a direct test of hyperbolic discounting using market asset data a b s t r a c t this paper introduces a framework that generalizes exponential discounting in a net present value model by including a quasi hyperbolic discount parameter in the asset valuation equation using observed market asset data a statistically significant quasi hyperbolic parameter is obtained thus rejecting exponential discounting

competition and corporate governance in transition this paper examines the elements of institutional development critical to the enhancement of company performance in transition economies this includes initial conditions forms of privatization institutional frameworks and the competitiveness of markets comparing empirical evidence the paper concludes that there is a clear distinction in effectiveness of policies followed and their impact between central europe and cis countries this divergence is attributed to fundamentally different political attitudes toward reform the need of cis governments to gain political support for reform and as a consequence of the desire of central european countries to join european union

evaluating natural resource investments notwithstanding impressive advances in the theory of finance over the past 2 decades practical procedures for capital budgeting have evolved only slowly the standard technique which has remained unchanged in essentials since it was originally proposed see dean 1951 bierman and smidt 1960 derives from a simple adaptation of the fisher 1907 model of valuation under certainty under this technique expected cash flows from an investment project are discounted at a rate deemed appropriate to their risk and the resulting present value is compared with the cost of the project this standard textbook technique reflects modern theoretical developments only insofar as estimates of the discount rate may be obtained from crude application of single period asset pricing theory but see brennan 1973 bogue and roll 1974 turnbull 1977 constantinides 1978 the inadequacy of this approach to capital budgeting is widely acknowledged although not widely discussed its obvious deficiency is its the evaluation of mining and other natural resource projects is made particularly difficult by the high degree of uncertainty attaching to output prices it is shown that the techniques of continuous time arbitrage and stochastic control theory may be used not only to value such projects but also to determine the optimal policies for developing managing and abandoning them the approach may be adapted to a wide variety of contexts outside the natural resource sector where uncertainty about future project revenues is a paramount concern

subjective discounting in an exchange economy this paper describes the equilibrium of a discrete time exchange economy in which consumers with arbitrary subjective discount factors and homothetic period utility functions follow linear markov consumption and portfolio strategies explicit expressions are given for state prices and consumption wealth ratios we provide an analytically convenient continuous time approximation and show how subjective rates of time preference affect risk free rates but not instantaneous risk return trade offs hyperbolic discount factors can be a source of return volatility but they cannot be used to address asset pricing puzzles related to high frequency sharpe ratios

investment under uncertainty and time inconsistent preferences abstract while standard real options models assume that agents possess a constant rate of time preference there is substantial evidence that agents are impatient about choices in the short term but are patient when choosing between long term alternatives we extend the real options framework to model the investment timing decisions of entrepreneurs with time inconsistent preferences the impact on investment timing depends on such factors as whether entrepreneurs are sophisticated or naive in their expectations regarding their future time inconsistent behavior and whether the payoff from investment occurs all at once or over time the model is extended to the case of a competitive equilibrium

privatization policy in an international oligopoly this paper studies privatization policy in an international oligopoly the argument that equal treatment of foreign investors will be detrimental to domestic welfare by shifting profits from domestic to foreign firms is shown to be less relevant in privatization auctions than in greenfield fdi models since these profi ts hifts are partly paid for by the foreign firms in the bidding competition effects of local equity requirements trade and investment policies are also studied it is for instance shown that small local equity requirements are likely to be beneficial but large ones are counterproductive by preventing welfare enhancing foreign acquisitions

anomalies in intertemporal choice evidence and an interpretation research on decision making under uncertainly has been strongly influenced by the documentation of numerous expected utility eu anomalies behaviors that violate the expected utility axioms the relative lack of progress on the closely related topic of intertemporal choice is partly due to the absence of an analogous set of discounted utility du anomalies we enumerate a set of du anomalies analogous to the eu anomalies and propose a model that accounts for the anomalies as well as other intertemporal choice phenomena incompatible with du we discuss implications for savings behavior estimation of discount rates and choice framing effects

empowered examining self disconnection in a postal survey of electricity prepayment meter consumers in new zealand abstract prepayment metering is an electricity payment method often used by low income consumers fuel poverty is an important public health problem in new zealand and is likely to be a particular problem for those using prepayment metering this paper details a nationwide postal survey of consumers undertaken with the support of three major electricity retailers which investigated the advantages and disadvantages of using prepayment metering from a consumer perspective the study surveyed a total pool of 359 randomly selected consumers across the three companies a response rate of 48 the study found that while almost all respondents felt the benefits of using prepayment outweighed the risks of running out of credit or self disconnection 53 of respondents experienced self disconnection in the past year of concern over a third of respondents experiencing self disconnection were without electricity for more than 12 h the frequency of self disconnection was also high with 17 of those disconnecting reporting six or more events in the past year government intervention could reduce the risks and disadvantages involved with using prepayment metering which could then support initiatives aimed at reducing fuel poverty

time inconsistent preferences investment and asset pricing in this paper we present a production based asset pricing model in which agents have time inconsistent preferences we find that the time inconsistent preferences lead to under investment over consumption and higher interest rate these variables are distorted more in the economy with naive agent than the economy with sophisticated agent in particular the sophisticated agent invests more and consumes less than the naive agent but invests less and consumes more than the time consistent agent the interest rate in the sophisticated agent economy is lower than that in the naive agent economy but higher than that in the time consistent agent economy

weighted discounting on group diversity time inconsistency and consequences for investment abstract this paper presents the class of weighted discount functions which contains the discount functions commonly used in economics and finance weighted discount functions may describe the discounting behavior of groups uncertainty about what discount rate to use present biased time preferences and all of these simultaneously as an application we study investment behavior under weighted discounting and come up with the following general result greater group diversity greater parameter uncertainty and more present biased time preferences lead to delayed investment or equivalently more risk taking

singular dividend optimization for a linear diffusion model with time inconsistent preferences abstract with the advancement of behavioral economics the use of exponential discounting for decision making in neoclassical economics has been questioned since it cannot provide a realistic way to explain certain decision making behavior the purpose of this paper is to investigate strategic decision making on dividend distribution policies of insurance companies when the management adopts a more realistic way for discounting namely stochastic quasi hyperbolic discounting the use of this more realistic way for discounting is motivated by some recent developments in behavioral economics a game theoretic approach is adopted to establish economic equilibrium results namely subgame perfect markov equilibrium strategies it is shown that 1 under certain mild technical conditions the barrier strategy with an optimal barrier which is widely used in the traditional approach to optimal dividend problems is a perfect markov equilibrium strategy 2 the optimal barrier is lower than the barrier of an optimal strategy obtained from the respective time consistent optimal dividend problem and 3 the solution based on the barrier strategy does not exist in some situations

the financial and operating performance of newly privatized firms an international empirical analysis this study compares the pre and postprivatization financial and operating performance of 61 companies from 18 countries and 32 industries that experience full or partial privatization through public share offerings during the period 1961 to 1990 our results document strong performance improvements achieved surprisingly without sacrificing employment security specifically after being privatized firms increase real sales become more profitable increase their capital investment spending improve their operating efficiency and increase their work forces furthermore these companies significantly lower their debt levels and increase dividend payout finally we document significant changes in the size and composition of corporate boards of directors after privatization the last fifteen years have witnessed a significant global shift away from state socialism towards entrepreneurial capitalism one of the most important and visible aspects of this trend has been the enthusiasm with which governments of all political persuasions have sold their state owned enterprises soes to private investors in hopes that the generally unsatisfactory economic performance of these firms can be improved by the discipline of private ownership this denationalization process given its current title of privatization by the conservative government of margaret thatcher in

the boundaries of multinational enterprises and the theory of international trade this paper begins with a review of empirical evidence on multinational firms conceptual underpinnings of a theory are developed relying in particular on the notion of knowledge capital as a mobile joint input into geographically separated production facilities this idea is embedded in a simple two country general equilibrium model that supports multinational production in equilibrium under conditions consistent with the empirical evidence the final section examines internalization and shows why certain properties of knowledge capital also imply a preference for transferring technologies internally within the firm rather than through arm s length markets

estate taxation with intended and accidental bequests abstract in this paper we examine the properties of the optimal estate tax in the presence of a complete set of tax instruments available to the social planner we allow for both types of bequest motives namely altruistic and accidental we examine the case for estate taxation which seems to be the strongest but not impeccable with accidental bequests in general the estate tax is highly sensitive to the relative importance of the two bequest motives

r d investment under time inconsistent preferences abstract we extend the real options model of r d by incorporating time inconsistent preferences we show that time inconsistent preferences can lead to both under investment and over investment in r d which depends on the magnitude of technological uncertainty when the technological uncertainty is low the sophisticated entrepreneurs exercise earlier than the time consistent entrepreneur however the sophisticated entrepreneurs invest later when the technological uncertainty is high

quantifying the prevalence of fuel poverty across the european union abstract the literature and policy base for fuel poverty in the uk and ireland is well established and there is a growing body of single country studies beyond these two eu member states for example brunner et al 2012 dubois 2012 robine et al 2008 however on a european level the last analysis of fuel poverty was conducted in 2004 prior to the enlargement of the eu using survey data this paper presents an updated overview of the prevalence of european fuel poverty in the context of the accession of numerous former social states and rising fuel prices analysis reveals the phenomenon of fuel poverty is occurring across the eu with particularly high levels of fuel poverty found in eastern and southern european states it is argued that there are both eu and national policy frameworks in place that address climate change and these could be used as a starting point for countries to address fuel poverty through improved domestic energy efficiency measures this paper reflects research undertaken in 2011 supported by eaga charitable trust within the umbrella of work examining issues of poverty and social exclusion across the eu which has enabled access to the eu silc dataset

a bayesian approach to real options the case of distinguishing between temporary and permanent shocks traditional real options models demonstrate the importance of the option to wait due to uncertainty over future shocks to project cash flows however there is often another important source of uncertainty uncertainty over the permanence of past shocks adding bayesian uncertainty over the permanence of past shocks augments the traditional option to wait with an additional option to learn the implied investment behavior differs significantly from that in standard models for example investment may occur at a time of stable or decreasing cash flows respond sluggishly to cash flow shocks and depend on the timing of project cash flows during the past two decades the real options approach to valuation of irreversible investment opportunities has become part of the mainstream literature in financial economics the central idea is that the opportunity to invest is equivalent to an american call option on the underlying investment project as a consequence the problem of optimal investment timing is analogous to the optimal exercise decision for an american option applications of the real options approach are now numerous 1 one feature that is common to virtually all real options models is that the underlying uncertainty pertains only to future shocks since future cash flows are uncertain there is an important opportunity cost of investing today the value of the asset might go up so that tomorrow will be an even better time to invest this opportunity cost is often referred to in the literature as the option

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

procrastination and obedience in this lecture i shall focus on situations involving repeated decisions with time inconsistent behavior although each choice may be close to maximizing and therefore result in only small losses the cumulative effect of a series of repeated errors may be quite large thus in my examples decision makers are quite close to the intelligent well informed individuals usually assumed in economic analysis but cumulatively they make seriously wrong decisions that do not occur in standard textbook economics this lecture discusses and illustrates several pathological modes of individual and group behavior procrastination in decision making undue obedience to authority membership of seemingly normal individuals in deviant cult groups and escalation of commitment to courses of action that are clearly unwise in each case individuals choose a series of current actions without fully appreciating how those actions will affect future perceptions and behavior the standard assumption of rational forwardlooking utility maximizing is violated the nonindependence of errors in decision making in the series of decisions can be explained with the concept from cognitive psychology of undue salience or vividness for example present benefits and costs may have undue salience relative to future costs

on the power of indicators how the choice of fuel poverty indicator affects the identification of the target population in light of the creation of the eu energy poverty observatory epov in january 2018 and the increase in debates on how fuel poverty is measured we propose a critical analysis of fuel poverty indi

optimal capital structure and investment decisions under time inconsistent preferences based on a continuous time model of quasi hyperbolic discounting this paper provides an analytically tractable framework of entrepreneurial firms capital structure and investment decisions under time inconsistent preferences inefficiency in both investment and default is caused due to time inconsistency if we view the time consistent benchmark as efficient compared to the standard trade off theory in corporate finance we clarify that debt financing under time inconsistent preferences brings a new trade off between the alleviation effect on investment inefficiency and the aggravation effect on default inefficiency the impact of time inconsistent preferences depends on the entrepreneurs belief regarding their future time inconsistent behavior i e sophisticated or naive concretely we find that naive entrepreneurs always choose higher leverages while sophisticated ones are more likely to choose lower leverages compared to the time consistent benchmark therefore time inconsistency can explain the observed leverage puzzle i e why firms choose different leverages even with similar fundamentals moreover we demonstrate that time inconsistent preferences delay investment and hasten default due to the interaction among the three effects option value effect payoff value effect and leverage effect in particular naive entrepreneurs invest later and default earlier than sophisticated ones leading to a shorter operating period these results support the empirical findings in entrepreneurial finance

real option duopolies with quasi hyperbolic discounting abstract this paper utilizes a real options and game theoretic approach to consider the strategic real investment in a duopoly market under uncertainty with time inconsistent preferences resulting from quasi hyperbolic discounting we show that the time consistent agent becomes the leader when s he interacts with a time inconsistent rival if the rival s time inconsistency is very significant the leader will optimally behave as if competition did not exist if the two rivals have about the same time preferences the leader will accelerate investment and her his investment threshold will accord with the rival s preemptive one which is higher than that determined in the classical time consistent model the inefficiency of investment from preemptive competition is mitigated and even eliminated if the heterogeneity among agents is sufficiently high our model provides a behavioral explanation for the empirical fact that preemption occurs in some markets but is not present in others

consumption and portfolio rules for time inconsistent investors abstract this paper extends the classical consumption and portfolio rules model in continuous time merton r c 1969 lifetime portfolio selection under uncertainty the continuous time case review of economics and statistics 51 247 257 merton r c 1971 optimum consumption and portfolio rules in a continuous time model journal of economic theory 3 373 413 to the framework of decision makers with time inconsistent preferences the model is solved for different utility functions for both naive and sophisticated agents and the results are compared in order to solve the problem for sophisticated agents we derive a modified hjb hamilton jacobi bellman equation it is illustrated how for crra functions within the family of hara functions logarithmic and power utilities the optimal portfolio rule does not depend on the discount rate but this is not the case for a general utility function such as the exponential cara utility function

self coordination in time inconsistent stochastic decision problems a planner doer game framework abstract time inconsistency has been a thorny issue in many economic and financial decision making problems especially when risk measures are involved in performance criteria we develop in this paper a two tier planner doer game framework with self coordination by aligning the global interest of the planner and the local interests of the doers by applying suitable penalty functions a degree of internal harmony measured quantitatively by the expected cost of self coordination can be achieved by the self coordination policy we establish an axiom system for modified preferences under which the self coordination policy can be obtained by solving a corresponding optimization problem we then apply our game framework successfully in dynamic mean variance portfolio selection

option exercise games an application to the equilibrium investment strategies of firms under the standard real options approach to investment under uncertainty agents formulate optimal exercise strategies in isolation and ignore competitive interactions however in many real world asset markets exercise strategies cannot be determined separately but must be formed as part of a strategic equilibrium this article provides a tractable approach for deriving equilibrium investment strategies in a continuous time cournot nash framework the impact of competition on exercise strategies is dramatic for example while standard real options models emphasize that a valuable option to wait leads firms to invest only at large positive net present values the impact of competition drastically erodes the value of the option to wait and leads to investment at very near the zero net present value threshold copyright 2002 oxford university press

investment in competitive equilibrium the optimality of myopic behavior there is an extensive literature on the optimal irreversible investment strategy of a solitary firm facing an exogenous price process this paper shows that the investment strategies that this literature derives may be optimal in competitive equilibrium even though the price process is now endogenous this provides a simple means for computing equilibrium investment strategies

a stochastic model for energy poverty analysis abstract so far the lack of a common effective way of measuring energy poverty has been detected as a major weakness in handling the energy poverty problem one of the main causes has been the complexity of modeling the required energy consumption of households as demanded by the official 10 indicator and its replacement in calculations by the actual energy consumption which as is well known underestimates the real needs of households this weakness is addressed in this paper through the development of the stochastic model of energy poverty smep the development of the model includes firstly the modeling of energy consumption at household level and subsequently the transition from household level to country level through stochastic analysis monte carlo simulation through sensitivity analysis the impact of various parameters on energy poverty is quantified for the first time by determining their weighting factors applied to the case of greece it is found that energy poverty reaches 70 4 with income being the decisive factor affecting energy poverty at 63 while other variables htot etc follow at significantly lower percentages the findings can be used in order to assess in advance the effectiveness of energy poverty measures making the model a valuable policy tool

optimal dividend strategies with time inconsistent preferences abstract this paper studies the optimal dividend strategies of an insurance company when the manager has time inconsistent preferences we consider the problem for a naive manager and a sophisticated manager and analytically derive the optimal dividend strategies when claim sizes follow an exponential distribution our results show that the manager with time inconsistent preferences tends to pay out dividends earlier than her time consistent counterpart and that the sophisticated manager is more inclined to pay out dividends than the naive manager furthermore we extend these results to the case with claim sizes following a mixed exponential distribution and provide a numerical analysis to reveal the sensitivity of the optimal dividend strategies to changes in the premium claims and surplus volatility

equilibrium and options on real assets in aggregate options on real and financial assets can have very different properties typically the good or service produced by a real asset has a finite elasticity of demand and developers have finite capacities also the supply of options can be limited and developers can be less than perfectly competitive in a subgame perfect nash equilibrium with these properties the optimal exercise policy and resulting values of developed and undeveloped assets are calculated explicitly the novel comparative statics are discussed in detail article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

when does privatization work the impact of private ownership on corporate performance in the transition economies this paper compares the performance of privatized and state firms in the transition economies of central europe while controlling for various forms of selection bias it argues that privatization has different effects depending on the types of owners to whom it gives control in particular privatization to outsider but not insider owners has significant performance effects where privatization is effective the effect on revenue performance is very pronounced but there is no comparable effect on cost reduction overlooking the strong revenue effect of privatization to outsider owners leads to a substantial overstatement of potential employment losses from postprivatization restructuring

real options and preemption under incomplete information abstract this paper introduces incomplete information and preemption into an equilibrium model of firms facing real investment decisions the optimal investment strategy may lie anywhere between the zero npv trigger level and the optimal strategy of a monopolist depending on the distribution of competitors costs and the implied fear of preemption our model implies that the equity returns of firms which hold real options and are subject to preemption will contain jumps and positive skewness

measuring and monitoring fuel poverty in the uk national and regional perspectives abstract throughout the industrialised world fuel poverty is the most commonly accepted term with which to describe a household s inability to afford basic standards of heat power and light whilst the term gained widespread acceptance with the publication of the uk s fuel poverty strategy in 2001 little is known about the origins of the term itself this paper traces the earliest formulations of the concept focusing particularly on the 10 needs to spend threshold which was adopted in 1991 and remains in place some 20 years later this paper argues that understanding more about the origins of this threshold yields a more critical understanding of why fuel poverty targets in the uk have not been reached and enables a more informed approach to setting realistic targets for the future it also provides an opportunity to explore regional disparities in uk fuel poverty prevalence highlighting the extent to which rigid adherence to a 10 threshold has created an unstable regional mosaic of over estimation and under estimation

the mediating role of social workers in the implementation of regional policies targeting energy poverty abstract this paper aims to provide a socio political reflection of the role played by social workers in regional policies and of the real needs of households affected by energy poverty the paper also examines the impact of technical specialised training on the ability of social workers to prevent and mitigate conditions of household energy poverty in europe the adoption of a research action participation methodological framework and a training research approach has permitted the opinions of social workers to be collected through surveys and their central role in implementing regional policies to be highlighted the conclusions obtained have made possible the construction of a self diagnosis and data collection tool which increases the ability of social workers to mediate and implement urgent mitigation measures for energy poverty finally regional policies which aim to mitigate household energy poverty are examined from the professional perspective of social workers

economic perspectives on privatization despite being one of the most fundamental issues in political economy the question of the appropriate boundary between public and private enterprise received relatively little attention in mainstream economic analysis until quite recently in the 1980s however programs of ownership reform were started in many developed and developing countries dramatic though some of these policies have been they are likely to be overshadowed in the 1990s by even greater privatization in the reforming socialist economies the opening sections of this paper are organized around three broad and interrelated questions how does ownership matter for the efficiency of enterprise performance what is the role for privatization in financing public debts and deficits what are the distributional and political implications of privatization finally we examine privatization in practice in three countries britain chile and poland

analysis of energy poverty intensity from the perspective of the regional administration empirical evidence from households in southern europe abstract the current economic situation has increased the number of households in europe experiencing restrictions and or limitations of affordability of energy services demonstrating the urgent need to intervene in those extreme cases in which households suffer the daily consequences of what is internationally defined as energy poverty in such a context this paper presents the results obtained in a case study characterising a sample of 615 households with demonstrated energy poverty in the region of aragon spain in parallel the intensity of energy poverty in the studied cases is examined by measuring the percentage of energy expenditures with respect to income in the households that suffer it and a descriptive analysis of the main determinants of energy poverty in the homes studied is presented as well as the policy implication at regional level

choice and procrastination author s o donoghue ted rabin matthew abstract recent models of procrastination due to self control problems assume that a procrastinator considers just one option and is unaware of her self control problems we develop a model where a person chooses from a menu of options and is partially aware of her self control problems this menu model replicates earlier results and generates new ones a person might forego completing an attractive option because she plans to complete a more attractive but never to be completed option hence providing a non procrastinator additional options can induce procrastination and a person may procrastinate worse pursuing important goals than unimportant ones

definitions of fuel poverty implications for policy abstract this paper outlines why the definition of fuel poverty is important in policy formulation and describes how the government s current definitions evolved from the original concept it discusses the determination of income and fuel costs and the possibilities for a relative and common european measure it examines problems inherent in assessing fuel costs as a percentage of income and puts forward the arguments for a budget standard approach the paper illustrates how the size of the problem depends on the definition and chosen threshold and suggests advantages for a rating scale it illustrates how the income composition and thresholds also govern the distribution of the target populations and the relative importance of the main causal factors and examines the consequent policy implications it explores the definition of vulnerable households and the importance of severity and questions whether the uk fuel poverty strategy is targeted at households least able to afford their fuel costs as the name implies or primarily those at risk from excess winter and summer mortality and morbidity finally after examining the role of supplementary indicators it looks at the opportunities for changing the definition and comments on the government review of the definition and targets

foreign direct investment education and wages in indonesian manufacturing this paper examines whether the higher wages paid by foreign owned manufacturing plants than by domestically owned plants typical of most countries represents a higher price for labor that is does it reflect a higher price for workers of a given quality as represented by the level of education we then ask whether foreign owned plants pay a higher price for labor given the characteristics of the plants foreign owned firms are found to pay a higher price for labor of a given educational level than domestically owned ones only a part of the difference is associated with plant characteristics rather than ownership

efficiency and ownership structure the case of poland we examine the effects of foreign entry on productive efficiency during the polish investment liberalisation the performance of foreign acquisitions is compared to foreign firms entering the marke

ramsey meets laibson in the neoclassical growth model the neoclassical growth model is modified to include a variable rate of time preference with no commitment ability and log utility the equilibrium features a constant effective rate of time preference and is observationally equivalent to the standard model the extended framework yields testable linkages between the extent of commitment ability and the rates of saving and growth the model also has welfare implications including the optimal design of institutions that facilitate household commitments steady state results are obtained for general concave utility functions and some properties of the transitional dynamics are characterized for isoelastic utility

incentives for procrastinators we examine how principals should design incentives to induce time inconsistent procrastinating agents to complete tasks efficiently delay is costly to the principal but the agent faces stochastic costs of completing the task and efficiency requires waiting when costs are high if the principal knows the task cost distribution she can always achieve first best efficiency if the agent has private information the principal can induce first best efficiency for time consistent agents but often cannot for procrastinators we show that second best optimal incentives for procrastinators typically involve an increasing punishment for delay as time passes

preemption games under levy uncertainty abstract we study a stochastic version of fudenberg tirole s preemption game two firms contemplate entering a new market with stochastic demand firms differ in sunk costs of entry if the demand process has no upward jumps the low cost firm enters first and the high cost firm follows if leader s optimization problem has an interior solution the leader enters at the optimal threshold of a monopolist otherwise the leader enters earlier than the monopolist if the demand admits positive jumps then the optimal entry threshold of the leader can be lower than the monopolist s threshold even if the solution is interior simultaneous entry can happen either as an equilibrium or a coordination failure the high cost firm can become the leader we characterize subgame perfect equilibrium strategies in terms of stopping times and value functions analytical expressions for the value functions and thresholds that define stopping times are derived

occupant behaviour as a fourth driver of fuel poverty aka warmth energy deprivation a conceptual framework for occupant behaviour as a driver of fuel poverty is presented comprising housing and use of the home heating and energy arrangements and thermal comfort household structure and dynamics health and well being household finances and social activity and relations this framework informs longitudinal analysis of movements into and out of fuel poverty among households in deprived communities in glasgow household surveys across ten years yielded a longitudinal sample of 3297 cases where initial and subsequent fuel poverty status was recorded using an experiential measure a third of households changed their fuel poverty status over time 18 moving out of fuel poverty and 16 moving in factors strongly associated with movements into fuel poverty included being a single parent or 2 27 experiencing a mental health problem or 2 74 and remaining out of work or 1 89 movement out of fuel poverty was less likely among those with infrequent family contact or 0 55 and who moved home or 0 66 home improvements had no effect upon the experience of fuel poverty it is argued that the policy problem should be considered one of warmth and energy deprivation accompanied by a broader interpretation of vulnerability to as well as from fuel poverty

assessing the fuel poverty vulnerability of urban neighbourhoods using a spatial multi criteria decision analysis for the german city of oberhausen abstract tackling fuel poverty has become an increasingly important issue on many european countries political agendas consequently national governments local authorities and ngos have established policies and programmes to reduce the fuel poverty vulnerability of households however evaluations of such policies and programmes show that they barely reach those who are most in need the reasons for this failure are diverse and include fuel poverty measurement metrics local scale data availability and policy design this raises the question of how fuel poor homes can be more effectively identified and targeted to ensure that limited local and national budgets are used to benefit those who most need help area based approaches which pinpoint spatial units highly affected by fuel poverty due to their specific characteristics offer an opportunity for creating more tailored policies and programmes in this study the author developed a gis mcda multi criteria decision analysis using an ahp analytical hierarchy process and applied the approach to the german city of oberhausen the overall issue of fuel poverty was broken down into three vulnerability dimensions heating burden socio economic and building vulnerability the relative importance of fuel poverty criteria and the dimensions were evaluated by experts and an overall fuel poverty index was created to assess the relative fuel poverty vulnerability of 168 urban neighbourhoods the analysis offers insights into the spatial pattern of fuel poverty within a city and thus provides an opportunity to channel efforts towards households in those neighbourhoods most in need it also demonstrates that a trade off between ecological and social targets should be considered in the development of future policies for tackling fuel poverty

goal setting and self control abstract this paper addresses the role of non binding goals to attenuate time inconsistency present biased agents have linear reference dependent preferences and endogenously set a goal that is the reference point they face an infinite horizon optimal stopping problem in continuous time when there is sufficient commitment to expectation based goals goal setting attenuates the present biased agent s tendency to stop too early and may even lead an agent to wait longer than the first best in particular reference dependence is strictly worse for a time consistent agent notably none of the effects of goal setting require loss aversion

privatization and foreign competition abstract this paper determines the equilibrium market structure in an international oligopoly where a state enterprise is sold at an auction the paper suggests that high greenfield costs and high trade costs do not necessarily induce foreign acquisitions in privatizations despite the fact that foreign firms would gain considerably from acquiring in such situations the reason is that domestic firms can then prevent foreign firms from becoming strong local competitors and thus their willingness to pay for the state assets is high