a regional energy hub for achieving a low carbon energy transition abstract the transition to a low carbon energy economy will remain a cornerstone of national energy policies of countries committed to the climate change accord for decades to come we think that transmission investment is one key policy instrument amongst other to help with this transition we propose an enhanced role for investing in transmission capacity for inter regional trade to allow effective fuel switching among countries through a physically connected market we develop a conceptual framework of regional energy hubs and propose a cost minimization model in support of a transmission investment strategy that integrates i a key geopolitical parameter for countries that are geographically close in a region but under different political jurisdictions judged as stable and receptive to firm trading arrangements ii an economic parameter related to the fuel mix where the differences in a country s supply and demand characteristics are significant enough for allow mutual benefits to be realized through cost reduction iii an environmental parameter linked to a country s carbon intensity that could benefit from the resources of a neighboring jurisdiction with lower intensities and iv a financial parameter for each country within a region capable of attracting investment capital a connected regional energy hub offers large economic and environmental benefit for transition to a low carbon energy economy

res and risk renewable energy s contribution to energy security a portfolio based approach abstract during the first decade of the 21st century renewable energy sources res had been gaining momentum due to environmental issues concerns about pollution and climate change have raised public awareness encouraging governments to adopt policies to preserve and protect the environment regarding energy res promotion together with energy efficiency measures has been the main policy response to address such concerns as a consequence res development during the first decade of the 21st century has been remarkable although res deployment has been mainly focused on achieving environmental goals its potential contribution to energy security went not unnoticed however it is worth noting that while the trade off between environmental goals and the use of res to accomplish them and competitiveness has been widely explored the relationship between energy security and res has received less attention both at the conceptual and energy policy levels this article tries to address such a relationship the present article focuses on renewable electricity imports as illustrated by the case of the mediterranean solar plan after introducing the energy security energy risk concept and its dimensions the article focuses on the contribution of res in terms of security of supply for a given energy mix using the portfolio theory most of the analyses of the interactions between res and energy security focus on the national level with res being mainly conceived as a substitute for fuel imports to produce electricity and reduce so called energy dependence however new transmission technologies allow the import of electricity directly from neighbouring countries far out of the range of regular electricity lines therefore this article tries to broaden the analysis of energy security to international res trade flows applying the previous discussion to the main project involving significant international green electricity trade the mediterranean solar plan

why do manufacturers issue coupons an empirical analysis of breakfast cereals we explore the relationship between shelf prices and manufacturers coupons for 25 readyto eat breakfast cereals we find that shelf prices are lower during periods when coupons are available this result is inconsistent with static monopoly price discrimination under a broad range of assumptions we present evidence that is inconsistent with both dynamic theories of price discrimination and explanations of couponing based on the vertical relationship between manufacturers and retailers we find support for models of price discrimination in oligopoly settings as well as suggestions that firmwide incentives may induce managers to use coupons and price cuts simultaneously finally lagged coupons have a positive effect on current sales suggesting that coupons are used to induce repurchase

price discrimination and retail configuration the hypothesis that price discrimination based on willingness to pay for quality can occur in multifirm markets is confirmed using microdata on gasoline retailing a test that discriminates between price structures associated with discrimination and with cost driven competitive differentials is developed and implemented with controls for variation in outlet and market characteristics a second test based on profitability variation rejects a competitive peak load pricing explanation for the observed price dispersion the data suggest that price discrimination at the retail level adds at least 9 a gallon to the average price of full service gasoline

price discrimination in free entry markets using a spatial model of monopolistic competition we investigate price discrimination in free entry zero profit markets we show that when brands are heterogeneous competition does not prevent discrimination the power to earn economic profits is not necessary for a firm to maintain discriminatory prices our model treats formally the fact that consumers difer not only in the utility they derive from a good but also in how strongly they prefer one brand over all others in markets where firms are very competitive sorting consumers on the strength on brand preference produces larger price differentials between groups than sorting on the basis of consumers reservation prices for the good when firms sort customers on the basis of strength of brand preference however we find that the output and welfare effects are generally less favorable than when sorting is more closely related to consumers reservation prices

measuring super efficiency in dea in the presence of infeasibility super efficiency data envelopment analysis dea model is obtained when a decision making unit dmu under evaluation is excluded from the reference set because of the possible infeasibility of super efficiency dea model the use of super efficiency dea model has been restricted to the situations where constant returns to scale crs are assumed it is shown that one of the input oriented and output oriented super efficiency dea models must be feasible for a any efficient dmu under evaluation if the variable returns to scale vrs frontier consists of increasing constant and decreasing returns to scale dmus we use both input and output oriented super efficiency models to fully characterize the super efficiency when super efficiency is used as an efficiency stability measure infeasibility means the highest super efficiency stability if super efficiency is interpreted as input saving or output surplus achieved by a specific efficient dmu infeasibility does not necessary mean the highest super efficiency

a bi objective weighted model for improving the discrimination power in mcdea lack of discrimination power and poor weight dispersion remain major issues in data envelopment analysis dea since the initial multiple criteria dea mcdea model developed in the late 1990s only goal programming approaches that is the gpdea ccr and gpdea bcc were introduced for solving the said problems in a multi objective framework we found gpdea models to be invalid and demonstrate that our proposed bi objective multiple criteria dea bio mcdea outperforms the gpdea models in the aspects of discrimination power and weight dispersion as well as requiring less computational codes an application of energy dependency among 25 european union member countries is further used to describe the efficacy of our approach

geographies of energy transition space place and the low carbon economy this paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity the paper draws on a seminar series on the geographies of energy transition security climate governance hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011 which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography focussing on the uk government s policy for a low carbon transition the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy six concepts are introduced and explained location landscape territoriality spatial differentiation scaling and spatial embeddedness examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent and contending potential geographical futures are in play more attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low carbon economy will be like it also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available

the geopolitics of cross border electricity grids the israeli arab case abstract countries often attempt to establish regional electricity grids however whereas research on natural resources frequently seeks to understand policy outcome through a geopolitical prism when it comes to electricity studies the prism is always economic or technical hence this study is a first attempt to identify the geopolitical dimension of cross border electricity grids the study argues that success in establishing electricity grids requires identifying how the geopolitical dimension interplays with the physical dimension to examine the role of these geopolitical bottlenecks the study examines negotiation protocols spanning over 15 years on establishing ten grid connections between israel and its arab neighbors it finds that electricity geopolitics has been used both as a platform for deeper international cooperation and as a stick against neighboring states when policies are driven by a peace dividend proposals for grid connection appear to evolve and overcome the dependency and the security economy bottlenecks when relations deteriorate proposals for grid connections appear to undergo reconsideration and to be held hostage by higher politics if when and how electricity grids materialize is a function of the nature of the electricity network as a twofold package and of the ability of the planning process to accommodate geopolitical uncertainty

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

coupon redemption and the demand for frozen concentrated orange juice a switching regression analysis a switching regression model was estimated and used to study the impact of florida department of citrus coupon promotional programs on the demand for frozen concentrated orange juice the empirical results show that discounts and information provided by coupons were effective in increasing the demand for fcoj and that the fdoc s coupon programs had positive impacts on the probability of using coupons for purchasing fcoj moreover different types of coupon promotions had different impacts and coupon users and nonusers demonstrated different degrees of response to price changes

a price discrimination theory of coupons the objective of this paper is to analyze the consumer s decision in electing to use cents off coupons distributed by manufacturers of consumer products arguing that the decision to use coupons is based on the tradeoff between costs of using coupons and the savings obtained it is shown that coupons can serve as a price discrimination device to provide a lower price to a particular segment of consumers based on a price theoretic model it is shown that the users of coupons are more price elastic than nonusers of coupons and that the opportunity cost of time and other household resource variables are determinant factors in consumers decisions implications derived from the model are tested using diary panel data

ranking efficient decision making units in data envelopment analysis based on reference frontier share abstract data envelopment analysis dea is a powerful technique for performance evaluation of decision making units dmus ranking efficient dmus based on a rational analysis is an issue that yet needs further research the impact of each efficient dmu in evaluation of inefficient dmus can be considered as additional information to discriminating among efficient dmus the concept of reference frontier share is introduced in which the share of each efficient dmu in construction of the reference frontier for evaluating inefficient dmus is considered for this purpose a model for measuring the reference frontier share of each efficient dmu associated with each inefficient one is proposed and then a total measure is provided based on which the ranking is made the new approach has the capability for ranking extreme and non extreme efficient dmus further it has no problem in dealing with negative data these facts are verified by theorems discussions and numerical examples

china s supply of critical raw materials risks for europe s solar and wind industries abstract this article examines the dependence of the european union s solar and wind industries on chinese supply of five critical raw materials tellurium gallium indium and the rare earths neodymium and dysprosium based partly on interviews with experts this study reviews china s industrial policies that shape the supply of these materials abroad we also assess the short and long term strategies of the european union and european solar and wind industries to ameliorate potential supply bottlenecks while these strategies adequately address short term challenges we find they pose several long term risks such as increasing the dependence on china and hampering european competitiveness in global markets there is also divergence in the extent to which these two industries are vulnerable to supply bottlenecks and price volatility because more options are open to them european solar manufacturers are less exposed to these risks than their counterparts in the offshore wind sector

renewable energy and geopolitics a review this article reviews the literature on the geopolitics of renewable energy it finds that while the roots of this literature can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s most of it has been published from 2010 onwards the following aggregate conclusions are extracted from the literature renewable energy has many advantages over fossil fuels for international security and peace however renewable energy is thought to exacerbate security risks and geopolitical tensions related to critical materials and cybersecurity former hydrocarbon exporters will likely be the greatest losers from the energy transition many of the reviewed publications share some weaknesses a failure to define geopolitics an unwarranted assumption that very little has been published in the field previously limited use of established forecasting scenario building or foresight methodologies a lack of recognition of the complexity of the field a lack of theorisation most authors do not distinguish between the geopolitical risks associated with different types of renewable energy and only a few distinguish clearly between the geopolitics of the transitional phase and the geopolitics of a post energy transition world a disproportionately large part of the literature is dedicated to critical materials and cybersecurity while only a small part concerns the decline of former fossil fuel powers among those publications that do discuss the decline of fossil fuels there is also an over focus on oil producers and a lack of attention to the countries that rely heavily on coal for example australia china germany indonesia poland and the united states

escaping carbon lock in this article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in understanding carbon lock in unruh 2000 which posited that industrial countries have become locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale carbon lock in arises through technological organizational social and institutional co evolution culminating in what was termed as techno institutional complex tic in order to resolve the climate problem an escape from the lock in condition is required however due to the self referential nature of tic escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required

super efficiency dea in the presence of infeasibility it is well known that super efficiency data envelopment analysis dea approach can be infeasible under the condition of variable returns to scale vrs by extending of the work of chen 2005 the current study develops a two stage process for calculating super efficiency scores regardless whether the standard vrs super efficiency mode is feasible or not the proposed approach examines whether the standard vrs super efficiency dea model is infeasible when the model is feasible our approach yields super efficiency scores that are identical to those arising from the original model for efficient dmus that are infeasible under the super efficiency model our approach yields super efficiency scores that characterize input savings and or output surpluses the current study also shows that infeasibility may imply that an efficient dmu does not exhibit super efficiency in inputs or outputs when infeasibility occurs it can be necessary that i both inputs and outputs be decreased to reach the frontier formed by the remaining dmus under the input orientation and ii both inputs and outputs be increased to reach the frontier formed by the remaining dmus under the output orientation the newly developed approach is illustrated with numerical examples

a guide to the pitfalls of identifying price discrimination this paper demonstrates that plausible cost based explanations exist for what are commonly perceived to be cases of price discrimination we explain such commonly discussed problems as the price spreads of retail gasoline products the high price of dinners at restaurants the high price of popcorn at movie theaters and the fact that airline ticket prices vary with how long the ticket is purchased before the flight s departure our explanations benefit from not relying on consumer ignorance or implicit collusion among numerous sellers

third degree price discrimination in oligopoly all out competition and strategic commitment price discrimination by imperfectly competitive firms may intensify competition leading to lower prices for all consumers the tradeoff of consumer groups welfare that is characteristic of monopolistic discrimination need not arise this escalation of competition may make firms worse off and as a result firms may wish to avoid the discriminatory outcome under conditions similar to those in which unambiguous price and welfare effects may arise unilateral commitments not to price discriminate including the adoption of everyday low pricing or no haggle policies may raise firm profits by softening price competition

the dynamics of markups and inventories in retailing firms this paper is concerned with the interaction between price and inventory decisions in retailing firms and its implications for the dynamics of markups and the existence of sales pro motions we consider a model where a monopolistically competitive retailer decides price and inventories and assumes lump sum costs when placing orders or changing nominal prices tn this model the existence of stockout probabilities and fixed ordering costs generate a cyclical price behaviour characterized by long periods without nominal price changes and short periods with very low prices i e sales promotions we estimate this model using a unique longitudinal dataset with information about retail and wholesale prices inventories orders and sales for several brands in a supermarket chain based on the estimated model we perform several counterfactual experi ments that show the important role that inventories and fixed ordering costs play in the dynamics of retail prices and the frequency of sales promotions in this dataset

a dea based incentives system for centrally managed multi unit organisations in multi unit organisations such as a bank and its branches or a national body delivering publicly funded health or education services through local operating units the need arises to incentivize the units to operate efficiently in such instances it is generally accepted that units found to be inefficient can be encouraged to make efficiency savings however units which are found to be efficient need to be incentivized in a different manner it has been suggested that efficient units could be incentivized by some reward compatible with the level to which their attainment exceeds that of the best of the rest normally referred to as super efficiency a recent approach to this issue varmaz et al 2013 has used data envelopment analysis dea models to measure the super efficiency of the whole system of operating units with and without the involvement of each unit in turn in order to provide incentives we identify shortcomings in this approach and use it as a starting point to develop a new dea based system for incentivizing operating units to operate efficiently for the benefit of the aggregate system of units data from a small german retail bank is used to illustrate our method

super efficiency infeasibility and zero data in dea lee et al 2011 and chen and liang 2011 develop a data envelopment analysis dea model to address the infeasibility issue in super efficiency models in this paper we point out that their model is feasible when input data are positive but can be infeasible when some of input is zero their model is modified so that the new super efficiency dea model is always feasible when data are non negative note that zero data can make the super efficiency model under constant returns to scale crs infeasible our discussion is based upon variable returns to scale vrs and can be applied to crs super efficiency models

the timing of sales this paper presents a model of intertemporal price discrimination a fixed number of sellers produce a homogeneous good consumers with different preferences enter the market in each period and leave when they make a purchase the sellers typically vary their prices over time charging a high price in most periods but occasionally cutting the price to sell to a large group of customers with a low reservation price in some equilibria all stores lower their price at the same time and to the same level

integrated north sea grids the costs the benefits and their distribution between countries abstract a large number of offshore wind farms and interconnectors are expected to be constructed in the north sea region over the coming decades creating substantial opportunities for the deployment of integrated network solutions creating interconnected offshore grids that combine cross border links and connections of offshore plants to shore offers multiple economic and environmental advantages for europe s energy system however despite evidence that integrated solutions can be more beneficial than traditional radial connection practices no such projects have been deployed yet in this paper we quantify costs and benefits of integrated projects and investigate to which extent the cost benefit sharing mechanism between participating countries can impede or encourage the development of integrated projects three concrete interconnection case studies in the north sea area are analysed in detail using a national level power system model model outputs are used to compute the net benefit of all involved stakeholders under different allocation schemes given the asymmetric distribution of costs and benefits we recommend to consistently apply the positive net benefit differential mechanism as a starting point for negotiations on the financial closure of investments in integrated offshore infrastructure

price discrimination through a distribution channel theory and evidence price discrimination practices are common but they typically are analyzed in a framework in which firms sell directly to end users louis phlips 1981 richard schmalensee 1981 hal varian 1985 gerstner and holthausen 1986 this direct channel framework is valid for service industries such as entertainment and travel where senior citizens buy reduced price tickets to musical concerts and children receive discounts on airfares and movietheater tickets in the packaged goods and durable goods industries however manufacturers sell to retailers who sell to consumers in indirect channels like these price discrimination occurs when manufacturers target pull discounts1 to price conscious consumers in the form of coupons and rebates consumers who do not use these discounts pay higher net prices because manufacturers cannot dictate consumer prices to retailers analysis of price discrimination ought to take into account the pricing behavior of retailers michael katz 1987 gerstner and hess 1991 while some researchers have studied coupons as a means for price discrimination william levedahl 1984 chakravarthi narasimhan 1984 they have done so in a direct channel context and have ignored the role of retailers or other middlemen in the pricing and couponing process in this paper we study price discrimination within a channel of distribution consisting of a single manufacturer and competitive retailers in the model the manufacturer pricediscriminates using a pull discount targeted at consumers with low reservation prices to reduce the net price these consumers pay for the product some consumers with higher reservation prices who self select not to use the discount pay the full retail price for the product the manufacturer chooses the wholesale price for the firm s product and the size of the price discriminating pull discount taking as given the markup percentage used by retailers joint determination of the manufacturer discount and retail markup is also considered the paper s major finding is that a higher retail markup percentage influences the manufacturer to use price discrimination in a less intensive way i e to reduce the size of the equilibrium pull discount as well as the wholesale price the intuition behind this result is as follows the greater the retail markup percentage for a given wholesale price the greater will be the retail price the greater the retail price the larger the pull discount will have to be to keep the low reservation price consumers in the market but the manufacturer bears the entire cost of the discount and a larger discount induces more nontargeted customers to use it these two effects make price discrimination less profitable when markup percentage increases so the manufacturer reduces its pull discount and in gerstner graduate school of management university of california davis ca 95616 and department of economics haifa university haifa 31999 israel hess department of business administration university of illinois champaign il 61820 holthausen department of economics north carolina state university box 7507 raleigh nc 27695 we thank alastair hall jeongwen chiang randy cooke and nick ruotolo for their comments and assistance 1manufacturers who distribute products through retailers use push or pull techniques to increase sales under push manufacturers offer inducements to retailers when consumers shop for the product the retailer has an incentive to promote the brand thus pushing it through to consumers under pull manufacturers offer incentives such as coupons or rebates directly to consumers the manufacturers hope that demand will be pulled through the channel by consumers asking retailers for the promoted brand

banks efficiency and credit risk analysis using by production approach the case of iranian banks abstractthis article uses a by production approach that integrates credit risk to monitor bank efficiency the method overcomes the possible misspecification issues of the commonly assumed weak disposability wda of undesirable outputs in addition our measure extends the classic by production approach by including statistical aspects through subsampling techniques we have also provided an algorithm to correct related infeasibilities using this approach we investigate the performance of iranian banks and credit risk management in the sector for the period 1998 2012 non performing loans npls have been used as an undesirable output and proxy for credit risk in our models based on our empirical results although the banks generally exhibited efficiency improvements over time their credit risk performance deteriorated considerably after the regulatory changes introduced in 2005 these findings confirm that credit quality can be monitored more actively across iranian banks

the cinderella options a study of modernized renewable energy technologies part 1 a technical assessment abstract this paper examines the status of and prospects for renewable energy technologies it is argued that the prospects for obtaining large scale supplies are good especially in the industrialized countries and that sufficient evidence exists for them to be taken much more seriously in the energy policy process reasons for their low status include inadequate data and a scepticism born of past disappointments however a failure to transfer existing knowledge to the policy community and well documented institutional and psychological processes are probably more important a major change of attitudes is required and is in the long run inevitable but the process will not be easy together with energy efficiency and natural gas renewable sources will then emerge as the third leg of the triad which will lead the way out of the growing energy environmental impasse however the changes involved could either deepen or alleviate political conflicts a great deal will hinge upon the timing and path of the changes

the effects of third degree price discrimination in oligopoly retail firms and restaurants commonly offer senior citizen discounts i suspect this practice is not motivated by altruism rather the behavior can be better explained as profit maximizing price discrimination these firms are setting a low price in a market which probably has high elasticity of demand but why should the demand of senior citizens be more elastic than average one possibility is that elderly people have below average income and they would not eat out if restaurant prices were high perhaps a more plausible explanation is that retired people simply have more time on their hands to spend commuting across town to take advantage of discounts the purpose of these discounts may then be to lure senior citizens away from other restaurants rather than to get them out of the house the analysis of third degree price discrimination has a long history a c pigou 1920 joan robinson 1933 and two articles on the subject have recently appeared in this review richard schmalensee 1981 hal varian 1985 the industry structure in these analyses is monopoly but an explicit model of some form of competition is obviously needed to study discriminatory discounts meant to attract customers from rival firms and even discounts meant to get people out of the house may have an oligopoly analysis which is qualitatively different from their monopoly anlysis in this paper i present a simple duopoly model of a differentiated products industry i show that a firm s price elasticity of demand in a market can be expressed as the sum of two parts the industry demand elasticity and the cross price elasticity the first measures the tendency of consumers in a market to stay home when the price goes up the second the tendency to switch suppliers in the monopoly case in which the crossprice elasticity is zero and the collusive case in which the cross price elasticity is irrelevant discrimination between markets is due to differences in industry demand elasticity in the noncooperative oligopoly case equilibrium price differentials can be accounted for both by differences in cross price elasticity as well as differences in industry demand elasticity total industry output when the firms can discriminate between two markets is compared to what it would be if discrimination were impossible which regime has larger output depends on the sum of the adjustedconcavity condition and the elasticity ratio condition the first predominates when the rival products are poor substitutes and the firms have approximate monopoly power while the second predominates at the other extreme where the products are close substitutes and the firms have almost no market power the adjusted concavity condition compares the relative curvature of demands in the two markets and was originally discovered by robinson 1933 in her analysis of monopoly price discrimination the elasticity ratio condition compares the relative difference in industry demand elasticity between the two markets with the relative difference in cross price elasticity according to the elasticity ratio condition a discriminatory discount due to high industry elasticity of demand would be more likely to increase total output than one due to high cross price elasticity the effect of discrimination on profit is also discussed the distinction made here department of economics university of wisconsin madison madison wi 53706 this paper is a revision of part of my doctoral dissertation i am grateful to steve matthews ken judd and john panzar for guidance in this research i also thank seminar participants at wisconsin the justice department and the 1986 econometric society meetings in new orleans and the discussant martin perry the excellent comments of the referees improved the exposition of the paper

fiscal year ends and nonlinear incentive contracts the effect on business seasonality salesperson and executive compensation contracts typically specify a nonlinear relationship between firm revenues and pay these agents therefore have incentive to manipulate prices influence the timing of customer purchases and vary effort over their firms fiscal years this paper empirically establishes results consistent with agents focusing on performance over the fiscal year most notably in addition to varying with the calendar business cycle manufacturing firms sales are higher at the end of the fiscal year and lower at the beginning than they are in the middle further evidence is found in fiscal year price movements and patterns in the industry variation of fiscal year effects

the contested energy future of amman jordan between promises of alternative energies and a nuclear venture metropolitan authorities and local business elites are often seen as major players in the energy transition in the city such energy transitions are mostly conceived of as low carbon technologies which permit the retrofitting of urban infrastructure and the rebundling of metabolic circuits this article contests these views by highlighting the major role of non urban energy sector institutions and actors by examining the connections between technology space and energy politics and by using a relational understanding of the urban this article explores the case of amman s energy transition the growth of consumption coupled with new energy practices face a problematic supply because shifts in regional geopolitics prompted energy transition policies among which are included a green growth program and the building of a nuclear power plant at the edge of the city the article analyses the socio political assemblages that shape those policies and unravel the competing interests at stake it demonstrates the political and highly unruly nature of energy transitions

conceptualizing energy security abstract energy security 1 is one of the main targets of energy policy however the term has not been clearly defined which makes it hard to measure and difficult to balance against other policy objectives we review the multitude of definitions of energy security they can be characterized according to the sources of risk the scope of the impacts and the severity filters in the form of the speed size sustention spread singularity and sureness of impacts using a stylized case study for three european countries we illustrate how the selection of conceptual boundaries along these dimensions determines the outcome this can be avoided by more clearly separating between security of supply and other policy objectives this leads us to the definition of energy security as the continuity of energy supplies relative to demand

measures of technical efficiency abstract fare and lovell j econom theory 19 1978 150 162 suggest four properties that a measure of technical efficiency should satisfy the commonly employed debreu farrell measure fails three of them necessary and sufficient conditions for a measure to satisfy the four conditions are provided and recently proposed measures are analyzed in the light of this result also it is argued that the debreu farrell measure has several desirable properties when one takes account of 1 perhaps unknown market prices and the relationship between technical and economic efficiency and 2 its characterization as a measure of economic efficiency using the shadow prices implicit in the production technology

productivity technical efficiency and technological change in french agriculture during 2002 2015 a fare primont index decomposition using group frontiers and meta frontier the objective of the article is to assess productivity change in french agriculture during 2002 2015 namely total factor productivity tfp change and its components technological change and ef

why do retailers deal an inventory explanation price deals or price specials are a wellestablished practice in retail sales promotion and a topic of considerable interest to researchers see seligman and love 1932 u s federal trade commission 1932 cassaday 1962 hinkle 1965 kuhn and rohloff 1967 tuch and harvey 1972 leed and german 1973 kinberg and rao 1975 blattberg et al 1978 dobson tybout and sterhal 1978 blattberg eppen and liebermann 1981 in these deals items are offered for sale for a short period of time at prices below their going market rates supermarket chains as well as independent retailers heavily advertise their deals in local papers by signs and displays at the store and on television and radio a natural question is why do many retailers prefer this strategy to other forms of price competition such as lower average prices this question is broached by allvine teach and connelly 1976 this paper demonstrates that under certain conditions price deals on nonperishable goods can benefit both retailer and consumer by transferring part of inventory holding cost from the former to the latter in return for an unusually low price however it does not deny that price deals may also reflect the influence of other considerations