modeling household cooking fuel choice a panel multinomial logit approach we use three rounds of a rich panel data set to investigate the determinants of household cooking fuel choice and energy transition in urban ethiopia we observe that the expected energy transition did not occur following economic growth in ethiopia during the decade 20002009 regression results from a random eects multinomial logit model suggest that households economic status price of alternative energy sources and education are important determinants of fuel choice in urban ethiopia the results also suggest the use of multiple fuels or fuel stacking behavior by households we argue that policy makers could target these policy levers to encourage transition to cleaner energy sources

country level analysis of household fuel transitions abstract solid fuel combustion remains a dominant energy source for household heating and cooking in less developed countries as a result almost three billion people are exposed to household air pollution causing four million premature deaths annually primarily among poor women and children we analyze data from demographic and health surveys in 69 countries to identify determinants of transition from solid to cleaner fuel estimates from a population averaged linear model show that population density and size rural population share income inequality and charcoal production are positively associated with countries solid fuel use while gdp per capita electricity and natural gas production have the opposite effect economic development measured as gdp per capita has the strongest link to solid fuel use a standard deviation increase in per capita gdp above its mean reduces solid fuel use from 70 to 57 of households electricity production is another strong predictor solid fuel use drops by 11 when electricity production increases by one standard deviation above the mean in addition in a fixed effects linear model population size has a positive association with solid fuel use while increases in gdp per capita and the number of governments renewable energy incentives are associated with lower dependence on solid fuels

special remedies for special causes involuntary unemployment in keynes political writings this paper analyses the proposals keynes made in his political writings regarding unemployment extending arguments made in the general theory the first issue is the relevance of voluntary unemployment to an understanding of keynes views on structural unemployment the second issue is the connection between on the one hand keynes argument in favour of public works state planning and more generally the socialisation of investment and on the other the analysis of involuntary unemployment made in the general theory emphasis is placed on long term pessimistic expectations and on the market valuation of capital assets copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

unequal treatment of identical agents in cournot equilibrium oligopoly models where prior actions by firms affect subsequent marginal costs have been useful in illuminating policy debates in areas such as antitrust regulation environmental protection and international competition we discuss properties of such models when a cournot equilibrium occurs at the second stage aggregate production costs strictly decline with no change in gross revenue or gross consumer surplus if the prior actions strictly increase the variance of marginal costs without changing the marginal cost sum therefore unless the cost of inducing second stage asymmetry more than offsets this reduction in production costs the private and social optima are asymmetric

horizontalism a critique this article offers a critique of the horizontalist view of money that banks are passive in the face of credit demand it is argued that banks liquidity preference influences their responsiveness to the demand for credit their liquidity preference is expressed in risk assessment understood in terms of john maynard keynes s theory of uncertainty it is argued that rationing in the sense of adverse changes in risk assessment occurs systematically in the downturn of the business cycle systematic rationing also occurs with respect to particular classes of borrowers the focus here is on the case of small firms c 1996 academic press limited copyright 1996 by oxford university press

rural electrification in developing countries abstract rural electrification programmes take up significant proportions of energy investment expenditures in developing economies conventional economic criteria for judging investments are not always thought appropriate for rural electrification because of the largely non quantifiable benefits that are thought to ensue including its bias towards helping the poor its catalytic role in stimulating rural development its role in reducing the adverse consequences of rural urban migration and the enabling of improved literacy rates and its general contribution to political stability this paper looks at each of these benefits in turn and asks what evidence there is to substantiate them the paper argues that conventional rate of return criteria should play a stronger role in determining rural electrification expenditures and that some of the non monetary benefits appear neither to be widespread nor as strong as supporters of rural electricity suggest while rural electrification is nonetheless important in the development process it is more usefully integrated into wider rural energy development schemes

horizontal mergers with free entry abstract we consider the impact of horizontal mergers in the presence of free entry and exit in contrast to much of the previous literature on mergers our model yields predictions that seem intuitively reasonable with only moderate cost synergies mergers of a small number of industry participants are beneficial even under quantity competition there is no free rider problem in that insiders always benefit more than outsiders and quantity setting and price setting games yield similar predictions about profitability we also derive two welfare results that hold under quantity competition with homogeneous goods if the initial no merger equilibrium is symmetric then with free entry 1 a horizontal merger has no impact on the equilibrium price and 2 all privately beneficial mergers are socially beneficial

evaluating the relative strength of product specific factors in fuel switching and stove choice decisions in ethiopia a discrete choice model of household preferences for clean cooking alternatives switching from conventional stoves to modern clean safe and efficient stoves will improve health and social welfare for the 2 7 billion people worldwide that lack reliable access to modern energy services in this paper we critically review some key theoretical dimensions of household consumer behaviour in switching from traditional biomass cooking stoves to modern efficient stoves and fuels we then describe the results of empirical research investigating the determinants of stove choice focusing on the relative strength of product specific factors across three wealth groups a stated preference survey and discrete choice model were developed to understand household decision making associated with cooking stove choice in addis ababa ethiopia the study found that with the exception of price and usage cost factors for the high wealth group the product specific factors that were investigated significantly affect stove and fuel choices the relative strength of factors was assessed in terms of marginal willingness to pay and provides some evidence that consumer preference for higher quality fuels and stoves tends to increase with increasing wealth

economic and demographic determinants of household energy use in turkey this paper analyzes several economic and socio demographic factors which affect households energy choices in turkey the data is obtained from the household budget surveys hbs conducted by the turkish statistics institute tuik the multinomial logit model is used to identify households energy choices the most important finding of the study is that monthly income of households or household welfare in general has significant effect on energy choices it is also important to note that ages of persons have influence on energy choices indeed health concerns easiness in use was found as criteria referred to particularly by household heads at age 50 and over when making energy choices as far as settlements are concerned the most salient characteristic of urban dwellers vis a vis rural dwellers is their dominant preference for natural gas while rural dwellers have their choice for more conventional fuels

more heat and light abstract one hundred years before the advent of modern power systems william blake in the marriage of heaven and hell argued with the devil asserting that energy is eternal delight that delight however remains beyond the reach of the two to three billion of people disadvantaged by a lack of modern energy services a number that has remained relatively unchanged over recent decades this is arguably the most disturbing of insights from an examination of global energy use trends and a simple clear justification for a political prioritisation of the issue it is widely accepted that a lack of access to energy services is a fundamental hindrance to human social and economic development addressing it comprehensively would have enormous multiple benefits however current efforts are woefully insufficient in scale scope and design and attempting to address the issue solely as part of wider poverty reduction policies is likely to be sub optimal we discuss energy policy with a focus on energy security as an effective vehicle for large scale action in providing modern clean energy services to this end we outline specific and limited examples of where international cooperation could play a role supporting national actions and ensuring universal access

agency theory and franchising some empirical results this article provides an empirical assessment of various agency theoretic explanations for franchising including risk sharing one sided moral hazard and two sided moral hazard the empirical models use proxies for factors such as risk moral hazard and franchisors need for capital to explain both franchisors decisions about the terms of their contracts royalty rates and up front franchise fees and the extent to which they use franchising in this article i exploit several new sources of data on franchising to construct a cross section of 548 franchisors involved in various business activities in the united states in 1986 the data are most consistent with a model based on two sided moral hazard the empirical models are also more successful at explaining the extent to which franchisors choose to franchise stores than at explaining the terms of franchise contracts finally contrary to the predictions of several theoretical models i find that royalty rates and franchise fees are not negatively related

multidivisional firms internal competition and the merger paradox traditional modelling of mergers has the merged firms insiders cooperate and maximize joint profits this approach has several unappealing results in quantity setting games for example mergers typically are not profitable for insiders but are profitable for non merging firms outsiders we take a different approach and allow for a parent company that can play each insider off one another in quantity setting games with our approach mergers are profitable for insiders unprofitable for outsiders socially beneficial and involve in a non monopolizing merger a small number of firms finally we find that the optimal strategy depends on whether firms compete in quantity or prices jel classification l000 entreprises multi divisionnelles concurrence interne et le paradoxe des fusions les modelisations conventionnelles des fusions suggerent que les entreprises fusionnees parties prenantes cooperent et maximisent leurs profits conjoints cette approche engendre plusieurs resultats contre intuitifs dans des jeux de concurrence par les quantites i e les fusions en general ne sont pas profitables pour les parties prenantes mais sont profitables pour des entreprises qui ne sont pas fusionnees les autres les auteurs adoptent une approche differente qui permet a l entreprise mere de jouer les parties prenantes l une contre l autre dans ce genre de jeu avec l approche adoptee les fusions sont profitables pour les parties prenantes non profitables pour les autres socialement benefiques et impliquent un petit nombre d entreprises dans une fusion qui ne cree pas un monopole finalement on trouve que la strategie optimale depend fondamentalement du fait que les entreprises se concurrencent par les prix ou par les quantites

factors underlying rural household energy transition a case study of china abstract this paper identifies factors underlying the energy transition of rural households in china based on province level panel data for years of 1991 2014 it indicates that there exists the energy stacking process of rural household energy transition characterized by the significant consumption inertia effects of traditional biomass energy tbe traditional commercial energy tce and advanced commercial energy ace respectively the insignificant substitution effect of tce and ace for tbe and the significant partial substitution of ace for tce with regard to the factors underlying rural household energy transition 1 per capita disposal income is negatively correlated with tbe tce and ace consumption 2 the number of motorcycles is positively correlated with tce and ace consumption 3 the number of firewood saving stoves and the price for ace are positively correlated with tbe consumption 4 household size and the number of motorcycles and the number of appliances are positively correlated with ace consumption 5 education level is positively correlated with tbe but negatively with tce consumption 6 the number of rural energy management institutions is positively correlated with tbe but negatively correlated ace consumption therefore some policy implications are discussed

are the energy poor also income poor evidence from india abstract the energy poverty line is defined as the threshold point at which energy consumption begins to rise with increases in household income this approach is applied to cross sectional data from a comprehensive 2005 household survey representative of both urban and rural india the objective is to determine if the energy poor are also income poor and whether and how energy policies help reduce energy poverty independent of income the findings suggest that in rural areas some 57 of households are energy poor versus 22 that are income poor but in urban areas the energy poverty rate is 28 compared to 20 that are income poor that is energy policies are expected to play some roles in mitigating energy poverty we find that reducing energy poverty requires not only support for rural electrification but also more use of modern cooking fuels such as lpg while income growth matters a combination of energy related programs can play an independent and substantial role in reducing energy poverty

cooperative r d and strategic trade policy in this paper three different cooperative r d arrangements in a strategic trade policy model are examined a policy game between two governments is analysed where each government chooses a particular cooperative r d policy in order to maximize national welfare allowing cooperation in r d is also compared with the use of r d subsidies it is jointly optimal for both governments to allow their firms to participate in the same type of cooperative r d and allowing cooperation in r d can

the limits of monopolization through acquisition we address the question of whether competitive acquisition of firms by their rivals can result in complete or partial monopolization of a homogeneous product industry this question is modeled in terms of two distinct three stage noncoopera tive games analysis of subgame perfect pure strategy nash equilibria of these games discloses that under simplifying assumptions monopolization of an industry through acquisition is limited to industries with relatively few firms partial monopolization is either limited in scope or can be completely eliminated by prohibiting any owner from acquiring over 50 percent of the firms in the industry

household fuel use in developing countries review of theory and evidence because of recent concerns about the negative externalities of traditional fuel use on the environment and health the issue of the household fuel transition in developing countries from dirty fuels towards clean fuels has received growing research attention this paper provides an up to date survey of the economic literature on household fuel use in these countries first we present the conceptual and theoretical frameworks then we discuss the empirical results that show how a wide range of factors drive the household fuel transition finally we suggest priorities for policy initiatives and highlight areas of future research

startup costs and the decision to switch from firewood to gas fuel firewood remains a key source of energy for households in developing countries contributing to forest degradation and deforestation the adoption of alternative fuels may be hindered by high startup costs and this problem may be compounded by restrictions in credit availability we use survey data to examine how credit access affects firewood consumption in guatemala our results suggest that access to credit plays a statistically significant role in determining firewood consumption through its effect on the ability to purchase a gas stove however simulations suggest that these effects are small and that subsidizing stoves would be amore promising policy for reducing firewood consumption

union bargaining power subcontracting and innovation we show that if a firm can subcontract production to an informal sector an increase in union power may either increase or decrease innovation an increase in union power makes the firm worse off irrespective of its effect on innovation however in contrast to the usual belief an increase in union power may increase consumer surplus and decrease union utility by affecting innovation thus suggesting that a union may not want to be too powerful an increase in union power may create an ambiguous effect on social welfare our analysis provides new insights to the relation between union power and innovation

the unequal benefits of fuel subsidies a review of evidence for developing countries summary this paper reviews evidence on the impact of fuel subsidy reform on household welfare in developing countries on average the burden of subsidy reform is substantial and is approximately neutrally distributed across income groups a 0 25 decrease in the per liter subsidy results in a 5 decrease in income for all groups more than half of this impact arises from the indirect impact on prices of other goods and services consumed by households fuel subsidies are a costly approach to protecting the poor due to substantial benefit leakage to higher income groups in absolute terms the top income quintile captures six times more in subsidies than the bottom

divisionalization franchising and divestiture incentives in oligopoly a two stage game is used to model firms strategic incentives to divide production among autonomous competing units through divisionalization franchising or divestiture firms simultaneously choose their number of competing units which then engage in cournot competition while it is costly to form autonomous units each firm does so in equilibrium thus reducing firm profits and increasing social welfare relative to the case where firms cannot form competing units with linear demand and costs duopolists choose the socially optimal number of competing units oligopolies with larger numbers of firms choose too many the case of nonlinear demand is also examined copyright 1996 by american economic association

effect of fuelwood scarcity and socio economic factors on household bio based energy use and energy substitution in rural ethiopia abstract in ethiopia biomass is predominantly utilized for household energy needs often using inefficient rudimentary stoves which cause adverse environmental and welfare effects this paper examined the contribution of biomass resources to rural household energy use and energy substitution the analysis applied the ordinary least square in the final stage estimation of fuelwood and overall biomass energy consumption by using predicted shadow prices the paper used tobit model to estimate charcoal and agricultural fuel consumption due to the presence of censoring an increase in fuelwood shadow price was associated with reduced household fuelwood consumption with price elasticity of 0 38 the cross price elasticity between fuelwood and agricultural fuels revealed no evidence of energy substitution which conforms to the findings of previous studies household access to electricity was associated with lower household biomass energy utilization but kerosene was not fuelwood substitute household energy use conformed to the fuel stacking or multiple fuel use concept but households preferred modern energy options as welfare increased in areas where modern energy is available this suggests that there is a promising prospect for fuel transition but access to modern energy and economic growth have key roles the findings suggest that a concerted policy effort is required that would help diversify rural livelihoods improve living standards and encourage economic growth encourage inter fuel substitution through improved modern energy access and afforestation to increase biomass supply

retail contracting theory and practice we summarize a number of regularities that arise in the empirical literature on contractual relationships between manufacturers and their exclusive resellers we do this using studies of traditional and business format franchise relationships as well as studies of salesforce integration decisions some of the patterns that we uncover are consistent with a standard incentive cum insurance theory of organization while others are not we brie y review some theoretical extensions that seem promising in terms of reconciling seeming con icts between theory and practice i introduction manufacturers of retail products must decide whether to sell their products to consumers themselves vertical integration or to sell via independent retailers vertical separation when manufacturers do not perform the sales function internally but want exclusive retailers they usually choose some form of franchising 1 many theories attempt to explain the choice of retail organizational form moreover a considerable body of empirical evidence concerning this choice is accumulating we attempt to evaluate this econometric evidence and relate it to the theories to accomplish this task we assess studies of franchising arrangements as well as studies of sales force organization in industrial settings the paper is organized as follows in the next section we highlight a number of regularities that arise in the empirical literature on retail contracting in particular we nd that i risk is positively related to the use of high powered incentives vertical separation ii the importance of the agent s eiort in production is positively related to the use of high powered incentives

rural household energy consumption the effects of access to electricity evidence from south africa this paper examines household energy consumption patterns in rural areas in the light of energy transition theories in particular the study aims to identify the effects of access to electricity on fuel choice the analysis uses data from an extensive household survey conducted in south africa and examines the prevalence of different fuels energy expenditure the end uses of fuels and multiple fuel use patterns it is concluded that evidence exists for the presence of an energy transition in rural households largely driven by income access to electricity affects the nature of this transition and there is weak evidence to suggest that it accelerates the process

keynes s theory of liquidity preference and his debt management and monetary policies this paper seeks to bolster the view that keynes was a monetary economist concerned primarily with monetary and not fiscal policy his most fundamental policy conclusion for national economies was that the authorities could control the long term rate of interest and should do so to promote investment growth and employment keynes s theory of liquidity preference is presented as a theory of money as a store of value that leads to this fundamental policy conclusion the theory is then applied to explain the debt management monetary and international financial policies that were adopted in world war ii copyright 2006 oxford university press

internal decision making rules and collusion we study the impact of internal decision making structures on the stability of collusive agreements to this end we use a three firm spatial competition model where two firms belong to the same holding company the holding company can decide to set prices itself or to delegate this decision to its local units it is shown that when transportation costs are high collusion is more stable under delegation furthermore collusion with maximum prices is more profitable if price setting is delegated to the local units profitability is reversed for low discount factors

urban fuelwood challenges and dilemmas abstract this paper explores the use of fuelwood in third world cities the importance of fuelwood and the factors which condition its use in cities are set out and three fuelwood problems are identified the cost to urban consumers fuel supply security and the impact of urban fuelwood markets on rural areas urban fuelwood interventions are evaluated with four categories identified interventions in marketing conservation increased wood production and fuel switching of these fuel switching by improved supply systems and increased production from smallholders and better management of natural woodlands appear to have the greatest potential the need for flexibility community participation in planning is stressed

multidivisional firms internal competition and comparative advantage baye et al meet neary abstract we present a tractable general equilibrium model to capture the effects of divisionalization on trade in oligopolistic industries divisionalization reduces the incentives for diversification in production the extensive margins of trade expand as a result of divisionalization facilitating specialization toward the direction of comparative advantage with exports rising in the case of domestic divisionalization and imports rising in the case of foreign divisionalization this effect of internal competition on specialization is magnified when competition between divisions is staggered the factor market effects of divisionalization domestic and or foreign strengthen the expansionary effects on the extensive margins of trade

corporate performance and managerial remuneration an empirical analysis abstract economic theories of efficient compensation predict a positive relationship between executive pay and corporate performance and yet efforts to document this relationship have been largely unsuccessful in this paper we argue that previous cross sectional studies have omitted important variables which seriously bias their results using data that focus on individual executives over time we find that executive compensation is strongly positively related to corporate performance as measured by shareholder return and growth in firm sales the results are robust to the stock market performance measure utilized

who adopts lpg as the main cooking fuel and why empirical evidence on ghana based on national survey the aim of this paper is to identify the factors that influence the probability of adopting lpg as the main cooking fuel in ghana using household level data gleaned from last two nationwide household surveys glss 5 glss 6 using a flexible semi parametric specification the following were uncovered first we find socioeconomic and demographic factors such as income education access to urban infrastructure and location of household as key drivers of households choice of lpg as main cooking energy source again the influences of these factors are stable across time and with a strong price effect the evidence shows that urban households with better socioeconomic and demographic factors are likely to adopt lpg as the main cooking fuel relative to households in rural areas and also urban households with poor socioeconomic and demographic factors finally we observe that the imposition of fully parametric structure functional form prior to estimation on factors such as age of household head income and household size as done in the literature is inappropriate at least in the case of ghana and tend to bias the marginal effects there is strong evidence of variations in the response rate of lpg adoption over the domains of income household size and the age of the household head the results suggest a policy dichotomy between rural and urban dwellers for it to be effective

the loanable funds fallacy exercises in the analysis of disequilibrium this essay analyses the core proposition of loanable funds theory that changes in technology and time preferences directly and immediately affect interest rates applying what may be seen as a generalised financial buffers approach to the analysis of disequilibrium we find that loanable funds theory is flawed and should therefore be abandoned a challenge to the neo walrasian general equilibrium approach to monetary theory remains that of justifying the idea that by some mechanism intertemporal prices correctly reflect technology and time preferences copyright 2001 by oxford university press

divisionalization and strategic managerial incentives in oligopoly under uncertainty abstract this paper argues that divisionalization and incentive contracting are complementary rent shifting tools in the presence of demand uncertainty the role for divisionalization arises if managers know the state of demand prior to making output decisions and if incentive contracts are linear and non state contingent in this context incentive contracts achieve expected stackelberg outcomes but have no impact on the firm s responsiveness to demand shocks divisionalization on the other hand has the strategically beneficial effect of making the firm more responsive to demand shocks

the merger paradox a tournament based solution according to the well known merger paradox in a cournot market game mergers are generally unprofitable unless most firms merge the present paper proposes an optimal merger mechanism with this mechanism mergers are never unprofitable more profitable than in other known mechanism and in many cases welfare increasing the proposed mechanism assumes that merged firms continue to operate as independent subsidiaries that are rewarded according to a simple and commonly observed relative performance measure

whatever happened to keynes s monetary theory some see a return to keynes s ideas in response to the crisis that began in 2007 but we argue that the resurrected ideas belong to that betrayal of keynes s thought known as keynesian economics what happened is almost a reversal of the whig history view of economics in which past knowledge is embodied in later theory keynes has been made a pre keynesian we trace this transformation mainly through his monetary theory though we range more widely where necessary we state what we consider to be his monetary theory then identify and summarise the key contributions to its destruction then in a speculative section we suggest a variety of motivations for this subversion of his ideas we end by assessing what has been lost in particular his monetary policy and suggest social and political pressures that may have been partly responsible

divisionalization and entry deterrence this paper assumes that incumbent firms can create new independent divisions more cheaply than potential entrants who must incur the additional overhead costs of new entry the main theoretical result is that such divisionalization ability leads perfectly informed incumbents to preempt all rational entry into their industries in contrast existing models of entry deterrence imply that informed incumbents even those with steadily decreasing average costs will often allow rational entry our result may explain why successful large scale entry by firms with no informational advantage is extremely rare the use of divisions to preempt entry may also explain why large firms in high profit oligopolies often divisionalize allowing their divisions to compete freely despite the negative pecuniary externality that each division imposes on others

unconventional monetary policy ante litteram richard kahn and the monetary policy debate during the works of the radcliffe committee the appointment of a committee on the working of the monetary system in 1957 radcliffe committee in the uk gave the occasion to debate innovative ideas in the field of monetary policy many prominent economists participated in the committee s works which ended with the publication of the radcliffe report in 1959 making an exception to the rule of not mentioning individual contributions the radcliffe report claims to follow professor kahn in insisting upon the structure of interest rates rather than some notion of the supply of money as the centrepiece of monetary action as we reconstruct in the paper kahn based his proposals on a conceptual framework emphasising the link between inflation wages and aggregate demand and the importance of combining incomes policy and term structure control in view of achieving external equilibrium full employment and price stability one finding of our research is that kahn s recommendations regarding term structure control with their relevance to the present day are best understood in connection with his theory of liquidity preference as presented in kahn 1954 we also find that the radcliffe committee while espousing kahn s policy recommendations surrounded them with so many caveats as to render them de facto inoperative as we suggest in our reconstruction this depends partly on institutional considerations and partly on differences of opinion between kahn and the radcliffe committee regarding monetary policy transmission and the causes of inflation