trade offs in energy and environmental policy abstract the energy sector is undeniably undergoing a critical period faced with multiple challenges whether economic political or technological these challenges are related to the requirements set on the sector to meet a wide range of social demands associated with the three traditional dimensions of a sustainable energy system i e environmental sustainability security of energy supply and economic sustainability in particular the environmental pillar has gained ground after the paris agreement which has reinforced the requirement of a low carbon transformation of the sector a main challenge is to balance trade offs among competing goals when designing energy and environmental policies although making the energy sector greener is a common aspiration of governments and many countries are indeed being successful in this regard the success comes at a price in terms of the other non environmental dimensions of a sustainable energy system the aim of this special issue is to look in detail on some of the most pressing environmental challenges faced by the energy sector as well as the trade offs involved in reaching a greener energy system

relational incentive contracts standard incentive theory models provide a rich framework for studying informational problems but assume that contracts can be perfectly enforced this paper studies the design of self enforced relational contracts i show that optimal contracts often can take a simple stationary form but that self enforcement restricts promised compensation and affects incentive provision with hidden information it may be optimal for an agent to supply the same inefficient effort regardless of cost conditions with moral hazard optimal contracts involve just two levels of compensation this is true even if performance measures are subjective in which case optimal contracts terminate following poor performance jel c73 d82 l14

events that shook the market tick data on the standard and poor s 500 stock index s p 500 futures contract and newswire searches are used to match events to large 1 to 5 minute stock price changes sixty nine events that led to large stock price changes are identified between 1982 and 1999 53 of which are directly or indirectly related to monetary policy many large stock price changes have no events associated with them

the provision of incentives in firms i ncentives are the essence of economics despite many wide ranging claims about their supposed importance there has been little empirical assessment of incentive provision for workers the purpose of this paper is to critically overview existing work on the provision of incentives since the interests of workers and their employers are not always aligned a large theoretical literature has emphasized how firms design compensation contracts to induce employees to operate in the firm s interest this literature has reached into many areas of compensation and has pointed to a multitude of different mechanisms that can be used to induce workers to act in the interests of their employers these include piece rates options discretionary bonuses promotions profit sharing efficiency wages deferred compensation and so on my objective here is to evaluate this literature in the light of a growing empirical literature on compensation where possible i will address the literature from two perspectives first an underlying assumption of this literature is that individuals respond to contracts that reward performance accordingly i consider whether agents behave in this way and whether these responses are always in the firm s interest second i address whether firms write contracts with these responses in mind in other words do contracts look like the predictions of the theory incentives are provided to workers

a techno economic analysis of eu renewable electricity policy pathways in 2030 the aim of this paper is to assess several pathways of a harmonised european policy framework for supporting renewable electricity res e in a 2030 horizon according to different criteria the pathways combine two main dimensions degrees of harmonisation and instruments and design elements a quantitative model based analysis with the green x model is provided the results of the simulations show that there are small differences between the evaluated cases regarding effectiveness all the policy pathways score similarly with respect to res e deployment i e with different degrees of harmonisation and whether using a feed in tariff a feed in premium a quota system with banding or a quota without banding scheme in contrast the policy costs clearly differ across the pathways but the differences can mostly be attributed to the instruments rather than to the degrees of harmonisation this is also the case with other criteria static and dynamic efficiency and the socioeconomic and environmental benefits in terms of co2 emissions and fossil fuels avoided both the degree of harmonisation and the choice of instrument influence the distribution of support costs across countries finally our findings suggest that keeping strengthened national support leads to similar results to other policy pathways

the political economy of international green certificate markets this paper analyzes the political economy of establishing bilateral trade in green certificate markets as one step towards harmonization of european green electricity support systems we outline some of the economic principles of an integrated bilateral green certificates market and then discuss a number of issues that are deemed to be critical for the effectiveness stability and legitimacy of such a market by drawing on some of the lessons of the fairly recent intentions to integrate a future green certificate market in norway with the existing swedish one we highlight exemplify and discuss some critical policy implementation and design issues these include for instance the system s connection to climate policy targets the role of other support schemes and the definition of what green electricity technologies should be included furthermore the establishment of an international market presumes that the benefits of renewable power e g its impacts on the environment diversification of the power mix self sufficiency etc are approached and valued from an international perspective rather than from a national one thus implying lesser emphasis on for instance employment and regional development impacts a bilateral green certificate system thus faces a number of important policy challenges but at the same time it could provide important institutional learning effects that can be useful for future attempts aiming at achieving greater policy integration in the european renewable energy sector

renewable energy policies in europe converging or diverging abstract nations today are urgently challenged with achieving a significant increase in the deployment of renewable energies in europe that need has given rise to a debate about the most effective and efficient support strategy whilst the different interests debate whether full european harmonisation or strengthening of national support policies for electricity from renewable energy sources res e is the best way forward individual national support schemes are rapidly evolving this study investigates how the eu member states have applied support policy types over the last decade by identifying predominant developments in the application of feed in tariffs premiums tradeable green certificates tax incentives investment grants and financing support for specific technologies wind biomass pv this study shows that europe is currently experiencing certain tendencies towards a bottom up convergence of how national policy makers design res e policy supports while some outliers remain the policy supports of most countries become more similar in the policy types applied dominance of feed in tariffs and in their scope of implementation differentiation for installation sizes and stacking of multiple instruments these trends in national decision making which show tendencies of convergence could make an eu driven top down harmonisation of support either dispensable or at least depending on the agreement less controversial

transparency and reciprocal behavior in employment relations abstract the impact of transparency on the extent of reciprocal behavior is investigated in a simple repeated gift exchange experiment where principals set wages and agents respond by choosing effort levels that with a random component determine principals payoff it is shown that direct reciprocal behavior is much stronger in a more transparent situation where efforts are revealed to the principals however there is no significant impact of transparency on average effort as non transparency leads to a stronger diversity in behavioral patterns such that at the same time the frequency of very low and very large effort levels increases

harmonization of renewable electricity feed in laws in the european union this paper focuses on the harmonization of feed in laws in the european union as a support mechanism for the promotion of renewable electricity in particular it proposes a methodology for harmonization based on a feed in law with a modular and transparent premium for renewable electricity producers this premium considers technology costs some grid services political incentives and national priorities the proposed approach includes flexibility mechanisms to update and revise premiums to avoid windfall profits for producers and to share technology innovation benefits with electricity consumers while maintaining incentives for innovation our approach is based on the review of the main features of the german and spanish feed in laws and takes into account other necessary considerations for harmonization such as grid access funding definitions and standards ownership of rights derived from renewables and exceptions for small non commercial producers and energy intensive industries

optimal contracting with subjective evaluation this paper extends the standard principal agent model to allow for subjective evaluation the optimal contract results in more compressed pay relative to the case with verifiable performance measures moreover discrimination against an individual implies lower pay and performance suggesting that the extent of discrimination as measured after controlling for performance may underestimate the level of true discrimination finally the optimal contract entails the use of bonus pay rather than the threat of dismissal hence neither efficiency wages nor the right to dismiss an employee are necessary ingredients for an optimal incentive contract

harmonization of renewable electricity feed in laws a comment abstract this comment aims at critically analyzing some of the economic efficiency issues that are raised in the paper by munoz et al 2007 harmonization of renewable electricity feed in laws in the european union energy policy 35 3104 3114 on the harmonization of feed in law schemes for renewable electricity in the european union we comment on the choice between green certificate systems and feed in laws but pay particular attention to the implementation and design of a harmonized feed in law scheme in the comment we argue first that the approach suggested by munoz et al tends to downplay many of the practical difficulties in assessing the real costs facing investors in renewable electricity not the least since the presence of regulatory uncertainty about the marginal costs of renewable electricity may be essential for the choice between different support systems concerning the benefit side of renewable electricity promotion the munoz et al 2007 paper builds on an interpretation of the eu renewables directive that provides plenty of room for national priorities and that therefore essentially implies that harmonized support premiums per se are of little value we argue instead that a harmonized system should primarily address the international spillover effects from renewable electricity promotion not the least those related to improved security of supply in europe there exists then a strong case for disregarding the specific national benefits of renewable electricity production in the design of harmonized support systems and for instead considering international perhaps at the start bilateral policy support coordination based on entirely uniform support levels

subjective performance evaluations and reciprocity in principal agent relations we conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on and principals benefiting from a real effort task in which the agents performance can only be evaluated subjectively principals give subjective performance feedback to agents and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals in contrast to existing models of reciprocity we find that agents tend to sanction whenever the feedback of principals is below their subjective self evaluations even if agents pay offs are independent of it in turn principals provide more positive feedback relative to their actual performance assessment of the agent if this does not affect their pay off

impact of terrorism on tourism in turkey empirical evidence from turkey this article aims at investigating the causal impact of terrorist attacks on the tourism industry in turkey based on the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing procedure for the period between 1986 and 2006 the ardl bounds test reveals that tourism is in a long run equilibrium level relationship with terrorism the evidence obtained from the long run and short run parameter estimates indicates the existence of a negative causal effect of terrorism on tourism

imports as a major complication liberalisation of the green electricity market in the netherlands abstract liberalisation of the green electricity market in the netherlands has proceeded in a context of relatively generous fiscal incentives and in line with the position that demand is the limiting factor to dutch green electricity production the main result was a massive rise of imports partly covered by renewable energy credits and partly virtual in nature whereas the domestic expansion of green electricity production remained limited this shows the importance of a supply side focus in designing policies aimed at the expansion of domestic green electricity production in the context of a common market with different incentives in place

when outcomes are the reflection of the analysis criteria a review of the tradable green certificate assessments abstract the tradable green certificates tgc framework is a prevalent policy support scheme enacted to stimulate investments in electricity from renewable energy sources res e in several countries including sweden and norway the tgc framework is currently under reevaluation in this process academic literature plays a crucial role in reflecting the outcomes of this policy framework the outcomes however are often limited by the analysis criteria which reflect what has been accounted for or disregarded when assessing the performance of the tgc framework the analysis criteria also stress what is considered as a successful outcome given the importance of such criteria this paper presents an extensive and systemic literature review of academic publications assessing the performance of the tgc framework the findings are to provide an overview of the publications analysis criteria and outline their outcomes we also provide descriptive statistics for the publications and examine the average citation record of the publications that use various analysis criteria in order to explore their relative impact on later studies these findings can help policymakers put the assessments into perspective when reevaluating a country s tgc system they also suggest several intriguing directions for future studies in this field

self confidence and personal motivation the maintenance and enhancement of self esteem has always been identified as a fundamental human impulse philosophers writers educators and of course psychologists have all emphasized the crucial role played by self image in motivation affect and social interactions the aim of this chapter is to bring these concerns into the realm of economic analysis and show that this has important implications for how agents process information and make decisions conversely the tools of economic modelling can help shed light on a number of apparently irrational behaviours documented by psychologists

friends or foes optimal incentives for reciprocal agents abstract widely used performance based contracts put positive or negative externalities on co workers these externalities have been proven to shape an organization s working climate especially when workers exhibit social preferences however it is a priori unclear whether a more friendly or a more competitive working environment should be encouraged in this paper we develop a theoretical model in which a self interested principal has to motivate a set of agents to work hard agents are symmetric potentially risk averse and exhibit reciprocity concerns towards each other we show that the principal reduces the cost of achieving high effort provision by designing a psychological gift exchange game thereby replacing monetary with psychological incentives we find that the optimal incentive scheme depends on the interplay between the agents attitudes towards risks and their preferences for reciprocity in particular the optimal scheme implements i a relative performance compensation scheme which induces an exchange of unkindness if agents are relatively little risk averse and ii a joint performance compensation scheme which induces an exchange of kindness if agents are sufficiently risk averse our findings can explain some puzzling empirical results

the effect of financial constraints technological progress and long term contracts on tradable green certificates tradable green certificates tgcs have recently become a diffuse instrument to support renewable electricity in oecd countries although it is perhaps too early to draw a conclusive judgement on the effectiveness of this instrument in increasing renewable capacity and decreasing the price of certificates one view in the literature maintains that long term contracts are of particular importance for tgcs to be effective this paper contributes to this debate by analysing how financial constraints and technological progress can induce investors to hold pessimistic expectations of their ability to sell green certificates and still make a profit clearly these expectations will prevent investors from building new capacity to fulfil the quota comprised in tgcs and will keep the price of certificates traded in the market high as this kind of expectation is not influenced by most design features of tgcs one can conclude that long term contracts are particularly important in determining the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of these instruments some attention should therefore be paid to the features of the tgcs which induce obliged parties to offer long term contracts to renewable generators

event studies in management research theoretical and empirical issues we examined the use of event studies in management research and found that there was inadequate attention paid to theoretical and research design issues this lack of attention may lead to false in

testing equity market efficiency around terrorist attacks this article uses the nine major bombings since 1998 that have been attributed to al qaida to examine market efficiency including a test of rumours that investors traded with advance knowledge of attacks analysis of these related but individually unexpected events confirms markets are semi strong efficient it now takes well under a trading day to fully price in a completely unexpected attack on balance markets also proved strongly efficient with no conclusive evidence of insider trading

turning points in the civil war views from the greenback market in early 1862 the united states government began issuing greenbacks a legal tender currency that was not convertible into gold the government promised to redeem the greenbacks in gold eventually but speculators understood that the probability of redemption depended on union army military fortunes and political developments that affected the total cost of the war to serve the speculative interest in gold a market emerged for the purpose of trading greenbacks for gold dollars because the market price of a greenback reflected the public s perceptions of future war costs the movement of these prices provides unique insights into how people at the time perceived various events we use daily quotations of the gold price of greenbacks to identify a set of dates during the civil war that market participants regarded as turning points in some cases these dates coincide with events familiar from conventional historical accounts of the war in other instances however market participants reacted strongly to events that historians have not viewed as very significant this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

war terror and the tourism market in israel a supply and demand model of the israeli hotel industry is developed distinguishing between its domestic and foreign sectors model simulations are employed to examine the impacts of war and terrorist incidents on tourist activity and hotel revenues foreign demand for israeli hotel stays is highly price elastic and income inelastic and moderately sensitive to terrorist events domestic demand is price inelastic income elastic and terror insensitive in the wake of terror attacks hotels supply or minimum prices to israeli tourists shift downward reducing local market prices and encouraging more local tourism however the magnitude of these shifts is minor and the local market thus provides little buffer for dropoffs in foreign tourism by permitting excess capacity in such fashion hotels respond rationally to the price inelasticity of local demand

confidence enhanced performance there is ample evidence that emotions affect performance positive emotions can improve performance while negative ones may diminish it for example the fears induced by the possibility of failure or of negative evaluations have physiological consequences shaking loss of concentration that may impair performance in sports on stage or at school there is also ample evidence that individuals have distorted recollection of past events and distorted attributions of the causes of successes of failures recollection of good events or successes is typically easier than recollection of bad ones or failures successes tend to be attributed to intrinsic aptitudes or own effort while failures are attributed to bad luck in addition these attributions are often reversed when judging the performance of others the objective of this paper is to incorporate the first phenomenon above into an otherwise standard decision theoretic model and show that in a world where performance depends on emotions biases in information processing enhance welfare

cost effects of international trade in meeting eu renewable electricity targets abstract the european market for renewable electricity received a major stimulus from the adoption of the directive on the promotion of renewable electricity the directive specifies the indicative targets for electricity supply from renewable energy sources res e to be reached in european union eu member states in the year 2010 it also requires member states to certify the origin of their renewable electricity production this article presents a first eu wide quantitative evaluation of the effects of meeting the targets using an eu wide system for tradable green certificates tgc we calculate the equilibrium price of green certificates and identify which countries are likely to export or import certificates cost advantages of participating in such an eu wide trading scheme are determined for each of the member states moreover we identify which choice of technologies results in meeting targets at least costs results are obtained from a model that quantifies the effects of achieving the res e targets in the eu with and without trade the article provides a brief insight in this model as well as the methodology that was used to specify cost potential curves for renewable electricity in each of the 15 eu member states model calculations show that within the eu wide tgc system the total production costs of the last option needed to satisfy the overall eu res e target equals 9 2 eurocent kwh assuming that the production price of electricity on the european power market would equal 3 eurocent kwh in the year 2010 the indicative green certificate price equals 6 2 eurocent kwh we conclude that implementation of an eu wide tgc system is a cost efficient way of stimulating renewable electricity supply

the policy implications of the different interpretations of the cost effectiveness of renewable electricity support abstract the cost effectiveness of support for renewable electricity is a main criterion to assess the success of policy instruments together with effectiveness the costs of support are also a source of significant concern for governments all over the world however significant confusion exists in the literature on the cost effectiveness of public support for renewable electricity while some authors define the concept of cost effectiveness as that which complies with the equimarginality principle many others including documents from relevant organisations european commission international energy agency intergovernmental panel on climate change define it as the lowest costs of support generally equating it with the minimisation of consumer costs the aim of this paper is to clarify the differences between both approaches and their policy implications regarding the choice of instruments and design elements it is shown that they partly overlap and that their policy implications clearly differ leading to very different policy prescriptions while the former favours technology neutral instruments and design elements the minimisation of consumer costs approach favours instruments and design elements which adjust support levels to the costs of the technologies

the multiperiod principal agent problem in repeated principal agent models long term contracts can improve on short term contracts only if they commit either principal or agent to a payoff in some future circumstance lower than could be obtained from a short term contract negotiated if that circumstance occurs we show that efficient contracting under moral hazard alone does not require long term commitment from the principal provided a short term contract can punish the agent sufficiently in a sense made precise it requires no commitment from the agent either then linking payoffs in one period to outcomes in previous periods does not improve the tradeoff between incentives and risk sharing

event studies in economics and finance the event study is an important research tool in economics and finance the goal of an event study is to measure the effects of an economic event on the value of firms event study methods exploit the fact that given rationality in the marketplace the effects of an event will be reflected immediately in security prices thus the impact can be measured by examining security prices surrounding the event in this paper event study methods are described including some of the potential complications an example is included to illustrate the approach