universal coverage with supply side reform the impact on medical expenditure risk and utilization in thailand abstract we estimate the impact on out of pocket oop medical expenditure of a major reform in thailand that greatly extended health insurance coverage to achieve universality while implementing supply side measures intended to deliver cost effective care from an increased but modest public health budget difference in differences comparison of groups to whom coverage was extended or deepened with those whose coverage did not change indicates that the reform reduced oop expenditure by 28 on average and by 42 at the 95th percentile of the conditional distribution simulations suggest that exposure to medical expenditure risk was reduced by three fifths on average generating a social welfare gain equivalent to 80 200 of the approximate deadweight loss from financing the reform estimated effects on health care access suggest that the policy managed to reduce households medical expenses while also raising their utilization of both inpatient and ambulatory care

effects of universal health insurance on health care utilization and supply side responses evidence from japan abstract we investigate the effects of a massive expansion in health insurance coverage on health care utilization and supply side responses by focusing on universal health insurance introduced in japan in 1961 there are two major findings first health care utilization measured in terms of admissions inpatient days and outpatient visits to hospitals increased significantly second we also find a supply response but the size of the supply response differs across service types while the number of beds increases effects on the number of medical institutions physicians and nurses are either negligible or inconclusive our results suggest that countries planning a large expansion in health insurance coverage would need to generate sufficient financial resources to cover the surge in health care expenditures both in the short and long run our results also indicate that any slowdown in the supply side response may constrain the ability of the health care system to meet increased demand

financial risk protection from social health insurance this paper estimates the impact of social health insurance on financial risk by utilizing data from a natural experiment created by the phased roll out of a social health insurance program for the poor in india we estimate the distributional impact of insurance on of out of pocket costs and incorporate these results with a stylized expected utility model to compute associated welfare effects we adjust the standard model accounting for conditions of developing countries by incorporating consumption floors informal borrowing and asset selling which allow us to separate the value of financial risk reduction from consumption smoothing and asset protection results show that insurance reduces out of pocket costs particularly in higher quantiles of the distribution we find reductions in the frequency and amount of money borrowed for health reasons finally we find that the value of financial risk reduction outweighs total per household costs of the insurance program by two to five times

the investor specific price of renewable energy project risk a choice experiment with incumbent utilities and institutional investors abstract renewable energy investments in germany have recently soared trebling the output of wind and solar power generation in only ten years while incumbent utilities have lagged behind in terms of investment new entrants have significantly contributed to this growth existing literature has primarily focused on explaining the lethargy of incumbents former investments although there is a growing need to investigate recent investment drivers to secure the necessary power plant capacity at a moderate cost from incumbents and new entrants alike to close this gap a choice experiment involving 1 659 investment choices by 52 european professional investors was conducted in significant contrast to the case with altruistic investors this survey underlines the importance of using financial incentives to attract professional investors given full exposure to electricity price risk incumbent utilities would facilitate projects at a 3 04 risk premium whereas institutional investors demand 6 61 generally incumbent utilities and institutional investors are equally attracted by low risk projects however when risk increases institutional investors are more hesitant to become involved while incumbent utilities confidently navigate these higher risk projects

when prices hardly matter incomplete insurance contracts and markets for repair goods abstract this paper looks at markets characterized by the fact that the demand side is insured in these markets a consumer purchases a good to compensate consequences of unfavorable events such as an accident or an illness insurance policies in most lines of insurance base indemnity on the insured s actual expenses i e the insured would be partially or completely reimbursed when purchasing certain goods in this setting we discuss the interaction between insurance and repair markets by focusing on one hand upon the development of prices and the structure of markets with insured consumers and on the other hand the resulting backlash on optimal insurance contracting we show that even in the absence of ex post moral hazard the extension of insurance coverage will lead to an increase in prices as well as to a socially undesirable increase in the number of repair service suppliers if repair markets are imperfect

communicating subjective evaluations consider managers evaluating their employees performances should managers justify their subjective evaluations suppose a manager s evaluation is private information justifying her evaluation is costly but limits the principal s scope for distorting her evaluation of the employee i show that the manager justifies her evaluation if and only if the employee s performance was poor the justification assures the employee that the manager has not distorted the evaluation downwards for good performance however the manager pays a constant high wage without justification the empirical literature demonstrates that subjective evaluations are lenient and discriminate poorly between good performance levels this pattern was attributed to biased managers i show that these effects occur in optimal contracts without any biased behavior

green electricity policies in the united states case study while there has been interest in promoting the use of renewable energy in electricity production for a number of years in the united states the market share of non hydro renewable energy sources in electricity production has remained at about 2 percent over the past decade the paper reviews the principal energy resources used for electricity production considers the changing regulatory environment for the electricity industry and describes government policies that have been used to promote green electricity in the united states with an emphasis on measures adopted by state governments factors influencing the development of green power markets are also discussed including underlying economic issues public policy measures the regulatory environment external costs and subsidies without significant increases in fossil fuel prices much more stringent environmental regulations or significant changes in electricity customer preferences green electricity markets are likely to develop slowly in the united states

heterogeneity in preferences for woody biomass energy in the us mountain west abstract millions of acres of public forest in the us mountain west are substantially degraded and are in need of restoration mechanized restoration treatments can improve forest health and reduce the likelihood of severe wildfire these treatments produce some timber and substantial amounts of forest residues that can be used to generate renewable energy and displace fossil fuels using the choice modeling method this study investigates social preferences for generation of energy with woody biomass produced by restoration treatments on public forests in the mountain west both multinomial logit and latent class logit lcl models are fit to the data and used to estimate marginal willingness to pay mwtp for increased amounts of woody biomass energy generation and important associated co benefits and costs positive and statistically significant mwtp is found for the number of homes powered with wood the extent of healthy forests avoiding increases in the number of large wildfires and local air quality significant heterogeneity was found in respondent preferences for the attributes the heterogeneity can be explained in part by sociodemographic and attitudinal characteristics of respondents the lcl revealed four classes of respondents with distinct preferences revealing conflicting viewpoints toward forest management for woody biomass energy generation

eco labelling competition and environment endogenization of labelling criteria this paper suggests a modelling of the labelling procedure consistent with empirical observations that allows the endogenous calculation of labelling criteria the authority in charge of the labelling program chooses the level of labelling criteria so as to maximise the social surplus anticipating competition between firms in environmental qualities and prices while accounting simply for the informational role of labels this model allows to understand observed behavior such as firms ignorance of a label resistance support or indifference of firms to the labelling program and the decision of the authority not to set up a label

endogenous incomplete contracts a bargaining approach in this paper we argue that by modelling the contracting process as a bargaining game one can endogenize the choice between complete and incomplete contracts this point is demonstrated within a stylized model in which agents can allocate an endowment stream either via a once for all bargain over the entire stream a long term contract or through a series of bargaining rounds a short term contract within this structure short term contracts arise as equilibrium outcomes under very general conditions because a short term contract implies reduced bargaining costs for one of the agents in essence reduced transaction costs produce a short term contract jel classification l14 c78

describability and agency problems this paper suggests a reason other than asymmetric information why agency contracts are not explicitly contingent on the agent s performance or actions two ingredients are essential to this reason the first is the written form that contracts are required to take to be enforceable the second is a form of discontinuity in the parties preferences and in the technology that transforms actions into a probabilistic outcome we show that under these conditions the chosen contract may not be explicitly contingent on the agent s actions although in principle such actions are contractible and observable to all parties to the contract court included

a market for renewable energy credits in the indian power sector abstract electricity generation from renewable energy sources in india has been promoted through a host of fiscal policies and preferential tariff for electricity produced from the same the fiscal policies include tax incentives and purchase of electricity generated through renewable energy sources the enactment of the electricity act 2003 the act has lent further support to renewable energy by stipulating purchase of a certain percentage of the power procurement by distribution utilities from renewable energy sources the renewable portfolio obligation as well as the feed in tariff for power procurement has been specified by a number of state electricity regulatory commissions sercs for the respective state under their jurisdiction a feed in tariff determined through a cost plus approach under a rate of return framework lacks incentive for cost minimisation and does not encourage optimal utilisation of renewable energy resources in the country such regulatory provisions differ across states the prevalent practice of fixing a renewable portfolio obligation along with cost based feed in tariffs disregards economic efficiency the paper proposes nationally tradable renewable energy credits scheme for achieving the targets set by the respective sercs as renewable portfolio obligation this would reduce the cost of compliance to a renewable portfolio obligation and would encourage efficient resource utilisation and investment in appropriate technologies the paper highlights its advantages and implementation issues this paper discusses regulatory developments for promotion of renewable energy in various indian states the paper also identifies a number of issues related to regulations concerning renewable portfolio obligation

predicting consumer demand responses to carbon labels abstract providing carbon footprint labels for all food products is a daunting and potentially infeasible project knowing how consumers substitute away from high carbon goods and what they choose as substitutes is essential for understanding which goods are likely to result in meaningful reductions in carbon emissions this paper proposes a model to systematically estimate how consumers will respond to information from a carbon footprint label our model uses consumers value of their individual carbon footprint with own and cross price elasticities of demand data on carbon emissions from life cycle analysis to simulate shifts in consumer demand for 42 food products and a non food composite and subsequent changes in carbon emissions from different labeling schemes our simulation results have several findings including 1 carbon labels can reduce emissions but labeling only some items could lead to perverse impacts where consumers substitute away from labeled goods to unlabeled goods with a higher carbon footprint 2 carbon labels can inform consumers such that their previous beliefs about carbon footprints matter and 3 carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions among the 42 food products studied

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

analyzing public preferences and increasing acceptability for the renewable portfolio standard in korea abstract in order to respond to the challenge of climate change similar to other countries korea has announced various policies to vitalize the development and uptake of renewable energy the renewable portfolio standard rps is the most striking example of a policy in this area this study employs a conjoint survey and bayesian mixed logit model to analyze consumer preferences for specific attributes of the rps policy it analyzes households marginal willingness to pay mwtp for the rps with specific attributes and simulates the degree of household acceptability of the policy through a scenario analysis comparison between costs and benefits of implementing the policy is also attempted by analyzing the households mwtp with the actual transition expense of rps implementation incurred by electricity supply companies the simulation results provide implications for improving rps policy implementation households consider the creation of new jobs as the most important policy attribute followed by increase in electricity prices damage to forests reduction in co 2 emissions and length of power outages moreover the korean household is willing to accept an increase of up to 1 39 in its electricity prices relative to 2012 and the median mwtp of each household for rps implementation is krw 734 99 month usd 0 67 month

social costs from proximity to hydraulic fracturing in new york state the study reports data from an economic choice experiment to determine the likely welfare impacts of hydraulic fracturing in this case using natural gas extracted by hydraulic fracturing for household electricity data were collected from an internet survey of 515 residents of new york state the welfare analysis indicated that on average households incur a welfare loss from in state hydraulic fracturing as the source of their electricity the evidence suggests that households in shale counties bear more costs from hf electricity than households out of shale counties the average welfare loss is substantive estimated at 40 46 of average household electric bills in shale counties and 16 20 of bills in counties without shale the evidence also suggests that relative proximity to hf well sites also increases cost borne by households

preferences for green electricity investment and regulatory incentives abstract this paper develops a theoretical model to investigate how consumers preferences for green electricity affect the incentives of a regulated firm to provide and invest in electricity from green sources optimal incentive regulation implies a trade off between providing an optimal match of consumers with green and brown electricity and efficient incentives to invest in cost reductions we show that a single price cap on green electricity is ineffective as it yields the same expected market outcome as with an unregulated firm price caps on both green and brown electricity are akin to a market share target policy which implements efficient investment but gives an inefficient ex post consumer allocation a single price cap on brown electricity weakly dominates these schemes and gives rise to three different optimal regulation regimes as a function of the underlying technology parameters

contradiction as a form of contractual incompleteness a simple model is presented in which contradictory instructions are viewed as a type of contract incompleteness the model provides a complexity based rationale for contradictory instructions if there are complexity bounds on the contract there may be an incentive to introduce contradictions leaving for another agent the task of interpreting them the optimal amount of contradictions depends on the complexity bound the con ict of interests with the interpreter and the institutional constraints on his interpretations in particular a higher complexity bound may result in a larger amount of contradictions

the effect of patient cost sharing on utilization health and risk protection abstract this paper exploits a sharp reduction in patient cost sharing at age 70 in japan using a regression discontinuity design to examine its effect on utilization health and financial risk arising from out of pocket expenditures due to the national policy cost sharing is 60 80 percent lower at age 70 than at age 69 i find that both outpatient and inpatient care are price sensitive among the elderly while i find little impact on mortality and other health outcomes the results show that reduced cost sharing is associated with lower out of pocket expenditures especially at the right tail of the distribution jel g22 i11 i12 i13 i18 j14

wind power externalities a meta analysis this study presents the first quantitative meta analysis of the non market valuation literature on the external effects associated with wind power production a data set of 60 observations drawn from 32 studies is constructed the relative economic values of different types of externalities as well as the impact of various methodological and sample characteristics on welfare estimates are examined the results indicate a significant effect of visual externalities on welfare estimates in both directions i e a positive effect of visual improvements and a negative effect of deteriorations this finding corresponds to predictions of the importance of visual impacts in the social science literature external effects of wind power on biodiversity mainly birds do not affect welfare estimates indirect externalities caused by conventional sources of electricity that can be avoided by wind power such as a the reduction of air pollution do neither have a significant impact on welfare measures methodologically we find substantial but inelastic income effects and for choice experiments clear evidence of sensitivity to scope from a policy point of view our results suggest that a policy mix combining a promotion of wind turbines with another green policy facilitates expansion of wind energy

fact free learning aragones acknowledges financial support from the spanish ministry of science and technology grant sec2003 01961 and creabarcelona economics aragones gilboa and schmeidler gratefully acknowledge support from the polarization and conflict project cit 2 ct 2004 506084 funded by the european commission dg research sixth framework programme gilboa and schmeidler gratefully acknowledge support from the israel science foundation grant 790 00 and 975 03 postlewaite gratefully acknowledges support from national science foundation grant sbr 9810693

valuation of environmental and societal trade offs of renewable energy sources abstract use of renewable energy sources is one solution to decrease green house gas emissions and the use of polluting fossil fuels renewables differ in their environmental and societal impacts and to design sound renewable energy policy societies need to assess the trade offs between alternative sources to enable the evaluation and comparison of renewable energy production alternatives in finland this paper applies the choice experiment to elicit the monetary information on people s preferences for four renewable energy sources wind power hydro power and energy from crops and wood and considers four impacts of energy production effects on biodiversity local jobs carbon emissions and household s electricity bill the nested logit analysis reveals that higher income male gender young age and pro environmental attitude increase the probability to choose renewable energy instead of the current energy mix wind power is on average the most popular renewable energy technology but regional differences exist biodiversity deterioration should be avoided the national aggregate willingness to pay based on stated preferences rather than preferences revealed by actual market behavior for a combination of renewable energy technologies that corresponds to finland s climate change and energy policy is over 500 million euros

the insurance is the lemon failing to index contracts we model the widespread failure of contracts to share risk using available indices a borrower and lender can share risk by conditioning repayments on an index the lender has private information about the ability of this index to measure the true state that the borrower would like to hedge the lender is risk averse and thus requires a premium to insure the borrower the borrower however might be paying something for nothing if the index is a poor measure of the true state we provide sufficient conditions for this effect to cause the borrower to choose a nonindexed contract instead

transactional characteristics institutional environment and joint venture contracts this study examines how transactional characteristics and the institutional environment influence contractual governance for international joint ventures ijvs unlike previous studies that view joint venture contractual governance as a unidimensional construct clause specificity thus causing a debate upon whether ijv contracts should be more specific contractual governance herein is defined as a three dimensional construct that includes the extent to which contractual terms are clearly specified term specificity possible contingencies are accounted for contingency adaptability and joint venture parties are legally bound to the contract contractual obligatoriness our analysis of ijvs in china suggests that term specificity and contractual obligatoriness increase when the proprietariness of resources to be invested in the ijv or the incompleteness of the host country s legal system increase contractual obligatoriness appears to be an increasing function of economic exposure and environmental volatility whereas contingency adaptability in a contract rises when interparty dependency investment uncertainty and knowledge proprietariness intensify or when environmental hazards escalate these results suggest that an ijv contract if structured multidimensionally as above can curtail opportunism and guide venture evolution at the same time these contractual dimensions should not be prefixed but properly aligned with transactional and institutional characteristics this alignment has strong implications in reducing transaction costs and spurring ijv evolution in the complex and volatile institutional environment

incomplete written contracts undescribable states of nature this paper extends the classic two armed bandit problem to a many agent setting in which n players each face the same experimentation problem the difference with the single agent problem is that agents can now learn from the experiments of others thus experiementation produces a public good and a free rider problem in experimentation naturally arises more interestingly future experimentation by others encourages current individual experimentation the paper provides an analysis of the set of markov equilibria in terms of the free rider effect and the encouragement effect

willingness to pay for ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation assessing the willingness to pay wtp of the general public for climate change mitigation programmes enables governments to understand how much taxpayers are willing to support the implementation of such programs this paper contributes to the literature on the wtp for climate change mitigation programmes by investigating in addition to global benefits the ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation it does so by considering local and personal benefits arising from climate change policies the contingent valuation method is used to elicit the wtp for ancillary and global benefits of climate mitigation policies in the basque country spain results show that wtp estimates are 53 73 higher when ancillary benefits are considered

norms and economic motivation in the swedish green electricity market abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide an econometric analysis of the most important determinants of swedish households choice to pay a price premium for green electricity we draw on recent developments in the literature on integrating norm motivated behavior into neoclassical consumer theory and assume that individuals have a preference for keeping a self image as a morally responsible person consumer behavior in the green market place will then be heavily determined by how purchases of different goods affect this self image the analysis is based on postal survey responses from 655 swedish households which are analyzed within a binary choice econometric framework the results indicate that the impact of choosing green on the household budget largely influences the choice between green and brown electricity as does the degree of perceived personal responsibility for the issue and the felt ability to affect the outcome in a positive way we find limited support for the notion that perceptions about others behavior in general affect individual moral norms and ultimately expressed behavior but this is also complemented by the influence of explicit social influence the difficulty in observing others purchases makes it however difficult to distinguish between social and moral norms in the case of green electricity

health insurance eligibility utilization of medical care and child health two economists applied data from the current population survey and the national health interview survey and state level data on child mortality to a simulation model of utilization of medical care that varies only with the states legislative environment to examine the utilization of medical care and health effects of medicaid eligibility on low income children the models took into consideration the recent expansions of medicaid to low income children 38 of those ineligible for medicaid in 1984 who became eligible due to changes during 1984 1992 were uninsured between 1984 and 1992 expansions of the medicaid program increased the proportion of children eligible for medicaid almost two fold 16 1 vs 31 2 yet coverage rates were always lower than eligibility rates 13 2 vs 16 1 in 1984 and 20 3 vs 31 2 in 1992 and the increase in coverage rates was only about 50 of the increase in eligibility rates during 1984 1992 the probability that a child was eligible for medicaid increased the probability of health insurance coverage by 29 77 when the model considered bias in variables e g a recession in a state the take up rate was only 22 73 nevertheless medicaid markedly increased use of medical care for example eligibility for medicaid increased the likelihood of making a visit to a physicians office in the last two weeks by about 50 it also increased the probability of a child visiting the hospital suggesting inefficiency in the way that providers deliver care to medicaid enrollees medicaid eligibility had a significant effect on reducing child mortality the 15 1 percentage point increase in eligibility during 1984 1992 reduced child mortality by 4 5 when the researchers examined parent assessed subjective health measures medicaid eligibility had no effect on child health medicaid eligibility reduced race and education based disparities in the number of visits and racial differences in mortality yet it may actually intensify current disparities in health care delivery site

probabilistic decision model of wind power investment and influence of green power market this paper presents results from a model of a representative wind power investor s decision making process using a monte carlo simulation of a project financial analysis data in the form of probability distribution functions pdfs for key input variables were collected from interviews with investors and other professionals active in the u s wind power industry using a formal expert elicitation protocol this study presents the first quantitative estimates of the effect of the u s voluntary renewable energy certificate rec market on renewable energy generation the results indicate that the investment decisions of wind power project developers in the united states are unlikely to have been altered by the voluntary rec market the problem with the current voluntary rec market is that it does not offer developers a reliable risk adjusted revenue stream consequently the claims by u s green power retailers and promoters that voluntary market recs result in additional wind power projects lack credibility even dramatic increases in voluntary market rec prices in the absence of long term contracts were found to have only a small effect on investor behavior

health insurance and the demand for medical care evidence from a randomized experiment we estimate how cost sharing the portion of the bill the patient pays affects the demand for medical services the data come from a randomized experiment a catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out of pocket price the price elasticity is approximately 0 2 we reject the hypothesis that less favorable coverage of outpatient services increases total expenditure for example by deterring preventive care or inducing hospitalization

ambiguity aversion and incompleteness of contractual form subjective uncertainty is characterized by ambiguity if the decision maker has an imprecise knowledge of the probabilities of payoff relevant events in such an instance the decision maker s beliefs are better represented by a set of probability functions than by a unique probability function an ambiguity averse decision maker adjusts his choice on the side of caution in response to his imprecise knowledge of the odds the non additive expected utility model allows a formal characterization of such behaviour using this model this paper shows that ambiguity aversion can explain the existence of incomplete contracts the setting for the demonstration is the investment hold up model which has been the focus of much of the recent research on the implications of incomplete contracts

does medicare save lives health insurance characteristics shift at age 65 as most people become eligible for medicare we measure the impacts of these changes on patients who are admitted to hospitals through emergency departments for conditions with similar admission rates on weekdays and weekends the age profiles of admissions and comorbidities for these patients are smooth at age 65 suggesting that the severity of illness is similar on either side of the medicare threshold in contrast the number of procedures performed in hospitals and total list charges exhibit small but statistically significant discontinuities implying that patients over 65 receive more services we estimate a nearly 1 percentage point drop in 7 day mortality for patients at age 65 equivalent to a 20 reduction in deaths for this severely ill patient group the mortality gap persists for at least 9 months after admission

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

complexity and renegotiation a foundation for incomplete contracts the paper considers a hold up model where only one of n future trading opportunities will prove to be efficient and where ex post renegotiation of the ex ante contract cannot be prevented as the environment becomes more complex n the outcome under any message contingent long term contract converges to that of the incomplete contracting model where trade is contractible ex post but not ex ante when trades are costly to describe both ex ante and ex post the incomplete contracting result is extended to a broader class of environments

renewable energy policy and electricity restructuring a california case study abstract many countries are in the process of deregulating and restructuring their electric power industries although the introduction of retail competition may have negative impacts on the development of renewable energy a number of countries are establishing new programs to support these clean energy technologies in the united states debate has centered on three primary renewables support mechanisms 1 the renewables portfolio standard 2 programs funded by an electricity distribution surcharge and 3 voluntary renewable energy purchases by electricity customers via green power marketing california provides a good case study of the design of renewables support programs within industry restructuring because policymakers considered all three of these options during the state s restructuring proceedings moreover many of the same policy options design issues and political conflicts that have arisen in california are likely to recur in other states and countries some of the most important lessons from the california experience include 1 renewable energy and environmental advocates must clearly articulate the need and rationale for continued support of renewables 2 cost containment and competitive neutrality concerns must be addressed head on 3 combinations of policies are likely to be far more effective than any single renewables policy and 4 the effectiveness of renewable energy policies developed during the restructuring process will be strongly linked to their duration and stability

random preferences towards bioenergy environmental externalities a case study of woody biomass based electricity in the southern united states article i nfo this paper contrasts alternate methodological approaches of investigating public preferences the random parameter logit rpl where tastes and preferences of respondents are assumed to be heterogeneous and the conditional logit cl approach where tastes and preferences remain fixed for individuals we conducted a choice experiment to assess preferences for woody biomass based electricity in arkansas florida and virginia reduction of co2 emissions and improvement of forest habitat by decreasing risk of wildfires and pest outbreaks were presented to respondents as attributes of using green electricity the results indicate that heterogeneous preferences might be a better fit for assessing preferences for green electricity all levels of both attributes were positive contributors to welfare but they were no statistically significant respondents expressed a positive mean marginal willingness to pay wtp for each attribute level the total wtp for green electricity per kilowatt hour was 0 049 kwh or 40 5 per capita year 1 when converted into future total annual expenditures

the value of socialized medicine the impact of universal primary healthcare provision on mortality rates in turkey abstract this paper examines the impact of universal free and easily accessible primary healthcare on population health as measured by age specific mortality rates focusing on a nationwide socialized medicine program implemented in turkey the family medicine program fmp launched in 2005 assigns each turkish citizen to a specific state employed family physician who offers a wide range of primary healthcare services that are free of charge furthermore these services are provided at family health centers which operate on a walk in basis and are located within neighborhoods in close proximity to the patients to identify the causal impact of the fmp we exploit the variation in its introduction across provinces and over time our estimates indicate that the fmp caused the mortality rate to decrease by 25 6 among infants 7 7 among the elderly and 22 9 among children ages 1 4 these estimates translate into 2 6 1 29 and 0 13 fewer deaths among infants the elderly and children ages 1 4 respectively furthermore the effects appear to strengthen over time we also show evidence to suggest that the fmp has contributed to an equalization of mortality across provinces finally our calculations indicate that each family physician saves about 0 15 0 46 and 0 005 lives among infants the elderly and children ages 1 4 per province every year

adoption of green electricity by german small and medium sized enterprises smes a qualitative analysis abstract the german government aims at generating 80 percent of the country s electricity from renewable sources by 2050 in the german liberalized electricity market customers can support this target by purchasing green electricity ge i e electricity produced from renewable energy sources yet the demand for ge has remained low among small and medium sized enterprises smes which represent the country s biggest electricity customer group based on a review of the relevant literature this article investigates factors that determine smes decisions whether to adopt ge for this purpose thematic interviews with ge providers and representatives of smes are performed and qualitatively analyzed the results of the interview analysis form the basis for a conceptual framework that reflects the ge adoption decisions of german smes and lay the groundwork for future analysis in this area

stuck between a roc and a hard place barriers to the take up of green energy in the uk abstract this paper examines the uk mechanisms for ensuring future investment in renewable energy through consumer adoption of green energy tariffs and the renewable obligation certificate roc system using a national survey and focus groups the stated willingness by uk customers to pay a premium for renewable or green energy and actual take up of such tariffs is assessed substantial differences between willingness to pay for and the adoption of green energy tariffs are reported this disparity is linked to a range of factors including consumer confusion lack of supply complexities of constructing green source tariffs under the roc system and a lack of customer trust it is concluded that the re definition of the green energy market in favour of green source tariffs greater direct compliance with the renewable obligation by addressing supply constraints and efforts in providing clearer information and choices for consumers via a compulsory green energy accreditation scheme are required if willing consumers are to contribute to investment in renewable energy

what determines urban households willingness to pay for co2 emission reductions in turkey a contingent valuation survey abstract this paper explores turkish urban households willingness to pay wtp for co2 emission reductions expected to result from improvements in power production a face to face questionnaire with a contingent valuation cv module prepared using the double bounded dichotomous choice elicitation framework was administered to 2422 respondents representative of urban turkey a developing country with low but rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions the determinants of wtp were identified by considering not only the impact of standard socio economic factors but also the effects of environmental knowledge attitudes and behaviour the relevance of the identity of the collection agent national versus international institutions in terms of trust people have towards them and the degree of perceived participation of others in the realization of the project our study confirms the existing literature in demonstrating that wtp figures reported by young and educated people that are active on environmental issues and who also possess material security and environmental knowledge are more likely to be high however their willingness to make contributions is hampered significantly by their belief that their fellow citizens will not contribute and the general lack of trust in institutions overall this study may be taken as a call to eliminate governance related uncertainties in climate change deals

employment based health insurance and job mobility is there evidence of job lock the majority of privately insured americans obtain their health insurance through their own or a family member s employment the rationale for employers to provide health insurance is straightforward by pooling the risks of individuals employers can reduce adverse selection and lower administrative expenses in addition they benefit from tax laws allowing businesses to deduct their health insurance costs these advantages of employer provision however must be weighed against the distortions they may generate in individual labor market decisions in particular health insurance may distort job mobility if employees decide to keep jobs they would rather leave for fear of losing coverage for preexisting conditions a possibility that has been termed job lock this paper attempts to quantify the effect of employer provided health insurance on the labor market mobility of individuals the link between employer provided health insurance and

applying threshold models to donations to a green electricity fund this study applies a threshold model proposed by granovetter 1978 to analyze the diffusion process of donating behavior for renewable energy we first use a stated preference survey to estimate the determinants of a decision to support the donation scheme under various predicted participation rates using the estimated coefficients we simulate how herd behavior spreads and the participation rate reaches the equilibrium the participation rate at the equilibrium is estimated as 37 88 when the suggested donation is 500 yen while it is 17 76 when the suggested amount is 1000 yen the influence of environmentalism and altruism is also examined and we find that these motivations increase the participation rate by 31 51 on average

the impact of health care reform on hospital and preventive care evidence from massachusetts in april 2006 massachusetts passed legislation aimed at achieving near universal health insurance coverage the key features of this legislation were a model for national health reform passed in march 2010 the reform gives us a novel opportunity to examine the impact of expansion to near universal coverage state wide among hospital discharges in massachusetts we find that the reform decreased uninsurance by 36 relative to its initial level and to other states reform affected utilization by decreasing length of stay the number of inpatient admissions originating from the emergency room and preventable admissions at the same time hospital cost growth did not increase

limited observability as a constraint in contract design limited observability is the assumption that economic agents can only observe a finite amount of information given this constraint contracts among agents are necessarily finite and incomplete in comparison to the ideal complete contract that we model as infinite in detail we consider the extent to which finite contracts can approximate the idealized complete contracts the objectives of the paper are i to identify properties of agents preferences that determine whether or not finiteness of contracts causes significant inefficiency ii to evaluate the performance of finite contracts against the ideal optimal contracts in principal agent and bilateral bargaining models

the aggregate effects of health insurance evidence from the introduction of medicare this paper investigates the effects of market wide changes in health insurance by examining the single largest change in health insurance coverage in american history the introduction of medicare in 1965 i estimate that the impact of medicare on hospital spending is over six times larger than what the evidence from individual level changes in health insurance would have predicted this disproportionately larger effect may arise if market wide changes in demand alter the incentives of hospitals to incur the fixed costs of entering the market or of adopting new practice styles i present some evidence of these types of effects a back of the envelope calculation based on the estimated impact of medicare suggests that the overall spread of health insurance between 1950 and 1990 may be able to explain about half of the increase in real per capita health spending over this time period

using conjoint analysis to derive estimates of compensating variation abstract we use several approaches to derive estimates of hicksian compensating variation from conjoint ratings data the different estimation approaches produced mixed results with respect to consistency with utility theory statistical significance of key variables magnitude of welfare estimates and confidence bounds on welfare estimates these findings suggest conjoint analyses are not a panacea for the problems being debated regarding contingent valuation and travel cost methodologies and conjoint questions appear to share many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions

cognition and incomplete contracts thinking about contingencies designing covenants and seeing through their implications is costly parties to a contract accordingly use heuristics and leave it incomplete the paper develops a model of limited cognition and examines its consequences for contractual design

heterogeneous effect of coinsurance rate on healthcare expenditure generalized finite mixtures and matching estimators the article proposes a combination of finite mixture models and matching estimators to account for heterogeneous and nonlinear effects of the coinsurance rate on healthcare expenditure the analysis with panel data for adult japanese consumers in 2008 2010 and for female consumers in 2000 2010 demonstrates the presence of subpopulations with high medium and low healthcare expenditure and subpopulation membership is explained by lifestyle variables generalized finite mixtures provide adequate fit compared to loglinear model conditional average treatment effect estimations reveal the existence of nonlinear effects of the coinsurance rate in the subpopulation with high expenditure

incentive provision when contracting is costly we analyse optimal incentive contracts in a model where the probability of court enforcement is determined by the costs spent on contracting the analysis shows that there is no monotonic relationship between contracting costs and incentive intensity and that an increase in contracting costs may lead to higher powered incentives moreover we formulate hypotheses about the relationship between legal systems and incentive provision specifically the model predicts higher powered incentives in common law than in civil law systems we also find that better performance measures may induce lower investments in contracting and potentially lead to lower powered incentives

an anatomy of cartel contracts we study cartel contracts using data on 18 contract clauses of 109 legal finnish manufacturing cartels one third of the clauses relate to raising profits the others deal with instability through incentive compatibility cartel organization or external threats cartels use three main approaches to raise profits price market allocation and specialization these appear to be substitutes choosing one has implications on how cartels deal with instability simplifying we find that large cartels agree on prices cartels in homogenous goods industries allocate markets and small cartels avoid competition through specialization

what did medicare do the initial impact of medicare on mortality and out of pocket medical spending abstract we study the impact of the introduction of one of the major pillars of the social insurance system in the united states the introduction of medicare in 1965 our results suggest that in its first 10 years the establishment of universal health insurance for the elderly had no discernible impact on elderly mortality however we find a substantial reduction in the elderly s exposure to out of pocket medical expenditure risk specifically we estimate that the introduction of medicare was associated with a 40 decline in out of pocket spending for the top quartile of the out of pocket spending distribution a stylized expected utility framework suggests that the welfare gains from such reductions in risk exposure alone may be sufficient to cover almost two fifths of the costs of medicare these findings underscore the importance of considering the direct insurance benefits from public health insurance programs in addition to any indirect benefits from an effect on health

lawyers in venture capital contracting theory and evidence real world financial contracts are sometimes so complex that it can be difficult to understand their exact payoff consequences we develop and test a theoretical model of a venture capitalist vc negotiating with an entrepreneur who may overweigh or underweigh the payoff consequences of contractual downside protection dp a lawyer with expertise in venture capital can inform the entrepreneur about these consequences but less expert but otherwise high quality lawyers cannot we determine how a vc s decision to include dp is affected by the expected quality of the entrepreneur s project the entrepreneur s experience and the vc expertise of his her legal counsel we show that the vc s incentive to include unnecessary dp declines in expected project quality indeed for inexperienced entrepreneurs involved with high quality projects vcs prefer that the entrepreneur s counsel has vc expertise this implies that when negotiating with inexperienced entrepreneurs vcs who invest in high quality companies should be more likely to negotiate with entrepreneurs who employ lawyers with vc expertise we document broad empirical support for the model and provide evidence against competing explanations jel l24 g24 k12 l14 l24

legal efficiency and consistency abstract we analyze the efficiency and consistency of court decisions under common and civil law as a leading example we study the enforcement of property rights judges are of two types some are conservative and follow the precedent or the statute while others maximize social welfare when courts intervene ex post after the relevant economic choices have been made welfare maximizing courts face a commitment problem such an ex post bias has implications on the relative consistency and efficiency of each legal system surprisingly we find that court decisions are more consistent under common law than under civil law the welfare comparison between the two systems is instead ambiguous however in changing economic environments common law is more likely to dominate civil law because of its greater adaptability

valuing climate protection through willingness to pay for biomass ethanol abstract this study uses a multi part split sample contingent valuation method cvm and fair share fs survey to better understand the public s valuation of mitigating global climate change through its willingness to pay for biomass or cellulosic ethanol in addition to a basic cvm question a related scenario was developed that asked half of the survey respondents to state their fair share cost to lessen a potential food shortage in the next decade also through the expanded use of cellulosic ethanol three alternative biomass feedstocks were assessed farming residues forestry residues and paper mill wastes and municipal solid wastes overall a slightly larger proportion of respondents were wtp extra for cellulosic ethanol in the basic cvm scenario than in the fs scenario though no significant differences were found in the wtp for the different feedstocks bid curve lognormal regression results for the two models were similar supporting the idea that asking a fs rather than a conventional wtp question may be justifiable in some circumstances such as in cases of a national emergency

carbon capture and storage on its way to large scale deployment social acceptance and willingness to pay in germany abstract carbon capture and storage ccs is an emerging technology to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel fired power plants in the wake of a rapidly changing german energy system ccs can play an important role by means of an online survey among 130 university students in dresden this paper investigates the level and influencing factors of social acceptance of ccs furthermore the individual willingness to pay for ccs and renewable power delivery is measured and compared through a choice model the survey results reveal that the attitude towards ccs is neutral moreover it is shown that acceptance of ccs is an important factor for the willingness to pay the level of willingness to pay for ccs technology is much lower than for renewable energy

investment preferences for wood based energy initiatives in the us abstract the forest sector is poised to become a major supplier of wood based energy in the us prospects for growth in energy demand and higher prices can create opportunities for private investments in renewable energy industries a conjoint analysis examined individuals willingness to invest in wood based energies following a random utility model the study design included three investment attributes annual returns on investment type of investment and location of investment three ordinal models that also included demographic and attitudinal characteristics indicate that wood based energy is less preferred among potential investors compared to the stock market and solar wind renewable energy investments expected returns and location of energy investments within the us are also major drivers of investment preferences favorable attitudes towards forestry and wood based energy could enhance prospects for a greater number of potential investors

on the duration of technology licensing abstract we model an innovator s choice of payment scheme and duration as a joint decision in a multi period licensing game with potential future innovations and some irreversibility of technology transfer we find that it may be optimal to license the innovation for less than the full length of the patent and that royalty contracts can be more profitable than fixed fee licensing even in the absence of information asymmetry and risk aversion moreover licensing contracts based on royalty have a longer duration than fixed fee licenses and are more likely to be used in industries where innovations are frequent and intellectual property protection is weak our paper also highlights an important link between the study of technology licensing and the theory of durable goods

willingness to pay for green electricity in korea a contingent valuation study abstract green electricity is energy that is generated from renewable energy sources such as solar power wind power small scale hydroelectric power tidal power and biomass power these sources mostly do not produce pollutants and are considered environmentally friendly however considering the current state of technology they are more costly government should take visible actions to compensate for the increased production costs this paper attempts to apply a contingent valuation cv method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits that ensue from the introduction of the policy that raises the percentage of green electricity consumption from 0 2 of the total electricity supply to 7 by 2011 overall the cv survey was successful in eliciting the willingness to pay wtp for green electricity considering that the cv method operated within respondents abilities to answer and the wtp estimates were statistically significant the monthly mean wtp estimates from parametric and non parametric methods were krw 1681 usd 1 8 and krw 2072 usd 2 2 respectively the estimates of the annual benefits to relevant residents amounted to krw 150 5 billion usd 157 5 million and krw 185 6 billion usd 194 2 million respectively

explaining demand for green electricity using data from all u s utilities abstract green electricity programs enable households to voluntarily contribute to the development of renewable electricity by purchasing green electricity through their local utility using a dataset of all utilities in the united states this paper explores the utility consumer and program characteristics that influence participation levels in green electricity as well as whether a utility chooses to offer a program among other results we find that the key determinants of program participation are the education of the consumer base and the affordability of the green electricity program our results enhance understanding of private provision of environmental public goods and could aid in ex ante evaluations of whether a green electricity program is likely to cover its administrative costs or be a cost effective way of improving environmental quality

green electricity markets as mechanisms of public goods provision theory and experimental evidence utility based green electricity programs provide market opportunities for consumers to reduce the carbon footprint of their electricity use these programs deploy three types of public goods contribution mechanisms voluntary contribution green tariff and all or nothing green tariff kotchen and moore 2007 we extend the theoretical understanding of the all or nothing green tariff mechanism by showing that an assumption of warm glow preferences is needed to explain widespread participation in programs deploying this mechanism we conduct the first experimental test to compare the revenue generating capacity of a pure public good based on the voluntary contribution mechanism and an impure public good based on the green tariff mechanism in experimental play the voluntary contribution mechanism raises 50 more revenue than the green tariff mechanism with the all or nothing green tariff experimental play and regression estimates show that a warm glow preference positively affects participation as predicted by the theory

formal contracts in the presence of relational enforcement mechanisms evidence from technology development projects formal contracting addresses the moral hazard problems inherent in interfirm deals via explicit terms designed to achieve incentive alignment alternatively when firms expect to interact repeatedly relational mechanisms may achieve similar results without the associated costs however as we now know from a growing body of theoretical and empirical work the resulting intuition that relational mechanisms will be substituted for formal ones whenever possible does not generally hold the extent to which firms substitute relational mechanisms for formal ones in the presence of repeated interaction is an empirical question that forms the basis of this paper we study a sample of 52 joint technology development contracts in the telecommunications and microelectronics industries and devise a coding scheme to allow empirical comparison of contract terms counter to the above intuition but consistent with recent research we find that a firm s contracts are more detailed and more likely to include penalties when it engages in frequent deals whether with the same or different partners our results suggest complementarity between formal and relational contracts and have implications for optimal contracting particularly in high technology sectors

measuring progress towards universal health coverage with an application to 24 developing countries the last few years have seen a growing commitment worldwide to universal health coverage uhc yet there is a lack of clarity on how to measure progress towards uhc this paper proposes a mashup index that captures both aspects of uhc that everyone irrespective of their ability to pay gets the health services they need and that nobody suffers undue financial hardship as a result of receiving care service coverage is broken down into prevention and treatment and financial protection into impoverishment and catastrophic spending nationally representative household survey data are used to adjust population averages to capture inequalities between the poor and better off nonlinear tradeoffs are allowed between and within the two dimensions of the uhc index and all indicators are expressed such that scores run from 0 to 100 and higher scores are better in a sample of 24 countries for which there are detailed information on uhc inspired reforms a cluster of high performing countries emerges with uhc scores of between 79 and 84 brazil colombia costa rica mexico and south africa and a cluster of low performing countries emerges with uhc scores in the range 35 57 ethiopia guatemala india indonesia and vietnam countries have mostly improved their uhc scores between the earliest and latest years for which there are data by about 5 points on average however the improvement has come from increases in receipt of key health interventions not from reductions in the incidence of out of pocket payments on welfare

the impact of nearly universal insurance coverage on health care utilization evidence from medicare the onset of medicare eligibility at age 65 leads to sharp changes in the health insurance coverage of the u s population these changes lead to increases in the use of medical services with a pattern of gains across socioeconomic groups that varies by type of service while routine doctor visits increase more for groups that previously lacked insurance hospital admissions for relatively expensive procedures like bypass surgery and joint replacement increase more for previously insured groups that are more likely to have supplementary coverage after 65 reflecting the relative generosity of their combined insurance package under medicare

on indescribable contingencies and incomplete contracts abstract i examine the theoretical foundations underlying the incomplete contracts literature a common justification for the assumption that contracts are not fully contingent on the state of nature is to point out that some aspects of the state may be unforeseen or indescribable to the contracting partners at the time the contract is written i argue however that as long as risk averse parties can foresee the probabilities of their possible payoffs then the fact that they cannot describe the possible physical states does not matter even with renegotiation the parties can attain the same welfare as when full description is possible

choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to improve electricity services abstract modern forms of energy are an important vehicle towards poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries most developing countries households rely heavily on wood fuel which impacts on their health and socio economic status to ease such a dependency other modern forms of energy namely electricity need to be provided however the quality of the electricity service namely reliability is an important factor in reducing this dependency this paper discusses a choice experiment valuation study conducted among electrified rural households located in kisumu kenya in which the willingness to pay wtp to avoid power outages or blackouts was estimated a mixed logit estimation was applied to identify the various socio economic and demographic characteristics which determine preferences in reducing power outages among a household s users in conclusion several of the socio economic and demographic characteristics outlined in this paper were identified and can assist service differentiation to accommodate the diverse households preferences towards the improvement of the electricity service