analysing the interactions between renewable energy promotion and energy efficiency support schemes the impact of different instruments and design elements abstract co2 emissions reduction renewable energy deployment and energy efficiency are three main energy environmental goals particularly in europe their relevance has led to the implementation of support schemes in these realms their coexistence may lead to overlaps synergies and conflicts between them the aim of this paper is to analyse the interactions between energy efficiency measures and renewable energy promotion whereas previous analyses have focused on the interactions between emissions trading schemes ets and energy efficiency measures and ets and renewable energy promotion schemes furthermore the analysis in this paper transcends the certificate debate i e tradable green and white certificates and considers other instruments particularly feed in tariffs for renewable electricity the goal is to identify positive and negative interactions between energy efficiency and renewable electricity promotion and to assess whether the choice of specific instruments and design elements within those instruments affects the results of the interactions

income inequality and health lessons from a refugee residential assignment program this paper examines the effect of income inequality on health for a group of particularly disadvantaged individuals refugees our analysis draws on longitudinal hospitalization records coupled with a settlement policy where swedish authorities assigned newly arrived refugees to their first area of residence the policy was implemented in a way that provides a source of plausibly random variation in initial location the results reveal no statistically significant effect of income inequality on the risk of being hospitalized this finding holds also for most population subgroups and when separating between different types of diagnoses our estimates are precise enough to rule out large effects of income inequality on health

new urbanism and housing values a disaggregate assessment in this paper we attempt a formal analysis of the virtues of new urbanism a movement hailed as the most significant movement in urban planning and architecture in this century we proceed using the tools of geographic information systems gis to develop quantitative measures of urban form we then incorporate those measures in a hedonic price analysis we find that our measures of urban form capture meaningful differences in the characters of urban neighborhoods that could well have direct impacts on the utility of urban residents further we find that such differences are capitalized into residential property values the results imply that some but not all of the design features of new urbanism provide benefits for which urban residents are willing to pay

good things do not always come in threes on the excess cost of overlapping regulation in eu climate policy since the mid 1990 s the european union eu aims at pushing global climate policy the objective is to promote international cooperation by the adoption of substantial eu wide greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and their least cost implementation our quantitative impact assessment of the eu climate and energy package shows that the myriad of instruments used in the eu to curb greenhouse gas emissions is doomed to generate substantial excess cost we conclude that eu climate and energy policy should better disentangle its choices of objectives targets and policy instruments on rigorous economic grounds in order to improve the coherence and overall cost effectiveness of policy initiatives

the causal effect of income on health evidence from german reunification we investigate whether there was a causal effect of income changes on the health satisfaction of east and west germans in the years following reunification our data source is the german socio economic panel gsoep between 1984 and 2002 and we fit a recently proposed fixed effects ordinal estimator to our health measures and use a causal decomposition technique to account for panel attrition we find evidence of a significant positive effect of income changes on health satisfaction but the quantitative size of this effect is small this is the case with respect to current income and a measure of permanent income

modelling health income and income inequality the impact of income inequality on health and health inequality a framework is developed to analyse the impact of the distribution of income on individual health and health inequality with individual health modelled as a function of income and the distribution of income it is demonstrated that the impact of income inequality can generate non concave health production functions resulting in a non concave health production possibility frontier in this context the impact of different health policies are considered and it is argued that if the distribution of income affects individual health any policy aimed at equalising health which does not account for income inequality will lead to unequal distributions of health this is an important development given current uk government attention to reducing health inequality

sequential investment in renewable energy technologies under policy uncertainty although innovation and support schemes are among the main forces that drive investment in renewable energy re technologies both involve considerable uncertainty we develop a real options framework to analyse the impact of technological policy and electricity price uncertainty on the decision to invest sequentially in successively improved versions of a re technology technological uncertainty is reflected in the random arrival of innovations and policy uncertainty in the likely provision or retraction of a subsidy that takes the form of a fixed premium on top of the electricity price we show that greater likelihood of subsidy retraction provision lowers raises the incentive to invest and by comparing a stepwise to a lumpy investment strategy we show how an embedded option to adopt an improved technology version mitigates the impact of subsidy retraction on investment timing specifically we show how stepwise investment facilitates earlier technology adoption compared to lumpy investment and that under stepwise investment technological uncertainty accelerates technology adoption thus further offsetting the incentive to delay investment in the light of subsidy retraction

income related inequalities in mental health in great britain analysing the causes of health inequality over time using regression techniques this paper estimates the level of income related health inequality in gb in 1992 and 1998 inequality is decomposed to investigate which socio demographic factors are important contributors to health differences the paper includes a range of measured and subjective income variables to control for absolute income a relative deprivation measure is included to test the impact of income inequality on health inequality it is found that subjective financial status is a major determinant of ill health and makes a major contribution to income related inequalities in health relative deprivation is an important contributor for women but not for men

winds of change how high wind penetrations will affect investment incentives in the gb electricity sector abstract wind power is widely expected to expand rapidly in britain over the next decade large amounts of variable wind power on the system will increase market risks with prices more volatile and load factors for conventional thermal plant lower and more uncertain this extra market risk may discourage investment in generation capacity financial viability for thermal plant will be increasingly dependent on price spikes during periods of low wind increased price risk will also make investment in other forms of low carbon generation e g nuclear power more challenging a number of policies can reduce the extent to which generators are exposed to market risks and encourage investment however market risks play a fundamental role in shaping efficient investment and dispatch patterns in a liberalised market therefore measures to improve price signals and market functioning such as a stronger carbon price and developing more responsive demand are desirable however the scale of the investment challenge and increased risk mean targeted measures to reduce although not eliminate risk exposure such as capacity mechanisms and fixed price schemes may have increasing merit the challenge for policy is to strike the right balance between market and planned approaches

equity and equality in health and health care this paper explores four definitions of equity in health care equality of utilization distribution according to need equality of access and equality of health we argue that the definitions of need in the literature are inadequate and propose a new definition we also argue that irrespective of how need and access are defined the four definitions of equity are in general mutually incompatible in contrast to previous authors we suggest that equality of health should be the dominant principle and that equity in health care should therefore entail distributing care in such a way as to get as close as is feasible to an equal distribution of health

do education and income really explain inequalities in health applying a twin design we apply a twin design to examine the relationship between health and education andincome the estimated associations between health and education and income controlling forunobserved endowments

the voluntary price for the small consumer real time pricing in spain abstract in 2013 a period of reform was initiated of the regulatory framework of the spanish electricity sector a year later the methodology for the calculation of the voluntary price for the small consumer vpsc was approved a real time price tariff for small domestic consumers under this price setting system vpsc consumers are billed according to their hourly consumption and hourly prices along the day directive 27 2014 eu on energy saving was also transposed to spanish regulation in 2014 the impact on the spanish electricity market and domestic vpsc consumers of these two recent energy policy modifications are analyzed in this work a qualitative model based on the flexibility of the merit order curves is first introduced to formulate a number of hypotheses a set of scenarios are then examined to quantify the main effects on the market and on domestic consumers the results show that domestic energy saving and to a lesser extent load shifting scenarios can diminish the mean hourly price and the cost of the annual traded energy in the market nevertheless these reductions are mainly granted to large qualified consumers since domestic consumers mostly benefit from the reduction of their energy demand rather than from a reduction of the price

the distribution of health and income a theoretical framework a general framework is developed to analyse variations in the distribution of population health where individual health is modelled as a function of income conditional upon the level of another factor such as health related behaviour results are derived for the response of the level of average health in a population and the degree of health inequality to alternative health promotion policies and equiproportionate income growth qualitative results are shown to depend on characteristics of the individual health production functions and the frequency distribution of the other factor at each income level these results are independent of the distribution of income the discussion focuses on the implications of these results for contemporary research into inequalities in health and income

carbon trading in the policy mix the kyoto protocol is stimulating the development of emissions trading schemes at the national and international levels these are being introduced alongside existing policy instruments such as carbon taxes and negotiated agreements leading to complex problems of policy interaction but the topic of policy interaction remains under researched this paper aims to improve understanding of such interactions by examining the conditions under which a cap and trade scheme for carbon dioxide emissions may usefully coexist with carbon energy taxes support mechanisms for renewable electricity and policies to promote energy efficiency the paper argues that each of these instrument combinations may be acceptable provided they contribute to either improving the static or dynamic efficiency of the trading scheme or delivering other valued policy objectives but since the coexisting instruments may raise overall abatement costs while contributing nothing further to emission reductions the objectives and trade offs within the policy mix must be explicit

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the european union this study examines the short and long run price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the european union between 1996 and 2016 instrumental variable models using the between estimator as well as dynamic panel models are employed to present robust estimates and to assess the impact of different methodologies on the reported elasticities the long run price elasticity of residential electricity consumption is estimated between 0 53 and 0 56 these elasticities are more inelastic than that of industrial electricity use which is reported between 0 75 and 1 01 the choice of different econometric methodologies has only moderate impact on the estimates while long run residential income elasticity estimates are moderately inelastic and estimated around 0 61 industrial electricity use tends to be closely tied to income with elasticities between 0 76 and 1 08 electricity demand in all sectors is highly price and income inelastic in the short run additionally population density temperatures and policy measures also influence sectoral electricity use the above estimates can aid the design of european energy and environmental policy

where do all the windmills go influence of the institutional setting on the spatial distribution of renewable energy installation abstract promoting renewable energy sources is one policy response to climate change not only is there currently a debate over the best policy instrument it is also discussed whether the renewable energy production should be expanded centralized at locations with the highest production potential or decentralized close to load it is yet not fully understood what influences the spatial distribution of renewable energy installation i assess the effect of subsidy scheme and market design on the spatial distribution of wind energy installations by comparing a feed in tariffs versus market premiums and b uniform versus nodal pricing the analysis is based on theoretical considerations and using a six node test model that reflects the consumption and renewable resource distribution in several countries and regions the institutional setting has great influence on the spatial distribution and resulting system costs with uniform pricing a market premium only leads to a more decentralized expansion of renewable energy production than a tariff when sites share similar wind conditions spatially more distributed expansion of wind power performs better in terms of total costs and share of wind power in final demand when networks are restricted

on the economics of renewable energy sources abstract with the global expansion of renewable energy re technologies the provision of optimal re policy packages becomes an important task we review pivotal aspects regarding the economics of renewables that are relevant to the design of an optimal re policy many of which are to date unresolved we do so from three interrelated perspectives that a meaningful public policy framework for inquiry must take into account first we explore different social objectives justifying the deployment of re technologies and review model based estimates of the economic potential of re technologies i e their socially optimal deployment level second we address pivotal market failures that arise in the course of implementing the economic potential of re sources in decentralized markets third we discuss multiple policy instruments curing these market failures our framework reveals the requirements for an assessment of the relevant options for real world decision makers in the field of re policies this review makes it clear that there are remaining white areas on the knowledge map concerning consistent and socially optimal re policies

efficient modeling and forecasting of electricity spot prices abstract the increasing importance of renewable energy especially solar and wind power has led to new forces in the formation of electricity prices hence this paper introduces an econometric model for the hourly time series of electricity prices of the european power exchange epex which incorporates specific features like renewable energy the model consists of several sophisticated and established approaches and can be regarded as a periodic var tarch with wind power solar power and load as influences on the time series it is able to map the distinct and well known features of electricity prices in germany an efficient iteratively reweighted lasso approach is used for the estimation moreover it is shown that several existing models are outperformed by the procedure developed in this paper

the impact of investors risk aversion on the performances of capacity remuneration mechanisms abstract this paper analyses the impact of risk aversion on the performances of capacity remuneration mechanisms with investors facing an uncertain peak load three market designs are studied for this purpose a competitive energy only market a capacity market and a strategic reserve mechanism a simulation model based on system dynamics is developed in order to represent investment decisions and analyse the behaviour of each market design risk aversion is modelled through the computation of conditional value at risk the results are discussed in terms of impact on the reliability ability to limit shortages and cost total generation costs of the studied market designs when comparing the three market designs the capacity market seems to be the least affected by the introduction of risk aversion both in terms of cost and reliability this result suggests that implementing a capacity market is preferable in order to deal with the adverse effects of risk aversion given the simulations and parameters that were used

price elasticity of demand in the epex spot market for electricity new empirical evidence this paper provides estimates for the price elasticity of demand in the european power exchange epex day ahead market for electricity an institutional change in the year 2010 allows us to use wind speed as an instrumental variable for hourly spot market prices in order to deal with potential endogeneity problems the average price elasticity of demand covering the years 2010 2014 is about 0 43 and our results point to a decline in its absolute value over time

renewable generation versus demand side management a comparison for the spanish market abstract conventionally the required instantaneous balance generation load is achieved by adjusting production to fit variable consumer demand nowadays a significant and increasing segment of generation is renewable but renewable production cannot be scheduled on request since its generation is dependent on nature wind sun in this context demand side management dsm would help since it would be advisable for part of the flexibility to be provided by the demand the integration of renewable production and demand side management dsm are compared in this work for spain throughout 2008 2014 first a qualitative model based on the linearization of the wholesale market is employed to explore some hypotheses a set of scenarios are then examined to quantify the main effects on the market the results show that dsm exhibits the best performance in terms of economic efficiency and environmental sustainability as well as for the reduction of load peaks and losses in the system what suggests the convenience of promoting plans for the replacement of equipment with other more efficient as well as the implementation of real time tariffs

subdivision vintage and housing prices do home buyers value traditional development new urbanism and traditional neighbourhood development tnd have been championed as solutions to the problems associated with post war suburban sprawl however they have yet to capture a substantial share of the us housing market the market context for tnd is not well understood as the paucity of tnd makes it difficult to study directly this paper takes a novel approach by focusing on the market for traditional development itself defined as subdivisions recorded prior to world war ii in the sprawling tucson arizona msa the results of the hedonic analysis demonstrate that home buyers value the features embodied in traditional development as homes in subdivisions platted before 1940 command premiums over those in their modern counterparts even after carefully controlling for locational and structural characteristics moreover the analysis finds that the premiums have increased through time which suggests growing demand for traditionally designed subdivisions

the real time price elasticity of electricity the real time price elasticity of electricity contains important information on the demand response of consumers to the volatility of peak prices despite the importance empirical estimates of the real time elasticity are hardly available this paper provides a quantification of the real time relationship between total peak demand and spot market prices we find a low value for the real time price elasticity which may partly be explained from the fact that not all users observe the spot market price if we correct for this phenomenon we find the elasticity to be fairly low for consumers currently active in the spot market if this conclusion applies to all users this would imply a limited scope for government intervention in supply security issues

the importance of transnational impacts of climate change in a power market abstract we contribute to the discussion on transnational impacts of climate change by analysing the potential cross border impacts climate change driven changes in the hydropower potential we analyse this in the context of the nordic countries where norway and sweden are likely to gain hydropower potential and finland is likely to experience transnational impacts we use an economic simulation model and a dynamic optimization model to study the impact of climate change to the production mix the price of electricity consumption of electricity and emissions from electricity production we show that climate change might reduce prices through increased renewables supply which decreases the profitability of power production the changes in the inflow profile affect the hydropower profiles over the hydrological year such that the reduced inflow peak in the spring shifts the hydropower production from spring to autumn and winter in addition the larger inflow increases the share of hydropower in production mix over the year the emissions per consumed energy unit is going to be decreased because of the decreasing share of the thermal production in the system however increased hydropower production reduces prices which in turn increases the quantity demanded this rebound effect somewhat dampens the emission reduction

health income and relative deprivation evidence from the bhps it is believed that income affects health directly but it is argued that indirect income effects due to relative deprivation may be equally important this paper investigates these relationships using parametric and semiparametric panel data models which ameliorate problems of misspecification and unobservable heterogeneity by allowing for a flexible functional form of income we ensure that coefficients on relative deprivation variables are not an artefact of a highly non linear relationship between health and income the results provide strong evidence for the impact of income on self reported measures of health for men and women these results are robust across a range of techniques and are resilient to the inclusion of measures of relative deprivation the parametric results for relative deprivation largely reject its influence on health although there is some evidence of an effect in the semiparametric models

the effect of income growth and inequality on health inequality theory and empirical evidence from the european panel governments of eu countries have declared that they would like to couple income growth with reductions in social inequalities in income and health we show that theoretically both aims can be reconciled only under very specific conditions concerning the type of growth and the income responsiveness of health we investigate whether these conditions were met in europe in the 1990s using panel data from the european community household panel we demonstrate that i in most countries the income elasticity of health was positive and increases with income and ii that income growth was not pro rich in most eu countries resulting in small or negligible reductions in income inequality the combination of both findings explains the modest increases we observe in income related health inequality in the majority of countries

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

renewable energy sources in european energy supply and interactions with emission trading abstract this paper presents a model based approach which allows to determine the optimised structure and operation of the eu 15 electricity supply under different political and economic framework conditions with a focus on the integration of renewable energy sources for electricity generation res e in the eu 15 countries the approach is designed to take into account the characteristics of power production from both renewable and conventional sources including the technological and economic characteristics of existing plants as well as those of future capacity expansion options beyond that fuel supply structures are modelled as well as the international markets for power and co 2 certificates with their restrictions thus a profound evaluation of the exploitation of mid term renewable potentials and an assessment of the market penetration of the various renewable power generation technologies under the normative premise of a cost optimised evolution of the power system becomes possible results show that a promotion of renewable energies reduces the scarcity of co 2 emission allowances and thus lowers marginal costs of co 2 reduction up to 30 in 2030 despite the higher overall costs a diversification of the energy resource base by res e use is observed as primarily natural gas and nuclear fuels are replaced

analysis of carbon tax efficiency in energy industries of selected eu countries abstract a carbon tax is one of economic policy instruments of environmental protection supposed to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas ghg emissions a functional carbon tax aims at incorporating costs for elimination of environmental harm into the pricing decisions in terms of global climate change the carbon tax is usually imposed on the production distribution or consumption of carbon content fossil fuels the main aim of the study is to evaluate the carbon tax environmental effectiveness in the energy industries of selected eu countries namely sweden finland denmark ireland and slovenia to achieve the principal research objective the multiple panel regression method for the selected variables was used the synergy of other environmental policy tools being taken into account control variables employed were emission allowance price household final consumption expenditure corporate investments solid fuel consumption and renewable energy consumption the analysis results suggest that the carbon tax in the energy industry is environmentally efficient an increased tax rate allowing to reduce ghg production which is statistically significantly affected by the consumption of fossil fuels based on the estimated partial regression coefficient 0 01158 raising the carbon tax by one euro per tonne can cut annual per capita emissions by 11 58 kg

risk premia in the german day ahead electricity market revisited the impact of negative prices abstract this paper replicates the study by viehmann 2011 that investigated risk premia in the german day ahead electricity market from october 2005 to september 2008 while estimated sizes of risk premia can be replicated this paper does not reproduce respective standard errors leading to remarkable differences between the reported significance levels an extension with data of preceding years points to further differences with respect to size and statistical significance in addition this paper analyzes the impact of negative prices on risk premia negative electricity prices were introduced in 2008 at the european power exchange epex and in 2013 at the energy exchange austria exaa the results of an econometric analysis suggest that the introduction of negative prices has led to a decrease in risk premia when compared to the period of a positive price regime

indirect double regulation and the carbon etss linking the case of coal fired generation in the eu and china abstract double regulation of carbon emissions is a key policy concern in the context of climate change mitigation the existing literature on double regulation in an emissions trading system ets context has largely focused on the direct type when e g an ets and a carbon tax cover the same entity and has not yet discussed the indirect type when e g the ets and carbon tax cover two related entities in the same production consumption chain this paper seeks to contribute to the literature by identifying indirect double regulation ets tax on the coal fired generation in the eu and china specifically we scrutinized legal documents associated with the coal fired power and further presented the quantitative evidence of double carbon costs from the law economics analysis of indirect double regulation we derived implications of indirect double regulation for the abatement of coal fired power sector in its own jurisdiction and after a hypothetic linkage between the eu ets and chinese national ets for its linked partner in response policy suggestions are provided to mitigate potential competitive distortions but should differentiate distortions by sources

cost effectiveness of renewable electricity policies we analyze policies to promote renewable sources of electricity a portfolio standard rps raises electricity prices and primarily reduces gas fired generation a knee of the cost curve exists between 15 and 20 goals for 2020 in our central case and higher natural gas prices lower the cost of greater reliance on renewables a renewable energy production tax credit lowers electricity price at the expense of taxpayers which limits its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions and it is less cost effective at increasing renewables than a portfolio standard neither policy is as cost effective as a cap and trade policy for achieving carbon emission reductions

do support systems for res e reduce eu ets driven electricity prices abstract support systems for electricity from renewable energy sources res e can reduce electricity prices which have also been influenced by a co2 emission trading scheme ets additional res e substitutes electricity from fossil fuels and thus co2 emissions are reduced the demand for emission reductions is lowered as a result the co2 price is also reduced consequently the wholesale price for electricity decreases however most res e support systems are financed via the electricity market which increases the retail electricity price an assessment for germany shows that retail electricity prices in the first trading period of the eu ets 2005 2007 are lowered by 2 6 euro mwh due to additional res e considering the complete eu the effect is substantially higher this paper describes the effect and the influence of different policy designs it develops an approach for assessing the effect and applies it for the case of germany and roughly estimates the effect for the eu

white certificates for energy efficiency improvement with energy taxes a theoretical economic model in this paper we analyze interactions of two energy policy instruments namely a white certificates whc scheme as an innovative policy instrument for energy efficiency improvement and energy taxation these policy instruments differ in terms of objectives and final impacts on the price of electricity we examine the effect of these policy instruments in the electricity sector focusing on electricity producers and suppliers in a competitive market using microeconomic theory we identify synergies between market players and demonstrate the total effect on the electricity price when suppliers internalize the behaviour of producers in their decisions this model refers to an ideal market situation of full liberalization the cases we examine consist of electricity producers with and without a carbon tax electricity suppliers with and without an electricity tax and with whc obligations furthermore we present a parallel implementation of whc for electricity suppliers with carbon tax on electricity producers and an electricity tax with whc obligations to electricity suppliers we demonstrate differences in optimization behaviour of producers and suppliers based on a couple of cases of whc with carbon and electricity taxes various positive and negative effects of both schemes in terms of target achievement and efficiency are present which can lead to an added value of such schemes in the policy mix although uncertainties of outcomes are quite high a basic finding is that in a merit order several parameters can increase final electricity price after the implementation of different policies demand for electricity and electricity supply cost at a large scale and then follow the level of level of obligation for energy saving level of penalty and price of whc representing the marginal costs of energy saving projects the impact magnitude of parameters depends on the values chosen and on the initial position of suppliers i e if their actual behaviour deviates from full compliance with targets

texas s operating reserve demand curve s generation investment incentive abstract faced with reserve margin projections well below the adopted target of 13 75 of the system peak forecast the public utility commission of texas on 01 17 2019 ordered the state s grid operator the electric reliability council of texas to right shift the operating reserve demand curve ordc to increase generators revenue from energy sales in ercot s real time market rtm using a large sample of 15 min data for the backcast period of 01 01 2015 through 12 31 2018 we calculate the ordc shift s impact on rtm prices and investment incentives for natural gas fired generation ngfg had the ordc shift been in effect in the backcast period the resulting rtm price increases in 2018 could suffice to justify ngfg investment though not in the prior years of 2015 2016 and 2017 while the actual ordc shift occurred on 03 01 2019 had a large impact on rtm prices in the ensuing six month period of march august 2019 texas s planned renewable generation is expected to erode ngfg s operating profit thus diminishing the ordc s investment incentive over time hence texas s energy only market design will likely need further refinements to solve the missing money problem of inadequate ngfg investment incentive

a public choice view on the climate and energy policy mix in the eu how do the emissions trading scheme and support for renewable energies interact abstract in this paper we analyze the rationale for an energy policy mix when the european emissions trading scheme ets is considered from a public choice perspective that is we argue that the economic textbook model of the ets implausibly assumes 1 efficient policy design and 2 climate protection as the single objective of policy intervention contrary to these assumptions we propose that the ets originates from a political bargaining game within a context of multiple policy objectives in particular the emissions cap is negotiated between regulators and emitters with the emitters abatement costs as crucial bargaining variable this public choice view yields striking implications for an optimal policy mix comprising res supporting policies whereas the textbook model implies that the ets alone provides sufficient climate protection our analysis suggests that support for renewable energies 1 contributes to a more effective ets design and 2 may even increase the overall efficiency of climate and energy policy if other externalities and policy objectives besides climate protection are considered thus our analysis also shows that a public choice view not necessarily entails negative evaluations concerning efficiency and effectiveness of a policy mix

does school district and municipality border congruence matter research on zoning typically assumes that city planners aim to maximise housing prices with their land use decisions either explicitly for public choice reasons or implicitly through the approval of land uses that create local net benefits noncongruence of school district and municipality borders severs the link between costs and benefits in the eyes of the median voter however which could result in excessive residential development and fiscal externalities that lower property values this paper uses a hedonic approach to indirectly observe the presence of these externalities border congruency between school districts and municipalities in ohio is measured using gis data and matched with a data set of 56 717 home sales the hedonic results indicate that noncongruence is associated with lower housing prices while the degree of noncongruence is positively related for most school districts the negative effect of noncongruency dominates my results are robust and consistent across different model spec

determinants of renewable energy growth a global sample analysis abstract we investigate factors influencing country level renewable energy growth by applying fevd and pcse estimation methods in a unique sample analysis with a longer time series 1990 2010 and a broader sample size of countries including brazil russia india china and south africa than previous studies our results reveal new insights the results suggest that certain government backed energy policies impede renewable energy investments thus implying significant failures in policy design these policies may be failing mainly because of uncertainty and the likelihood of discontinuity weak voluntary approaches are introduced in order to satisfy public demand for more sustainable investments and programmes we find that these may have negative influences on the growth of renewables as well the insight gained is consistent over the estimation methods employed

changes in the distribution of house prices over time structural characteristics neighborhood or coefficients quantile hedonic house price function estimates imply that appreciation rates were higher between 1995 and 2005 for high priced homes in chicago decompositions of temporal changes in the house price distribution suggest that the types of homes sold and their location do not account for the change in the price distribution rather higher appreciation rates for high priced homes are explained by differences in the quantile regression coefficients over time