political competition in the evolution of government size over long horizons here we argue for the use of cointegration and error correction analysis to combine economic factors that are nonstationary with political factors that are stationary into an empirical model of the evolution of public policy over long periods the approach is applied to disentangle the contributions of economics and politics to the evolution of public expenditure by the government of canada over 130 years political competition emerges as the primary political factor affecting government size

how do mncs vote in developing country elections research on multinational corporations mncs and host government political risk in developing countries has largely ignored local electoral politics economic policies and the mnc investment ince

partisan alignment effects on total factor productivity aray h partisan alignment effects on total factor productivity regional studies unlike the literature on political effects on real economy that suggests that partisan effects accrue through aggregate demand it is hypothesized that such effects could also accrue through aggregate supply using panel data for the spanish regions over the 1986 2010 period the main results are 1 partisan alignment effects only arise when central government enjoys a majority 2 there exist a positive contemporaneous effect and negative lagged effects and 3 in absolute value such effects vanish over time results are robust to different specifications and measures of total factor productivity tfp and methods of estimation

carbon intensity in production and the effects of climate policy evidence from swedish industry we analyze carbon intensity performance at firm level and the effectiveness of the swedish co2 tax carbon intensity performance is derived from a production technology and measured as changes in t

industrial companies demand for electricity evidence from a micropanel abstract the paper presents a micro econometric analysis of industrial companies demand for electricity previous studies on electricity consumption in the industrial sector have relied on aggregate data or cross section observations here we present an econometric study on electricity demand based on a panel of 2949 danish companies followed from 1983 to 1996 it is found that estimators of electricity demand that take account of the panel structure fixed effect models yield considerably lower price and production elasticities compared to estimators that do not like cross section models it is also investigated how various company characteristics like size type of industrial sub sector and electricity intensity in production influence price and production elasticities it appears that companies with a high electricity intensity also have a high own price elasticity

surprise party estimating the consequences of unexpected presidential election results alesina s quarterly journal of economics 102 651 678 1987 influential model of presidential elections with ideologically motivated parties attributes higher growth and lower unemployment under democratic presidents to the surprise inflation a democratic victory entails in contrast to the published literature we test this hypothesis using calcula tions of presidential election surprises consistent with the assumption of rational economic actors we confront the econometric complications attending a time series approach tak ing into account economic growth dynamics we ultimately fail to confirm the hypothesis that the level of uncertainty associated with presidential election results has an effect on economic outcomes

electoral cycles and international policy cooperation abstract this paper analyzes the interaction between domestic politics and international policy coope ration as a two level repeated prisoners dilemma at the domestic level two party competition generates an electoral cycle in monetary growth inflation and real output at the international level the policymakers desire to promote domestic expansion by depreciating the currency gives rise to an inflationary bias in monetary growth a move towards international cooperation reduces the inflationary bias but may increase the amplitude of the electoral cycle moreover international cooperation may not be desirable for one of the domestic parties nevertheless domestic and international cooperation may be jointly sustained by the credible threat of a reversion to the regime under which the destabilizing effect of domestic politics is at a maximum

government subsidies and presidential election outcomes evidence for a developing country summary we explore the effects of government subsidies on presidential elections in chile in 1989 99 we use a panel with three periods the elections of 1989 1993 and 1999 and 229 counties we correct for the potential simultaneity problem deriving from the fact that an incumbent facing a difficult political scenario might react by increasing subsidies to improve his her electoral performance our results indicate that the greater the coverage of these types of programs i e the percentage of people receiving subsidies the higher the votes for the incumbent

the demand for electricity in israel quarterly data for israel are used to compare and contrast three dynamic econometric methodologies for estimating the demand for electricity by households and industrial companies these are the dynamic regression model and two approaches to cointegration ols and maximum likelihood since we find evidence of seasonal unit roots in the data we also test for seasonal cointegration we find that the scale elasticities are similar in all three approaches but the ols price elasticities are considerably lower moreover ols suggests non cointegration the paper concludes by stochastically simulating the drms to calculate upside risk in electricity demand

the residential demand for electricity in australia an application of the bounds testing approach to cointegration this paper reports estimates of the long and short run elasticities of residential demand for electricity in australia using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration within an autoregressive distributive lag framework in the long run we find that income and own price are the most important determinants of residential electricity demand while temperature is significant some of the time and gas prices are insignificant our estimates of long run income elasticity and price elasticity of demand are consistent with previous studies although they are towards the lower end of existing estimates as expected the short run elasticities are much smaller than the long run elasticities and the coefficients on the error correction coefficients are small consistent with the fact that in the short run energy appliances are fixed

a review of industrial energy and climate policies in japan and sweden with emphasis towards smes abstract the threat of increased global warming resulting from the use of fossil fuels stresses decision makers to formulate and adopt policies towards different sectors of the economy in light of the great earthquake in japan 2011 energy efficiency also plays an important role in meeting the challenge of power supply shortage energy policies towards industry are of particular importance as a major part of the energy in the economy is used in industrial production the number of papers investigating and presenting experience from energy end use policies are scarce furthermore for those present they often only include a very brief analysis from a public point of view evaluations of energy programs are of major importance to measure the performance of the programs from an energy policy designer point of view it is of major importance to not only see the cost effectiveness of the policy but also to understand the fundamental mechanisms for the success or failure of an industrial energy program in order to learn how to improve future programs the aim of this paper is to present a review of energy end use policy instrument in japan and sweden towards the industrial sector from 1990 to 2014 with special emphasis on industrial smes from the results presented some general conclusions can be made 1 results show that the cost effectiveness differs substantially between the evaluated programs and 2 that from a governmental point of view subsidies towards energy audit programs seem like the most cost effective policy in addition to this 3 the results from the review also stress the importance of a clear strategy for every energy program on how the program is going to be evaluated ex ante or ex post and how the performance of the program is to be measured this structure should be included from the start of the program

review of policies and measures for energy efficiency in industry sector abstract energy efficiency in industry plays key roles in improving energy security environmental sustainability and economic performance it is particularly important in strategies to mitigate climate change the evidence of great potential for cost effective efficiency derived reductions in industrial energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions have prompted governments to implement numerous policies and measures aimed at improving their manufacturing industries energy efficiency what can be learned from these many and varied initiatives this paper provides foundation for policy analysis for enhancing energy efficiency and conservation in industry by surveying more than 300 policies encompassing about 570 measures implemented by governments in iea countries brazil china india mexico russia and south africa it outlines the measures main features their incidence of use and their connections with specific technical actions and key stakeholders i e how and where measures affect the energy efficiency of industry it also examines the key features underlying the measures success 1 potential to reduce energy use and co2 emissions cost efficiently 2 ease of policy development execution and assessment and 3 ancillary societal effects