energy efficiency investments in the context of split incentives among french households the residential sector offers considerable potential for reducing energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions particularly through energy efficient renovations the objective of this study is twofold first i aim to provide initial empirical evidence of the extent to which split incentives between landlords and tenants may lead to underinvestment second i investigate the influence of tax credits and energy burdens on energy efficiency expenditures given the complexity of studying the decision to invest in energy saving renovations i use a bivariate tobit model to compare decisions about energy efficient works and repair works even when the renovation expenditures seem quite similar the analysis shows that tenants are doubly penalized they have high energy expenditures due to energy inefficient building characteristics and because they are poorer than homeowners they are unable to invest in energy saving systems the results also confirm that tax credits are ineffective in the split incentives context in terms of public policy the government should focus on low income tenants and mandatory measures such as minimum standards seem appropriate financial support from a third party financer also might be a solution

a test of the law of one price in retail banking this paper investigates the level and the determinants of retail banking interest rate differences among spanish banks in the period 1989 2003 we find that the interest rates of twenty five different bank loan and deposit products adjust rather rapidly to their long term values in response to external shocks as the relative version of the law of one price predicts but the evidence runs contrary to the absolute version of the law credit risk premium part of the marginal cost of the loans granted by a particular bank is an important source of interest rate dispersion across banks and loan products both before and after spain joined the euro zone therefore differences in credit risk policies across banks must be taken into account when forming expectations about european retail banking integration

targeting energy justice exploring spatial racial ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in urban residential heating energy efficiency abstract fuel poverty the inability of households to afford adequate energy services such as heating is a major energy justice concern increasing residential energy efficiency is a strategic fuel poverty intervention however the absence of easily accessible household energy data impedes effective targeting of energy efficiency programs this paper uses publicly available data bottom up modeling and small area estimation techniques to predict the mean census block group residential heating energy use intensity eui an energy efficiency proxy in kansas city missouri results mapped using geographic information systems gis and statistical analysis show disparities in the relationship between heating eui and spatial racial ethnic and socioeconomic block group characteristics block groups with lower median incomes a greater percentage of households below poverty a greater percentage of racial ethnic minority headed households and a larger percentage of adults with less than a high school education were on average less energy efficient higher euis results also imply that racial segregation which continues to influence urban housing choices exposes black and hispanic households to increased fuel poverty vulnerability lastly the spatial concentration and demographics of vulnerable block groups suggest proactive area and community based targeting of energy efficiency assistance programs may be more effective than existing self referral approaches

assessing the consumers willingness to adopt a prepayment metering system in nigeria abstract despite the rising popularity in the adoption and usage of prepayment meters little is still known about the drivers of its adoption we examine the willingness to adopt prepayment metering ppm for a sample of nigerian households that were not prepayment users double hurdle models were estimated to account for households decisions concerning billing system switching behaviour and households willingness to pay wtp the estimated results revealed that decisions to adopt a prepayment meter are significantly affected by current electricity spending current billing method and the split incentive problem whereas current electricity spending significantly increased the tendency to adopt ppm the split incentive problem reduced the probability of adoption although unmetered consumers were more likely to express a willingness to adopt a ppm system than post paid customers they did not intend to pay a significantly higher amount to obtain the prepayment service income did not play a significant role in decision making concerning ppm adoption and the corresponding wtp amount these results cast doubt on the validity of the widely held belief that low income may be responsible for ppm adoption reflecting the widespread usage of ppm by low income households

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

dsm power plant in india abstract india is facing acute energy shortage that is likely to affect its economic development there are severe supply side constraints in term of coal and gas shortages that are likely to continue in the near future hence in its current focus to solving the energy shortage problem and sustaining the development trajectory the country should aim at a balance between supply side and demand side measures energy efficiency in end use is increasingly gaining importance as one of the most cost effective options for achieving short to medium term energy savings india has initiated the national mission for enhanced energy efficiency under national action plan for climate change which addresses various aspects of energy efficiency such as technology financing fiscal incentive and also creation of energy efficiency as a market instrument however even though energy efficiency has substantial scope in the indian subcontinent the market for energy efficiency has been limited this paper discusses the concept of mega demand side management projects as a dsm power plant a dsm power plant acts as an umbrella with multiple energy efficiency schemes under its ambit aimed at transforming energy efficiency into a business by providing a push to the scale of operation as well as financial sustenance to energy efficiency projects this paper expounds on the various aspects of dsm power plant in terms of its policy and institutional mechanism for the large scale implementation of energy efficiency in india this paper provides an illustration of the concept of dsm power plant model through a case study in one of the states rajasthan of india further a comparative analysis of the cost of generation from dsm power plant and a representative conventional power plant cpp in rajasthan has been undertaken and the dsm power plant comes out to be a more cost effective option the concept of dsm power plant will not only address the issue of energy shortages but will also help the financially thwarted utilities to reduce their revenue deficit in the near future

a biophysical analysis of the energy real gdp ratio implications for substitution and technical change abstract this paper quantifies the factors that caused the energy real gdp ratio to change during the post war period in france the federal republic of germany japan and the united kingdom econometric results indicate that changes in the types of fuel used changes in the energy consumed by the household sector changes in the types of goods and services produced and changes in energy prices account for most of the variation in this ratio price elasticities estimated from these results are lower than those estimated by neoclassical economists and indicate that the system boundaries used by neoclassical economists overestimate the amount of energy saved by substitution analysis of the error term from the regression results indicates that energy saving technical change has had little effect on the amount of energy used to support economic activity

money market integration we use transaction level data and detailed modeling of the high frequency behavior of federal funds eurodollar spreads to provide evidence of strong integration of the u s markets for federal funds and eurodollars the two core components of the dollar money market our evidence of negligible federal funds eurodollar premia contrasts with previous findings of large and predictable premia which have been interpreted as evidence of segmentation between the markets for federal funds and eurodollars our results however are consistent with possible persistent segmentation within the global eurodollar market we document several patterns in the behavior of federal funds eurodollar spreads including liquidity effects from trading volume to yield spreads volatility

a theory of economic growth with material energy resources and dematerialization interaction of three growth mechanisms the nature of energy and material resources in a non optimizing growth theory framework is clarified this involves two modifications of the conventional theory firstly multiple feedback mechanisms or growth engines are identified such that the impact of the cost of production through demand on growth is accounted for secondly a production function distinguishes between resource use technical efficiency and value creation the resulting model is analytically solved under the condition of a constant growth rate given model complexity numerical experiments are performed as well providing relevant insights to the academic and political debates on environmental kuznets curves and dematerialization

the relation between marginal product and price in us energy markets implications for climate change policy abstract this paper reports an empirical test of the axioms that describe the relationship between the marginal product and price of factor inputs in us energy markets to do so i estimate a reduced form of a production function that represents the amounts of various energy types that are required to produce a given level of output the partial derivative of this production function is used to calculate the change in output that is generated by a marginal change in the use of coal oil natural gas or electricity a partial adjustment model is used to estimate the relation between the marginal product and price of coal oil natural gas and electricity the results indicate that rational agents manipulate their use of coal oil natural gas and electricity so that the marginal product of these energies adjust to changes in the relative prices of these energies because the marginal products of oil and natural gas are greater than coal less than one heat unit of oil or natural gas is needed to substitute for one unit of coal and this increases the quantity of carbon emissions that can be abated by interfuel substitution the time required to achieve these reductions may be longer than thought previously because of the slow rate at which the relative marginal product adjusts to relative price

increasing energy supply not inevitable abstract suggestions that energy efficiency improvements cannot reduce energy demand are wrong first such suggestions are not even justified by available historical evidence second the general argument that increasing living standards can only be based on increasing energy demand is based solely on the assumption that what has generally happened in the past must always apply to the future in the past governments have not seen the need to accelerate the rate of energy efficiency improvements by intervening in the market and by changing attitudes however with mounting concerns about the environmental impact of energy sources there is now the motivation to reverse this general trend the means to do this are available what we need to do is to make a political choice to embark on a non nuclear response to global warming

the implications of the historical decline in us energy intensity for long run co2 emission projections this paper analyzes the influence of the long run decline in us energy intensity on projections of energy use and carbon emissions to the year 2050 we build on our own recent work which decomposes changes in the aggregate us energy gdp ratio into shifts in sectoral composition structural change and adjustments in the energy demand of individual industries intensity change and identifies the impact on the latter of price induced substitution of variable inputs shifts in the composition of capital and embodied and disembodied technical progress we employ a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model of the us economy to analyze the implications of these findings for future energy use and carbon emissions comparison of the simulation results against projections of historical trends in gdp energy use and emissions reveals that the range of values for the rate of autonomous energy efficiency improvement aeei conventionally used in cge models is consistent with the effects of structural changes at the sub sector level rather than disembodied technological change even so our results suggest that us emissions may well grow faster in the future than in the recent past

the impact of electric power on productivity according to the historical record the increased use of energy in general and electric power in particular stands as one of the key factors in productivity growth growth accountants however find little support for this view rejecting claims that the productivity slowdown can be attributed to the lower rate of growth of the energy input in us manufacturing in this study an attempt at reconciling the historical record with the empirical facts is made specifically the commonly used factor income shares in the relevant divisia input growth index are replaced by the estimated output input elasticities the latter attribute a considerably larger role to electric power than previous studies indicated these are then used to reevaluate the sources of growth in us manufacturing

towards a disequilibrium theory of endogenous economic growth this paper discusses the need for a new approach to economic growth theory the standard theory of growth in equilibrium driven by exogenous uncaused productivity gains has an implication that is both unjustified and perverse from a policy perspective that government intervention of any kind can only introduce constraints and reduce option space thus decreasing potential growth it is argued that growth theory should 1 acknowledge the importance of natural resources especially fossil fuels as a driver of past and present economic growth 2 incorporate an explicit recognition that growth is a consequence of technological innovation especially radical innovation that often responds to natural resource scarcities or other societal needs and 3 explicitly reflect the fact that the important i e scarce factors of production in economics can and do change over time i e from a rural cowboy economy of the past to an urbanized spaceship economy of the future in short it should reflect the fact that necessity is the mother of invention the first and third of these modifications have been proposed before but not in combination the third seems to be new

policy options for the split incentive increasing energy efficiency for low income renters the split incentive problem concerns the lack of appropriate incentives to implement energy efficiency measures in particular low income tenants face a phenomenon of energy poverty in which they allocate significantly more of their household income to energy expenditures than other renters this problem is substantial affecting 1 89 of all united states energy use if effectively addressed it would create a range of savings between 4 and 11 billion dollars per year for many of the nation s poorest residents we argue that a carefully designed program of incentives for participants including landlords in conjunction with a unique type of utility managed on bill financing mechanism has significant potential to solve many of the complications we focus on three kinds of split incentives five concerns inherent to addressing split incentive problems scale endurance incentives savings political disfavor and provide a detailed policy proposal designed to surpass those problems with a particular focus on low income tenants in a u s context

imposing local concavity in the translog and generalized leontief cost functions abstract we propose and illustrate a method for imposing concavity at a single point which may result in concavity at many points in the familiar translog and generalized leontief cost functions while at the same time maintaining flexibility of the forms

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

credit derivatives premium as a new japan premium at the height of the japanese banking crisis of 199798 a popular indicator of weakness was the so called japan premium that is the premium in the interest rate charged to japanese banks in the interbank market the internationally active japanese banks had to pay a premium in borrowing us dollars and to a much lesser extent japanese yen from western banks the japan premium was considered to reflect western banks skepticism on opaque accounting and supervision ihe japan premium disappeared after the second capital injection to major banks in march 1999 l by the end of 2001 the vulnerability of japanese banks became obvious due to low earnings newly emerged nonperforming loans and deflation the core capital tier i capital was depleted and was supplemented only by deferred tax credit which has no liquidation value however it was noted by banking experts and researchers that the japan premium did not reappear it was a puzzle why the premium was not demanded this time the focus of this letter is to explain why the japan premium apparently disappeared and to report on an alternative indicator for japanese bank vulnerability that would replace the japan premium we will assert that the japan premium the

testing the law of one price in retail banking an analysis for colombia using a pair wise approach abstract we apply a pair wise approach to test the law of one price for deposit lending rates in colombia we find that when banks are of different sizes deposit rates adjust quickly suggesting a competitive environment by contrast lending rates adjust rapidly when banks are of similar sizes supporting market segmentation

the effect of house energy efficiency programs on the extensive and intensive margin of lower income households investment behavior abstract this paper examines the biggest house energy efficiency retrofit support program in greece which ran during 2011 2015 and approximately fifty thousand households participated we take advantage of an exogenous policy change resulting in cost reduction for households that occurred while the program was running this change substantially increased the subsidy rate for lower income households we find that this effective cost reduction increased the participation rate extensive margin we add to the literature on retrofits by further showing that this change increased substantially the investment amount intensive margin of these lower income households detailed data on a sub sample of households reveal that this increase was driven primarily by window replacement and thermal insulation investments

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

attitudes and behaviours of private sector landlords towards the energy efficiency of tenanted homes abstract the uk s housing stock generates approximately 27 of the country s total annual carbon emissions in light of the legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions new housing is subject to a tightening of regulations governing energy demand and efficiency resulting in a gradual improvement in carbon emissions the question is how to achieve the deep carbon emission reductions from existing domestic properties of which 75 will still be in use in 2050 government has sought to provide incentives to homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their households and mandate improvements in socially rented housing using a range of fiscal measures most recently the green deal there has however been little consideration of the 18 of uk households who privately rent their home a tenure that is growing fast the aim of this research is to investigate the factors that influence private sector landlords when considering energy efficiency improvements to their tenanted homes the results indicate that government policy has consistently failed to engage private sector landlords in the issue of energy efficiency and thus measures must be taken to understand the motivations of landlords in order to design effective incentives and interventions

market specific and currency specific risk during the global financial crisis evidence from the interbank markets in tokyo and london abstract this paper investigates how international money markets reflected credit and liquidity risk during the global financial crisis after matching the currency denomination we examine how the tokyo interbank offered rate tibor was synchronized with the london interbank offered rate libor we find remarkably asymmetric responses in market specific and currency specific risk during the crisis the regression results suggest that market specific credit risk increased the difference across markets whereas liquidity risk caused the difference across currency denominations they also support the view that liquidity shortage of the us dollar occurred in international money markets during the crisis coordinated central bank liquidity provisions were useful in reducing the liquidity shortage of the us dollar but their effectiveness was asymmetric across markets

a multivariate cointegration analysis of the role of energy in the us macroeconomy abstract this paper extends my previous analysis of the causal relationship of gdp and energy use in the usa in the post war period a majority of the relevant variables are integrated justifying a cointegration analysis the results show that cointegration does occur and that energy input cannot be excluded from the cointegration space the results are plausible in terms of macroeconomic dynamics the results are similar to my previous granger causality results and contradict claims in the literature based on bivariate models that there is no cointegration between energy and output

on the rebound feedback between energy intensities and energy uses in iea countries abstract the interaction or feedback between energy efficiencies or energy intensities and energy use has long been the topic of debate some have argued that energy efficiency improvements by reducing energy intensities and therefore lowering the cost of energy services would lead to rebound effects offsetting much or all of any initial savings in energy in this paper we analyse historical data on energy use efficiency and pricing in different sectors to try and identify rebounds for the period of our data since about 1970 we show that key measures of activity car use manufacturing output and structure house area etc have changed little in response to changes in energy prices or efficiency instead continuing their long term evolution relative to gdp or other driving factors while our analysis cannot disentangle more macro level economic feedbacks in a detailed way we show indirectly that such effects also appear to have been small over the 1970s and 1980s overall our analysis of disaggregated sectoral and subsectoral energy use and activity trends in a variety of iea economies suggests that any feedback effect is small compared to both the effects on energy use of changes in energy intensities and overall economic growth we conclude that most of the improvements in energy efficiencies led to reductions in energy intensities observed in the 1970s and 1980s weighted by 1990 activity levels intensities were roughly 15 20 lower in 1994 5 than in 1973 which in turn meant real savings of energy energy demand in iea countries is roughly this much below what it would have been for the same gdp had these savings not occurred rebounds may have taken back some of the overall savings but most remain even after the fall of oil prices in 1986 any boost to gdp as a result of these savings could not have been sufficient to increase energy demand enough to significantly alter these conclusions that the savings remained after the fall in oil prices supports the notion that net savings restrained energy growth relative to gdp in some formulations arise from technological progress even if energy prices do not increase how far this effect can reach however is a matter of considerable debate

polices for increasing energy efficiency thirty years of experience in oecd countries energy efficiency improvement was an important phenomenon in the global energy balance over the past 30 years without energy efficiency improvements the oecd nations would have used approximately 49 more energy than was actually consumed as of 1998 this paper first reviews energy intensity trends for the major oecd nations since 1973 considering how much of the overall reduction in e gdp was due to energy efficiency improvement and how much was due to structural change the bulk of the paper examines the energy efficiency policies and programs adopted in japan united states and western europe commenting on their effectiveness and energy savings impacts where possible the paper also reviews the energy efficiency policies and programs adopted in california this experience shows that well designed policies can result in substantial energy savings as demonstrated in the united states where nine specific policies and programs reduced primary energy use in 2002 by approximately 11 substantial energy savings also occurred in japan some european countries and in the electricity sector in california

fuel conserving and using production functions abstract this article compares eight production cost functions used or potentially useful for exploring how energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption we show the practitioner s choice of function can inadvertently pre determine results and make recommendations as to which functions are flexible enough to prevent this we also show pre selected factor substitution elasticities can similarly pre determine results to aid the comparison we decompose the energy consumption rebound effect into intensity and output income effects which also delivers insight into the mechanisms of rebound we conclude by recommending practitioners restrict themselves to either the gallant fourier or the generalized leontief symmetric generalized barnett cost functions as being sufficiently rebound flexible the translog cost function may be suitable given certain conditions and a particular form of the ces solow function is a possible but problematic candidate along the way the article provides a general methodology for similarly examining any arbitrarily defined constant returns to scale production or cost function

does the law of one price hold in international financial markets evidence from tick data abstract this paper investigates the validity of the law of one price lop in international financial markets by examining the frequency size and duration of inter market price differentials for borrowing and lending services one way arbitrage using a unique data set for three major capital and foreign exchange markets that covers a period of more than seven months at tick frequency we find that the lop holds on average but numerous economically significant violations of the lop arise the duration of these violations is high enough to make it worthwhile searching for one way arbitrage opportunities in order to minimize borrowing costs and or maximize earnings on given funds we also document that such opportunities decline with the pace of the market and increase with market volatility

electricity policies for low income households this paper discusses the implications of restructuring the u s electricity industry for low income energy policy and low income households the paper discusses the historical development of existing low income energy policies and programs federal policy has focused primarily on addressing the heating needs of low income customers state policy has traditionally vested the vertically integrated utility with much of the responsibility to provide energy programs to low income customers the paper considers how industry restructuring may affect the appropriateness of these policies and programs the paper describes new policies to provide low income electricity services that could be developed in parallel with broader industry restructuring efforts

facade insulation retrofitting policy implementation process and its effects on health equity determinants a realist review abstract fuel poverty and cold housing constitute a significant public health problem energy efficiency interventions such as facade retrofitting address the problem from a structural and long term perspective despite evidence of the health benefits of insulation little is known about the political and social contexts that contribute to social inequalities in receiving and experiencing health benefits from these interventions we used a realist review methodology to better understand the mechanisms that explain how and why variations across different social groups appear in receiving energy efficiency facade retrofitting interventions and in their impact on health determinants we considered the four stages of the policy implementation framework public policy approach policy receiving intervention and impact on health determinants we found strong evidence that certain social groups low income renters elderly suffering most from fuel poverty experience more barriers for undertaking a building retrofitting due to factors such as upfront costs presentism thinking split incentives disruption and lack of control and that some public policies on housing energy efficiency may exacerbate these inequalities this can be avoided if such policies specifically aim at tackling fuel poverty or social inequities are completely free to users target the most affected groups and are adapted to their needs

measuring european financial integration in this paper we present a set of specific measures to quantify the state and evolution of financial integration in the euro area five key markets are considered namely the money corporate bond government bond credit and equity markets building upon the law of one price we have developed two types of indicators that can be broadly categorized as price based and news based measures we have complemented these measures by a number of quantity based indicators mainly related to the evolution of the home bias results indicate that the unsecured money market is fully integrated while integration is reasonably high in the government and corporate bond markets as well as in the equity markets the credit market is among the least integrated especially in the short term segment

interbank interest rates funding liquidity risk and xibor basis spreads abstract this article presents a theoretical model for interbank money market xibor rates that endogenously generates the basis spreads that characterize post crisis fixed income markets xibor ois spreads tenor basis spreads and the forward basis our approach is based on an explicit modeling of interbank cash transactions where interbank credit and liquidity risk are factored in the framework of this article offers a consistent arbitrage free explanation for the emergence of basis spreads we also demonstrate that funding liquidity is a key determinant of post crisis xibor rates and in particular tenor basis spreads

an empirical analysis of energy intensity and the role of policy instruments abstract the reduction of energy intensity is important for sustainable economic growth especially in non oecd countries where energy demand growth is high understanding the impact of policies on energy intensity can help policy makers to reduce energy intensity using empirical methods and cross country data from 44 countries over the period 1990 2016 we study the determinants of energy intensity the common correlated effects mean group estimator is employed since it addresses nonstationarity cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity all three of which exist in the data both gdp per capita and economy wide energy prices are shown to be negatively associated with energy intensity the empirical results provide evidence that several policy instruments are effective in reducing energy intensity i standards and labeling ii government direct investment iii strategic planning and support iv fiscal measures taxes and v grants and subsidies the duration of the policy is more important than the mere existence of the policy in demonstrating the policy s effectiveness

promoting household energy conservation in low income households through tailored interventions in grahamstown south africa abstract there is consensus among researchers and policy makers that households are major consumers of energy which results in serious environmental and financial costs however low income households in particular are often energy insecure and spend a substantial proportion of their income on energy expenditure therefore promoting household energy conservation is considered one of the key pathways to achieving sustainability in both environmental and financial terms this study examines the effectiveness of intervention strategies designed to promote energy conservation using data gathered among low income households in grahamstown south africa a total of 103 households participated in the experimental study energy conservation strategies including print media interactive face to face discussions and feedback were variably applied to different households the results show that the interventions were more effective in promoting energy conservation when applied conjointly rather than separately these results suggest that promoting pro environmental behaviour even among low income households is a possibility further household energy reduction had significant relationships with participants self reported actions and personal values but not with demographic characteristics this study provides useful insights into the complex interplay of personal and situational factors that shape household energy consumption the study underscores the important role that household driven programmes could play in promoting sustainable energy use with support from local municipal government

threshold arch models and asymmetries in volatility this paper attempts to enlarge the class of threshold heteroscedastic models tarch introduced by zakoian 1991a we show that it is possible to relax the positivity constraints on the parameters of the conditional variance unconstrained models provide a greater generality of the paths allowing for nonlinearities in the volatility cyclical behaviour is permitted as well as different relative impacts of positive and negative shocks on volatility depending on their size we give empirical evidence using french stock returns

the rebound effect some empirical evidence from india abstract the present paper looks at the effect of technical efficiency gains on energy use in three sectors in india at varying levels of aggregation high positive rebound implies that efficient technology unless supplemented by appropriate pricing policy will not be successful in containing demand however the main purpose of the paper is to focus on the unique mechanism of rebound that may occur in developing countries with unmet demand

factors influencing commercial buildings to obtain green certificates abstractidentifying the key factors that influence commercial buildings decision to obtain voluntary green certificates is essential to building sustainability enhancement using commercial buildings in the state of new york multinomial logit and nested logit models demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between the characteristics of commercial buildings such as square footage lot size and years built and green certification more interestingly if a commercial building is occupied by its owner likelihood of green certification is actually smaller this finding not only confirms that ongoing energy savings are heavily discounted when deciding whether to incur the upfront cost of green certification but also suggests that the rental premium enjoyed by green buildings is likely greater in terms of present value than the expected operating cost savings another explanation could be that investor owners must operate in a competitive market for tenants while owner occupiers do not operate

identifying policy solutions for improving the energy efficiency of rental properties abstract world leaders have acknowledged that climate change is one of the biggest challenges we face in the 21st century and have committed to pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1 5 degrees above pre industrial levels unfccc 2015 to do this further efficiencies in energy use are needed across all sectors many of which still offer considerable potential for improving energy efficiency rental properties in particular have seen very few improvements in energy efficiency due to a range of barriers and market failures including misinformation split incentives and an uneven power dynamic between renters and landlords this is important as not only do rental properties account for a significant proportion of housing stock the high proportion of low income households in rental properties are particularly vulnerable to rising energy prices this study aimed to identify feasible policy solutions for overcoming the barriers to energy efficiency improvements in rental properties renters landlords and agents were presented with five possible solutions to determine their level of support eight key recommendations for overcoming the barriers to energy efficiency improvements in rental properties are provided these create a foundation for policy makers councils and businesses to develop and target energy efficiency solutions for rental properties

from turmoil to crisis dislocations in the fx swap market before and after the failure of lehman brothers abstract this paper investigates dislocations in the foreign exchange fx swap market between the us dollar and three major european currencies after the failure of lehman brothers in september 2008 deviations from covered interest parity cip were negatively associated with the creditworthiness of us financial institutions as well as that of european institutions consistent with the deepening of a dollar liquidity problem into a global phenomenon us dollar term funding auctions by the ecb snb and boe as well as the us federal reserve commitment to provide unlimited dollar swap lines are found to have ameliorated the fx swap market dislocations

a yen is not a yen tibor libor and the determinants of the japan premium pricing in the euroyen market is based on libor the london interbank offered rate set at 11 00am london time or tibor the tokyo interbank offered rate set at 11 00am tokyo time the changing tibor libor spread reflects the credit risk associated with japanese banks or the japan premium the spread is modeled as a function of determinants of bank default and firm value systematic variation in the spread can be explained by interest rate and stock price effects along with public information flows of good and bad news regarding japanese banking with a separate role for bank credit downgrades and upgrades

determinants of the japan premium actions speak louder than words abstract since august 1995 japanese banks have had to pay a premium on eurodollar and euroyen interbank loans relative to their u s and u k competitors this so called japan premium provides a market indicator of investor anxiety about the ability of japanese banks to repay loans we examine the determinants of the japan premium and find that government announcements not associated with concrete actions had little impact on the other hand announcements of concrete actions by the japanese government such as injections of funds into the banking system tended to have an effect on the size of the japan premium

monetary policy and covered interest parity in the post gfc period evidence from the australian dollar and the nz dollar abstract after the global financial crisis gfc most major currencies had higher interest rates than the us dollar on forward contract because of increased demand for the us dollar as international liquidity however unlike the other major currencies the australian dollar and the nz dollar had lower interest rates than the us dollar on forward contract in the post gfc period the purpose of this paper is to explore why this happened through estimating the covered interest parity cip condition in the analysis we focus on a unique feature of australia and new zealand where short term interest rates remained significantly positive even after the gfc the paper first constructs a theoretical model where increased liquidity risk causes deviations from the cip condition it then tests this theoretical implication by using daily data of six major currencies we find that both money market risk measures and policy rates had significant effects on the cip deviations the result implies that unique monetary policy feature in australia and new zealand made deviations from the cip condition distinct on the forward contract

an analysis of monthly household energy consumption among single family residences in texas 2010 demographic socioeconomic and housing characteristics influence variation in household energy consumption by combining household level utility public and proprietary data we examine predictors of household energy consumption in a texas urban area using quantile regression this analysis assesses the relationship between energy consumption and predictors at the middle and both ends of the distribution 10th and 90th percentiles results indicate potential opportunities to lower consumption among the highest energy consuming households including those with pools with non central cooling with people working from home those built on pier post foundation and those that are renter occupied these findings suggest significant opportunities to reduce consumption and demand as in the study area almost 10 of housing units are renter occupied 18 percent are without central cooling and 7 have pools capturing a significant portion of these homes for retrofit conservation efforts through marketing has potential to produce substantial results producing a better understanding of determinants of household energy consumption using the methods presented has potential to assist development and implementation of strategies to reduce consumption and increase efficiency

energy efficiency fallacies revisited abstract a number of governments including that of the uk subscribe to the belief that a national program devoted to raising energy efficiency throughout the economy provides a costless indeed profitable route to meeting international environmental obligations this is a seductive policy it constitutes the proverbial free lunch not only avoiding politically unpopular measures like outlawing taxing or rationing offending fuels or expanding non carboniferous sources of energy like nuclear power but doing so with economic benefit the author of this contribution came to doubt the validity of this solution when it was offered as a way of mitigating the effect of the opec price hikes of the 1970 maintaining that economically justified improvement in energy efficiency led to higher levels of energy consumption at the economy wide level than in the absence of any efficiency response more fundamentally he argues that there is no case for preferentially singling out energy from among all the resources available to us for efficiency maximization the least damaging policy is to determine targets enact the restrictive measures needed to curb consumption and then leave it to consumers intermediate and final to reallocate all the resources available to them to best effect subject to the new enacted constraints and any others they might be experiencing there is no reason to suppose that it is right for all the economic adjustment following a new resource constraint to take the form of improvements in the productivity of that resource alone as many others have argued any action to impose resource constraint entails an inevitable economic cost in the shape of a reduction in production and consumption possibilities there would be no free lunch in the last few years debate about the validity of these contentions has blossomed especially under the influence of writers on the western side of the atlantic in this contribution the author outlines the original arguments for questioning whether raised efficiency leads to lower consumption reports more recent developments and offers some insights as food for further thought