remittances and the informal economy abstract many developing countries are characterized by a large informal sector and are also often heavily dependent on remittance inflows from abroad we develop a general equilibrium framework to understand better the dynamic absorption of remittances in a two sector small open economy by incorporating many of the stylized features of the informal sector calibrating the model to yield a long run equilibrium consistent with sample averages for 56 developing countries for the period 1990 2014 we show that the effect of remittances depends critically on how they impinge on the recipient economy i e whether these inflows are i permanent or temporary ii associated with a collateral effect to securitize borrowing and iii exogenous or countercyclical we also identify the conditions under which remittances are associated with an expansion of the informal sector as well as the dutch disease effect

why don t remittances appear to affect growth although measured remittances by migrant workers have soared in recent years macroeconomic studies have difficulty detecting their effect on economic growth this paper reviews existing explanations for this puzzle and proposes three new ones first it offers evidence that a large majority of the recent rise in measured remittances may be illusory arising from changes in measurement not changes in real financial flows second it shows that even if these increases were correctly measured cross country regressions would have too little power to detect their effects on growth third it points out that the greatest driver of rising remittances is rising migration which has an opportunity cost to economic product at the origin net of that cost there is little reason to expect large growth effects of remittances in the origin economy migration and remittances clearly have first order effects on poverty at the origin on the welfare of migrants and their families and on global gross domestic product but detecting their effects on growth of the origin economy is likely to remain elusive

assessment of projected temperature impacts from climate change on the u s electric power sector using the integrated planning model abstract this study analyzes the potential impacts of changes in temperature due to climate change on the u s power sector measuring the energy environmental and economic impacts of power system changes due to temperature changes under two emissions trajectories with and without emissions mitigation it estimates the impact of temperature change on heating and cooling degree days electricity demand and generating unit output and efficiency these effects are then integrated into a dispatch and capacity planning model to estimate impacts on investment decisions emissions system costs and power prices for 32 u s regions without mitigation actions total annual electricity production costs in 2050 are projected to increase 14 51 billion because of greater cooling demand as compared to a control scenario without future temperature changes for a scenario with global emissions mitigation including a reduction in u s power sector emissions of 36 below 2005 levels in 2050 the increase in total annual electricity production costs is approximately the same as the increase in system costs to satisfy the increased demand associated with unmitigated rising temperatures

measuring climatic impacts on energy consumption a review of the empirical literature abstract this paper reviews the literature on the relationship between climate and the energy sector in particular we primarily discuss empirical papers published in peer reviewed economics journals focusing on how climate affects energy expenditures and consumption climate will affect energy consumption by changing how consumers respond to short run weather shocks the intensive margin as well as how people will adapt in the long run the extensive margin along the intensive margin further research that uses household and firm level panel data of energy consumption may help identify how energy consumers around the world respond to weather shocks research on technology adoption e g air conditioners will further our understanding of the extensive margin adjustments and their costs we also note that most of the literature focuses on the residential sector similar studies are urgently needed for the industrial and commercial sectors

energy demand substitution from biomass to imported kerosene evidence from tanzania abstract we analyze domestic household energy demand and use patterns in tanzania using a detailed household survey of purchase transactions a multivariate probit model and the quaids modeling framework the main fuel sources that we study are kerosene charcoal and firewood these three accounted for 96 5 of spending on energy by households charcoal and firewood are used for cooking while kerosene is used for lighting and cooking kerosene is almost exclusively imported while charcoal and firewood are produced domestically these fuel sources are important given the impacts of wood harvesting on the environment and kerosene imports on public finances we find a statistically significant response in kerosene demand to charcoal prices suggesting a pattern of substitution but no strong substitution relationships between other fuel pairs these results which we use in a simulation of tariff change imply that policies centered on price changes may not be effective in changing consumer behavior unless alternative sources of energy are readily accessible

electricity shortages and firm productivity evidence from china s industrial firms unreliable inputs to production particularly those that are difficult to store can significantly limit firms productivity leading them to react in a number of ways this paper uses a panel of 23 000 energy intensive chinese firms from 1999 to 2004 to examine how firms responded to severe power shortages in the early 2000s our results suggest that in response to electricity scarcity chinese firms re optimize among inputs to production by substituting materials for energy both electric and non electric sources a shift from make to buy of intermediate inputs to production while outsourcing can be costly chinese firms were able to avoid substantial productivity losses by doing so as a result of the increase in electricity scarcity from 1999 onward we find that unit production costs increased by eight percent

remittances in nepal boon or bane abstract nepal is one of the highest recipients of remittances percentage of gdp in the world for a small land locked economy battered by a decade long maoist insurgency 1996 2006 prolonged political instability slow growth rate and large exodus of youths for employment overseas high inflow of remittances bears a huge significance both at micro and macro levels exploring various facets of high migration and remittances this article shows remittance induced dutch disease effects and policy laxity to improve investment climate in nepal since it is costly to sterilise the impact of remittances each year it might be prudent to learn to live with it and gradually channel remittances to productive usages with a goal to boost productivity

benefits and ancillary costs of natural infrastructure evidence from the new jersey coast abstract this paper empirically estimates the economic impacts of a large scale public investment in natural infrastructure aimed at adapting to climate change and increasing coastal resilience i utilize temporal and spatial variation in investment in dunes to provide a hedonic property value estimate of the economic benefits i identify the net effect of treatment utilizing the doubly robust oaxaca blinder estimator and show that coastal housing price increases attributable to constructed dunes are approximately 3 6 a decomposition of the average impact suggests that the policy intervention generates ancillary costs related to impaired ocean views and privacy concerns that partially offset large protection benefits

the impact of climate change on incomes and convergence in africa abstract climate change is projected to detrimentally affect african countries economic development while income inequalities across economies is among the highest on the planet however it is projected that income levels would converge on the continent hitherto there is limited evidence on how climate change could affect projected income convergence accelerating slowing down or even reversing this process here we analyze convergence considering climate change damages by employing an economic model embedding the three dimensions of risks at the country level exposure vulnerability and hazards the results show 1 with historical mean climate induced losses between 10 and 15 percent of gdp per capita growth the majority of african economies are poorly adapted to their current climatic conditions 2 western and eastern african countries are projected to be the most affected countries on the continent and 3 as a consequence of these heightened impacts on a number of countries inequalities between countries are projected to widen in the high warming scenario compared to inequalities in the low and without warming scenarios to mitigate the impacts of economic development and inequalities across countries we stress 1 the importance of mitigation ambition and africa s leadership in keeping global mean temperature increase below 1 5 c 2 the need to address the current adaptation deficit as soon as possible 3 the necessity to integrate quantitatively climate risks in economic and development planning and finally 4 we advocate for the generalization of a special treatment for the most vulnerable countries to access climate related finance the analysis raises issues on the ability of african countries to reach their sdgs targets and the potential increasing risk of instability migration across african countries of decreased trade and economic cooperation opportunities as a consequence of climate change exacerbating its negative consequences

modeling food consumption decisions as a two step process this article evaluates the suitability of tobit analysis of food consumption patterns by comparing results generated by a tobit model and a modification with a two step decision process two samples of adult women were selected from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey and the 1985 continuing survey of food intakes by individuals results show strong statistical evidence for questioning tobit analysis in examining food consumption decisions determinants of the decision to consume food within a particular food group often differ from the determinants of how much to consume particularly for more highly defined food groupings analysis of u s food consumption patterns and their dietary aspects with respect to consumer behavior has a long history traditionally ordinary least squares ols or some variant has been used in many studies where ols was not appropriate the tobit method was applied tobit allows for a discrete mass point for observations as well as a continuous range of values for the dependent variable this nonlinear method has yielded good results in a variety of studies e g mccracken and brandt lane and devaney and fraker this article examines the suitability of the tobit method for analysis of food consumption patterns the tobit method assumes that the decision to consume a given food item is the same as the decision about the amount of the food to consume ignoring the two step nature of the decision process may hamper understanding of true behavioral patterns lead to erroneous conclusions and generate incorrect policy recommendations this article compares results generated by a tobit model and a modification with a two step decision process in the next section the statistical methods used to test whether food consumption is a one or two step decision process are described the following sections discuss the variables and data present the results and consider the conclusions

adoption and the impact of system of rice intensification on rice yields and household income an analysis for india this paper examines the determinants and impacts of the adoption of five mutually exclusive practices system of rice intensification sri on yields and household incomes using a multinomial endoge

heating technology and energy use a discrete continuous choice approach to norwegian household energy demand abstract the aim of this paper is to describe the structure of the household s energy demand as a discrete continuous choice and on this basis establish an econometric model suitable for the data available in the norwegian energy surveys the discrete appliance choice is specified as a multinomial logit model with a mixture of appliance attributes operating costs and individual characteristics income housing unit characteristics etc as explanatory variables in the next step the continuous choice of energy use is modelled conditional on the appliance choice the energy prices turn out to be significant both when estimating the appliance choice and the conditional energy demand the estimated price elasticity for energy exceeds minus unity the paper discusses how this relatively strong price response should be interpreted in the context of other econometric analysis with no explicit appliance dependence finally the significance of the many household characteristics at both stages of the model signals a high degree of heterogeneity within the households which justifies the use of detailed micro data in the modelling of the energy demand

the demand for residential industrial and total electricity 1973 1998 this paper estimates residential industrial and total electricity demand by a partial adjustment approach and by a simultaneous equation approach simultaneous equation models are more appropriate since they provide negative price elasticity estimates for the residential industrial and total electricity samples flow adjustment models yield positive price elasticity estimates in some cases suggesting they fail to identify proper supply considerations that may be influencing prices the simultaneous equation approach suggests that residential customers are more price sensitive than industrial customers weather seems to have the greatest impact on the residential sector and cold weather appears to affect demand more than hot weather

do remittances facilitate a sustainable current account we examine how workers remittances impact on the current account in doing so we focus on how remittances affect the sustainability rather than the size of current account balances we find that the presence of remittances makes it more likely that exports and imports are cointegrated thereby lending support to current account sustainability furthermore quantile regression analysis suggests that increased remittances are associated with a faster speed of current account adjustment towards long run equilibrium particularly for those countries characterised by already highly persistent current account balances in contrast to a literature that emphasises an adverse dutch disease impact of workers remittances on the real exchange rate in terms of reduced external competitiveness our findings suggest that remittances are actually beneficial to the current account balance

the value of adaption climate change and timberland management abstract adaptation to exogenous change occurs on both intensive and extensive margins whether and how one accounts for human adaptation directly affects estimates of the economic consequences of environmental change estimates that are both critical in informing policy decisions and notoriously difficult to value this paper introduces and applies an analytical framework for placing an economic value on adaptation we explore the issue first in a stylized model that facilitates making concrete generalizations about the kinds of adaptations that generate high or low economic value we then test the soundness of our insights by incorporating learning and adaptive decision making into a structural dynamic forestry model where climate change is imposed exogenously and agents respond optimally using downscaled climate projections integrated with site and species specific timber productivity data we estimate the economic value of adaptation to climate change within the california timber industry we find on the intensive margin changing the rotation intervals will yield a low value of adaptation but on the extensive margin replanting more suitable tree species can yield significant value

a discrete continuous choice approach to residential water demand under block rate pricing reply waldman is quite correct in noting that the microeconomic theory of block rate pricing in hewitt and hanemann hh 1995 is given for the general case of a k block rate structure whereas the econometric theory is largely confined to the case of exactly two blocks the extension in waldman to the more general case of k blocks is correct although the extension itself could be even more general if it addressed the nonnegativity of demand as is demonstrated below that no apparent attention was paid to the nonnegativity of demand in hh may be attributed to the fact that the need to do so was negated by a fortuitous assumption in the earlier work although that assumption that the errors are multiplicative and lognormally distributed was only maintained and not tested in hh i now estimate two models with the more common assumptions of linear demand and additive and normally distributed errors both with and without a modification for

remittances finance and growth does financial development foster the impact of remittances on economic growth abstract there is no consensus in the literature regarding the long run impact of remittances on economic growth previous studies have shown that it might be related to financial development in the transfer receiving country but the direction of the link remained unclear i contribute to this literature by using a newly created index of overall financial development and two different estimation methods i measure the importance of remittances given financial development for economic growth in developing countries as there is no widely accepted measure of financial sector development i estimate an index of overall financial conditions it is created by means of an unobserved components model and used to determine the relevance of the financial sector as a transmission channel for remittances to affect economic growth i show that the more financially developed a country is the smaller the impact of remittances on economic growth remittances can foster growth but the effect is significant only at low levels of financial development this is in line with previous studies which found remittances and financial development to be substitutes however the interaction between the two factors becomes weaker once size depth and efficiency of the financial sector are taken into account my results suggest that while attracting migrants transfers can have important short run poverty alleviating advantages in the long run it might be more beneficial for governments to foster financial sector development

the use of trade measures against illicit fishing economic and legal considerations illegal unreported and unregulated iuu fishing activities are a threat for both the marine environment and society by undermining effective management systems iuu fishing activities affect economic performance social welfare and compliance decisions so far traditional control and surveillance like measures have had a limited success in deterring iuu fishing so this paper aims at throwing light on several forms of trade related initiatives that can be more effective the paper suggests that both the effectiveness and further development of such measures strongly depend on the way they are designed especially with respect to their trade law compatibility however current discussions on future trade based policy developments within some key economic areas suggest that trade measures are a sound option for policy makers while the paper focuses on fisheries issues it is also expected to inform the international debate surrounding the sustainable use of natural resources in general as many sectors face similar biodiversity and trade challenges e g tropical forest mangroves etc

residential energy demand for space heating in the nordic countries accounting for interfuel substitution abstract reliable estimation of fuel consumption in residential sector is crucial for the future development of fuel supply system three approaches are compared in this study to capture climate impact as well as and interfuel substitution between fuels on residential fuel consumption for space heating in the nordic countries the first approach aims at directly estimating the demand for each energy carrier as a function of explanatory variables including heating degree days fuels price and gdp per capita the second approach is a two stage model combing an econometric model for total energy use for space heating and the market share for energy carriers based on cross price elasticities while in the third approach a set of simultaneous equations models were estimated based on the results of the mean average error and root mean square error criteria for three approaches across the nordic countries it was found that the second and third approaches were able to capture the complementary and substitution effects between fuels this finding confirms our hypothesis that the interfuel substitution is a key factor for estimating changes in fuel demand and should be accounted for when residential energy demand is projected the results additionally have important implications for climate change policy by exploring the impact of fuel price on residential energy demand for space heating

climate change adaptation a study of fuel choice and consumption in the us energy sector abstract using cross sectional data this paper estimates a national energy model of fuel choice by both households and firms consumers in warmer locations rely relatively more heavily on electricity rather than natural gas oil and other fuels they also use more energy climate change will likely increase electricity consumption on cooling but reduce the use of other fuels for heating on net american energy expenditures will likely increase resulting in welfare damages that increase as temperatures rise for example if the us warms by 5 c by 2100 we predict annual welfare losses of 57 billion

organic agriculture and fair trade a happy marriage a case study of certified smallholder black pepper farmers in india summary this study examines whether the joint adoption of organic and fair trade systems adds additional benefits to smallholders in developing countries we use panel data collected from 300 smallholder rural black pepper growers in kerala india to assess household welfare impacts we apply a multinomial endogenous switching regression model along with a counterfactual analysis to estimate certification effects results show that both certification systems have a significant impact on income compared to conventional black pepper farming however membership in fair trade marketing systems does not increase income of organic farmers but has positive effects on asset accumulation of smallholder farmers

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

electric utilities fuel use and responsiveness to fuel prices this research tests the impact of changes in fuel price to explain fuel use by electric utilities we employ a three stage least squares model that explains changes in fuel use as a function of changes in three fuel prices this model is repeated across sub samples of data aggregated at the plant level and operating holding company level we expect that plants and holding companies reduce fuel use when fuel prices rise several fuel substitution effects within and across plants and holding companies are demonstrated as well as several frictions at the plant level higher prices of natural gas lead to less natural gas consumption less coal consumption and more fuel oil consumption at the operating holding company level results demonstrate the inelasticity of coal use and the increases of natural gas in response to higher coal prices subsamples demonstrate heterogeneity of results across different plants results emphasize that technological market and regulatory frictions may hinder the performance of energy policies

the allocative cost of price ceilings in the u s residential market for natural gas a direct consequence of restricting the price of a good for which secondary markets do not exist is that in the presence of excess demand the good will not be allocated to the buyers who value it the most we demonstrate the empirical importance of this allocative cost for the u s residential market for natural gas which was subject to price ceilings during 1954 89 using a household level discrete continuous model of natural gas demand we estimate that the allocative cost in this market averaged 3 6 billion annually nearly tripling previous estimates of the net welfare loss to u s consumers

determinants of households space heating type a discrete choice analysis for german households abstract considering the increasing attention on efficient use of energy it becomes vitally important to understand the energy related behavior of households this article presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the space heating technology applied by a household three sets of variables are examined as potential influences building socio economic and regional characteristics to highlight both the differences and similarities the results are obtained from a sample of house owners and from a sample including all households the influence of socio economic factors is similar across these groups income is found to exert only a minor impact on the system choice dwelling features are significant in determining the heating type particularly in the sample including all households regional effects are important clear differences prevail between east and west germany

greenhouse gas abatement cost curves of the residential heating market a microeconomic approach in this paper we develop a microeconomic approach to deduce greenhouse gas abatement cost curves of the residential heating sector our research is based on a system dynamics microsimulation of private households investment decisions for heating systems to the year 2030 by accounting for household specific characteristics we investigate the welfare costs of different abatement policies in terms of the compensating variation and the excess burden we investigate two policies i a carbon tax and ii subsidies on heating system investments we deduce abatement cost curves for both policies by simulating welfare costs and greenhouse gas emissions to the year 2030 we find that i welfare based abatement costs are generally higher than pure technical equipment costs ii given utility maximizing households a carbon tax is the most welfare efficient policy and iii if households are not utility maximizing a subsidy on investments may have lower marginal greenhouse gas abatement costs than a carbon tax

the macroeconomic consequences of remittances abstract this paper analyzes the dynamic absorption of remittances at the macroeconomic level contrasting two possible effects on economic activity depending on whether these accrue to hand to mouth wage earners or credit constrained entrepreneurs using an open economy dsge model with heterogeneous households we show that the effects of remittances are inherently contractionary if they accrue to the first group and expansionary when they accrue to the second group calibrating the model to the philippines using both aggregate data as well as micro evidence from the family income and expenditure survey fies we show that accounting for both binding credit constraints and the internal distribution of remittances improves the model s fit to the data welfare gains result when the distribution of remittances is skewed towards entrepreneurs

smart meter devices and the effect of feedback on residential electricity consumption evidence from a natural experiment in northern ireland abstract using a unique set of data and exploiting a large scale natural experiment we estimate the effect of real time usage information on residential electricity consumption in northern ireland starting in april 2002 the utility replaced prepayment meters with advanced meters that allow the consumer to track usage in real time we rely on this event account for the endogeneity of price and payment plan with consumption through a plan selection correction term and find that the provision of information is associated with a decline in electricity consumption of 11 17 we find that the reduction is robust to different specifications selection bias correction methods and subsamples of the original data the advanced metering program delivers reasonably cost effective reductions in carbon dioxide emissions even under the most conservative usage reduction scenarios

retracted factors affecting commercial energy consumption in pakistan progress in energy the purpose of this study is to identify major macroeconomic factors that enhance energy consumption for pakistan through the cointegration error correction model and granger causality tests over a 32 year time period i e between 1980 and 2011 the study employed the bivariate cointegration technique to estimate the long run relationship between the variables an error correction model was used to determine the short run dynamics of the system while granger causality test was used to find the directions between these variables the study investigates the relation between four energy consumption variables i e oil petroleum consumption gas consumption electricity consumption and coal consumption and four macroeconomic factors which have further sub classifications i e balance of payment bop factors i e exports imports trade deficit worker s remittances and current account balance fuel factors i e carbon dioxide emissions natural resource depletion and net forest depletion agricultural crops yield per hectare i e wheat rice sugarcane maize and cotton and industrial production items i e beverages cigarettes motor tyres motor tubes cycle tyres and cycle tubes in order to manage robust data analysis the result confirms the long run relationship between total commercial energy consumption and macroeconomic factors in pakistan as oil petroleum consumption increases exports fuel factors agricultural crops yield per hectare and industrial items however the intensity of these factors are different in nature carbon dioxide emissions net forest depletion beverages motor tyres and motor tubes are more elastic with oil petroleum consumption however oil petroleum consumption decreases trade deficit and workers remittances in pakistan gas electricity and coal consumption increases agricultural crops yield per hectare and industrial production which shows that as agriculture and industry modernizes energy demand increases energizing the food production chain is an essential feature of agricultural development which is a prime factor in helping to achieve food security in pakistan the empirical results only moderately support the conventional view that energy consumption has significant long run casual effect on macroeconomic variables in pakistan the present study finds evident of unidirectional causality between the commercial energy consumption factors and macroeconomic factors in pakistan however there is some bidirectional causality exist which is running between electricity consumption ec and exports ec to imports ec to carbon emissions ec to natural resource depletion nrd and ec to wheat the results conclude that macroeconomic variables tend to positively respond to total primary energy consumption this indicates that increasing total commercial energy consumption may cause growth variables which show that pakistan is an input driven economy

the effects of international migration on migrant source households evidence from ethiopian diversity visa lottery migrants about a million people have migrated to the us via the diversity visa dv lottery the dv was instituted by an act of the united states congress to diversify the u s population through a lottery made available to people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the country in any given year the probability of winning the lottery is less than 1 with millions of people from around the world competing for a maximum of 55 000 immigrant visas that can be obtained through this migration channel using ethiopian dv participants which have consistently made up between 6 and 8 of all dv immigrants i study the causal effects of emigration on the well being of the migrant sending families i infer that migration contributes positively to the welfare of the source families overall migration increases consumer expenditure but has no effect on savings and business ownership of the senders the positive treatment effects do not diminish with duration of emigration migrant men contribute more to the increase in their families standard of living than their female counterparts do while expenditure on food and energy are invariant to the migrants gender the gains in terms of durable ownership access to clean water and sanitation facilities occur almost entirely in families where the emigrants are men i find that dv participants are favorably selected relative to the overall population

estimating the net implicit price of energy efficient building codes on u s households abstract requiring energy efficiency building codes raises housing prices or the monthly rental equivalent but theoretically this effect might be fully offset by reductions in household energy expenditures whether there is a full compensating differential or how much households are paying implicitly is an empirical question this study estimates the net implicit price of energy efficient buildings codes iecc 2003 through iecc 2006 for american households using sample data from the american community survey 2007 a heteroskedastic seemingly unrelated estimation approach is used to estimate hedonic price house rent and energy expenditure models the value of energy efficiency building codes is capitalized into housing rents which are estimated to increase by 23 25 percent with the codes however the codes provide households a compensating differential of about a 6 47 percent reduction about 7 71 in monthly energy expenditure results indicate that the mean household net implicit price for these codes is about 140 87 per month in 2006 dollars 163 19 in 2013 dollars however this estimated price is shown to vary significantly by region energy type and the rent gradient

normative and social influences affecting compliance with fisheries regulations economic models of regulatory compliance in fisheries usually assume an instrumental determination of individual behavior in which the decision to comply or to violate depends primarily on the expected monetary costs and benefits policy implications tend as a result to focus only on deterrence that is increasing the expected monetary costs of violation more complete models of compliance behavior take into account factors such a social influence moral values and the perceived legitimacy of regulations and the regulatory authority the paper describes an investigation into the non monetary factors affecting compliance with output quota restrictions among fishermen in the united kingdom

mobility and the return to education testing a roy model with multiple markets self selected migration presents one potential explanation for why observed returns to a college education in local labor markets vary widely even though u s workers are highly mobile to assess the impact of self selection on estimated returns this paper first develops a roy model of mobility and earnings where workers choose in which of the 50 states plus the district of columbia to live and work available estimation methods are either infeasible for a selection model with so many alternatives or place potentially severe restrictions on earnings and the selection process this paper develops an alternative econometric methodology that combines lee s 1983 parametric maximum order statistic approach to reduce the dimensionality of the error terms with more recent work on semiparametric estimation of selection models e g ahn and powell 1993 the resulting semiparametric correction is easy to implement and can be adapted to a variety of other polychotomous choice problems the empirical work which uses 1990 u s census data confirms the role of comparative advantage in mobility decisions the results suggest that self selection of higher educated individuals to states with higher returns to education generally leads to upward biases in ols estimates of the returns to education in state specific labor markets while the estimated returns to a college education are significantly biased correcting for the bias does not narrow the range of returns across states consistent with the finding that the corrected return to a college education differs across the u s the relative state to state migration flows of college versus high school educated individuals respond strongly to differences in the return to education and amenities across states

cropping system diversification conservation tillage and modern seed adoption in ethiopia impacts on household income agrochemical use and demand for labor the type and combination of sustainable agricultural practices saps adopted have a significant effect on agricultural productivity and food security this study develops a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of farmers choice of combination of saps and impacts on maize income and agrochemicals and family labor use in rural ethiopia four primary results were found first adoption of saps increases maize income and the highest payoff is achieved when saps are adopted in combination rather than in isolation second nitrogen fertilizer use is lower in the package that contains system diversification and conservation tillage third conservation tillage increased pesticide application and labor demand perhaps to compensate for reduced tillage however when it is used jointly with system diversification it does not have a significant impact on pesticide and labor use fourth in most cases adoption of a package of saps increases women workload suggesting that agricultural intensification technology interventions may not be gender neutral this implies that policy makers and other stakeholders promoting a combination of technologies can enhance household food security through increasing income and reducing production costs but need to be aware of the potential gender related outcomes

the effects of the corporate average fuel efficiency standards in the us this paper examines the effects of the corporate average fuel economy standards cafe on automobile sales prices and fuel consumption first a discrete choice model of automobile demand and a continuous model of vehicle utilization are estimated using micro data from the consumer expenditure survey for 1984 1990 next the demand side model is combined with a model of oligopoly and product differentiation on the supply side with these elements in place the effects of the cafe regulation are assessed through simulations and compared to the effects of alternative policy instruments such as an increase in gasoline tax

remittances institutions and economic growth summary there is considerable debate regarding the relative contribution of international migrants remittances to sustainable economic development while officially recorded remittances to developing countries have increased over the last decade research has not come to a consensus over whether remittances have a positive or negative impact on long run growth this paper argues that contradictory findings have emerged when looking at the remittances growth link because of an omitted variable bias specifically remittances will be more likely to contribute to longer term growth in countries with higher quality political and economic policies and institutions

a blessing in disguise banking crises and institutional change weak economic growth is a contributing factor behind many banking crises in this paper we test whether banking crises cause long term institutional change aimed at improving macroeconomic performance and thus indirectly reduce the risk of future crises our dataset consists of 22 developed and 34 developing countries covering the period from 1985 to 2009 the results show that banking crises cause institutional change if gdp growth is below potential growth during the crisis approximately 40 of the change in institutional quality during the considered period occurred after a banking crisis these results hold for both developed and developing countries

water demand under alternative price structures we estimate the price elasticity of water demand with household level data structurally modeling the piecewise linear budget constraints imposed by increasing block pricing we develop a mathematical expression for the unconditional price elasticity of demand under increasing block prices and compare conditional and unconditional elasticities analytically and empirically we test the hypothesis that price elasticity may depend on price structure beyond technical differences in elasticity concepts due to the possibility of endogenous utility price structure choice observed differences in elasticity across price structures may be due either to a behavioral response to price structure or to underlying heterogeneity among water utility service areas

electricity prices and consumers long term technology choices evidence from heating investments abstract this paper studies consumers s sensitivity to energy costs at the moment of making a long term energy technology investment the analysis exploits local variation in regulated electricity distribution prices that are persistent over time and therefore a good measure of long term price expectations price impacts are estimated on extensive administrative registry data of private persons acting as home builders in finland during 2006 2011 the results show that electricity prices notably influence builders choices and that electricity tax increases have induced demand for technologies based on renewable energy the results on the comprehensive set of individual level characteristics reveal that technology choices vary systematically across households current dwelling status and the education level have the strongest influence on the choice probabilities price sensitivity is found to be lower for low income households and to vary by the current dwelling status and type of building location

are remittances an effective mechanism for development evidence from tajikistan 1999 2007 abstract in many remittance receiving countries evidence linking remittances to household economic stability and investment is limited using three cross sectional national surveys 1999 2003 2007 we compare remittance receiving to non remittance households in tajikistan a country highly dependent on remittances exploring household perceptions of financial security wealth and entrepreneurial activity across a period of rising remittance reliance we find that households receiving remittances are not more economically stabile wealthier or entrepreneurial than non remittance households findings highlight the importance of conceptualising remittances as a process influenced by the developmental contexts within receiving countries and question previous assumptions concerning development pathways

on the causal nexus of remittances and poverty reduction in bangladesh the aim of this article is to investigate the causal relationship between remittances and poverty reduction in bangladesh over the period 1976 to 2010 this issue is of fundamental importance for the developing economy of bangladesh we apply newly developed methods by hacker and hatemi j 2006 2012 that are based on simulations and are robust to the violation of statistical assumptions especially when the sample size is small as is the case in this article our estimation results reveal that causality nexus of poverty and remittances is bi directional we also find that the causal impact of poverty reduction on remittance is stronger than the reverse impact this finding implies that bangladeshi policy makers can influence remittances through poverty reduction in the long run

remittances and economic growth a meta analysis abstract expatriate workers remittances represent an important source of financing for low and middle income countries no consensus however has yet emerged regarding the effect of remittances on economic growth in a quantitative survey of 538 estimates reported in 95 studies we find that approximately 40 of the studies report a positive effect 40 report no effect and 20 report a negative effect our results indicate publication bias in favor of positive effects correcting for the bias using recently developed techniques we find that the mean effect of remittances on growth is still positive but economically small nevertheless our results uncover noticeable regional differences remittances are growth enhancing in asia but not in africa studies that do not control for alternative sources of external finance such as foreign aid and foreign direct investment mismeasure the effect of remittances finally time series studies and studies ignoring endogeneity issues report systematically larger effects of remittances on growth

the validity of environmental benefits transfer further empirical testing this paper provides further empirical evidence of the validity of environmental benefits transfer based on cv studies by expanding the analysis to include control factors which have not been accounted for in previous studies these factors refer to differences in respondent attitudes traditional population characteristics were taken into account but these variables do not explain why respondents from the same socio economic group may still hold different beliefs norms or values and hence have different attitudes and consequently state different wtp amounts the test results are mixed the function transfer approach is valid in one case but is rejected in the 3 other cases investigated in this paper we provide further evidence that in the case of statistically valid benefits transfer the function approach results in a more robust benefits transfer than the unit value approach we also show that the equality of coefficient estimates is a necessary but insufficient condition for valid benefit function transfer and discuss the implications for previous and future validity testing

do remittances lead to a public moral hazard in developing countries an empirical investigation abstract this article tests the hypothesis that in a context of bad governance remittance inflows strongly reduce public spending on education and health in receiving countries a phenomenon called the public moral hazard problem using a large sample of 86 developing countries over the period 1996 2007 and after factoring in the endogeneity of remittances the results suggest a negative impact of remittances on public spending on education and health when governance is bad in remittance dependent economies

durable goods and long run electricity demand evidence from air conditioner purchase behavior i estimate a dynamic structural model of demand for air conditioners the most energy intensive home appliance in the us the model explores the links between demand for durable goods and expected changes in key attributes energy efficiency and price i incorporate expectations explicitly as a feature of the choice setting and use parameter estimates from the model to calculate durable good demand elasticities with respect to energy efficiency electricity price and price of the durable itself these estimates fill a large gap in the literature and also shed light on consumer behavior in this setting results indicate that consumers are forward looking and value the stream of future savings derived from energy efficiency

the volatility effect of diaspora s location remittances can transmit volatility from host to home countries for some common patterns of diaspora s geographical distribution in a migration portfolio model the overall risk of volatility of any set of diaspora location is decomposed into a contagion and a concentration risks a diaspora located in more volatile destinations induces a higher contagion risk while a diaspora located in few destination countries increases the concentration risk a series of estimations on a large panel of developing countries over 1995 2015 provide evidence for these two risks estimation of a structural model confirms that the geography of diaspora has an indirect impact on the origin country s aggregate instability through remittances

remittances and economic growth larger impacts in smaller countries this paper examines the impact of remittances on economic growth in small island developing states sids results from variants of an empirical model suggest that while on average there is at best no association between remittances and growth in developing countries there is a positive association between these variables in sids this finding holds for sids in sub saharan africa and the pacific but not for those in latin america and the caribbean relationships between remittances economic volatility and household labour supply are offered as reasons for these findings

remittance inflows and financial development evidence from the top recipient countries in sub saharan africa this paper utilizes a panel cointegration approach to investigate the relationship between remittances and financial development in the top remittance recipient countries in sub saharan africa our

determinants of risk sharing through remittances abstract the sending of remittances is a decentralised decision of migrant workers nevertheless it has macroeconomic implications in providing insurance against domestic output shocks in the recipient economies a phenomenon known in literature as risk sharing income smoothing using a large sample of 86 developing countries for the period 1990 2010 we establish that remittance inflows serve as an important channel through which risk sharing takes place in the developing world the extent of income smoothing via remittances stands at around 5 on average subsequently we explore the underlying factors that explain countries ability to share risk through remittances the diversification of migrants turns out to be the leading explanation for the extent of risk sharing via remittances the more diverse the migration destinations of a country the higher the amount of risk shared in addition the size of remittance flows appears to have a strong and statistically significant impact on enhancing risk sharing we also find suggestive evidence that a higher proportion of remittances originating from farther countries facilitate more risk sharing compared to those originating from neighbouring or regional economies

the impact of climate change on the electricity market a review climate change will impact electricity markets through both electricity demand and supply this paper reviews the research on this topic whereas there is much that remains unknown or uncertain research over the last few years has significantly advanced our knowledge in general higher temperatures are expected to raise electricity demand for cooling decrease demand for heating and to reduce electricity production from thermal power plants the effect of climate change on the supply of electricity from non thermal sources shows great geographical variability due to differences in expected changes to temperature and precipitation whereas the research frontier has advanced significantly in the last few years there still remains a significant need for more research in order to better understand the effects of climate change on the electricity market four significant gaps in the current research are regional studies of demand side impacts for africa asia the caribbean and latin america the effects of extreme weather events on electricity generation transmission and demand changes to the adoption rate of air conditioning and finally our understanding of the sensitivity of thermal power supply to changes in air and water temperatures

the effect of development aid unpredictability and migrants remittances on fiscal consolidation in developing countries summary we use panel data on 74 developing countries for the period 1980 2007 to examine the effects of aid unpredictability and migrants remittances on fiscal consolidation in these countries using two definitions of fiscal adjustment and a conditional logit model to perform our analysis evidence is shown that except for the case of low income countries especially gradual fiscal retrenchment remittances increase the likelihood of fiscal consolidation be the latter gradual or rapid surprisingly we observe that aid unpredictability does not affect the adoption of fiscal consolidation measures in all the groups considered

distributional effects of alternative vehicle pollution control policies abstract previous work shows that policies that subsidize new vehicles and tax size miles or gasoline efficiently reduce pollution less is known about their distributional effects this paper examines distributional effects by estimating the joint demand for vehicles and miles using the consumer expenditure survey greater price responsiveness among low income households enhances progressivity of gas or miles taxes across lower incomes and mitigates regressivity across upper incomes taxes on engine size or subsidies to new vehicles are significantly more regressive than gas or miles taxes

the effect of climate change on electricity expenditures in massachusetts abstract climate change affects consumer expenditures by altering the consumption of and price for electricity previous analyses focus solely on the former which implicitly assumes that climate induced changes in consumption do not affect price but this assumption is untenable because a shift in demand alters quantity and price at equilibrium here we present the first empirical estimates for the effect of climate change on electricity prices translated through the merit order dispatch of existing capacity for generating electricity climate induced changes in daily and monthly patterns of electricity consumption cause non linear changes in electricity prices a 2 c increase in global mean temperature increases the prices for and consumption of electricity in massachusetts usa such that the average household s annual expenditures on electricity increase by about 12 commercial customers incur a 9 increase these increases are caused largely by higher prices for electricity whose impacts on expenditures are 1 3 and 3 6 fold larger than changes in residential and commercial consumption respectively this suggests that previous empirical studies understate the effects of climate change on electricity expenditures and that policy may be needed to ensure that the market generates investments in peaking capacity to satisfy climate driven changes in summer time consumption