bank runs liquidity costs and investment distortions abstract in this paper we extend the diamond and dybvig 1983 model of intermediation to study further the conditions under which bank runs can occur and to consider how private parties might adjust to the existence of bank run equilibria we provide weaker necessary conditions for runs we then characterize how banks respond to the possibility of runs in their design of deposit contracts and investment decisions banks might choose to offer contracts that prevent runs but under some conditions the second best contracts will involve accepting some risk of runs in order to achieve higher expected returns from their investments

household level spillover effects from biofuels evidence from castor in ethiopia the indirect effects of biofuels are mostly considered negative in this paper we argue that there may be a positive indirect effect of biofuels on food security and poverty using micro level evidence and a matched plot pair design through which we control for plot and farmer characteristics we show that the introduction of castor production for biofuel in a poor country as ethiopia can significantly improve food productivity of rural households who produce raw material for biofuel production this spillover seems particularly linked to enhanced access to inputs and technical assistance which were provided as part of biofuel feedstock production contracts our results thus document another mechanism through which biofuels may influence smallholders food security a mechanism that did not receive attention so far

banking panics information and rational expectations equilibrium this paper shows that bank runs can be modeled as an equilibrium phenomenon we demonstrate that some aspects of the intuitive story that bank runs start with fears of insolvency of banks can be rigorously modeled if individuals observe long lines at the bank they correctly infer that there is a possibility that the bank is about to fail and precipitate a bank run however bank runs occur even when no one has any adverse information extra market constraints such as suspension of convertibility can prevent bank runs and result in superior allocations banking panics were a recurrent phenomenon in the united states until the 1930s they have re emerged as a source of public concern and much theoretical research recently in this paper we provide an information theoretic rationale for bank runs the traditional story is that contagion is an important aspect of bank runs the idea seems to be that when the general public observes large withdrawals from the banking system fears of insolvency grow resulting in even larger withdrawals of deposits in our model some individuals withdraw because they get information that future returns are likely to be low uninformed individuals observing this also have an incentive to liquidate their investments in addition some individuals need to withdraw deposits for other than informationally based reasons thus if the random realization of such a group of individuals is unusually large then the uninformed individuals will be misled and will precipitate a run on the bank the technology is such that a large volume of withdrawals involves liquidation costs consequently runs on the bank do impose social costs a mechanism that may reduce these costs in our model is to suspend convertibility if withdrawals are high however those individuals who need to withdraw their assets for liquidity reasons are worse off ex post our model provides a rationalization for restrictions in demand deposits that were widespread prior to 1929 friedman and schwartz 7 suggest that restrictions of payments ensured

implementing efficient allocations in a model of financial intermediation abstract in a finite trader version of the diamond and dybvig j polit econ 91 1983 401 model the ex ante efficient allocation is implementable by a direct mechanism i e each trader announces the type of his own ex post preference in which truthful revelation is the strictly dominant strategy for each trader when the model is modified by formalizing the sequential service constraint cf wallace fed reserve bank minneapolis quart rev 12 1988 3 the truth telling equilibrium implements the symmetric ex ante efficient allocation with respect to iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies

bank runs and investment decisions revisited we examine how the possibility of a bank run affects the deposit contract offered and the investment decisions made by a competitive bank cooper and ross 1998 have shown that when the probability of a run is small the bank will offer a contract that admits a bank run equilibrium we show that in this case the bank will chose to hold an amount of liquid reserves exactly equal to what withdrawal demand will be if a run does not occur in other words precautionary or excess liquidity will not be held this result allows us to determine how the possibility of a bank run affects the level of illiquid investment chosen by a bank we show that when the cost of liquidating investment early is high the level of investment is decreasing in the probability of a run however when liquidation costs are moderate the level of investment is actually increasing in the probability of a run

financial contagion and the wealth effect an experimental study abstract we design a laboratory experiment to test the importance of wealth as a channel for financial contagion across markets with unrelated fundamentals in a sequential global game we analyze the decisions of a group of investors that hold assets in two markets we consider two treatments that vary the level of diversification of these assets across markets in both treatments we find evidence of financial contagion when investors have completely diversified portfolios we provide evidence of contagion due to a wealth effect for certain ranges of fundamentals we show that a decrease in wealth from the investment in the first market makes withdrawals more likely in the second thereby increasing the probability of a crisis when portfolio diversification is small then social imitation is relevant in explaining contagion

for better or for worse till the human development index do us part abstract this paper describes the results of research intended to explore the volatility inherent in the united nations development programme s undp human development index hdi the hdi is intended to be a simple and transparent device for comparing progress in human development and is an aggregate of life expectancy education and gdp per capita values of the hdi for each country are presented in the human development reports hdrs the first being published in 1990 however while the methodology is consistent for all countries in each year there are notable differences between years that make temporal comparisons of progress difficult the paper presents the results of recalculating the hdi for a simplified sample of 114 countries using various methodologies employed by the undp the results are a set of deviations of recalculated hdi ranks compared to the original ranks given in the hdrs the volatility that can result from such recalculation is shown to be substantial 10 15 ranks yet reports in the popular press are frequently sensitive to movements of only a few ranks such movement can easily be accounted for by changes in the hdi methodology rather than genuine progress in human development while the hdrs often carry warnings about the inadvisability of such year on year comparisons it is argued that the existence of such a high profile index and the overt presentation within league tables do encourage such comparison assuming that the hdi will be retained as a focal point within the hdrs then it is suggested that greater focus be upon more meaningful and robust categories of human development e g low medium and high rather than league tables where shifts of a few places perhaps as a result of nothing more than a methodological or data artefact may be highlighted in the press and by policy makers

bank runs and institutions the perils of intervention we study ex post efficient policy responses to a run on the banking system and the ex ante incentives these responses create we show that the efficient response to a run is typically not to freeze all remaining deposits since doing so imposes heavy costs on some individuals instead once a run is underway benevolent government institutions would allow additional deposit withdrawals placing further strain on the banking system when depositors anticipate these extra withdrawals their incentive to participate in the run increases in fact ex post efficient interventions can generate the conditions necessary for a self fulfilling run to occur jel g21 g8

financial contagion in the laboratory does network structure matter we explore the role of interbank network structure and premature liquidation costs for the likelihood of financial contagions in a laboratory experiment we consider complete versus incomplete networks of banks linked together by interbank deposits and we further vary premature liquidation costs subjects play the role of depositors deciding whether or not to withdraw funds from their interconnected bank we find that when liquidation costs are high a complete network structure is significantly less vulnerable to financial contagions than an incomplete network structure however when liquidation costs are low network structure is less important for the frequency of financial contagions

does energy poverty really exist in china from the perspective of residential electricity consumption abstract china is undergoing a market oriented reform in energy and the residential sector will be involved in the near future the analysis of energy poverty is crucial in breaking the illusion of the dilemma between enhancing energy efficiency and controlling poverty based on chinese residential energy consumption survey we firstly estimated the energy poverty in china by the 10 indicator and lihc indicators and then proposed a minimum end use method to classify the energy poor households into lifeline and consumption energy poverty results show that energy poverty exists in china at the proportion of 18 9 and 46 of the energy poor houses are in short of modern energy consumption and are sensitive to tariffs with a level of electricity consumption lower than the basic demand the energy poverty rate is highest in central china while the lifeline energy poor are relatively concentrated in the western region in terms of public policy we suggest focusing on heterogeneity by considering different groups of households when implementing energy efficiency measures and targeting more on the consumption energy poor in poverty alleviation we also suggest paying particular attention to targeting households with low income by supporting practices such as coupons for energy consumption and appliance purchasing

pre play research in a model of bank runs se estudia un modelo de corrida bancaria en el que los depositantes no llegaron a un consenso sobre la accion a elegir pero pueden informarse acerca de las intenciones de los otros jugadores la propiedad de equilibrio indeterminado reaparece en el juego con adquisicion de informacion en el escenario bajo analisis el equilibrio con niveles positivos de adquisicion de informacion resulta en mayores probabilidades de quiebra del banco la correlacion en las senales aumenta el espacio de parametros para el cual existen equilibrios con niveles positivos de adquisicion de informacion y mayor probabilidad de quiebra del banco

energy justice for all rethinking sustainable development goal 7 through struggles over traditional energy practices in sierra leone abstract with sustainable development goal 7 the united nations has declared its ambition to ensure access to modern energy for all by 2030 aside from broad appeals to differentiated responsibilities and greener technologies however the goal leaves significant procedural questions unaddressed this paper argues that the basic orientation of this approach is problematic undermining possibilities for progress toward energy justice and equitable development first in framing the issue of global energy distribution in broad techno managerial terms it obscures how particular geographies of energy poverty have been shaped by critical political economic influences second in privileging modern forms of energy and focusing on an end state of universal adoption over a broader goal of eliminating energy poverty the approach of sdg7 presents tangible hazards to many of those it seeks to benefit using a case study of sierra leonean rural cooking energy policy we demonstrate how the underlying mentality of sdg7 feeds into existing discourses that marginalise producers and users of traditional energy sources threatening important livelihoods with such evidence we argue that for justice in energy policy to be realised holistically there is a need to question how our knowledge of energy problems have emerged to avoid epistemologically autarchic policy positions

liquidity regulation banking history and financial fragility an experimental examination abstract we report an experiment conducted to evaluate interactions between liquidity requirements and depositors experiences with the banking system treatments consist of combinations of required liquidity levels and weak or strong background conditions intended to induce stable histories of play with few bank runs or unstable histories of play where bank runs are common experimental results suggest that both increased liquidity levels and a stable history of play improve the incidence of coordination on the pareto preferred no run outcome nevertheless even with an unstable history non degenerate no run outcomes occur quite reliably with high liquidity requirements

overcoming coordination failure in a critical mass game strategic motives and action disclosure abstract we study whether coordination failure is more often overcome if players can disclose their actions at a lower cost in an experiment subjects first choose their action and then choose whether to disclose this action to other group members and disclosure costs are varied between treatments we find that no group overcomes coordination failure when action disclosure costs are high but half of the groups do so when the costs are low simulations with a belief learning model can predict which groups will overcome coordination failure but only if it is assumed that players are either farsighted risk seeking or pro social to distinguish between these explanations we collected additional data on individual preferences and the degree of farsightedness we find that in the low cost treatment players classified as more farsighted more often deviate from an inefficient convention and disclose this action while the effect of risk and social preferences is not significant

the human development index yet another redundant composite development indicator abstract in its human development report 1990 the united nations development program undp proposes yet another composite indicator of development levels the human development index hdi the hdi assesses intercountry development levels on the basis of three so called deprivation indicators life expectancy adult literacy and the logarithm of purchasing power adjusted per capita gdp using simple statistical analysis this paper questions both the composition of the hdi and its usefulness as a new index of development it concludes that the hdi is both flawed in its composition and like a number of its predecessors fails to provide insights into intercountry development level comparisons which preexisting indicators including gnp per capita alone cannot

satiation in discounted utility in this paper we propose a model of intertemporal choice that explicitly incorporates satiation due to previous consumption in the evaluation of the utility of current consumption in the discounted utility du model the utility of consumption is evaluated afresh in each time period in our model the utility of current consumption represents an incremental utility from the past level when the time interval between consumption periods is large and there are therefore no carryover effects our model coincides with the du model for short time intervals between consumption periods the satiation due to previous consumption lowers the utility of current consumption several implications of our model are examined and comparisons with the du model and the habituation model are made

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

coordination need not be a problem abstract in a game of common interest there is one action vector that all players prefer to every other yet there may be multiple pareto ranked nash equilibria in the game and the coordination problem refers to the fact that rational equilibrium play cannot rule out pareto dominated equilibria in this paper i prove that two elements asynchronicity and a finite horizon are sufficient to uniquely select the pareto dominant action vector in subgame perfect equilibrium play asynchronicity may be exogenously specified by the rules of the game alternatively in a game where players choose when to move asynchronicity may emerge as an equilibrium move outcome

a modified human development index abstract this paper discusses a modified index for measuring human development the suggested index is based on the components of the human development index hdi developed by the united nations development programme undp since 1990 it discusses two categories of technical issues related to the hdi for 1995 those related to the components and those relevant to the structure of the index the data from the human development report 1995 for 174 countries are used to test the robustness of the suggested index and the results are compared to those of the hdi the new index is then used to delineate with some justification different groups of countries at various levels of human development

counting and multidimensional poverty measurement this paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method k that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches and a class of poverty measures m our identification step employs two forms of cutoff one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting the dimensions in which a person is deprived the aggregation step employs the fgt measures appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality the axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability the identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data as is the first of our measures the adjusted headcount ratio we present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom examples from the us and indonesia illustrate our methodology

distinguishing panics and information based bank runs welfare and policy implications in this paper we contrast panics and information based bank runs in an effort to provide a robust and empirically plausible model of how bank runs are triggered the model of information based runs is characterized by two sided asymmetric information the bank cannot observe the true liquidity needs of the depositors while depositors are asymmetrically informed about bank asset quality we also examine the relative degrees of risk sharing provided by bank deposit contracts and traded equity contracts we show that the choice of deposit or equity depends on the attributes of and information about the underlying investment returns

that s how we roll an experiment on rollover risk abstract we design a continuous time experiment to study how different short term credit maturities interact with the state of the economy we find that when the economy is in a boom long maturities stabilize the credit market yet when in a downturn such maturities increase the likelihood of credit freezes this result has important regulatory implications as it suggests that a policy aimed at reducing maturity mismatch in short term credit markets might backfire during a recession

the developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty a new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world we find that 25 of the population lived in poverty in 2005 as judged by what poverty typically means in the world s poorest countries this is higher than past estimates substantial overall progress is still indicated the corresponding poverty rate was 52 in 1981 but progress was very uneven across regions the trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology though precise counts are more sensitive

an experiment on the causes of bank run contagions abstract to understand the mechanisms behind bank run contagions we conduct bank run experiments in a modified diamond dybvig setup with two banks left and right the banks liquidity levels are either linked or independent left bank depositors see their bank s liquidity level before deciding right bank depositors only see left bank withdrawals before deciding we find that left bank depositors actions significantly affect right bank depositors behavior even when liquidities are independent furthermore a panic may be a one way street an increase in left bank withdrawals can cause a panic run on the right bank but a decrease does not calm depositors

bank run psychology abstract banks are inherently susceptible to panics and bank runs due to the problem of maturity mismatch resulting in both a stable equilibrium in which the bank survives and an unstable equilibrium in which a bank run occurs understanding equilibrium selection in this setting is extremely important for safeguarding financial stability in this paper one new potential factor that determines whether a bank runs gets triggered or not is experimentally studied namely the psychological state of the depositor prior to participating in an experimental bank run game subjects are either induced with fear sadness or happiness using an autobiographical emotion induction task the findings suggest that the presence of background fear significantly increases the likelihood of withdrawal and a subsequent bank run in addition women are shown to be significantly more likely to withdraw then men but only in the fear induction treatment

platform selection in the lab abstract emerging literature explores experimental platform selection games these games converge rapidly on the superior platform under a wide range of conditions we replicate the remarkable results of hossain and morgan 2009 in which such a game tips almost perfectly to the superior platform next we show that platform coordination fails when seemingly innocent increases in out of equilibrium payoffs are introduced the inflated payoffs keep the best reply structure unchanged and do not influence players security levels our design allows control for the explanatory force of risk dominance we find that equilibrium selection theory is unable to account for coordination failure while observed behavior is consistent with non rational learning furthermore and contrary to the literature we find that efficiency suffers when an inferior platform is granted initial monopoly

bank runs as coordination failures an experimental study we use experimental methods to investigate what factors contribute to breakdowns in coordination among a bank s depositors subjects in our experiment decide whether to leave their money deposited in a bank or withdraw it early a bank run occurs when there are too many early withdrawals we explore the effects of adding uncertainty about fundamental withdrawal demand and of changing the number of opportunities subjects have to withdraw our results show that i bank runs are rare when fundamental withdrawal demand is known but occur frequently when it is stochastic and ii subjects are more likely to withdraw when given multiple opportunities to do so than when presented with a single decision for the multiple opportunity case we evaluate individual withdrawal decisions according to a set of simple cutoff rules we find that the cutoff rule corresponding to the payoff dominant equilibrium of the game which involves bayesian updating of probabilities explains subject behavior better than other rules

on the power of indicators how the choice of fuel poverty indicator affects the identification of the target population in light of the creation of the eu energy poverty observatory epov in january 2018 and the increase in debates on how fuel poverty is measured we propose a critical analysis of fuel poverty indi

should i stay or should i go bandwagons in the lab abstract we experimentally investigate the impact of strategic uncertainty and complementarity on leader and follower behavior using the model of farrell and saloner 1985 at the core of the model are endogenous timing irreversible actions and private valuations we find that strategic complementarity strongly determines follower behavior once a subject decides to abandon the status quo the probability that other players jump on the bandwagon increases sharply however there is a reluctance to lead when leading is a conditional best response we explain this deviation from the neo classical equilibrium by injecting some noise in the equilibrium concept we also find that cheap talk improves efficiency

the real output losses associated with modern banking crises this study investigates the real output losses associated with modern banking crises we find a remarkable diversity of experience in a number of instances banking crises have not been associated with any significant reduction in the growth of real per capita gdp often this has been the case in mature and developed economies on the other hand estimated output losses are extremely large for some other countriesnamounting to several years of lost gdp interestingly such large losses can be associated with banking crises that were designated as non systemic our sample mean and median output loss estimates are also big for the average sample country the estimated present discounted value of crisis related output losses is bounded between 63 and 302 of real per capita gdp in the last year before the crisis onset average loss estimates are this large primarily because we find evidence that post crisis economic slowdowns often persist long after the crisis is officially over such delayed costs have been largely overlooked in previous empirical work and resultantly our loss estimates are much larger than those that have appeared elsewhere

on freezing depositor funds at financially distressed banks an experimental analysis this article reports an experiment conducted to evaluate the effects of alterations in the terms of repayments to depositors following a liquidity suspension as well as the effect of alterations in the publicity of information about withdrawal behavior on the fragility of distressed banks results indicate that a tough renegotiation stance of protecting depositors who maintain their money in the bank can quite effectively promote stability information provided to depositors regarding past withdrawal behavior weakens the effectiveness of a tough renegotiation policy but reduces fragility somewhat for a more lenient rescheduling condition

the tyranny of international index rankings abstract international index rankings are popular but perhaps too persuasive they emphasize country differences where similarity is the dominant feature rankings based on doing business the human development index and freedom house can be misleading not because of wrong indicators but because the estimation of the scores ignores inherent uncertainty re estimated with a method that captures this uncertainty it becomes clear that ranking every adjacent country is a rather courageous activity

analysis of energy poverty intensity from the perspective of the regional administration empirical evidence from households in southern europe abstract the current economic situation has increased the number of households in europe experiencing restrictions and or limitations of affordability of energy services demonstrating the urgent need to intervene in those extreme cases in which households suffer the daily consequences of what is internationally defined as energy poverty in such a context this paper presents the results obtained in a case study characterising a sample of 615 households with demonstrated energy poverty in the region of aragon spain in parallel the intensity of energy poverty in the studied cases is examined by measuring the percentage of energy expenditures with respect to income in the households that suffer it and a descriptive analysis of the main determinants of energy poverty in the homes studied is presented as well as the policy implication at regional level

hindsight foresight and insight an experimental study of a small market investment game with common and private values we experimentally test an endogenous timing investment model in which sub jects privately observe their cost of investing and a signal correlated with the common investment return subjects overinvest relative to nash we separately consider whether subjects draw inferences in hindsight and use foresight to delay profitable investment and learn from market activity in contrast to nash cursed equilibrium and level k predictions behavior hardly changes across our experimental treatments maximum likelihood estimates are inconsistent with belief based theories we offer an explanation in terms ofboundedly ratio nal rules of thumb based on insights about the game which provides a better fit than quantal response equilibrium jel c72 d82 d83 gil

weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics the main argument of this paper is that weak comparability of values should be seen as one characteristic feature of ecological economics the formal properties of the concepts of strong comparability implying strong or weak commensurability and weak comparability implying incommensurability will be clarified multicriteria evaluation offers the methodological and mathematical tools to operationalize the concept of incommensurability at both macro and micro levels of analysis the concept of incommensurability of values already has a long tradition in economics moreover we will show that analytic philosophy theories of complexity post normal science and the recent theories of rationality lead with different trajectories to a non algorithmic approach which in our view could be implemented by some forms of multicriteria evaluation 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

experimental evidence of bank runs as pure coordination failures abstract we investigate how coordination requirement measured by the coordination parameter affects the occurrence of miscoordination based bank runs in controlled laboratory environments we identify an indeterminacy region of the coordination parameter such that games with the parameter within the region have varying coordination outcomes and exhibit persistent path dependence experimental economies with the parameter above below the region stay close or converge to the run non run equilibrium switches between the two equilibria occur even with fixed economic fundamentals the experimental results are well accounted for by a version of the evolutionary algorithm that uses experimentation rates estimated from the experimental data

panic bank runs we provide experimental evidence that panic bank runs occur in the absence of problems with fundamentals and coordination failures among depositors the two main culprits identified in the literature depositors withdraw when they observe that others do so even when theoretically they should not our findings suggest that panic also manifests itself in the beliefs of depositors who overestimate the probability that a bank run is underway loss aversion has a predictive power on panic behavior while risk or ambiguity aversion do not

electricity demand and basic needs empirical evidence from china s households an increasing block tariff ibt has been implemented nationwide in the residential sector in china since 2012 however knowledge about ibt design is still limited particularly how to determine the electricity volume for the first block of an ibt scheme assuming the first block should be set based on some measure of electricity poverty we attempt to model household electricity demand such that the range of basic needs can be established we show that in chinese households there exists a threshold for electricity consumption with respect to income which could be considered a measure of electricity poverty and the threshold differs between rural and urban areas for rural urban families electricity consumption at the level of 7th 5th income decile households can be considered the threshold for basic needs or a measure of electricity poverty since household electricity demand in rural urban areas does not respond to income changes until after 7th 5th income decile accordingly the first ibt block for some provinces e g beijing appears to have been set at a level that is too high over time however given continued rapid growth the ibt will begin to better reflect actual basic needs

on the effects of deposit insurance and observability on bank runs an experimental study we study the effects of deposit insurance and observability of previous actions on the emergence of bank runs by means of a controlled laboratory experiment we consider three depositors in the line of a bank who decide between withdrawing or keeping their money deposited we have three treatments with different levels of deposit insurance which reflect the losses a depositor may incur in the case of a bank run we find that different levels of deposit insurance and the possibility of observing other depositors actions affect the likelihood of bank runs when decisions are not observable higher levels of deposit insurance decrease the probability of bank runs when decisions are observable this need not to be the case these results suggest that i observability might be considered as a partial substitute of deposit insurance and ii the optimal deposit insurance should take into account the degree of observability

are sunspots learnable an experimental investigation in a simple macroeconomic model abstract we conduct experiments with human subjects in a model with a positive production externality in which productivity is a nondecreasing function of the average level of employment of other firms the model has three steady states and a sunspot equilibrium that fluctuates between the high and low steady states steady states are payoff ranked low values give lower profits than higher values we investigate whether subjects can learn a sunspot equilibrium we observe coordination on the extrinsic announcements in our experimental economies cases of apparent convergence to the low and high steady states are also observed

a multidimensional measure of energy poverty in china and its impacts on health an empirical study based on the china family panel studies abstract inability or insufficient access to modern forms of energy is an important issue in development which makes the notion of energy poverty a widely discussed topic a consensus has been reached that energy poverty has serious health education and other socio economic impacts for people in a country however measurements of energy poverty have generally been absent or inaccurate especially for developing countries at the micro level this paper begins with the multidimensional nature of energy poverty and uses household level survey data in china to construct a quantitative measure of energy poverty covering both affordability of and accessibility to a broad range of forms of energy it then builds an econometric model to address empirically how much energy poverty affects health a statistically significant and robust negative impact on health from energy poverty is confirmed our results have important policy relevance in terms of understanding the current status quo of energy poverty in china and its consequences the concept can also be expanded to investigate similar issues in other developing countries

equilibrium bank runs we analyze a banking system in which the class of feasible deposit contracts or mechanisms is broad the mechanisms must satisfy a sequential service constraint but partial or full suspension of convertibility is allowed consumers must be willing to deposit ex ante we show by examples that under the so called optimal contract the postdeposit game can have a run equilibrium given a propensity to run triggered by sunspots the optimal contract for the full predeposit game can be consistent with runs that occur with positive probability thus the diamond dybvig framework can explain bank runs as emerging in equilibrium under the optimal deposit contract

an experimental exploration of self fulfilling banking panics their occurrence persistence and prevention this article tests the possibility and the degree of persistence of self fulfilling banking panics through an experimental protocol panics are proved to be persistent phenomena that are difficult to prevent however it seems possible to curb them through a learning effect caused by a temporary but sufficient suspension of the deposit availability combined with a narrow banking solution which makes banks more liquid additionally panic prevention requires a full deposit coverage to be effective this suggests that the moral hazard issue should not be tackled through a lower deposit coverage especially in emerging countries banking systems where depositors are likely to lose confidence

meta analysis of empirical evidence on energy poverty the case of developing economies abstract energy poverty has evolved as an important issue of research from academic and policy perspectives during the last two decades the energy poverty estimates exhibit widespread variations across regions methodologies and datasets making the task of energy and development policies challenging the variations in energy poverty estimates necessitate a systematic and rigorous analysis of these empirical studies to obtain a true measure of energy poverty the present study conducts a meta analysis of 30 studies and 103 estimates of energy poverty on average 71 1 percent of the population in the overall sample studies has been identified as energy poor high i square statistic values suggest heterogeneity bias in the sample studies therefore analysis at the subgroup level has been conducted meta regression analysis of overall sample and subgroups has identified type of methodology citations impact factor of the journal regional dummies average key crude oil price and gross domestic product as significant factors that explain heterogeneity in the energy poverty effect sizes we recommend inclusion of local and regional factors in assessment of energy poverty for developing a uniform methodology to assess energy poverty across developing economies

strategic loan defaults and coordination an experimental analysis this paper experimentally studies the impact of bank and borrower fundamentals on loan repayment we find that solvent borrowers are more likely to default strategically when the bank s expected strength is low although loan repayment is a pareto dominant nash equilibrium borrowers are also less likely to repay when other borrowers expected repayment capacity is low regardless of banks fundamentals we show that changes in expectations about bank and borrower fundamentals change the risk dominance properties of the borrowers coordination problem and that these changes subsequently explain strategic defaults for the individual borrower loss aversion and negative past experiences reduce repayment suggesting that bank failure can be contagious in times of distress

measuring energy poverty focusing on what matters abstract the provision of modern energy services is recognised as a critical foundation for sustainable development and is central to the everyday lives of people effective policies to dramatically expand modern energy access need to be grounded in a robust information base metrics that can be used for comparative purposes and to track progress towards targets therefore represent an essential support tool this paper reviews the relevant literature and discusses the adequacy and applicability of existing instruments to measure energy poverty drawing on those insights it proposes a new composite index to measure energy poverty both the associated methodology and initial results for several african countries are discussed whereas most existing indicators and composite indices focus on assessing the access to energy or the degree of development related to energy our new index the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi focuses on the deprivation of access to modern energy services it captures both the incidence and intensity of energy poverty and provides a new tool to support policy making

energy poverty in ghana any progress so far abstract this paper investigates the dynamics of energy poverty in ghana using two nationwide cross sectional datasets ghana living standards surveys round 5 and round 6 employing the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi as a measure of energy poverty this paper estimates that the share of energy poor people decreased from 88 4 in 2005 2006 to 82 5 in 2012 2013 the results indicate that although there has been a significant decline in the overall energy poverty in ghana during the study periods the incidence of energy poverty remains high moreover the study findings show a large gap between urban and rural energy poverty over the two periods rural people are almost twice as energy poor as urban people these findings suggest the need for the incorporation of energy poverty reduction strategies into income poverty reduction strategies to help improve not only access to modern energy but also in terms of affordability

biodiesel value chain and access to energy in ethiopia policies and business prospects abstract similar to many net oil importing sub sahara african countries ethiopia s economy is rural and as it stands today it is far from being a fossil fuel based economy instead the economy is largely powered by traditional burning of solid biomass despite its small share in the overall energy supply 7 imported fuel absorbs half of ethiopia s foreign currency earnings the common justifications behind the development of biofuels such as energy source diversification foreign currency saving rural poverty alleviation through employment and technology transfers were all appealing for ethiopian policy advisers in 2007 mostly influenced by the global discourse ethiopia launched a biofuel expansion strategy and a massive ad hoc investment promotion of two biodiesel crops castor and jatropha in this paper we synthesize the various biodiesel development initiatives and modes of production and point out at the gaps in policy formulation and project implementation evaluating the prospect and constraints for biodiesel production in ethiopia we conclude that most of the prerequisites for a viable biodiesel industry still need to be met we identify key areas and priorities to further strengthen the development of the biodiesel sector