an analysis of the relationship between various redistributive programs and poverty this paper utilizes multivariate exogeneity causality tests to analyze the relationship between various income policy programs and the poverty rate the framework we develop allows us to make a distinction between intended poverty reduction objectives and automatic stabilizing behavior since we find that the poverty in a given year affects the funding of social programs in later years we conclude that these programs are primarily acting as automatic stabilizers i e the poverty reduction instruments do not appear to have been implemented with a relentless intent to reduce poverty a result consistent with tullock s 1983 1986 theorem

optimal taxation economic growth and income inequality that there is a trade off between equityand efficiency economic growth is wellknown two models have been developed thatlink government spending and taxation toeconomic growth this paper uses thesemodels to provide estimates of thegrowth maximizing tax rate then a twoequation structural model is developed andestimated that is used to find thetrade off rate between economic growth andincome inequality and the growth maximizinglevel of income inequality for the unitedstates over the period 1960 1990

general economic conditions and national elections the fact that economic conditions influence voters is a leading commonplace of conversation in election years the question is is this fact in fact a fact despite the overwhelming popularity of the fact it has received neither an explicit theoretical analysis presumably because it is so obvious that economic adversity should create political adversaries nor until recently a satisfactory statistical analysis gerald h kramer has presented a multivariate analysis of congressional elections which would strongly suggest that fluctuations in the rate of unemployment have no appreciable effect upon elections but that fluctuations in per capita real income are influential in the following pages i propose to 1 reaffirm his finding on the electoral unimportance of ordinary fluctuations in unemployment 2 argue that contrary to kramer fluctuations in real income also do not have important electoral effects and 3 present an argument based upon rational voter behavior for the unimportance of general economic conditions in national elections

another look at momentum crashes momentum in the european monetary union abstractthis article studies the profitability of a selection of prominent momentum based strategies in the european monetary union emu in contrast to past examples documenting the lack of profitability of unconditional price momentum in the most recent decade the current research finds that unconditional price momentum yielded significant positive payoffs there is evidence of option like behaviour for strategies based on intermediate past performance surprisingly there is no such evidence for the momentum strategy based on recent past performance

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

relative price changes and inequality in the size distribution of various components of income this article uses a comprehensive model of economic inequality to examine the impact of relative price changes on inequality in the marginal distributions of various income components in which the marginal distributions are derived from a multidimensional joint distribution the multidimensional joint distribution function is assumed to be a member of the pearson type vi family that is it is assumed to be a beta distribution of the second kind the multidimensional joint distribution is so called because it is a joint distribution of components of income and expenditures on various commodity groups gini measures of inequality are devised from the marginal distributions of the various income components the inequality measures are shown to depend on the parameters of the multidimensional joint distribution it is then shown that the parameters of the multidimensional joint distribution depend on the relative prices of various commodity groups and several other specified exogenous variables thus knowle

strategic choices for renewable energy investment conceptual framework and opportunities for further research this paper introduces the special issue on strategic choices for renewable energy investment which is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in st gallen switzerland in february 2010 substantial private investment is needed if public policy objectives to increase the share of renewable energy and prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change are to be achieved the aim of this paper and the entire special issue is to draw scholarly attention to the processes underlying strategic choices for renewable energy investment and how they are influenced by energy policy we disentangle the role of risk return perceptions portfolio effects and path dependence in explaining energy investment decisions and suggest that the heterogeneous universe of investors requires a segmentation of policies the paper outlines some of the rich opportunities for further research in this emerging area

rights equity and economic efficiency the adelman morris premise that economic development and equity are incompatible is not supported by the evidence of a strong relationship between equality of rights and the income distribution the premise that equity requires the denial of individual rights and the affirmation of state control is an oxymoron what has been overlooked in the literature on growth and equity is the effect of the rights structure on both economic efficiency and on the income distribution the evidence is that free societies have much larger shares of income going to the middle 60 percent of the distribution than is observed in societies where men are not free to choose in politically open societies compared to politically closed regimes the share of income to the middle three quintiles is q2 10 7 vs 8 0 q3 16 0 vs 11 5 and q4 22 9 vs 17 9 in the aggregate the shares to the middle quintiles are 49 6 vs 37 4 in nations that obey the rule of law compared to regimes in which the rights of the state relative to the individual are paramount the comparisons are q2 11 2 vs 7 4 q3 16 3 vs 10 6 q4 23 0 vs 17 3 summing the three quintiles yields a comparison of 50 5 vs 35 3 in countries that have private property market allocation of resources and minimum intervention by the state compared to command economies the shares of income to the middle quintiles are q2 10 8 vs 8 0 q3 16 0 vs 11 1 and q4 22 8 vs 17 7 aggregated the shares of the middle class in regimes with high levels of economic liberty are 49 6 vs 36 8 for regimes with restricted private economic rights

momentum in global equity markets in times of troubles does the economic state matter this paper investigates the profitability of momentum based trading strategies pursued during the most recent economic downturns in global equity markets in contrast to previous studies it reveals that such strategies generated statistically significant negative returns during the most recent recessions these momentum crashes happen during market reversals following exceptionally large market declines as occurred in march and april 2009

economic freedom government policy and the trade off between equity and economic growth this study investigates the role that economicfreedom plays in economic growth and in the distribution in marketincome the role of government policy in advancingeconomic progress and in promoting income equality and the effectthat the rate of economic progress has on thedistribution of market income structural and reduced formmodels are estimated that reveal that economic freedompromotes both economic growth and equity and that there is apositive but relatively small trade off between growth andincome inequality

the paradox of politics and policy in redistributing income with political ideology with respect to the income distribution measured by proxy as the fraction of conservative coalition victories it is found that over the period 1961 1984 the degree of conservative coalition strength is positively associated with changes in inequality holding the effects of unemployment and inflation constant

which renewable energy policy is a venture capitalist s best friend empirical evidence from a survey of international cleantech investors governments around the world have adopted ambitious targets to increase the share of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions they pursue a variety of policy approaches to achieve these targets it has been a popular theme for contributions in energy policy to investigate the effectiveness of such policies this article adds a new perspective to the debate namely looking at the policy preferences of private investors in innovative clean energy technology firms we surveyed 60 investment professionals from european and north american venture capital and private equity funds and asked them to assess the effectiveness of various policies in terms of stimulating their interest to invest in innovative clean energy technologies in addition to quantitative rankings we use qualitative interview data to capture additional information on why investors prefer some policies over others the combined analysis compensates for the inherent limitations of a quantitative ranking using generic policy types the results of this exploratory analysis demonstrate that all other things being equal investors in our sample perceived feed in tariffs to be the most effective renewable energy policy the overall preference for feed in tariffs is even more pronounced among investors based in europe and with higher exposure to clean energy

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

efficiency improving fossil fuel technologies for electricity generation data selection and trends abstract this paper studies patenting dynamics in efficiency improving electricity generation technologies as an important indicator of innovation activity we build a novel database of worldwide patent applications in efficiency improving fossil fuel technologies for electricity generation and then analyse patenting trends over time and across countries we find that patenting has mostly been stable over time with a recent decreasing trend oecd countries represent the top innovators and the top markets for technology some non oecd countries and particularly china are also very active in terms of patenting activity in this sector the majority of patents are first filed in oecd countries and only then in bric and other non oecd countries bric and other non oecd countries apply for patents that are mostly marketed domestically but bric countries represent important markets for patent duplication of oecd inventions these results are indicative of significant technology transfer in the field of efficiency improving technologies for electricity production

why is south korea s renewable energy policy failing a qualitative evaluation abstract this study explores the causes of the south korean government s failure to successfully deploy its renewable energy policy despite the south korean government s ongoing efforts since 2002 to promote the deployment of renewable energy the established deployment target has not been met and the share of renewable energy supply in total primary energy supply is poor compared to peer countries with a similar level of economic development therefore we attempt to find the causes of this policy failure using qualitative evaluation methods through the analyses conducted using focused interviews and secondary data we found that the domination of the fossil fuel and nuclear power industry s interests inconsistent policy shifts policy design that lacks sufficient support schemes poorly coordinated government activities and unsystemic and untimely monitoring and feedback have led to the failure of renewable energy deployment policies in south korea to overcome these problems we suggest that the south korean government should set more ambitious policy goals establish a new independent organization that focuses on energy policy issues use a varied policy mix and secure political support from diverse policy actors

the european sovereign debt crisis the origin and propagation of the european sovereign debt crisis can be attributed to the flawed original design of the euro in particular there was an incomplete understanding of the fragility of a monetary union under crisis conditions especially in the absence of banking union and other european level buffer mechanisms moreover the inherent messiness involved in proposing and implementing incremental multicountry crisis management responses on the fly has been an important destabilizing factor throughout the crisis after diagnosing the situation we consider reforms that might improve the resilience of the euro area to future fiscal shocks

decomposition of carbon intensity in electricity production technological innovation and structural adjustment in china s power sector abstract china s power generation accounted for 24 of the world s total output ranking first in 2015 as a suitable performance indicator carbon intensity of electricity reflects a variation in the average level of carbon emissions per unit of electricity generated as the largest carbon emitter among various industries power sector is in duty bound to reduce carbon emissions and achieve sustainable development great progress has been made in china s power sector which is reflected by the effects of technological innovation and structural adjustment with logarithm transformation and integral transformation three dimensional decomposition model is proposed to quantitatively measure the changed carbon intensity of electricity due to technological innovation and structural adjustment in the context of three dimensional model the variation of carbon intensity can be decomposed into absolute changes and or relative changes furthermore accumulative decomposition results are obtained by chain linked calculation rules finally the proposed models are implemented in china s power industry to reveal its historical progress during 1980 2014 some important conclusions are also found based on the decomposition results

the evolution of wind energy policies in china 1995 2014 an analysis based on policy instruments abstract the rapid growth of china s installed wind power capacity in recent years is closely related to the wind energy policies issued by the chinese government using content analysis and quantitative analysis methods this paper studies the historical evolution of chinese wind energy policies based on 72 wind energy policies issued in the past two decades 1995 2014 this paper analyzes the issuing organization form number and stringency of wind energy policies and compares different policy instruments in two periods the results show that the number and stringency of wind energy policies fluctuated greatly from 1995 to 2014 and that more than twenty organizations had independently or jointly issued the policies the main organization issuing wind energy policies however is the department that controls key economic and administrative resources and not the one that is in charge of wind energy of the 72 policies issued twenty three took the form of notices and eleven were measures as to the policy instrument environmental policies are most widely applied by the chinese government and regulation control and goal planning instruments are the ones most frequently adopted furthermore the application of supply and demand type policies is inadequate and few effective instruments have been adopted

public policy influence on renewable energy investments a panel data study across oecd countries this paper examines the impact of public policy measures on renewable energy re investments in electricity generating capacity made by institutional investors using a novel combination of datasets and a longitudinal research design we investigate the influence of different policy measures in a sample of oecd countries to suggest an effective policy mix which could tackle failures in the market for clean energy the results call for technology specific policies which take into account actual market conditions and technology maturity to improve the conditions for institutional investments advisable policy instruments include economic and fiscal incentives such as feed in tariffs fit especially for less mature technologies additionally market based instruments such as greenhouse gas ghg emission trading systems for mature technologies should be included these policy measures directly impact the risk and return structure of re projects supplementing these with regulatory measures such as codes and standards e g rps and long term strategic planning could further strengthen the context for re investments

state renewable energy electricity policies an empirical evaluation of effectiveness over the past decade state governments have emerged as us energy policy leaders across the country states are adopting policy instruments aimed at carbon mitigation and renewable energy deployment one of the most prevalent and innovative policy instruments is a renewable portfolio standard rps which seeks to increase the share of renewable energy electrification in the electricity market this analysis evaluates the effectiveness of state energy programs with an empirical investigation of the linkage between state rps policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy electricity generation across states we use a variant of a standard fixed effects model referred to as a fixed effects vector decomposition with state level data from 1998 to 2006 results indicate that rps implementation is not a significant predictor of the percentage of renewable energy generation out of the total generation mix yet for each additional year that a state has an rps policy they are found to increase the total amount of renewable energy generation these findings reveal a potentially significant shortcoming of rps policies political institutions natural resource endowments deregulation gross state product per capita electricity use per person electricity price and the presence of regional rps policies are also found to be significantly related to renewable energy deployment

the impact of policy consistency on technological competitiveness a study on oecd countries abstract this study investigates the impact of policy consistency on technological competitiveness using patent citation analysis policy support plays a key role in promoting firms investment in research and development r d activities especially in emerging sectors policy consistency increases technological competitiveness since it encourages firms to invest in r d activities although previous studies argue policy design and characteristics few deal with policy consistency and they lack a quantitative measure of policy consistency and explanation of its effects therefore this study proposes the quantitative indexes for policy consistency and potential technological competitiveness the indexes are applied to the case of renewable energy sector since energy sector is highly dependent on the government policy and thus needs high policy consistency the result shows that renewable energy technology development is affected by policy and the higher the policy consistency especially in emerging sectors it also shows that countries of high policy consistency tend to achieve higher technological competitiveness and thus are likely to secure higher technological competitiveness in the future the findings of this study can be used in designing policy for sustainable technological competitiveness and will be a corner stone for researches on assessing policy consistency