an analysis of feed in tariff remuneration models implications for renewable energy investment recent experience from around the world suggests that feed in tariffs fits are the most effective policy to encourage the rapid and sustained deployment of renewable energy there are several different ways to structure a fit policy each with its own strengths and weaknesses this paper presents an overview of seven different ways to structure the remuneration of a fit policy divided into two broad categories those in which remuneration is dependent on the electricity price and those that remain independent from it this paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of these different fit models and concludes with an analysis of these design options with a focus on their implications both for investors and for society

did migration in the 1980s narrow the north south divide this paper integrates empirical analysis of the decision to migrate from a region with that of destination choice thus we are able to study how net migration and not just gross outflows are influenced by regional labour market circumstances the results suggest that relative regional wages rates but not relative unemployment and vacancy rates are effective in reallocating labour from regions experiencing adverse demand shocks we find little evidence that manual labour is migrating from those regions with relatively high manual unemployment but that migration plays a more conventional role in the regional adjustment process for non manual workers

dual labor markets urban unemployment and multicentric cities a two sector model of urban employment is developed which focuses on the formation of a secondary sector in response to a primary sector demand shock the optimal location of this single firm sector is shown to give rise to a multicentric urban spatial structure conditions are then established under which the new labor market equilibrium involves both a decrease in unemployment and an increase in net income for those unemployed these results are extended to a case where all unemployment benefits are financed by local taxation of firms here it is shown that profit incentives may exist for the primary sector to subsidize entry of the secondary sector c 1997 academic press

revised feed in tariff for solar photovoltaic in the united kingdom a cloudy future ahead abstract the united kingdom uk started implementing a national feed in tariff fit mechanism on the 1 april 2010 which included specific payment tariffs for solar photovoltaic pv installations however a revised fit rate has been put in place starting from 1 april 2012 applicable to any installations with an eligibility date of on or after 3 march 2012 this paper presents first an overview of solar pv installation in the uk this followed by a general concept of the fit in the uk before analyzing the financial impact of the new fit rate on the consumers similar financial analysis is conducted with selected countries in europe the financial analysis investigates the total profit the average rate of return and the payback period it is found that the new fit rate generates very low profit minimum rate of return and a longer payback period suggesting a downward trend of solar pv uptake in the future

regulatory design for res e support mechanisms learning curves market structure and burden sharing drawing from relevant experiences in power systems around the world this paper offers a review of existing policy support mechanisms for res e with a detailed analysis of their regulatory implications while recent studies provide an account of current res e support systems in this paper we focus on some of the impacts these mechanisms have on the overall energy market structure and its performance given the rising importance of res e in systems everywhere these impacts should no longer be overlooked

a regulatory adjustment process for the determination of the optimal percentage requirement in an electricity market with tradable green certificates abstract a system of tradable green certificates tgcs is a market based subsidy scheme designed to promote electricity generation from renewable energy sources such as wind power under a tgc system the principal policy instrument is the percentage requirement which stipulates the percentage of total electricity production green plus black that must be obtained from renewable sources in this paper we propose a regulatory adjustment process that a regulator can employ to determine the socially optimal percentage requirement explicitly accounting for environmental damages resulting from black electricity generation

spatial competition with a land market hotelling and von thunen unified we introduce into the standard spatial competition model the consumption of land by households and study the spatial competition under the influence of a land market in contrast to the standard assumption of a fixed given distribution of households we introduce the possibility of households relocation in reaction to firms location decisions thus the spatial distribution of households is treated as endogenous and a land market is introduced on which households compete for land use households consume simultaneously land and firms output accordingly the demand of each household becomes in turn endogenous as it depends on the income left after the land rent is paid not surprisingly the results obtained within this more general framework prove to be very different from the standard results for example in the 2 and 3 firm cases the optimal configuration of firms is a nash equilibrium when transport costs are high enough or the amount of vacant land is large enough the existence property is restored in the 3 firm case when the transport costs are high enough the introduction of vacant land causes a discontinuous change in the set of equilibrium configurations

feed in tariff and tradable green certificate in oligopoly abstract feed in tariff fit and tradable green certificate tgc schemes are studied in a formal model and numerical example using the uk data we find that if the markets were perfectly competitive then feed in tariff and the certificate price would be the same however when the markets are imperfect they are generally different while both the tariff and certificate price fluctuate around the difference between the costs of green and black energy the tariff deviates more from the cost difference than the certificate price the supplies of both black and green energy under fit are higher than tgc obviously as a result of subsidies a troubling outcome is that the total energy supply increases under fit as the renewables quota increases which can negate other measures to mitigate climate changes such as demand management finally using the data from the uk market we find that social welfare under tgc is consistently higher than fit for a wide range of values of the parameters

is there monopsonistic discrimination against immigrants the authors investigate immigrants and natives labor supply to the firm within an estimation approach based on a dynamic monopsony framework applying duration models that account for unobserved worker heterogeneity to a large administrative employer employee data set for germany they find that immigrants supply labor less elastically to firms than do natives under monopsonistic wage setting the estimated elasticity differential predicts a 7 7 log points wage penalty for immigrants thereby accounting for the entire unexplained native immigrant wage differential of 5 8 to 8 2 log points when further distinguishing immigrant groups differing in their time spent in the german labor market their immigration cohort and their age at entry the authors find that the observed unexplained wage differential is larger for those groups that show a larger elasticity differential relative to natives these findings not only suggest that search frictions are a likely cause of employers more pronounced monopsony

it pays to be different endogenous heterogeneity of firms in an oligopoly abstract heterogeneous firms can be supported by familiar conditions of technology and demand in a two stage duopoly game firms choose technologies simultaneously in stage i from a continuous technology set in stage ii once technological commitments have been made firms choose quantities and the equilibrium price is determined if the technology set is insufficiently convex firms choose only the extreme production technologies in some cases they choose the same technology in others they choose different technologies when compared to socially optimal industry structures equilibria tend to have too little heterogeneity uncertainty about demand or costs favors the emergence of heterogeneous firms

the distributional effects of local labor demand and industrial mix estimates using individual panel data abstract this paper finds that increases in local labor demand have significant progressive effects on the income distribution and significantly reduce poverty the anti poverty effects of stronger demand have not lessened in recent years local labor demand s benefits are particularly great for younger less educated men labor demand s benefits are similar for blacks and whites and men and women the paper also finds that shifts in the local industrial mix toward manufacturing or other high wage industries do not have progressive effects and do not reduce poverty

the political economy of urban transport system choice this paper analyzes the political economy of transport system choice with the goal of gaining an understanding of the forces involved in this important urban public policy decision transport systems pose a continuous trade off between time and money cost so that a city can choose a fast system with a high money cost per mile or a slower cheaper system the paper compares the socially optimal transport system to the one chosen under the voting process focusing on both homogeneous and heterogeneous cities while considering different landownership arrangements the analysis identifies a bias toward underinvestment in transport quality in heterogeneous cities

a historical review of promotion strategies for electricity from renewable energy sources in eu countries abstract the core objective of this paper is to elaborate on historically implemented promotion strategies of renewable energy sources and the associated deployment within the european electricity market hence at a first glance the historic development of renewable energy sources in the electricity res e sector is addressed on member state and on sectoral level as well as consequently discussed according to available res e potentials and costs the specific focus of this paper are promotion strategies for res e options as they are the key driver of an efficient and effective res e deployment therefore the paper depicts the main types of different promotion schemes and their properties additionally several cases studies of different european member states show an in depth analysis of the different res e promotion schemes in this context special emphasises are put on the question of effective and efficient promotion scheme designs of different res e technologies generally conducted research led to the conclusion that technology specific financial support measures of res e performed much more effective and efficient than others did hence it is not all about the common question of feed in tariffs vs quota systems based on tradable green certificates but more about the design criteria of implemented res e support schemes

government introduced price distortions and growth evidence from twenty nine developing countries from the time adam smith s wealth of nations was published in 1776 until today the role of the state in the economic affairs of nations has been probably one of the most debated subject matters not only among economists but also among other social scientists a free competitive market and pricing system has since been recognized as a crucial factor in the allocation of resources indeed in the economic development of nations at the national as well as international levels there is a growing interest in the role of governmental policies in particular those policies that directly or indirectly influence the working of the market mechanism and the incentive system in the context of nations economic growth an example of the growing interest is the rather unequivocal focus placed in recent years by the world bank and the international monetary fund imf on the need for liberal competitive and outward looking policies in promoting economic growth in developing countries an area of particular concern has been that of the government introduced price distortions in several developing nations historically speaking such policies have grown over time as a part of the so called grand socialistic and planned economic policies and programs undertaken by several developing nations since they attained political independence these nations embarked upon such policies in pursuance of the promises that were made by their political leaders during their freedom movements against the colonial powers the imposition of controls by governments over domestic prices interest rates wages foreign trade and exchange rates for example has caused severe distortions in the economies of these nations and such distortions are not without bearing on economic growth according to the world bank 1983 2 coun

feed in tariff outlook in malaysia this paper aims to present the feed in tariff fit outlook in malaysia which is in the process of being enacted through a renewable energy re policy by the government of malaysia gom a brief in policies leading towards the re policy and the potential of each re sources under fit mechanism have been discussed the successful utilisation of re source in electricity generation and the fit implementation globally are positive indicators to implement fit in malaysia potentials of fit on biomass biogas and solid waste energy are currently very promising in malaysia but it is solar energy which is predicted to be the main re of the future surpassing all other res

on the condition for export led growth in this paper the author explores the conditions under which favorable export shocks produce export led growth in a three sector three factor general equilibrium model that allows for endogenous capital accumulation the export shock takes the form of either a resource discovery or an increase in the world market price of the export good while surprisingly simple conditions define the outcome in many cases there is no general presumption that an export boom will act as an engine of growth much depends on the precise structural characteristics of the economy

economic openness and green gdp since the early 1990s there have been several attempts to develop national income accounting systems which recognize the negative impacts of environmental degradation and income inequalities on economic welfare collectively these bgreenq gross domestic product gdp studies have generated a wealth of new time series data sets which can be used to reexamine the links between gdp and a host of factors commonly included in traditional economic growth models in this paper we develop models of green gdp growth and the gap between traditional and green gdp by using a panel data set from eight countries spanning 30 50 years in both the growth and gap models the effects of economic openness are tested we find strong and robust results suggesting a negative nonlinear correlation between openness and green gdp growth and a positive nonlinear correlation between openness and growth of the gap between traditional and green gdp while green gdp accounting systems are still in their infancy our paper nonetheless implies that once these more comprehensive measures are fully developed empirical models which explore factors contributing to the growth of economic welfare over time should be reexamined d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

cost effectiveness as energy policy mechanisms the paradox of technology neutral and technology specific policies in the short and long term when choosing policy mechanisms to design and deploy energy policies policymakers typically seek cost effective ones linking cost effectiveness to the lowest cost of support for res e generation and or consumer costs the objectives of this paper are to analyze the cost effectiveness of renewable portfolio standards rps feed in tariffs fit and auctions in the short and long term considering both technology neutral and technology specific approaches results show that rps and auctions are more cost effective than feed in tariffs fit in the short term if cost effectiveness is defined as minimizing consumer costs also if one or more emerging technologies with higher levelized life cycle costs lcc low cumulative production and high experience elasticity are considered in the pool of res e policy design a technology neutral approach in the short term could lock out these emerging technologies avoiding a long term lcc reduction in this case a technology specific policy used in the short term would reflect lower total generation policy costs in the long term if compared with a technology neutral policy in both short and long term this paper calls this phenomenon the paradox of technology neutral and technology specific policies in the long term considering the results this paper suggests a mix of technology neutral and technology specific policies using rps or auction mechanisms to promote res e

exports and growth critical minimum effort and diminishing returns abstract this paper provides some extensions and qualifications concerning the empirical evidence for the positive impact of exports on growth using a model of feder in particular the ideas of critical minimum effort and diminishing returns with respect to the export sector are given some empirical support

competitive auction mechanisms for the promotion renewable energy technologies the case of the 50 mw photovoltaics projects in cyprus abstract there are a range of policy frameworks and support mechanisms to promote the penetration of renewable energy technologies into the energy mix assembled by the governments and regulatory bodies around the world the three dominant and most common support schemes that have also been implemented within the eu and proven successful in the past include the competitive auctions the feed in tariff scheme fit and tradable green certificates tgcs this study reviews the use of the competitive auction mechanism for the promotion of power generation from renewable energy technologies the process of the specific policy instrument as well as its pros and cons are introduced successful and failed case studies from countries that have already incorporated this mechanism into their renewable energy technologies development policies are also presented among these cases is the cyprus auction procurement for the licensing of 50 mw of photovoltaic power plants conducted in january 2013 which is thoroughly elaborated in this paper the timeline of the bids is presented and the auction winner strategy is tracked and examined a discussion is also presented on the feasibility of the awarded projects eventually the entire auction procurement procedure is evaluated to expose the defects of the mechanism and to offer some recommendations for the viability of the process

how trade and foreign investment affect the growth of a small but not so open economy australia this article analyses the impact of trade and foreign investment on a small but not so open economy australia whose growth rate outpaced the majority of the oecd countries in the last decade we model five channels of outward orientation exports imports foreign direct investment foreign portfolio investment and other foreign investment a cointegrated vector autoregressive model complemented by a robust granger noncausality test is specified to identify permanent channels of outward orientation imports and direct investment are found to have a growth effect in the long run the effect of imports is almost three times that of direct investment

role of agriculture in economic development revisited abstract while both malthus and ricardo viewed agriculture as impediments to economic progress mill and marshall argued that the effects of diminishing returns to land could be offset mill emphasized that the progress of civilization such as roads that reduced the cost of bringing products to market and policy improvements such as abolition of the corn laws provided substitutes for farm inputs marshall argued that population growth could for a long time through growth of organization and knowledge offset the effects of diminishing returns had the insights of colin clark dominated the policies of developing countries rather than the implications drawn from the dual sector models and the pessimistic views of prebisch agriculture s contribution to economic development would have been enhanced the efforts to tax agriculture to support import substitution policies reduced rather than increased economic growth agriculture has important contributions to make to economic development but must receive even handed treatment if the possible contributions are to be realized a major failure of all governments has been the unwillingness to recognize that agriculture is a declining industry and to adopt policies that would assist farm people to adjust to the decline in demand for farm labor

the j curve malaysia versus her major trading partners currency depreciation is said to worsen the trade balance before improving it hence the j curve phenomenon since introduction of cointegration and error correction modelling researchers have tried to distinguish the short run effects of currency depreciation from its long run effects a few studies that have investigated the experience of malaysia have relied upon aggregate trade data and have found no strong support for a significant relation between the real value of the ringgit and the malaysian trade balance in this article we disaggregate the data by country and consider malaysia s bilateral trade balance with her 14 largest trading partners using bound testing approach to cointegration and error correction modelling we provide some support for the j curve hypothesis

wage competition with heterogeneous workers and firms we study imperfect competition in the labor market when both workers and firms are heterogeneous when firms cannot observe workers skill firms pay workers equal wages but workers absorb training costs when firms can identify worker types firms pay different net wages to different workers voters select the level of general education that is financed by a lump sum tax workers are on average better off when firms can observe workers skill for a given level of general human capital but the median voter prefers a higher level of general human capital when firms cannot observe worker types

can trade liberalization stimulate economic growth in africa abstract this paper examines changes in economic growth that are likely to result from changes in trade policies exports and investment in 12 sub saharan african ssa countries using a vector error correction model vecm our results indicate that trade policies exports and investment rate shocks have a significant impact on economic growth in 10 of the 12 ssa countries this suggests that it is possible to stimulate economic growth in some african countries through an outward looking strategy of export expansion more significantly the results further suggest the importance as well as the need for african countries to embark on trade liberalization policies in order to enhance economic growth in the current world economy

does city structure affect job search and welfare we develop a model in which workers search efficiency is negatively affected by access to jobs workers location in a city is endogenous and reflects a trade off between commuting costs and the surplus associated with search different configurations emerge in equilibrium notably the unemployed workers may reside far away segregated city or close to jobs integrated city we prove that there exists a unique and stable market equilibrium in which both land and labor markets are solved for simultaneously we find that despite inefficient search in the segregated city equilibrium the welfare difference between the two equilibria is not so large due to differences in commuting costs we also show how a social planner can manipulate wages by subsidizing taxing the transport costs and can accordingly restore the efficiency

differentials at firm level productive capacity realization in bangladesh food manufacturing an empirical analysis this article empirically estimates the firm specific productive capacity realization pcr indices using the stochastic frontier production function and analyses a number of variables explaining realization rates across firms and over time following battese and coelli 1995 the stochastic frontier production function is used to estimate capacity output and thereby pcr using the firm level panel data from bangladesh food manufacturing the results show that capacity realization rates widely vary across firms and over time the average rate of realization is about 65 implying that most of the firms are producing away from their full production capacity this article also identifies several firm specific and policy related variables explaining capacity realization the results show that firm size sze and outward orientation opn have positive while capital intensity cnsty market structure mstre and effective rate of assistance era have negative impact on realization rates strikingly both poli

impact of exchange rate uncertainty on commodity trade between us and sweden previous studies that investigated the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on the trade flows of sweden employed aggregate trade data either between sweden and the rest of the world or at bilateral level between sweden and her major trading partners in this article we disaggregate the trade data and employ the import and export data from 87 industries that trade between sweden and the us we find that exchange rate volatility has significant short run effects on the trade flows between the two countries in almost two third of the industries however the short run effects are translated into the long run effects in one third of the cases furthermore the real depreciation of krona against the dollar was found to have favourable effects on the overall trade balance between the two countries

symmetric equilibrium existence and optimality in differentiated product markets abstract equilibrium existence and optimality are analysed in a market for products differentiated by their variety a game of three stages is analysed firms enter in the first stage choose varieties in the second stage and choose prices in the third stage the existence of subgame perfect equilibria is established at equilibrium products are symmetrically located in the space of characteristics and are offered at equal prices the surplus maximizing solution is characterized and it is shown that surplus maximizing product diversity is lower than the equilibrium one

when households go solar determinants of uptake of a photovoltaic scheme and policy insights abstract the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels has resulted in escalating interest in renewable energy generation yet few countries have seriously tested household potential to produce energy from pv panels propelled by mandatory eu targets for renewable energy and constrained with limited territory the government of malta launched a subsidy scheme with a view to encouraging pv installation by households the scheme reached the desired adoption levels within a very short period of time the study takes an entire country dimension to assess the determinants of household investment in pv panels a unique dataset is specifically constructed for this study we find that the prevalence of younger households higher incomes dwelling ownership and unshared roof space results in higher rates of uptake neither higher educational levels nor the participation in other environmental schemes recycling contribute any explanatory power to uptake of pv panels pro government sentiment captured by voting outcomes significantly and positively influences the take up of the grant and installation of pv panels we conclude by identifying some pointers for policy makers interested in harvesting the potential of households

design of an economically efficient feed in tariff structure for renewable energy development abstract evidence suggests albeit tentatively that feed in tariffs fits are more effective than alternative support schemes in promoting renewable energy technologies rets fits provide long term financial stability for investors in rets which at the prevailing market price of electricity are not currently cost efficient enough to compete with traditional fossil fuel technologies on the other hand if not properly designed fits can be economically inefficient as is widely regarded to have been the case under the public utility regulatory policies act of 1978 purpa under purpa too high a guaranteed price led to the creation of so called purpa machines poorly performing generating units that could survive financially only because of heavy subsidies that came at the expense of retail customers similarly because of their adverse impacts on retail electricity rates german fits have been subject to increasing political pressure from utilities and customers in this paper we propose an innovative two part fit consisting of both a capacity payment and a market based energy payment which can be used to meet the renewables policy goals of regulators our two part tariff design draws on the strengths of traditional fits relies on market mechanisms is easy to implement and avoids the problems caused by distorting wholesale energy markets through above market energy payments the approach is modeled on forward capacity market designs that have been recently implemented by several regional transmission organizations in the usa to address needs for new generating capacity to ensure system reliability

imports and implementation neglected aspects of trade in the report of the commission for africa i i ntroduction the report of the commission for africa aims to provide a blueprint for what is needed to reverse decades of stagnation and decline in africa and enable the region to achieve sustained economic growth and poverty reduction the core argument is for a big push to improve governance reduce corruption invest in people especially health and education and infrastructure and create a favourable business climate an essential source of resources for the big push will be a doubling of aid flows to africa and the potential exists to absorb and spend these resources effectively trade has two functions in this as elaborated below export led growth and increased imports to absorb foreign exchange while the report is quite clear and often detailed in discussing how resources can be increased and spent and on how to address issues of governance there is very little discussion of the sequencing inherent in the trade context will import demand be increasing at the time aid inflows are greatest and over what timeframe should exports expand the report gives good coverage of trade issues and has many sensible things to say chapter 8 more trade and fairer trade is devoted to trade and other chapters cover related issues in particular section 7 3 on policies for growth including agriculture and infrastructure it has long been recognised that africa as a region has been marginalised in the process of globalisation especially regarding trade for many reasons africa has failed to benefit from the expansion of world trade over the past two decades morrissey and filatotchev 2001 the basic argument of the report is that more needs to be done globally and within african

trade liberalization and industrial growth in pakistan a cointegration analysis using the framework of an endogenous growth model this study empirically analyses the relationship between trade policies and industrial growth in pakistan during the period 1973 1995 the cointegration and error correction modelling approaches have been applied the empirical results suggest that there exists a unique long run relationship among the aggregate growth function of industrial value added and its major determinants of the real capital stock the labour force real exports the import tariff collection rate and the secondary school enrolment ratio the short term dynamic behaviour of pakistan s growth function of industrial value added has been investigated by estimating an error correction model in which the error correction term has been found to be correctly signed and statistically significant

the future of the feed in tariff fit scheme in europe the case of photovoltaics abstract the key objective of this study is the examination of the regulatory and policy framework of the feed in tariff fit scheme specifically its effect on both the electricity pricing as well as the local and european renewable energy sources res market and accordingly the definition of its feasibility as a scheme for the further development and promotion of renewable energy technologies rets this work discusses the fit scheme implementation for photovoltaics pvs in four case study countries denmark germany cyprus and spain a model describing the conditions under which a fit scheme is led to collapse is also introduced and a parametric analysis towards revealing the sensitivity of the different parameters affecting it is delivered the study concludes with significant policy implications that should be considered for future implementation of the scheme for the prevention of the collapse of the scheme the tariff s value ought to be determined by each country s government based on a set of influencing factors including the operational capital and investment costs of each ret the standard cost of renewable energy re generation and the avoidance cost which would be regularly reviewed depending on the excess of the annual capacity

the j curve and nafta evidence from commodity trade between the us and mexico the north american free trade agreement nafta was predicted to have a substantial impact on the us mexico trade especially on specific importing and exporting industries in this article we use annual industry level export and import data from 1962 to 2004 to discern both the short and long run effects of real exchange rate depreciation on the mexico us trade balance as well as the effects of nafta on this trade we find that peso depreciation has a positive long run effect on 24 of 102 mexican industries and a negative short run effect on 19 of 102 industries only a small fraction 7 of 102 industries show any support for the j curve hypothesis nafta has had a significant effect on a significant number of the industries however

intercourse across economic growth trade and renewable energy consumption in developing and developed countries abstract this article exploits a dynamic simultaneous equation panel data approach to research the bond across economic growth renewable sort of energy and trade for information of 72 countries since 1990 until 2012 we likewise analyze this relationship by separating all countries into three groups as per the level of development whole developing high income developing upper middle income developing lower middle income developing lower income developing developed major developed and others developed countries the outcomes demonstrate a feedback linkage between income and renewable energy consumption between trade and renewable energy consumption and between trade and income this implies that the three variables considered are interdependent

causality between exports and economic growth abstract this paper utilizes granger causality tests in investigating the relationship between exports and national income from a consistent data set for 47 developing countries in africa new empirical results as well as suggestions for future research are presented

renewable energy certificate markets in india a review abstract in india the national action policy on climate change napcc 1 has set a target of 15 of electricity via renewable energy sources by 2020 to reach these ambitious targets in march 2011 the government of india launched the renewable energy certificates rec a market based mechanism to drive renewable energy development and spur further investments however a look into the actual performance of rec market trading during the first year of operation shows that though volume of trading steadily increased the number of accredited certificates issued was less than 2 5 of the technical rec demand potential indicating that the full potential of the rec markets was far from being realized we critically examine the design and implementation of the rec market in india as well as its effectiveness in meeting the desired objectives in the context of international best practices our analysis of rec market best practices reveals that though forward markets banking and price bounds are recommended for stable markets best of class methods for determining the optimal length of banking the level of floor and forbearance prices and the values of credit vintage multipliers are not fully established we then establish that the main issues with the indian rec markets appear to be demand uncertainty resulting from lack of long term targets absence of clarity on compliance and near absence of long term price signals to investors finally we present an analysis of other important features of the indian rec market in the context of well functioning rec markets such as credit multipliers set asides vintage multipliers and voluntary markets 2013 elsevier ltd

competition and teacher pay i introduction recent policy initiatives are increasing the degree of competition in primary and secondary education the number of charter schools is growing at an astounding rate vouchers are available to eligible children in florida utah and a number of cities including washington d c kafer 2005 school districts throughout the country are experimenting with subcontracting campuses to private firms the increasing popularity of policies that foster school competition dovetails with a burgeoning literature on the effects of educational competition researchers have examined the effects of educational competition on academic outcomes average public school spending and school district efficiency l this research has largely ignored the effects of increased competition on teacher pay yet reductions in the market power of school districts could have a significant impact on teacher earnings if school districts behave as typical monopsonists or oligopsonists when hiring then a lack of competition suppresses wages and policies that are designed to enhance competition among schools could lead to higher teacher salaries ceteris paribus 2 alternatively if a school district s position as a monopolistic provider of education services generates economic rents there are few parties to whom those rents might be dissipated besides school district personnel if teachers have been able to appropriate a share of the economic rents generated by the market power of school districts then increased competition could lower teacher salaries 3 this study uses individual data on more than 335 000 teachers from 670 texas school districts to explore the empirical relationship between competition and teacher pay the analysis suggests that a lack of competition in the public school system has led to significant market power for texas school districts resulting in lower wages for most texas teachers but higher wages for teachers in relatively concentrated markets ii theoretical models the elementary and secondary education industry in the united states is often highly concentrated more than 30 of u s educational markets are served by a single public school district and there are many more that are served by only a handful of educational providers 4 the concentrated nature of education markets suggests two alternative models of teacher wage determination the first is a classic oligopsony model and the second is a rent sharing model an oligopsony model of teacher wage determination boal and ransom 1997 lay out a classic cournot model of oligopsony that can be directly applied to the educational labor market 5 firms school districts choose an employment level l sub i to maximize the firm s revenue function r sub i given the employment level of all other firms in the market l sub i 1 r sub i l sub i w l sub i l sub i l sub i the market wage is determined by the total employment of all firms the first order condition for each firm implies that it chooses l sub i such that 2 mrp sub i w w l sub i l epsilon sup 1 in this model the gap between the marginal revenue product of firm i mrp sub i and the wage rate w depends on the firm s employment share l sub i l and the inverse wage elasticity of labor supply for the market epsilon sup 1 6 assuming that firms have different marginal revenue products the employment weighted average across all the firms in the market is 3 summation over i mrp sub i w l sub i wl epsilon sup 1 summation over i l sub i l sup 2 the last term on the right hand side is the familiar herfindahl index of market concentration thus wages are a function of market concentration h the employment weighted average marginal revenue profit per worker bar

outsourcing labor market pooling and labor contracts this paper considers the interaction between input sharing and labor market pooling in urban areas in particular it examines the impact of the size of a city and business risks on the organizational structures of firms located in urban agglomerations and it also discusses the impact of organizational structure on incentives to insure workers against income risks it is shown that manufacturing firms suffer from a coordination game in their decision to outsource production the existence of idiosyncratic risks causes manufacturers to refrain from outsourcing the incentives to offer wage and employment protection to workers are more pronounced when manufacturers outsource the production of their inputs to a local market which mitigates the impact of labor market pooling

government and economic growth in the less developed countries an empirical study for 1960 1980 adam smith founded modern economics with a powerful argument that free markets are the best route to prosperity and economic growth his conclusion has been studied and debated by economists ever since including nobel prize winners friedman hayek kuznets lewis myrdal and schultz whatever economists have concluded since world war ii the majority of the less developed countries seem to have opted for extensive government regulation of the private sector and for a large public sector has the large government role slowed or accelerated the growth of ldcs obviously this is an important issue this study looks at government expenditure revenue raising and regulation greater emphasis is put on expenditure because 1 the revenue raised is presumably a function of the level of expenditure and 2 there are few internationally comparable measures of regulation there are virtually no empirical studies of the general impact of government on economic growth an extensive literature search turned up only three papers gemmell analyzed the impact of nonmarket sector growth on various measures of macroeconomic performance for 27 ldcs and developed countries for 1960 and 1970 he drew no general conclusions about the relation between the size of the nonmarket sector and economic growth marsden found a negative relation between tax gdp ratios and economic growth for a cross section of 20 ldcs and developed countries for the 1970 79 period 2 i found a negative relationship between the share of government consumption expenditure in gdp and the growth of per capita gdp for a cross section of 96 ldcs and developed countries over various time periods between 1961 and 1976 3 this paper extends the approach used in my 1983 article

how sensitive is commodity trade flows between us and india to currency depreciation previous studies that investigated the impact of real depreciation of the rupee on indian trade balance used aggregate trade data and provided no support for real depreciation to be effective in improving india s trade balance in this article we disaggregate the indian trade data by commodity and consider the sensitivity of each industry s inpayments export value and outpayments import value to real rupee dollar exchange rate annual data over the period of 1962 to 2004 from 40 industries that trade between the two countries as well as bounds testing approach are used to show that while in half of the industries real depreciation of rupee has short run effects on inpayments and outpayments the short run effects do not last into the long run in majority of the cases

solar feed in tariffs and the merit order effect a study of the german electricity market abstract this study investigates the merit order effect moe of the recent years implementation of solar power in germany market clearing electricity prices and production levels are compared for the years 2009 2011 and a model for the relationship between the electricity price and price sensitive electricity production is developed and applied to predict electricity prices in germany from july 2010 to july 2011 with and without solar electricity generation seg the results show that the seg has caused a 7 reduction in average electricity prices for this period the average daily maximum price and daily price variation are also found to decrease by 13 and 23 respectively when taking the moe into account the net consumer s cost of the solar feed in tariff fit system is found to be 23 less than the charge listed in the electricity bill the german fit policy for solar power has been subject to considerable public debate and a common argument brought up in disfavor of the system is the high cost for the consumers in this study we demonstrate the importance of including the moe when evaluating the total costs and benefits of the fit policy mechanism

car ownership and the labor market of ethnic minorities we show how initial wealth differences between low skilled minorities and white workers can generate differences in their labor market outcomes this even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against ethnic minorities or exogenous differences in distance to jobs because of the initial wealth difference minorities cannot afford to buy a car while whites can car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time which gives them a better bargaining position in the labor market as a result in equilibrium ethnic minorities end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites furthermore we also show that it takes more time for minorities to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles when employed those predictions are consistent with the data better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes

social welfare and income inequality in a system of cities abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of a system of core periphery cities to examine the main determinants of intra and inter regional income disparities the economy is populated by a continuum of homogeneous unskilled and heterogeneous skilled workers unskilled workers whose wages are determined competitively specialize in food production in local cities skilled workers whose wages are determined according to a nash bargain manufacture a high tech commodity in the metropolis we establish conditions under which this core periphery equilibrium spatial configuration emerges we show that both intra and inter regional income disparities are present the determinants of each type of disparity and the social welfare implications are fully investigated our results suggest that public policy programs that improve income equality may not be necessarily welfare enhancing

trade orientation and macroeconomic performance in ldcs an empirical study there exist several cross country studies that seek to establish the superiority of export oriented policies eops over import substitution policies isps with few exceptions these studies use growth rates of exports as proxies for trade policies on the assumption that eops lead to higher rates of export growth 2 a positive correlation between export growth and output growth is then interpreted as evidence of the superiority of eops over isps in studies using a production function framework a positive association between export growth sometimes weighted by export shares and output growth is taken to imply a positive contribution of eops to growth of total factor productivity 3 while results of these studies are frequently cited in the literature j bhagwati has pointed out that they do not bear directly on the question whether the ep export promotion strategy is productive of more growth because the incentive related ep strategy is not the one used to examine the question of income or growth performance it is necessary to identify whether the superior export growth rates or higher export magnitudes belong to the ep countries 4 it should be pointed out here that cross country studies occasionally do refer to evidence in support of their use of export growth rates as proxies for trade policies one such study by j b donges and j riedel based on a time series analysis of 12 countries found partial support for such a relationship in four of the countries the shift toward eop was attended by a decline in the trend rate of export growth and for a fifth country the positive shift in export growth was statistically insignificant 5 similar results were obtained by b balassa for an overlapping group of countries 6 while these studies suggest a connection between trade policies and export growth over time for individual countries they do not constitute evidence of such a connection across

endogenous job destruction and job matching in cities we propose a spatial search matching model where both job creation and job destruction are endogenous workers are ex ante identical but not ex post since their jobs can be hit by a technological shock which decreases their productivity they reside in a city and commuting to the job center involves both pecuniary and time costs as a result workers with high wages are willing to live closer to jobs to save on time commuting costs we show that in equilibrium there is a one to one correspondence between the productivity space and the urban location space workers with high productivities and wages reside close to jobs have low per distance commuting costs and pay high land rents we also show that higher per distance commuting costs and higher unemployment benefits lead to more job destruction

how urbanization affect employment and social interactions we develop a model where the unemployed workers in the city can find a job either directly or through weak or strong ties we show that in denser areas individuals choose to interact with more people and meet more random encounters weak ties than in sparsely populated areas we also demonstrate that for a low urbanization level there is a unique steady state equilibrium where workers do not interact with weak ties while for a high level of urbanization there is a unique steady state equilibrium with full social interactions we show that these equilibria are usually not socially efficient when the urban population has an intermediate size because there are too few social interactions compared to the social optimum finally even when social interactions are optimal we show that there is over urbanization in equilibrium

trade policy and growth of developing countries some new data abstract the present study provides empirical evidence on trade policy and economic growth of developing countries our data indicate that adverse changes in world demand carried greater weight in determining export performance than changes in trade policy the results presented confirm that high growth rates of export earnings occur only when external demand to strong low income countries are shown to fare worse across all time periods though there are regional variations these are not due solely to differences in trade policy thus an outward oriented policy is not necessarily a valid policy recommendation for all conditions and all countries

the role of regulatory uncertainty in certificate markets a case study of the swedish norwegian market abstract price volatility in green certificate markets reflects uncertainty over future prices representing a major source of risk for renewable energy generators price risk is considered the principal deficiency of this market based policy since it causes investors to require higher returns moreover investors are exposed to regulatory risk namely the risk that a change in the regulation will materially impact the certificate price regulatory uncertainty is reflected in market volatility exacerbating certificate price risk using an econometric approach we investigate the role of regulatory changes on price volatility in the swedish certificate market the results of our analysis indicate that regulatory changes strongly affect certificate markets resulting in periods of higher volatility moreover we analyze whether certificate price volatility has changed after creating a joint swedish norwegian market results indicate that the ambivalence surrounding the creation of this bigger market led to a period of increased price volatility between 2010 and 2011 overall this article brings a better understanding of the role of regulatory uncertainty on certificate markets and gives evidence for its negative impact in terms of increased price volatility

the j curve evidence from commodity trade between uk and china in testing the short run j curve effect and the long run effects of currency depreciation on the trade balance many researchers have used either trade data between one country and the rest of the world or between one country and another trading partner both groups are said to suffer from aggregation bias to reduce the bias in this article we consider trade data between one country the us and her trading partner china disaggregated by commodity we use imports and exports of 88 industries 2 digit and 3 digit classifications and cointegration analysis to show that the trade balance of at least 34 of the industries react favourably to real depreciation of the dollar the j curve effect is detected in 22 industries furthermore most of these industries that are sensitive to currency depreciation are durable commodity groupings

monopsony in the labor market this paper surveys recent theoretical and empirical research on monopsony in labor markets broadly defined as upward sloping labor supply to an employer we compare older monopsony models based on small numbers of employers with newer models based on labor market frictions such as moving costs and search we also compare older econometric approaches that focus on static wage concentration relationships with newer approaches that focus on dynamics our review of empirical estimates suggests that monopsony power based on small numbers of employers is probably rare but occasionally large while monopsony power based on frictions is probably widespread but small on average

local labor markets job matching and urban location we present a new way of modeling local labor markets by linking the space of workers skills and the physical space of cities the key lesson of our analysis is that firms exploit workers in these two spaces by setting wages that are below the competitive level the degree of monopsony power depends on the elasticity of the firm s labor pool which is inversely related to the costs workers incur in commuting and acquiring skills our analysis thus shows how socioeconomic ghettos emerge as workers with poor skill matches are also those who incur the highest commuting costs

search in cities the aim of this paper is to expose the recent developments of urban search models which incorporate a land market into a search matching framework using these models we will be able to explain why unemployment rates vary within a city how city structure affects workers labor market outcomes how unemployment benefits and the job destruction rate affect the growth of cities and why workers living far away from job centers search less intensively and experience higher unemployment rates than those residing closer to jobs we are also able to explain why as compared to whites black workers spend more time commuting to work but travel less miles and search for jobs over a smaller area

comparing the feed in tariff incentives for renewable electricity in ontario and germany the development of feed in tariff fit programs to support green electricity in ontario the green energy and green economy act of 2009 and germany the erneuerbare energien gesetz of 2000 is compared the two policies are highly comparable offering similar rates for most renewable electricity technologies major differences between the policies include the level of differentiation found in the german policy as well as the use of a price degression strategy for fit rates in germany compared to an escalation strategy in ontario the german renewable electricity portfolio is relatively balanced compared to ontario where wind power dominates the portfolio at the federal level canada does not yet have a policy similar to the european directive on renewable energy and this lack may impact decisions taken by manufacturers of renewable technologies who consider establishing operations in the province ontario s green energy and green economy act could be benefit from lessons in the german system especially with regard to degression of feed in tariff rates over time which could significantly reduce payments to producers over the course of a contract and in turn encourage greater competitiveness among renewable power providers in the future

trends in the terms of trade of primary commodities 1900 1982 the controversy and its origins primary commodity markets have offered an opportunity for much economic debate on a number of key issues first secularly declining terms of trade of primary commodities are used to explain the widening gap between developing ldcs and developed countries dcs second they are regarded as a contributing factor to the creation of a structural condition of unequal exchange between a dominating industrial center and a dominated agrarian periphery and third they are thought to be a source of instability often causing financial vulnerability to foreign exchange equilibria and fragility to international market institutions

private versus public schools in post apartheid south african cities theory and policy implications blacks and whites have different incomes decide where to locate in the city and which school to send their children to we show that despite the tuition fees imposed by whites and their remote location some black pupils attend the private school this market solution is shown not to be optimal because whites overprice education in order to limit black attendance at the private school three types of education policies are then considered transportation subsidies private school vouchers and public school spending the efficiency of such policies depends on the fee setting behavior of whites that strongly varies from one policy to another

labor specialization and the extent of the market this paper presents an analytical model of labor specialization workers make human capital investment decisions on the depth and the breadth of their skill given that firms have diverse job requirements and increasing returns to scale workers invest more for the depth of their human capital and less for the breadth as the size of the labor market increases also the larger the size of the market the more varieties of job requirements are used so that the average match between a worker and a firm improves

exports as a factor of production a consistency test abstract for more than a decade economists have routinely introduced an export growth variable into a crosscountry production function framework as a way of examining various aspects of the growth process in developing countries the export promotion hypothesis in particular while the authors of these studies have rejected the argument that their results are biased by the accounting relationship between exports and gdp some recent studies offer evidence supporting this contention here a simple procedure is proposed to test for this bias the procedure consists of testing directly for the implied lower productivity in the nonexport sector of the economy

monopsony power pay structure and training although interest in monopsonistic influences on labor market outcomes has revived in recent years only a few empirical studies provide direct evidence on this topic in this article the authors analyze the effect of monopsony power on pay structure using a direct measure of labor market thinness the authors find evidence of monopsony power as firms facing fewer local competitors offer lower wages to skilled labor and trainees but not to unskilled labor the findings have important implications for the economic theory of training as most recent models assume monopsonistic pay setting for skilled labor but not for trainees

are tradable green certificates a cost efficient policy driving technical change or a rent generating machine lessons from sweden 2003 2008 in the european policy debate tradable green certificates tgc have been suggested to be a superior regulatory framework for promoting the diffusion of renewable electricity technologies the purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of the swedish tgc system contributing to the european debate on the suitability of different types of frameworks the expectations of the tgc system were that it would a be effective in terms of increasing the supply of green electricity b do this in a cost effective manner from both a social and a consumer perspective c generate an equitable distribution of costs and benefits and d drive technical change so far it has performed adequately in terms of effectiveness and social cost effectiveness however consumer costs have been substantially higher than expected very large rents are generated and at best it contributes marginally to technical change thus a tgc framework should be selected if the overriding concern is to minimize short term social costs of reaching a certain goal with a high degree of predictability however it cannot be expected to also drive technical change keep consumer costs down and be equitable such trade offs need to be revealed and not obscured by analysts

on the impact of trade openness on growth further evidence from oecd countries this study attempts to examine empirically the implications of the degree of openness for total and individual factor productivity growth in a group of 19 oecd countries over the last three decades the study combines both time series and cross sectional data the model employed is a generalization of the commonly used growth accounting model based on the concept of an aggregate production function in which the rate of economic growth is a function of capital and labour accumulation and total factor productivity it is explicitly assumed that total factor productivity depends in turn upon the rate of export expansion the model is then estimated using the random coefficients approach while results generally indicate that the relative importance of trade openness on economic growth varies significantly across countries they also indicate that the role of capital and labour accumulation in fostering economic growth varies with the degree of openness cross sectionally as well as across time

natural gas in cyprus the need for consolidated planning abstract the electricity supply system of cyprus is currently dominated by oil fired generation with small but increasing contributions from renewable energy technologies as regulations regarding emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants will become stricter with the turn of the decade change is imminent available offshore gas reserves and the possibility of natural gas imports have shown that the substitution of oil with gas can reasonably be expected in the not so distant future however the framework under which change could occur has not yet been established should imports of gas serve as a short term bridge until domestic gas becomes available what are the infrastructure implications associated with such a medium term solution how does a policy driven transition to gas affect energy security and how compatible is this with a liberalized electricity market can short and longer term strategies be consistently designed and implemented a cost optimization model osemosys representing the electricity system of the island is used to provide insights to these questions results regarding generation mix capacity and system costs are presented for a set of scenarios in all cases investigated compliance with environmental regulations of the european union after 2020 makes gas the strategic fuel of choice for low cost electricity generation

the renewable energy market in brazil current status and potential abstract renewable energy offers a range of options with which to meet the growing demand for energy particularly in the context of the pursuit especially in developing countries of economic development which takes into account social and environmental issues brazil has abundant natural sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar power hydraulic energy small hydroelectric plants ethanol and bio diesel these sources form part of the brazilian strategy aimed at satisfying the demand for 6300 mw of fresh capacity per year arising out of projected economic growth of 5 1 per year over the next 10 years renewable energy sources currently provide 47 2 of the internal supply of primary energy in brazil brazil has been pursuing a strategy of maintaining its renewable energy matrix and developing and providing incentives for further low carbon initiatives in this study we set out an overview of the renewable energy options available in brazil their current status the main positive results obtained to date and future potential we describe the market for renewable energy in brazil and examine specific public policies aimed at overcoming barriers to this market thereby promoting its consolidation and expansion