intra annual sheep price patterns and factors underlying price variations in the central highlands of ethiopia a sheep market survey was undertaken to determine the effects of certain animal and market characteristics on price and the pattern of sheep prices in relation to seasons nine key ethiopian central highlands markets were surveyed for a period of one year in 1989 each market was surveyed once a week on the main market day price weight sex age colour condition score breed type and buyer s purpose were recorded for all completed transactions as well as the numbers offered and sold on each market day a total of 50 062 cases were recorded three markets each representing redistributive intermediate and terminal markets as identified by the distribution in buyer s purpose were chosen for further analysis considerable weekly price variation was evident in these markets prices were also seasonal with higher premiums paid during some religious festivals animal characteristics weight age condition sex colour as well as buyer s purpose and seasons were variably important in explaining variation in price among animals within weeks variations in the composition of these characteristics from week to week were among factors underlying changes in weekly mean prices r2 varied from 0 2659 to 0 3583 in the quadratic price per kg model and from 0 7822 to 0 8413 in the quadratic price per head model in the three markets however it was found that price per head was predicted equally well overall by estimated price per kg multiplied by actual weights and that because of wide variation in weights both within and between weeks price per kg is more useful market information

identification of strategies to improve goat marketing in the lowlands of ethiopia a hedonic price analysis abstractthis article aims at identifying factors that determine market prices of goats and analyse potential mechanisms by which smallholder goat producers could maximize their benefits data on 35

measuring heterogeneous preferences for cattle traits among cattle keeping households in east africa this study employs mixed logit and latent class models to examine preferences for cattle traits with a focus on heterogeneity among cattle keepers using choice experiment data of 506 cattle keeping households in kenya and ethiopia the findings indicate the existence of preference heterogeneity based on cattle production systems highly valued cattle traits for the cropping systems include traction fitness and trypanotolerance while traits associated with herd increase are considered important in pastoral systems considering heterogeneity within population segments provides a framework for adapting breeding policy interventions to specific producer segments by integrating preferred traits in a breed improvement program

import price elasticities reconsidering the evidence recent economic geography and trade empirical studies based on monopolistic competition suggest high levels of trade price elasticities between 3 and 1 1 however price elasticity estimations in trade equations using unit values as price proxies usually lead to lower values of around unity we show that those inconclusive results may be due to some misspecification in these equations as well as measurement errors in prices when suit able instrumental variables are used within a panel of industrialized countries we obtain high price elasticities the majority ranging from i to 13 the highest estimates correspond to industries producing homogeneous goods jel classification c2 c3 and f 1

the diffusion of energy efficiency in building awareness of global warming and the extent of greenhouse gas emissions has focused more attention upon energy efficiency in building moreover the inventory of green office space in the u s has increased dramatically since the introduction of rating schemes that attest to the energy efficiency or sustainability of commercial buildings in some metropolitan areas the supply of certified office buildings has more than doubled in the last decade and there are a few metropolitan areas where green office space now accounts for more than a quarter of the total office stock in this paper we analyze the diffusion of buildings certified for energy efficiency across us property markets using a panel of 48 metropolitan areas msas observed over the last 15 years we trace the diffusion of green building practices across the country we then model the geographic patterns and dynamics of building certification relating industry composition changes in economic conditions characteristics of the local commercial property market and the presence of human capital to the crosssectional variation in energy efficient building technologies and the diffusion of those technologies over time understanding the determinants and the rate at which energyefficient building practices diffuse over space and time is important for designing policies to affect resource consumption in the built environment

the estimation of demand parameters in hedonic price models this paper shows that the econometric problem of estimating hedonic demand parameters is not a standard identification problem caused by demand supply interaction as has been often assumed estimation procedures based on this assumption lead to biased results the hedonic estimation problem is instead caused by the endogeneity of both prices and quantities when households face a nonlinear budget constraint an instrumental variables solution to this problem is suggested using instruments that exogenously shift the budget constraint

residential energy use and conservation economics and demographics energy consumption in the residential sector offers an important opportunity for conserving resources however much of the current debate regarding energy efficiency in the housing market focuses on the physical and technical determinants of energy consumption neglecting the role of the economic behavior of resident households in this paper we analyze the extent to which the use of gas and electricity is determined by the technical specifications of the dwelling as compared to the demographic characteristics of the residents our analysis is based on a sample of more than 300 000 dutch homes and their occupants the results indicate that residential gas consumption is determined principally by structural dwelling characteristics such as the vintage building type and characteristics of the dwelling while electricity consumption varies more directly with household composition in particular income and family composition combining these results with projections on future economic and demographic trends we find that even absent price increases for residential energy the aging of the population and their increasing wealth will roughly offset improvements in the energy efficiency of the building stock resulting from policy interventions and natural revitalization

border adjustments supplementing nationally determined carbon pricing as agreed on in the paris agreement each country determines its own contribution to combat climate change on a voluntary basis there is no mechanism to force a country to comply with its own nationally determined contributions this bottom up approach builds on unilateral actions and yields a kind of carbon pricing which is not necessarily identical across countries as a consequence these nationally determined climate policies have drawbacks in terms of carbon leakage and loss of competitiveness for firms producing in high carbon price countries to reduce these negative effects border adjustments bas may be appropriate subsequent to more stringent environmental regulation we model a three stage game involving carbon price competition in the first stage the introduction of bas in the second stage and oligopolistic competition between firms in the third stage strategic trade theory suggests that the qualitative results about the optimal ba policy may vary with the underlying type of competition namely bertrand and cournot competition however our results are similar for both types of competition we conclude that bas are suitable for supporting a more stringent environmental policy moreover we find that anticipation of the implementation of bas in the second stage yields higher average carbon prices in the first stage since high carbon price countries increase their carbon prices whereas the other countries partially offset

review of us esco industry market trends an empirical analysis of project data abstract this comprehensive empirical analysis of us energy service company esco industry trends and performance employs two parallel analytical approaches a survey of firms to estimate total industry size and a database of 1500 esco projects from which we report target markets and typical project characteristics energy savings and customer economics we estimate that industry investment for energy efficiency related services reached us 2 billion in 2000 following a decade of strong growth esco activity is concentrated in states with high economic activity and strong policy support typical projects save 150 200 mj m2 year and are cost effective with median benefit cost ratios of 1 6 and 2 1 for institutional and private sector projects the median simple payback time spt is 7 years among institutional customers 3 years is typical in the private sector reliance on dsm incentives has decreased since 1995 preliminary evidence suggests that state enabling policies have boosted the industry in medium sized states escos have proven resilient in the face of restructuring and will probably shift toward selling energy solutions with energy efficiency part of a package we conclude that appropriate policy support both financial and non financial can jump start a viable private sector energy efficiency services industry that targets large institutional and commercial industrial customers

european emission trading scheme and competitiveness a case study on the iron and steel industry abstract we quantify the impact of the european emission trading scheme ets on the two dimensions of competitiveness production and profitability for the iron and steel industry among those covered by the scheme this sector is one of the most exposed since it is both highly co 2 intensive and relatively open to international trade we also examine the robustness of these results to various assumptions marginal abatement cost curve trade and demand elasticities as well as pass through rates and updating of allocation rules of which the latter two are scarcely debated we conclude that for this sector competitiveness losses are small we prove this conclusion to be robust hence arguments against tightening the environmental stringency of the ets in phase ii are not justified on grounds of competitiveness loss our systematic sensitivity analysis allows us to identify the important assumptions for each output variable it turns out that pass through rates and updating rules are significant despite being often implicit and least debated in existing analyses

heteroscedastic hedonic price model for cattle in the rural markets of central ethiopia this study employs a heteroscedastic hedonic price model to examine the factors that influence cattle prices in the rural markets of central ethiopia the empirical results show that season market location class of cattle body size and age are very important determinants of the cattle price the relative weight of the phenotypic characteristics of the animals is among the highest of all the factors considered these preferences at the farmers and farmer traders levels are the ones that matter most in shaping the diversity of animals kept at farm level and the diversity of cattle genetic resources is quite essential for generating or identifying the best suited breeds of cattle given the livelihood objectives of the target community

is energy efficiency capitalized into home prices evidence from three u s cities abstract we test for evidence that energy efficiency features are capitalized into home prices in three u s metropolitan areas using hedonic regressions and multiple matching procedures we find that energy star certification is associated with higher sales prices in two of the markets the research triangle region of north carolina and portland oregon we find that local green certifications in portland and in austin texas are also associated with higher prices and that the estimated price impacts are larger than those from energy star matching on observables proves to be important in some cases reducing the estimated impacts compared with models without matching we calculate the implied energy savings from the estimated premiums and find that in the research triangle market the energy star premiums approximately equal the savings that program is designed to achieve but in portland the premiums are slightly greater than the program s savings due to low energy costs in the region

can tariffs be used to enforce paris climate commitments we evaluate the potential of border carbon adjustments bcas and strategic tariffs to compel noncompliant countries to meet emission reduction targets pledged under the paris climate agreement our analysis employs a numerical economy wide model with energy sector detail and given recent actions by the us administration considers bcas on us exports we find that when the us does not restrict emissions and faces bcas on its exports us welfare losses are smaller than when the us meets its paris commitments hence bcas are preferable for the us and cannot be used to enforce paris climate commitments the use of strategic tariffs on the contrary would result in a trade war and a larger welfare decrease in us welfare than when it meets its paris commitments strategic tariffs also decrease welfare in countries that meet their paris pledges accordingly strategic tariffs which are much higher than bca rates can be used to enforce paris climate commitments if compliant countries are willing to incur welfare losses to punish non compliant countries

border carbon adjustments addressing emissions embodied in trade approximately one fourth of global emissions are embodied in international trade and a significant portion flows from non carbon priced to carbon priced economies border carbon adjustments bcas figure prominently as instruments to address concerns arising from unilateral climate policy estimating the volume of emissions that could be potentially taxed under a bca scheme has received little attention until now this paper examines how a number of issues involved in the implementation of bcas can affect their ability to cover emissions embodied in trade and thus address carbon leakage these issues range from ensuring compliance with trade provisions and assumptions on the carbon intensity of imports to determining which countries are included and whether intermediate and final demand are considered here we show that the volume of co2 captured by a scheme that involved all annex b countries could be significantly reduced due to these issues particularly by trade provisions such as the principle of best available technology bat as a consequence the tariff burdens faced by non annex b parties could dwindle considerably these findings have important policy implications as they question the effectiveness and practicalities of bcas to reduce carbon leakage and alleviate competitiveness concerns adding further arguments against their implementation

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

consumer preferences for fresh food items with multiple quality attributes evidence from an experimental auction of pork chops this study illustrates an application of experimental auction methods using both experimental economics and experimental design to evaluate consumer perceptions and willingness to pay wtp for fresh pork chops we test and reject hypotheses that a market prices and consumers wtp are unaffected by the level of attributes embodied in the pork chops b appearance based on photographs or actual product and actual taste are equally good sources of consumer information and c consumers are consistent in their preferences for fresh pork attributes a major conclusion is that predicting consumer demand for fresh pork or any fresh food based on appearance without tasting is unproductive

fair optimal or detrimental environmental vs strategic use of border carbon adjustment abstract we carry out a detailed sensitivity analysis of border carbon adjustment rates by applying a global computable general equilibrium cge gtap7 based model we find different incentives for the regions in the climate coalition to raise carbon based border tax rates btax above the standard rate that mimics an equalisation of carbon prices across regions herein the strategic use of btax the manipulation of the terms of trade is stronger for all coalition regions than the environmental use the reduction of carbon emissions abroad higher btax can reduce carbon leakage but with a declining marginal effect furthermore we find different incentives for regions outside the coalition to oppose high btax rates russia and the other energy exporters would oppose it while the low income countries would not because of benefits from the trade diversion effect thus btax encourages the former to join the coalition while compensating transfers are necessary to encourage the other developing countries including china and india

the value of domestic building energy efficiency evidence from ireland abstract following the transposition of the eu energy performance of buildings directive into irish law all properties offered for sale or to let in ireland are obliged to have an energy efficiency rating this paper analyses the effect of energy efficiency ratings on the sale and rental prices of properties in the republic of ireland using the heckman selection technique we model the decision to advertise the energy efficiency rating of a property and the effect of energy efficiency ratings on property values our results show that energy efficiency has a positive effect on both the sales and rental prices of properties and that the effect is significantly stronger in the sales segment of the property market we also analyse the effect of energy efficiency across different market conditions and we find that the effect of the energy rating is generally stronger where market conditions are worse

information inefficiency and willingness to pay for energy efficient technology a stated preference approach for china energy label abstract the paper examines the extent to which consumers willingness to pay for energy efficient room air conditioners may be altered by correcting the information inefficiency on the china energy label the data are collected from a discrete choice experiment with two alternatives variable speed and constant speed room air conditioners characterized by attributes of brand purchase price and energy grade three versions of the questionnaires with choice sets differing only in energy consumption indicators were distributed randomly to 1602 potential consumers in nanjing china and a sample of 1569 was obtained after dropping missing data the analysis with multinomial and mixed logit models reveal that the price premium that consumers are willing to pay for a variable speed room ac over a constant speed room ac increases significantly when energy consumption information becomes comparable and additional energy related information is provided furthermore the impact of information on wtp varies under different energy saving scenarios it is suggested that china energy label should correct information inefficiency by adopting same energy indicators for room acs with different technologies and providing energy consumption information based on different climate zones

energy performance certificates and investments in building energy efficiency a theoretical analysis abstract in the european union energy performance certificates epcs provide potential buyers or tenants with information on a property s energy performance by mitigating informational asymmetries on real estate markets the conventional wisdom is that they will reduce energy use increase energy efficiency investments and improve social welfare we develop a model that partly contradicts these predictions although epcs always improve social welfare in the absence of market failures other than asymmetric information their impact on energy use and investments is ambiguous and depends both on the time horizon considered and the distribution of energy needs in the population this implies that in a second best world where energy externalities are under priced epcs can damage social welfare

production costs of the chemical industry in the eu and other countries ammonia methanol and light olefins abstract our study compares chemical production costs in the european union eu and other countries in order to understand whether these costs are higher in the case of europe than in other countries our analysis focuses on ammonia methanol and light olefins ethylene and propylene as all of them are considered chemical compounds produced in large scale the countries selected for comparison are usa russia ukraine and saudi arabia since they have high shares of extra eu28 trade and or the global installed capacity of the selected products a bottom up approach based on information at facility level has been followed including 116 29 122 and 224 facilities producing ammonia methanol ethylene and propylene respectively taking into consideration the complex differences in technologies and co products between operators costs are broken down to six components 1 feedstock 2 credits due to co products 3 electricity 4 thermal energy 5 other materials chemicals catalysts etc and 6 labour and other costs salaries overheads etc our findings suggest that it is not easy to reach a common conclusion about the whole chemical industry overall costs compare more favourably among countries than initially thought in the case of processes producing co products but maybe less favourably when processes are without co products the european industry has lower production costs than the industries in the other countries in the case of ethylene and propylene but higher in the case of ammonia and methanol feedstock costs play the most important role in the total production costs of all four products but the presence of credits due to by products could change the behaviour of the total costs

autonomous efficiency improvement or income elasticity of energy demand does it matter observations of historical energy consumption energy prices and income growth in industrial economies exhibit a trend in improving energy efficiency even when prices are constant or falling two alternative explanations of this phenomenon are a productivity change that uses less energy and a structural change in the economy in response to rising income it is not possible to distinguish among these from aggregate data and economic energy models for forecasting emissions simulate one as an exogenous time trend or the other as energy demand elasticity with respect to income or both processes for projecting energy demand into the future in this paper we ask whether and how it matters which process one uses for projecting energy demand and carbon emissions we compare two versions of the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model one using a conventional efficiency time trend approach and the other using an income elasticity approach we demonstrate that while these two versions yield equivalent projections in the near term that they diverge in two important ways long run projections and under uncertainty in future productivity growth we suggest that an income dependent approach may be preferable to the exogenous approach

doing well by doing good green office buildings this paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of green buildings in the commercial sector value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates we match publicly available information on the addresses of energy star and leed rated office buildings to a commercial data source detailing the characteristics of u s office buildings and their rental rates we analyze the micro data on 694 certified green buildings and on 7489 other office buildings located within a quarter mile of the certified buildings we find systematic evidence that rents for green offices are about two percent higher than rents for comparable buildings located nearby effective rents i e rents adjusted for the occupancy levels in office buildings are about six percent higher in green buildings than in comparable office buildings nearby at prevailing capitalization rates conversion of the average non green building to an equivalent green building would add more than 5 million in market value these results are robust to the statistical models employed

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

the steel industry a mathematical model under environmental regulations abstract in this work a spatial equilibrium problem is formulated for analyzing the impact of the application of the eu ets on the steel industry that has historically seen europe as one of its major producers the developed model allows us to simultaneously represent the interactions of several market players to endogenously determine output and steel prices and to analyze the investment in the carbon capture and storage ccs technology in addition the proposed model supports the evaluation of the co2 emission costs on the basis of directive 2009 29 ec the 20 20 20 targets and the energy roadmap 2050 in this light two main processes for steelmaking have to be considered integrated mills bof and electric arc furnace eaf in minimills

building energy efficiency a research branch made of paradoxes abstract the literature dealing with building energy efficiency has long since debated about the possible occurrence of the so called jevons paradox in a nutshell benefiting from energy savings due to transition to high performance buildings may the same savings cause a kind of rebound effect by acting as an incentive to increase consumptions on closer inspection this is not the only paradox affecting the research branch that focuses on the energy used by the buildings and the building industry a second paradox is that investments in energy efficient solutions may contribute to energy price control which in turn lends itself to make the same investments not profitable a third paradox lies in the need to adopt energy intensive materials in order to achieve substantial energy savings in operation hence sometimes we just substitute a certain amount of operating energy with a more or less commensurate amount of embodied energy here we argue that the joint consideration of the paradoxes mentioned above should not be neglected since it brings with itself several implications needing to be disentangled whether we aim to get further enhancements in this disciplinary field

recent progress of cooperation on climate mitigation a bibliometric analysis abstract effective international cooperation is an important measure to mitigate climate change the purpose of this study is to clarify the research progress in the field of cooperation on emission reduction identify the influential authors and articles and reveal the main research topics based on the bibliometric method and the web of science database this study analyzes the literature in the field of cooperation on emission reduction the results show that the publications in this field have increased significantly over the past decade with the usa and china are the most influential countries keyword co occurrence and frequency analysis show that the most important research topics are as follows burden sharing and equity the stability of the climate coalition and international environmental agreements technology transfer and climate finance the linkage of carbon markets and the response to noncooperation behavior the main methods involved are game theory model integrated assessment models and computable general equilibrium model equitable distribution of mitigation responsibilities is the basis for cooperation on carbon reduction specific rulebooks for carbon market linkage is the key to its successful implementation this study helps researchers to clarify the current research status in the field of cooperation on emission reduction and provide valuable information for future research

valuing indigenous cattle breeds in kenya an empirical comparison of stated and revealed preference value estimates abstract in this study we compare revealed and stated preference approaches to value traits of cattle in kenya the premise is that much can be learnt about non market values of indigenous animal genetic resources angr from the use of multi attribute stated preference methods if these compare well with revealed preference results the objective is to investigate the performance of choice experiments ces in maasai cattle trading by conducting an external test of preference consistency we compare value estimates for cattle attributes from ces data with those from hedonic analysis of actual transactions by the same population of traders in the same markets and over the same period if ces perform well they can be used to investigate values of those genetically determined livestock traits currently not prominent in pastoralists populations but desirable candidates for breeding or conservation programmes e g disease resistance the results indicate that ce estimates pass the external test and appear to be adequately precise in estimating values for cattle traits that are relevant in market transactions for maasai traders accounting for taste and variance heterogeneity does not change this conclusion ces may therefore be a promising tool for valuing phenotypic traits expressed by indigenous angr

unilateral co2 reductions and carbon leakage the consequences of international trade in oil and basic materials a recursively dynamic general equilibrium model featuring six world regions with trade in energy and non energy goods is used to simulate the period from 1990 through 2100 in 10 year intervals the simulations explore the effect of unilateral action by the oecd to curb global co2 emissions unilateral cuts create incentives for free riding by non participating regions so that global emissions are reduced by less than the amount that the oecd cuts back its regional emissions carbon leakage occurs through two channels first basic materials production increases in unconstrained regions resulting in increased carbon intensity of gdp second reductions in oecd oil imports cause the world oil price to fall leading to an increased energy intensity in the non participant regions in this paper we use a general equilibrium model to assess the extent to which these two mechanisms reduce the effectiveness of oecd reductions in curbing global co2 concentrations

optimal emission pricing in the presence of international spillovers decomposing leakage and terms of trade motives abstract carbon leakage provides an efficiency argument for differentiated emission prices in favor of emission intensive and trade exposed sectors under unilateral climate policy however differential emission pricing can be used as a beggar thy neighbor policy to exploit terms of trade adopting an optimal tax framework we propose a method to decompose the leakage and terms of trade motives for emission price differentiation we employ our method for the quantitative impact assessment of unilateral climate policy based on empirical data we find that the leakage motive yields only small efficiency gains compared to uniform emission pricing likewise the terms of trade motive has rather limited potential for strategic burden shifting we conclude that in many cases the simple first best rule of uniform emission pricing remains a practical guideline for unilateral climate policy design

the impact of border carbon adjustments under alternative producer responses border carbon adjustments bcas have been proposed to address leakage and competitiveness concerns in traditional assessments firms regard bcas as output taxes rather than implicit emissions taxes using a stylized energy economic model we analyze the impact of bcas for alternative producer responses when firms view bcas as an implicit emissions tax the outcome depends on whether or not firms can differentiate production across destination markets if firms are able to produce a lowemissions variety for regions imposing bcas results are similar to when firms regard bcas as an output tax if firms produce a single variety for all markets bcas result in larger leakage reductions than in standard approaches we also find that bcas are less effective at addressing competitive concerns in scenarios that result in larger leakage reductions jel codes f18 q54

the economics of green building we analyze the economics of green building finding that recent increases in the supply of green buildings and the volatility in prop erty markets have not affected the returns to green buildings we then analyze a large cross section of office buildings demonstrating that eco nomic returns to energy efficient buildings are substantial finally we relate the economic premiums for green buildings to their relative effi ciency in energy use the attributes rated for thermal efficiency as well as sustainability contribute to premiums in rents and asset values among green buildings increased energy efficiency is fully capitalized into rents and asset values

revealed preference analysis of characteristics models characteristics models have been found to be useful in many areas of economics however their empirical implementation tends to rely heavily on functional form assumptions in this paper we develop a revealed preference approach to characteristics models we derive the necessary and su cient empirical conditions under which data on the market behaviour of heterogeneous price taking consumers are nonparametrically consistent with the consumer characteristics model where these conditions hold we show how information may be recovered on individual consumer s marginal valuations of product attributes in some cases marginal valuations are point identi ed and in other cases we can only recover bounds where the conditions fail we highlight the role which the introduction of unobserved product attributes can play in rationalising the data we implement these ideas using consumer panel data on the danish milk market

supply demand and the value of green buildings attention to sustainability and energy efficiency rating schemes in the commercial property sector has increased rapidly during the past decade in the uk commercial properties have been certified under the breeam rating scheme since 1999 offering fertile ground to investigate the economic dynamics of green certification in the commercial property market this paper documents that over the 2000 09 period the expanding supply of green buildings within a given london neighbourhood had a positive impact on average rents and prices but reduced rents and prices for environmentally certified real estate the results suggest that there is a gentrification effect from green buildings however each additional green building decreases the marginal effect of certification in the rental and transaction markets by 2 per cent and 5 per cent respectively in addition controlling for lease contract features like contract length and the rent free period modifies the impact of environmental certification on

the impact of energy labels and accessibility on office rents abstract energy consumption in the commercial property sector offers an important opportunity for conserving resources in this study we evaluate the financial implications of two elements of sustainability energy efficiency and accessibility in the market for commercial real estate an empirical analysis of some 1100 leasing transactions in the netherlands over the 2005 2010 period shows that buildings designated as inefficient with an eu energy performance certificate d or worse command rental levels that are some 6 5 percent lower as compared to energy efficient but otherwise similar buildings labeled a b or c furthermore this study shows that office buildings in multi functional areas with access to public transport and facilities achieve rental premiums over mono functional office districts for policymakers the results documented in this paper provide an indication on the effectiveness of the eu energy performance certificate as a market signal in the commercial property sector the findings documented here are also relevant for investors in european office markets as the importance of energy efficiency and locational diversification is bound to increase following stricter environmental regulation and changing tenant preferences

sustaining the emerging carbon trading industry development a business ecosystem approach of carbon traders abstract this paper explores how carbon traders nurture the business ecosystem to sustain the emerging carbon trading industry development we collected primary data from a multinational carbon trader and its ecosystem partners in china through the construction of interviews and documentary the research findings show the carbon trading industry has experienced four stage evolution with different driving forces the carbon trader attracted and organized ecosystem partners to facilitate the cdm project owners to create carbon credits and trade them a systematic business ecosystems approach through the lens of context cooperation and configuration initiated by carbon traders has facilitated the industry development our findings also implicate to industrial practitioners and policymakers for sustaining the emerging industry development at both the current and the post kyoto protocol periods

the price premium for green labelled housing evidence from china the chinese central government introduced the chinese green building label in 2008 which makes china one of the few developing countries with an official rating system of buildings performance in sustainability this paper investigates the existence and magnitude of the price premium associated with this official green label in the residential sector based on a unique data set of green labelled newly built housing projects and their non labelled counterparts from around the country in 2013 an empirical analysis suggests that the labelled housing projects attract a price premium of 6 9 compared with their non labelled counterparts further analysis suggests that this official green label is more effective as a reliable signal of buildings energy efficiency in the chinese context compared with developers self advertised greenness these results provide preliminary evidence that with this official rating system the investment in buildings energy efficiency could be potentially profitable for ho

buyer preferences for sheep and goats in southern nigeria a hedonic price analysis abstract a survey of two rural markets in southwest nigeria over 14 months showed that supplies sales and prices of sheep and goats varied widely during the period with a sharp peak during the muslim festival of eid el kabir and a smaller peak during the christmas new year period local west african dwarf wad sheep and goats and northern y ankasa sheep and red sokoto goats were traded in the markets and animals were purchased for rearing trading ceremonies butchering catering sacrifice and festivals there were significant differences between species breeds purchased for various purposes a hedonic price model was fitted to determine factors influencing price after adjustments were made for age weight sex time of transaction and market wad sheep commanded higher prices than wad goats and red sokoto goats for all purposes except for butchering catering red sokoto goats commanded similar or lower prices than wad goats depending on the purpose for purchase and y ankasa sheep principally purchased for the eid el kabir festival commanded marginally higher prices than wad sheep the market share of wad sheep is currently small and is under competition from northern sheep and goats so increased production of wad sheep in the south will benefit both producers and consumers in the area in general the results indicate that buyers have preferences for specific breeds and species for specific purposes so producers and sellers may benefit by targeting specific buyer categories and times of the year

spite and development in a wide variety of settings spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation trade and thus economic development this paper shows that spiteful preferences the desire to reduce another s material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one s relative payoff are surprisingly widespread in experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions in india uttar pradesh in a one shot trust game the authors find that a large majority of subjects punish cooperative behavior although such punishment clearly increases inequality and decreases the payoffs of both subjects in experiments to study coordination and to measure social preferences the findings reveal empirical patterns suggesting that the willingness to reduce another s material payoff either for the sake of achieving more equality or for the sake of being ahead is stronger among individuals belonging to high castes than among those belonging to low castes because extreme social hierarchies are typically accompanied by a culture that stresses status seeking it is plausible that the observed social preference patterns are at least partly shaped by this culture thus an exciting question for future research is the extent to which different institutions and cultures produce preferences that are conducive or detrimental to economic development

does energy efficiency matter to home buyers an investigation of epc ratings and transaction prices in england abstract this paper investigates whether energy performance ratings as measured by mandatory energy performance certificates epcs are reflected in the sale prices of residential properties this is the first large scale empirical study of this topic in england involving 333 095 dwellings sold at least twice in the period from 1995 to 2012 applying hedonic regression and an augmented repeat sales regression we find a positive relationship between the energy efficiency rating of a dwelling and the transaction price per square metre the price effects of superior energy performance tend to be higher for terraced dwellings and flats compared to detached and semi detached dwellings the evidence is less clear cut for rates of house price growth but remains supportive of a positive association overall the results of this study suggest that energy efficiency labels have a measurable and significant impact on house prices in england

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables