network regulation and regulatory institutional reform revisiting the case of australia it is well understood that the success of liberalizing the electricity supply industry depends crucially on the quality and design of the regulatory and institutional framework this paper analyses the regulatory arrangements that underpin the work of the australian energy regulator aer these arrangements are contrasted with the regulatory structure of electricity provision in norway a key difference between the reform processes in the two countries relates to the lack of privatization in norway and the co existence of private and publicly owned generators and distributors in australia this comparative analysis allows us to make several recommendations to improve regulatory arrangements in australia these include greater independence for the aer better coordination among regulatory institutions greater use of benchmarking analysis greater customer involvement and improving market transparency and privatization of government owned corporations however the success of privatization will hinge upon the effectiveness of the regulatory environment

smart grid investments regulation and organization worldwide but in particular in north america and europe the grid infrastructure managers are facing demands for reinvestments in new assets with higher on grid and off grid functionality in order to promote energy efficiency and low carbon conversion of the energy sector to meet societal policy objectives in terms of carbon dioxide emissions both the composition of the generators in favor of distributed energy resources der and the load promoting integration with downstream energy useage will change in this paper we chararcterize some of the effects of new asset investments policy on the network tasks assets and costs and contrast this with the assumptions implicit or explicit in current economic network regulation the resulting challenge is identified as the change in the direction of higher asymmetry of information and higher capital intensity combined with ambiguities in terms of task separation to provide guidance we present a model of investment provision under regulation between a distribution system operator dso and a potential investor generation the results from the model confirm the hypothesis that network regulation should find a focal point should integrate externalities in the performance assessment and should avoid wide delegation of contracting billing for smart grid investments

new light on an old problem reflections on barriers and enablers of distributed energy this viewpoint article new light on an old problem aims to stimulate thought and discussion on pathways to rapid emission reduction trajectories it considers briefly the history of the australian energy system and recent attempts to support emerging distributed energy supply systems before exploring the importance of new energy supply models and how they may emerge organically ahead of further policy and regulatory shifts in australia the article is shaped by extensive primary research literature review and engagement with policy makers industry and community organisations energy market institutions colleagues and others over a period of four years it outlines how new business models may reduce emissions ahead of policy and regulation and the importance of keeping an open mind when considering barriers to distributed energy we hope this article will spark interest and dialogue with colleagues who may be experiencing and grappling with similar challenges

home bias and cross border taxation abstract the relationship between cross border taxation and free float home bias is examined this explicitly recognizes that insider shares are unavailable to foreigners other important explanations for home bias information asymmetry behavioural and governance issues are controlled when examining the impact of cross border tax variables in our sample of countries about sixty percent eighty percent withhold taxes on realized capital gains dividends of foreign investors and about thirty percent of the mature economies provide imputation of taxes paid on dividend income by domestic corporations dividend imputation is a statistically significant impediment to cross border equity flows a tax credit variable for foreign taxes paid on dividends is constructed and found to be statistically significant in reducing home bias a relatively high foreign tax rate that cannot be offset by tax credits is found to significantly increase home bias these results hold for float adjusted home bias and traditional international portfolio home bias

the effect of asymmetries on optimal hedge ratios there is widespread evidence that the volatility of stock returns displays an asymmetric response to good and bad news this article considers the impact of asymmetry on time varying hedges for financial futures an asymmetric model that allows forecasts of cash and futures return volatility to respond differently to positive and negative return innovations gives superior in sample hedging performance however the simpler symmetric model is not inferior in a hold out sample a method for evaluating the models in a modern risk management framework is presented highlighting the importance of allowing optimal hedge ratios to be both time varying and asymmetric

can markov switching models replicate chartist profits in the foreign exchange market abstract in this paper we show that the markov switching model is a relevant statistical alternative to the classical martingale model for exchange rates by extending the standard markov switching model we decisively reject the martingale model moreover the model generates autocorrelations and linear structures in line with what is observed in reality subsequently we test whether this model can explain chartist profits we find that the extended markov switching model is able to explain the profitability of a simple ma 30 rule finally we decompose the profitability of the ma 30 rule into a linear and nonlinear part we find that although the implied linear structure of the markov model explains a substantial part of the profitability part of the profits of the ma 30 rule can be attributed to the specific nonlinearities implicit in the markov model

repatriation taxes repatriation strategies and multinational financial policy abstract several investment repatriation strategies are added to the standard model of a multinational in which an affiliate is located in a low tax country and is limited to two alternatives repatriating taxable dividends to the parent or investing in its own real operations in our model affiliates can invest in passive assets which the parent can borrow against or in related affiliates which can be used as vehicles for tax favored repatriations we show analytically how the availability of alternative strategies can effect real investment throughout the worldwide corporation we use firm level data for us multinationals to test for the importance of alternative strategies the evidence is generally consistent with the theory particularly the strategies using related affiliates

co2 emissions and economic development china s 12th five year plan abstract for the period of the 12th five year plan 2011 2015 the chinese government has decided to reconsider and adjust its policies on economic development because of the pressures of co 2 emissions and fossil energy consumption the current paper adopts the logarithmic stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model to simulate the relationship between co 2 emissions and other economic development factors in china three groups of outliers are found using samples from 1989 to 2008 and the partial least square pls regularity test method the outlier analysis reveals three important areas for co 2 reduction a decreasing the share of coal to the total energy consumption and replacing it with non fossil energies b controlling vehicles used in the cities as well as c adjusting industrial structure furthermore based on the social and economic realities of china the current paper designs six feasible development scenarios for the period covered by the 12th five year plan and predicts the values of each factor in each scenario the values can test the implementation of china s co 2 control development concept the experiences obtained by outlier analysis can be of significant reference value for realizing the predicted scenarios

energy security and renewable energy deployment in the eu liaisons dangereuses or virtuous circle abstract a large body of literature estimates the effect of energy security drivers on renewable energy deployment using import dependence as a proxy for energy security which is an approach that ignores the potential effect of other energy security strategies such as the diversification of energy sources using panel data for the energy sector across 21 eu member states we investigate the effect of different energy security concepts on the development of renewable energies we compare the results of applying different energy security indicators including the ones used in eu energy policymaking unlike previous studies this study reports a long term relationship between energy security and renewable deployment our findings suggest that the relationship between energy security policies and renewable energy sources res deployment is far from straightforward and depends on the chosen energy security strategy which is usually linked to different energy security conceptualizations our primary findings confirm i that res deployment is a consequence of a combination of energy security strategies including environmental concerns rather than being solely caused by a shift towards more sustainable energy policies and ii that among the different energy security strategies the diversification of energy sources through renewable energy deployment is a more coherent strategy than using res to reduce dependency

progress and prospective on the police system of renewable energy in china abstract the renewable energy law has been formulated by china government in 2005 during the next few years there has been dramatic progress in china s renewable energy industries along with the formation of the policy system of renewable energy in china it is widely recognized that a reasonable and effective policy system can lay the solid foundation for the development of renewable energy regarding the rapid growth of renewable energy with a host of relevant policies issued in china there is an urgent need to study the policy system of renewable energy in view of the latest situations to further promote the development of renewable energy this paper is a systematical review about the promotion of china s policy system of renewable energy since renewable energy law issued achievements on the policy system of renewable energy in 2011 as of 2005 are discussed experiences from recent periods are drawn and factors limiting the policy system of renewable energy are also addressed in details to probe the policy predicament and solutions the development tendency of renewable energy is presented and the framework is drafted to set the framing constraints for china s policy system of renewable energy finally policy suggestions are proposed for the successful implementation of renewable energy policies within the framing constraints of the policy system and the long term healthy development of renewable energy in china

preferred solutions to the energy crisis as a function of causal attributions results of two studies support the hypotheses that those accepting personal responsibility for the energy crisis favor and report adopting the personal solution of voluntary energy conservation and those making attributions to nonpersonal causes opec oil companies u s government are most likely to favor nonpersonal solutions implications are discussed

rejecting renewables the socio technical impediments to renewable electricity in the united states if renewable power systems deliver such impressive benefits why do they still provide only 3 percent of national electricity generation in the united states as an answer this article demonstrates that the impediments to renewable power are socio technical a term that encompasses the technological social political regulatory and cultural aspects of electricity supply and use extensive interviews of public utility commissioners utility managers system operators manufacturers researchers business owners and ordinary consumers reveal that it is these socio technical barriers that often explain why wind solar biomass geothermal and hydroelectric power sources are not embraced utility operators reject renewable resources because they are trained to think only in terms of big conventional power plants consumers practically ignore renewable power systems because they are not given accurate price signals about electricity consumption intentional market distortions such as subsidies and unintentional market distortions such as split incentives prevent consumers from becoming fully invested in their electricity choices as a result newer and cleaner technologies that may offer social and environmental benefits but are not consistent with the dominant paradigm of the electricity industry continue to face comparative rejection

some relations between volatility and serial correlations in stock market returns this article explores the relation between serial correlation and volatility for several different stock return series at daily and weekly frequencies it is found that serial correlations are changing over time and are related to stock return volatility an extension to the garch model is proposed and estimated revealing parameters consistent with other findings in this article copyright 1992 by university of chicago press

the determinants of asymmetric volatility volatility in equity markets is asymmetric contemporaneous return and conditional return volatility are negatively correlated in this article i develop an asymmetric volatility model where dividend growth and dividend volatility are the two state variables of the economy the model allows both the leverage effect and the volatility feedback effect the two popular explanations of asymmetry the model is estimated by the simulated method of moments i find that both the leverage effect and volatility feedback are important determinants of asymmetric volatility and volatility feedback is significant both statistically and economically the relationship between stock price and its volatility has long interested financial researchers empirically returns and conditional variance of next period s returns are negatively correlated that is negative positive returns are generally associated with upward downward revisions of the conditional volatility this empirical phenomenon is often referred to as asymmetric volatility in the literature see engle and ng 1993 zakoian 1994 and wu and xiao 1999 the presence of asymmetric volatility is most apparent during stock market crashes when a large decline in stock price is associated with a significant increase in market volatility formal econometric models have been developed by researchers to capture asymmetric volatility for example asymmetric arch models of nelson 1991 and glosten jagannathan and runkle 1993 have been found to significantly outperform their counterparts that do not accommodate the asymmetry moreover continuous time stochastic volatility models generally produce estimates of a negative correlation between return and return volatility bakshi cao and chen 1997 and bates 1997 for a review of the literature on asymmetric volatility see bekaert

do taxes affect corporate debt policy evidence from us corporate tax return data abstract this paper uses u s statistics of income soi corporate income tax returns balance sheet data on all corporations to estimate the effects of changes in corporate tax rates on the debt policies of firms of different sizes small firms face very different tax rates than larger firms and relative tax rates have also changed frequently over time providing substantial information to identify tax effects the results suggest that taxes have had a strong and statistically significant effect on debt levels for example cutting the corporate tax rate by ten percentage points e g from 46 to 36 holding personal tax rates fixed is forecast to reduce the fraction of assets financed with debt by around 3 5 since small firms normally rely much more heavily on debt finance yet face much lower tax incentives to use debt the estimated effect of taxes would be strongly biased downwards without controls for firm size

can natural gas fired power generation break through the dilemma in china a system dynamics analysis abstract recently the share of natural gas in the generation of electricity has shown a dramatic increase in china however the domestic natural gas source natural gas price and unclear policy environment are the barriers lying on the development way of natural gas power generation this paper aims to evaluate development pattern and constraints in the development of china s natural gas power generation by system dynamics methodology the natural gas price for generation is predicted by market netback pricing method which sets up price linkage mechanism and bundles the natural gas price with alternative energy price the downturn of international oil market pushes natural gas price down in spite of the over demand domestic natural gas market the long term take or pay clauses provide a guarantee for adequate gas supply hence the natural gas price and source are no longer the case meanwhile the promotion policies including subsidy and emission trade scheme are analyzed as a result the natural gas power generation will witness explosive development with an average annual growth rate of about 10 by 2030 natural gas generation installed capacity will reach 235 7 gw

turning green into gold a framework for energy performance contracting epc in china s real estate industry abstract there is a growing interest in a sustainable built environment and green technologies are gaining worldwide attention however implementing green technologies usually requires more investment than using traditional technologies and the payback period tends to be very long in china most developers sell their properties and subsequently transfer the ownership to customers hence a crucial problem for promoting green construction is that developers cannot obtain economic profits gold from implementing green technologies meanwhile other stakeholders such as property management companies are also hesitant to adopt green technologies because of the large investment involved and their lack of experience to tackle this problem an energy performance contracting epc based framework is proposed to turn green investment into gold benefit by careful sharing of the risks existed the framework was developed by conducting a focus group meeting with three experienced representatives from developer property management company and energy service company respectively a real life case study which includes both energy efficient system retrofit and new construction is used to estimate the costs and benefits involved to demonstrate and verify the conceptual framework the results show that the proposed framework can support the application of green technologies in both types of projects economic benefits as well as environmental benefits can be gained for the project stakeholders and the whole society

low quality or high quality coal household energy choice in rural beijing abstract household low quality coal consumption contributes to severe haze pollution in china in response subsidy policies on high quality coal consumption and the adoption of new type coal stoves have been implemented using survey data in rural beijing this paper characterizes the determinants of coal consumption and switching behavior between low quality and high quality coals to this end we apply bivariate probit regression and tobit regression to evaluate the effectiveness of government policies and the influence of cognitive psychological and socioeconomic factors on coal consumption behaviors our empirical results reveal that prosociality and local environmental concern play crucial roles in household choices and consumption behaviors between two types of coals but global environmental concern does not the promotion of new type coal stoves significantly facilitates the transition from low quality to high quality coal while price subsidies on high quality coal do not influence market acceptance of high quality coal these results demonstrate the importance of cognitive psychological factors and promotion policies on coal consumption behavior overall we suggest that an education campaign or program regarding local environmental awareness prosocial values and behaviors and on new type coal stoves should be further promoted to accelerate the transition from low quality to high quality coal

nonlinear dynamics and stock returns simple deterministic systems are capable of generating chaotic output that mimics the output of stochastic systems for this reason algorithms have been developed to distinguish between these two alternatives these algorithms and related statistical tests are also useful in detecting the presence of nonlinear dependence in time series in this article the authors apply these procedures to stock returns and find evidence that indicates the presence of nonlinear dependence on weekly returns from the center for research in security prices value weighted index copyright 1989 by the university of chicago

energy conservation through energy service companies empirical analysis from china abstract china s energy service companies escos have developed only modestly despite favorable political and market conditions we argue that with sophisticated market institutions still evolving in china trust based relations between escos and energy customers are essential for successful implementation of energy efficiency projects chinese escos who are predominantly small and private enterprises perform poorly in terms of trust building because they are disembedded from local business social and political networks we conclude that in the current institutional setting the esco model based on market relations has serious limitations and is unlikely to lead to large scale implementation of energy efficiency projects in china

renewable and non renewable energy consumption growth nexus evidence from a panel error correction model abstract unlike previous renewable energy consumption growth studies this study examines the relationship between renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic growth for 80 countries within a multivariate panel framework over the period 1990 2007 the pedroni 1999 2004 heterogeneous panel cointegration test show a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption non renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficient estimates positive and statistically significant there is little difference in the elasticity estimates with respect to renewable and non renewable energy consumption the results from the panel error correction model reveal bidirectional causality between renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run also there is bidirectional short run causality between renewable and non renewable energy consumption indicative of substitutability between the two energy sources

explaining the role of incumbent utilities in sustainable energy transitions a case study of the smart grid development in china abstract smart grids sgs have been widely recognized as an enabling technology for delivering sustainable energy transitions such transitions have given rise to more complex government utility consumer relationships however these stakeholder relationships remain largely under researched this paper critically examines and explains the role of incumbent utilities in sustainable energy transitions using sg developments in china as a case study we have three major findings first china has developed an incumbent led model for deploying sgs second two incumbents the major state owned grid companies act as enablers of sg deployment they are strategic first movers and infrastructure builders of sgs they have also developed five types of networks as they increasingly reach out to other state actors businesses and electricity consumers thirdly these two grid companies also act as a fundamental block to structural changes in socio technical regimes disincentives to these large existing grid companies coupled with excessive reliance on them to provide public goods have resulted in major weaknesses in china s incumbent led model our findings have clear policy implications innovation in regulating incumbents is needed in order to provide sufficient regulatory incentives for advancing sg developments in china

corporate taxation debt financing and foreign plant ownership this paper compares domestically and foreign owned plants with respect to their debt to assets ratio and analyzes to which extent the difference is systematically affected by corporate taxation to derive hypotheses about influence of corporate taxation on a firm s debt financing we adapt a standard model of taxation and financing decisions of firms for the case of international debt shifting activities of foreign owned firms we estimate the average difference between a foreign owned and a domestically owned firm s debt ratio treating the mode of ownership as endogenous using data from 32 067 european firms we find that foreign owned firms on average exhibit a significantly higher debt ratio than their domestically owned counterparts in the host country moreover this gap in the debt ratio increases with the host country s statutory corporate tax rate

the role of the business model in capturing value from innovation evidence from xerox corporation s technology spin off companies this paper explores the role of the business model in capturing value from early stage technology a successful business model creates a heuristic logic that connects technical potential with the realization of economic value the business model unlocks latent value from a technology but its logic constrains the subsequent search for new alternative models for other technologies later on an implicit cognitive dimension overlooked in most discourse on the topic we explore the intellectual roots of the concept offer a working definition and show how the xerox corporation arose by employing an effective business model to commercialize a technology rejected by other leading companies of the day we then show the long shadow that this model cast upon xerox s later management of selected spin off companies from xerox parc xerox evaluated the technical potential of these spin offs through its own business model while those spin offs that became successful did so through evolving business models that came to differ substantially from that of xerox the search and learning for an effective business model in failed ventures by contrast were quite limited

towards alternative trajectories reconfigurations in the dutch electricity regime abstract in the early 2000s dutch electricity companies are increasingly investing in technologies that enable them to replace coal with biomass replacing large amounts of coal up to 40 requires the companies to invest in technological trajectories alternative to the ones they have supported over the past decades this paper aims to understand why these incumbent firms in the dutch electricity regime are developing alternatives the second aim of the paper is to provide a way for assessing the potential of innovations the paper does so by bringing together insights from literature on socio technical regimes and insights from literature on technological and market niches strategic niche management the main conclusion is that both niche processes at the level of experimenting with alternatives and changes in the incumbent regime are necessary for understanding the innovation journey of a new technology a two by two matrix is developed that can be used for both analysis and governance purposes

innovation processes in large technical systems market liberalization as a driver for radical change abstract electricity supply is a large technical system which exhibits strong path dependencies and high barriers for radical innovations recent market liberalization however has initiated a fundamental restructuring the paper analyzes how liberalization has altered innovation processes in the field of electricity supply we examine three radical innovations under monopoly conditions and contrast the findings with the results from a survey on the innovation behavior of electric utilities in liberalized markets we argue that the selection environment for innovations has changed in various respects in our sample new options open to innovation activities have emerged at the level of the firm and utility strategies turn out to be more heterogeneous this may be interpreted as an increase in the variety of search processes which may lead to a mid term decrease of path dependencies

densification what does it mean for fuel poverty and energy justice an empirical analysis energy is increasingly at the forefront of the global political agenda while there is a longstanding literature relating to fuel poverty and increasingly energy justice there remains little evidence which explores its link with the urban form specifically the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the urban consolidation hypothesis and the cultivation of energy justice in australia this study uses data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey years 2007 2014 a national probability sample and indefinite life panel the substantive findings of this study demonstrate that for low income and renting households greater urban density corresponds to a higher likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty further for households with a dwelling type described as an apartment two or three storeys there is a separate and quite generalisable indication that this type of dwelling is associated with a lower likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty this study connects the debate regarding urban consolidation and energy consumption to the fuel poverty and energy justice literature alongside this contribution this study also provides policymakers and planners with new evidence to inform remediation policies that are directed at supporting the fuel poor

local mobilisation against windfarm developments in spanish rural areas new actors in the regulation arena the region of valencia has a marked territorial duality an urbanised populated and high income coastal line and mountain and depressed inland rural areas this territorial duality also derives in a functional duality so that market and regulation drivers seem to assign rural areas specific roles for the provision of raw materials energy water and the like one of the clearest examples can be found in the design and development of the wing energy plan passed by the regional government in 2001 which designated areas for the installation of windmills however this regulation has resulted in an outstanding emergence of associations that have organised at several levels from the local to the national as a strong opposition movement to the local developments of the plan with this background the objective of this paper is to analyze from a set of case studies the processes of emergence and the evolution of collective actors associations which have been arising in many rural areas as a response to the local applications of the wind energy plan attention will be paid to understand the tactics used the process of adaptation to the participation mechanisms and the role played by local and non local networks

public attitudes towards renewable energy technologies in norway the role of party preferences abstract transition to a sustainable society requires large scale conversion of the energy system to new renewable non fossil sources of energy this presupposes public support for new technologies which means the public must deal with challenges in terms of placement area requirements ecological degradation and price developments this paper discusses how citizens view renewable energy technologies it analyses responses to representative surveys of the norwegian population on the desirability of various energy technologies such as hydroelectric dams onshore and offshore wind energy bioenergy plants and for contrast gas plants with and without carbon capture and storage our main focus is on the influence of party political preference on views of renewable energy we find that the sometimes lukewarm enthusiasm for renewable energy technologies cannot be fully explained by existing theories and that political party preference has a larger impact on energy technology attitudes than previously believed

cross border loss offset can fuel tax competition following recent court rulings cross border loss compensation for multinational firms has become a major policy issue in europe this paper analyzes the effects of introducing a coordinated cross border tax relief in a setting where multinational firms choose the size of a risky investment and host countries non cooperatively choose tax rates we show that coordinated cross border loss compensation may intensify tax competition when following current international practice the parent firm s home country bases the tax rebate for a loss making subsidiary on its own tax rate in equilibrium tax revenue losses may thus be even higher than is implied by the direct effect of the reform in contrast tax competition is mitigated when the home country bases its loss relief on the tax rate in the subsidiary s host country

asymmetric predictability of conditional variances we show that there is an asymmetry in the predictability of the volatilities of large versus small firms using both univariate and multivariate arma garch m parameterizations we find that volatility surprises to large market value firms are important to the future dynamics of their own returns as well as the returns of smaller firms conversely however shocks to smaller firms have no impact on the behavior of either the mean or the variance of the returns of larger capitalization companies article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

smart grids and the transformation of the electricity sector ict firms as potential catalysts for sectoral change abstract the sustainability challenges associated with increasing demand and generation of electricity require a far reaching transformation of the energy system smart grid technologies are expected to play a major role in such sectoral transformation while a growing body of literature is concerned with the dynamics and particularities of sectoral transformation most contributions have focused on exogenous shocks or new technological developments as drivers of change this paper complements the existing perspectives by exploring the role of actors as catalysts for transformation within the field of smart grid we study the transformative influence of ict firms on the energy sector in europe more specifically we analyze actor participation in 450 european smart grid projects between 2000 and 2011 as well as acquisitions in the field we find that incumbent firms from the ict sector have gained influence and drive transformation through the creation of variety in terms of technology business models and value chains as a strategic reaction electricity sector incumbents have recently acquired many start ups specialized in ict technology and thus expanded their competence base we conclude that entrants from another sector can be important catalysts for sectoral transformation and should be analyzed more systematically in transition studies

saving taxes through foreign plant ownership this paper analyzes to which extent foreign plant ownership involves lower tax payments than domestic plant ownership we employ a model of endogenous foreign subsidiary ownership to derive a set of empirically testable hypotheses about the differential taxation of foreign and domestically owned subsidiaries we assess these hypotheses in a data set of 33 577 european foreign and domestically owned manufacturing plants we identify a significant tax saving of endogenous foreign owner ship on average foreign owners pay 594 euros per employee or about 56 percent less than domestic owners of similar subsidiaries this effect is larger in thinner markets with fewer plants in markets with a greater relative presence of foreign owners and for foreign owners of larger plants

consumer responses towards home energy financial incentives a survey based study abstract residential energy efficient and renewable energy eere products play an important role in energy conservation and carbon emissions reduction various financial incentive programs have been developed to promote the adoption of these products however their effectiveness in attracting consumers is not very well understood in this study we investigated impacts of financial incentives on homeowner s decision making towards six eere products two forms of incentives tax credits and interest free loans were examined through a household mailing survey in florida the united states results showed that although half of the respondents were interested in eere products the high investment cost was a major concern that hindered their purchase activities homeowners were attracted to financial incentives and valued tax credits much higher than interest free loans the current federal home energy tax credit levels were found to attract only 2 12 percent of homeowners to buy eere products the willingness of participation was especially low for the costly products such as solar panels the participation rate was also very low for lower income i e annual household income below 50 000 families living in older residences this study contributes to the understanding of economic and social aspects of consumer decision making on energy efficiency and alternative energy

immobilizing corporate income shifting should it be safe to strip in the harbor abstract many subsidiaries can deduct interest payments on internal debt from their taxable income by issuing internal debt from a tax haven multinationals can shift income out of host countries through the interest rates they charge and the amount of internal debt they issue we show that from a welfare perspective thin capitalization rules that restrict the amount of debt for which interest is tax deductible safe harbor rules are inferior to rules that limit the ratio of debt interest to pre tax earnings earnings stripping rules even if a safe harbor rule is used in conjunction with an earnings stripping rule

a quantile approach to identify factors promoting renewable energy in european countries this paper analyses the impact of several factors on the use of renewable energy sources in a set of european union countries by applying a quantile regression approach we find that different factors are effective for different levels of renewable energy commitment and the magnitudes of some effects evolve in accordance with the level of renewable energy sources used consequently some policies that do not take into account the different stages could carry different effects the results suggest that the lobbying effect of the established industries hampers the development of renewable sources and that this effect is greater for lower initial level of renewable energy use the results reveal that environmental concerns have not yet achieved enough pressure to stimulate major developments on renewables we include two new drivers geographic area and european union directive 2001 77 ec that directive was effective in signaling the commitment to renewables namely for countries with lower renewables use

cross jurisdictional income shifting by u s multinationals evidence from international bond offerings we examine whether tax incentives influence where u s multinationals locate their interest deductions worldwide our sample includes international bond offerings by u s multinationals during 1987 1997 denominated in the currencies of australia canada france germany italy japan or the united kingdom our results suggest that u s multinationals debt location decisions take into account the effect of jurisdiction specific tax loss carryforwards and binding foreign tax credit limitations on the value of debt tax shields our results are also consistent with u s multinationals locating interest deductions in different tax jurisdictions as a mechanism to achieve tax motivated income shifting

towards trust in regulation moving to a public value regulation abstract the uk government has committed itself to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions the challenge of successfully achieving a transition to a sustainable energy system in the context of the uk s largely privately owned energy industry rests on the ability of policy makers to encourage and enable the necessary changes or innovation at all levels of the energy system this paper argues that the uk s current dominant political paradigm or framework the regulatory state paradigm rsp and within it the role of the economic regulator ofgem acts as a fundamental block to this challenge the current economic regulatory system is based on trust in the market or on predicted albeit theoretical known outcomes to expand our regulatory system to one which can deliver a sustainable energy system requires innovation in a certain direction as opposed to any innovation that is the antithesis of the current process of regulation trust is required that ofgem the economic regulator will develop rules and incentives which deliver an agreed sustainable energy goal which is trusted to be the right goal this requires ofgem moving away from ex ante regulation to a type of regulation where all costs benefits and outcomes cannot be known beforehand and where they cannot necessarily be quantifiable this has very provisionally been called public value regulation pvr

how high are option values in energy efficiency investments high implicit discount rates in consumers energy efficiency investments have long been a source of controversy in several recent papers hassett and metcalf argue that the uncertainty and irreversibility attendant to such investments and the resulting option value account for this anomalously high implicit discounting using their model and data we show that to the contrary their analysis falls well short of providing an explanation of this pattern

unobserved tax avoidance and the tax elasticity of fdi abstract this paper investigates the tax responsiveness of multinational firms investment decisions in foreign countries distinguishing firms that are able to avoid taxes avoiders from those that are not non avoiders from a theoretical point of view the tax responsiveness of firms crucially depends on this distinction empirically however a firm s ability to avoid profit taxes is inherently unobservable to the researcher to address this problem we use a finite mixture modeling approach which allows us to distinguish avoiders from non avoiders stochastically from a mixture of distributions of the two types of firms using panel data on the universe of foreign affiliates of german multinational firms over the years 1999 2010 we find that investments of tax avoiders do not respond to host country profit taxes at all while those of non avoiders do about 11 of the affiliates are estimated to be able to avoid taxes these investments account for about 58 of the stock of foreign fixed assets held by german multinational firms abroad a one percentage point increase in the statutory corporate profit tax rate of a host country is found to reduce the fixed assets of non avoiders in that host country by 0 81

income shifting investment and tax competition theory and evidence from provincial taxation in canada abstract we study corporate income taxation when firms operating in multiple jurisdictions can shift income using tax planning strategies because income of corporate groups is not consolidated for tax purposes in canada firms may use financial techniques such as lending among affiliates to reduce subnational corporate taxes a simple theoretical model shows how income shifting affects real investment government revenues and tax base elasticities depending on whether firms must allocate income to provinces or not we then analyze data from administrative tax records to compare the behavior of corporate subsidiaries that may engage in income shifting to comparable firms that must use the statutory allocation formula to determine their taxable income in each province the evidence suggests that income shifting has pronounced effects on provincial tax bases according to our preferred estimate the elasticity of taxable income with respect to tax rates for income shifting firms is 4 9 compared with 2 3 for other comparable firms

why countries differ in thin capitalization rules the role of financial development abstract the purpose of thin capitalization rules is to limit multinational firms possibilities of engaging in tax planning via debt shifting this paper analyzes the optimal design of thin capitalization rules in the presence of financial frictions when a host country in the first stage chooses the type of thin capitalization rule and then in the second stage decides about the strictness we show that welfare under a safe haven rule is higher than under an earnings stripping rule if firms are not able to manipulate the interest rate on internal loans welfare however can be higher under an earnings stripping rule if firms are able to manipulate the interest rate on internal loans we also show that the optimal level of internal interest deductions decreases with the financial development of the host country our results are consistent with countries actual policy choice

determinants of renewable energy development in the eu countries a 20 year perspective abstract the objective of the paper is to identify factors which determine energy policy in the eu countries in the middle of 1990s this objective is achieved in three stages first the changes in the distribution of res in 26 eu countries in the period between 1995 and 2014 are investigated the analysis demonstrates that over the last 20 years the eu countries diversify the res they use which results in substantial changes in their distribution second the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is described as it is assumed that the distribution might be a crucial factor influencing energy policy in each country third several other factors related to energy security environmental concerns economy and politics are considered as potential determinants of renewable energy development two statistical methods of variable selection namely the best subset regression and the lars method reveal that the present in 2014 share of res in the energy mix significantly depends on the condition of the eu countries in the middle of 1990s the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is the crucial determinant of renewable energy development countries without their own fossil fuel sources are the ones which develop renewable energy to the greatest extent other important factors boosting re development include gdp per capita concentration of energy supply swi and the costs of consumption of energy obtained from fossil fuels in relation to gdp

renewable energy consumption and economic growth evidence from a panel of oecd countries abstract this study examines the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of twenty oecd countries over the period 1985 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship the heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run

proxies for the corporate marginal tax rate abstract this paper focuses on how best to measure the corporate marginal tax rate which is an important input into financial analysis of the cost of capital financing policy corporate hedging and corporate reorganizations the results indicate that the simulated tax rate used by shevlin 1990 and graham 1996 although difficult to calculate is the best available proxy for the true marginal tax rate if the simulated rate is unavailable an easy to calculate trichotomous variable or the statutory marginal tax rate which captures the progressivity in the tax schedule are reasonable alternatives better than most commonly used tax variables

an evaluation of alternative measures of corporate tax rates abstract this paper examines the ability of financial statement measures of average and marginal tax rates mtr to capture tax attributes utilizing firm level tax and financial data the results suggest commonly used average tax rate measures provide little insight about statutory tax burdens and may introduce substantial bias into analyses of tax incidence financial statement based proxies for mtr particularly those based on simulation methods are found to perform well in estimating current year tax rates both current year and present value mtr are found to be highly correlated with an easily constructed binary proxy of firms tax status

an international review of the implications of regulatory and electricity market structures on the emergence of grid scale electricity storage abstract energy storage systems ess have the potential to make a significant contribution to planning and operation practises in power systems while ess can be used to provide multiple benefits in the power sector widespread use has been restricted by high technology costs lack of deployment experience and the barriers and uncertainties caused by the present electricity market and regulatory structures that were designed for conventional electricity systems this paper reviews countries with high renewable targets and with significant current or planned ess deployments to ascertain the common problems affecting the use of ess on the grid and to establish where changes have been made or proposed to the electricity market and regulatory frameworks three major problems were identified as the undetermined asset class for ess and unbundled electricity system limiting stakeholders from determining and realising multiple ess benefits low electricity market liquidity and changing market conditions and a lack of common standards and procedures for evaluating connecting operating and maintaining ess based on the established barriers recommendations to update or create policies regulation and market arrangements to increase the viability and wider use of grid level ess are discussed the three key regulatory and policy recommendations were identified as an alignment of renewable policies to that of ess creating a separate asset class for ess and associated rules for regulated and competitive operations and standardising assessment frameworks connection and operational procedures for the use of ess finally three main electricity market recommendations include updating rules to support simultaneous ess operation across wholesale ancillary services and capacity markets updating market rules to allow compensation for flexible and highly accurate responsive demand and generation technologies such as ess and updating market ancillary services energy requirements

trading asymmetric trend and volatility by leverage trend garch in taiwan stock index this article develops a leverage trend generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity garch model by incorporating asymmetric trend of returns of the exponential autoregressive and asymmetric volatility of garch models to study the asymmetric effects using in sample daily data of taiex over the period 4 january 1980 to 25 august 1997 and postsample daily data over the period 26 august 1997 to 10 september 2007 the evidence reveals that a curvaceous risk return relationship and both asymmetric volatility and asymmetric trend of returns are significant in taiex the episode of asymmetric trend of returns is that the positive information creates a higher return trend than the negative information of the same amount while similarly to most studies the evidence of asymmetric volatility appears that the negative information makes a higher volatility than the positive information of the same size most remarkably we evidence that the volatility asymmetry effect is a conservative trading factor

identifying the influencing factors of the sustainable energy transitions in china abstract this paper aims to explore the influencing factors that facilitate sustainable energy transitions in china for this purpose this paper assumes that the impact of the energy transition is from three main factors energy technology innovations the energy market and socio technical regimes which can be subdivided into 11 subfactors to empirically test the proposed hypotheses questionnaire survey data collected from chinese energy enterprises are statistically analysed by structural equation models sems the results show that first energy technology innovations the energy market and socio technical regimes are the major forces in the transition to sustainable energy in china second the effects of the three main factors on the energy transition vary according to 11 different subfactors some subfactors i e innovation strategy innovation factors innovation policy innovation network and new energy competitiveness have very important positive effects on the energy transition some subfactors i e competitiveness of the coal industry customer habits and coal based infrastructure have negative effects on the transition to sustainable energy in china third the influence of the subfactors on the transition performance is diminished as a result of the joint intermediate effects of transition behaviours

the socio technical transition of distributed electricity storage into future networks system value and stakeholder views whole system models for the gb electricity system suggest that distributed electricity storage has the potential to significantly reduce the system integration cost for future system scenarios from a policy perspective this poses the question why this value should not be realised within existing market structures opinion among stakeholders is divided some believe that storage deployment constitutes a special case in need of policy support others insist that markets can provide the necessary platform to negotiate contracts which reward storage operators for the range of services they could provide this paper seeks to inform this debate with a process of stakeholder engagement using a perspective informed by socio technical transition literatures this approach allows the identification of tensions among actors in the electricity system and of possibilities for co evolution in the deployment of storage technologies during a transition towards a low carbon electricity system it also draws attention to policy related challenges of technology lock in and path dependency resulting from poor alignment of incumbent regimes with the requirements for distributed electricity storage

current challenges of germany s energy transition project and competing strategies of challengers and incumbents the case of direct marketing of electricity from renewable energy sources electricity generated by renewable energies res e already accounts for 25 of germany s electricity supply this has led to recent discussions for a better market integration of res e the paper examines how competing actors and their ideas on market integration developed new services for direct marketing according to their respective origins and tried to shape the regulatory framework the paper analyses this process and explains the current shape of the field of direct marketing medium sized structured actors who favoured res e integration via the conventional wholesale power markets and who formed early close coalitions with res e power producers at the same time have been most successful in terms of market shares moreover they have been very successful for different reasons in building up coalitions with governance units and influencing the field rules and routines based on those findings the paper will conclude with some policy advices for the future adjustment of the current regulative frameworks as long as there is no evidence of how res e can be integrated most effectively and efficiently policies should maintain a competition between different direct marketing strategies to find out which strategies serve the best in terms of achieving a successful energy transition

governing the transition of socio technical systems a case study of the development of smart grids in korea abstract this paper examines the motivations processes and outcomes of the development of smart grids in south korea through the perspectives of governance and innovation systems drawing on desktop research and semi structured interviews this paper has two major findings first the development of smart grids in korea has been shaped by various factors including macroeconomic policy the role of the government and experimentation the complex interactions between these factors at the landscape regime and niche levels has impacted on the development of smart grids second while korea s government led approach has its strengths in driving change it has also exposed weaknesses in the country s ability to mobilise the private sector and consumer participation major obstacles including partial electricity market reform and public distrust exist a systemic perspective is needed for policy in order to accommodate the changes required for smart grid development regulatory reforms particularly price setting mechanisms and consumer engagement are priority areas for policy change

mobilizing private finance for low carbon innovation a systematic review of barriers and solutions this paper analyses the field of innovation studies regarding barriers to low carbon innovation and consequences for finance investment and divestment and contributes to a more holistic understanding of the underlying mechanisms a combination of technological barriers combined with economic barriers institutional and political barriers contribute to sub optimal low carbon investment all along the innovation cycle policy makers need to take a systemic approach to enable the redirection of diverse private financial sources instruments range from cutting dirty r d subsidies and support for clean technology innovation and diffusion levelling the institutional playing field and making risks of high carbon and low carbon technologies transparent to providing a consistent but adaptive long term transition strategy this would allow financiers to gradually shift their investments away from high carbon mainstream markets and scale low carbon technology niche markets however financiers also need to sharpen their competencies with regard to new clean technologies and markets

debt shifting and ownership structure abstract previous theoretical studies on the debt shifting behavior of multinationals have assumed affiliates of multinationals to be wholly owned we develop a model that allows a multinational firm to determine both the leverage and ownership structure in affiliates endogenously a main finding is that affiliates with minority owners have less debt than wholly owned affiliates and therefore a less tax efficient financing structure this is due to an externality that arises endogenously in our model where costs and benefits of debt shifting are shared asymmetrically between minority and majority owners our findings provide a theory framework for recent empirical findings

overall review of distributed energy development in china status quo barriers and solutions abstract as a good power supplement form of super power and large scale energy base distributed energy has the characteristics of less investment and flexible power generation facing with the double pressure of the sustainable development of energy use and environmental protection it has become an efficient solution to meet the demand of load growth reduce environmental pollution and improve the comprehensive utilization of energy and the reliability of power supply however the development of distributed energy starts relatively late in china and confronts many difficulties so this paper analyzes the present development situation and existing problems of the distributed energy in china then it elaborates from the aspects of policies and regulations technical specifications price policy and grid interconnection codes at last this paper puts forward relevant policy suggestions of the guarantee mechanism of distributed energy this paper argues that with the attention of the development of distributed energy increasing a series of policies to promote the construction and interconnection of distributed energy will be introduced and distributed energy will get scaled development in china

factors impacting diverging paths of renewable energy a review abstract considered an essential factor for countries development energy demand is growing worldwide unlike conventional sources the use of renewable energy sources has multiple benefits including increased energy security sustainable economic growth and pollution reduction in particular greenhouse gas emissions nevertheless there is a considerable difference in the share of renewable energy sources in national energy portfolios this study conducts a systematic literature review to identify drivers and barriers which could help understanding the diverging paths of renewable energy deployment for countries among a total of 1431 academic studies 60 qualitative and quantitative studies were identified using a multistage selection process designated manuscripts were explored in detail including publication years length of the studies countries represented and renewable energy sources referenced factors explaining countries renewable energy deployments were defined and organized into seven main categories economic environmental political regulatory social technical potential and technological within these categories economic considerations appeared most frequently across manuscripts while environmental factors were least represented these categories were then classified as drivers barriers or undetermined towards renewable energy deployment based on a one sample proportion statistical test economic environmental and social factors were found to be drivers whereas political regulatory technical potential and technological factors were not classified as either a driver or a barrier i e undetermined each main category contains several subcategories among which only national income was found to have a positive impact whereas all other subcategories were considered undetermined no significant barriers to the deployment of renewable energy sources were found over the analyzed period

multinational firms and tax havens multinational firms with operations in high tax countries can benefit the most from reallocating taxable income to tax havens though this is sufficiently difficult and costly that only 20 4 of german multinational firms have any tax haven affiliates among german manufacturing firms a 1 percentage point higher foreign tax rate is associated with a 2 3 greater likelihood of owning a tax haven affiliate this is consistent with tax avoidance incentives and contrasts with earlier evidence for u s firms the relationship is less strong for firms in service industries possibly reflecting the difficulty of reallocating taxable service income