leapfrog to the future energy scenarios and strategies for suriname to 2050 abstract this paper formulates energy strategies for suriname a conceptual model identifying relationships in the energy sector is conceived one of the striking characteristics is that various relationships inhibit significant uncertainty our contemporary age is characterized by more complex becoming relations decreasing predictability and increasing chaos simple extrapolation of past events is therefore futile since deviations from anticipated outcomes have significant impacts the scenario planning methodology has been used to deal with this uncertainty the most uncertain high impact driving forces that shape the future of the energy sector in suriname have been identified and are used to create energy scenarios to 2050 next robust strategies have been formulated which primarily focus on institutionalization renewable resources cost reflecting tariffs decentralization of energy supply and energy efficiency and savings leading indicators have been identified that identify towards which scenario the present develops and hence which set of strategies need to be applied

electric power sector reform liberalization models and electric power prices in developing countries an empirical analysis using international panel data this study aims to clarify whether the effects of electric power sector reforms should be different either across regions or between developing and developed countries an empirical model was analyzed to observe the impact of electric power prices on the selection of a liberalization model in the power sector this was achieved by the use of an ordered response fixed effect and a random effect model an instrument variable technique was also used to estimate the impact of the liberalization model on the electric power price this technique addressed the problems of simultaneity bias between the electric power price and the liberalization models selected these econometric models were designed using panel data from 78 countries in four regions developed countries asian developing countries the former soviet union and eastern europe and latin america for the period from 1985 to 2003 the research findings suggest that higher electricity prices are one of the driving forces for governments to adopt liberalization models however the development of liberalization models in the power sector does not necessarily reduce electricity prices in fact contrary to expectations there was a tendency for the price to rise in every market modeled

foreign ownership and the theory of trade and welfare some standard topics in the theory of international trade are reconsidered in this paper by distinguishing between national and aggregate income when fixed supplies of foreign inputs are present within the home country under conditions that would ensure a national welfare gain if foreign ownership were absent international transfer economic growth or tariff policy might cause a national welfare loss in the presence of foreign ownership the techniques developed could be applied to other domestic distinctions such as those based on race sex age or ethnicity and to the theory of customs unions in a three country world

investment security of supply and sustainability in the aftermath of three decades of power sector reform the last three decades have witnessed many electricity industry reform processes in more than half of the countries in the world the reforms have aimed inter alia at encouraging private investments in electricity infrastructure enhancing security of electricity supply and making power industry operate in line with the requirements of the sustainable development using an original panel dataset from 55 developed and developing countries covering the period from 1975 to 2010 this study aims at finding out to what extent these objectives have been materialized so far econometric models are used to identify the effects of electricity market liberalization on these variables the research findings suggest that the progress toward the electricity market reform is associated with a decline in private investments in the electricity industries of developing countries higher levels of self sufficiency in electricity supply and lower co2 emissions from electricity generation

the effect of food stamps on labor supply a bivariate selection model abstract although there is a large literature on the effects of u s transfer programs on labor supply this is the first such study of the food stamp program we model the nonlinearity and nonconvexity of the budget constraint and use maximum likelihood methods to estimate hours of work functions for female heads of household the largest recipient group in the program we also model the joint response to afdc and food stamps and we account for the existence of a significant number of eligible households who do not participate in the programs a three equation bivariate selection model is estimated on a sample of eligible households with maximum likelihood

micro data heterogeneity and the evaluation of public policy nobel lecture this paper summarizes the contributions of microeconometrics to economic knowledge four main themes are developed 1 microeconometricians developed new tools to respond to econometric problems raised by the analysis of the new sources of micro data produced after the second world war 2 microeconometrics improved on aggregate time series methods by building models that linked economic models for individuals to data on individual behavior 3 an important empirical regularity detected by the field is the diversity and heterogeneity of behavior this heterogeneity has profound consequences for economic theory and for econometric practice 4 microeconometrics has contributed substantially to the scientific evaluation of public policy

household labor supply and welfare participation in sweden using a sample of swedish households we estimate a household labor supply model assuming that preferences for consumption and leisure can be described by a direct translog utility function the labor supply and welfare participation decisions are treated as a discrete choice problem and we assume that these choices follow a simple conditional logit rule in addition we allow unobserved individual specific effects to be correlated across alternatives we assume that these unobserved effects are drawn from a discrete distribution and the correlation across alternatives is modeled using factor loading techniques classification error in hours is allowed for by using a multiplicative measurement error specification the estimates from the structural model yield inelastic labor supply among husbands and positive wage elasticity for wives further the cross elasticities are close to zero

collective labour supply taxes and intrahousehold allocation an empirical approach most empirical studies of the impact of labor income taxation on the labor supply behavior of households use a unitary modeling approach in this article we empirically analyze income taxation and

assessing the determinants of household electricity prices in the eu a system gmm panel data approach abstract a meaningful portion of the consumer basket of european households and companies is embodied by electricity as well as gas or refined petroleum products as energy products are essential inputs of nearly all final goods and services whichever change of energy prices has a direct impact of the general price level in this context the main purpose of this study is to assess the main drivers of household electricity prices in the european union eu throughout a period of deep sector transformation relying on eurostat data not only we analyze the long term progress of household electricity prices across the eu but also we provide empirical evidence on their determinants while confronting the results with the eu energy policy path for this purpose a firsthand approach is herein developed based on a dynamic model with panel data through gmm proposal method by blundell and bond 1998 4 with the windermeijer 2005 41 correction the data analysis provides grounds for a relation between the variable of household electricity prices with variables related to sector liberalization renewable energy sources which support the eu policy to boost liberalization this study offers evidence that the sector liberalization is accompanied by a decreasing trend in prices which is consistent with the european commission s objectives to liberalize

welfare transfers in two parent families labor supply and welfare participation under afdc up this paper examines the effect of cash transfers and food stamp benefits on family labor supply and welfare participation among two parent families the aid to families with dependent children unemployed parent program has provided cash benefits to two parent households since 1961 despite recent expansions little is known about the program s effect on labor supply and welfare participation i develop a model of family labor supply in which hours of work for the husband and wife are chosen to maximize family utility subject to a family budget constraint accounting for afdc up benefits and other tax and transfer programs the husband s and wife s labor supply decisions are restricted to no work part time work and full time work maximum likelihood techniques are used to estimate parameters of the underlying hours of work and welfare participation equations the estimates are used to determine the magnitude of the work disincentive effects of the afdc up program and to simulate the effects of changes in afdc up benefit and eligibility rules on family labor supply and welfare participation the results suggest that labor supply and welfare participation among two parent families are highly responsive to changes in the benefit structure under the afdc up program

welfare recipient work choice and in kind benefits in washington state we analyze the work choice of welfare recipients potential welfare recipients compare their on and off welfare utility from after tax income and in kind benefits via employment or welfare and choose whether to work our null hypothesis which we reject is that benefits affect only the decision to work or not not the hours worked which will depend on wages using temporary assistance for needy families tanf administrative data from washington state we find that employer provided health insurance and child care subsidies significantly raise exit rates of tanf recipients and induce greater work effort other work inducing factors include wages and the earned income tax credit while increased levels of medicaid food stamps and the income guarantee increase welfare dependency

if at first you don t succeed applying for and staying on the supplemental nutrition assistance program we examine households applications to and participation in the supplemental nutrition assistance program using administrative records from south carolina we model application resolutions with multinomial logit mnl specifications where the possible outcomes are acceptance denial due to income ineligibility denial due to a failure to provide sufficient information and denial due to other reasons for cases with successful applications we model the durations of participation spells using competing risk hazard specifications that distinguish among exits that result from missed recertifications financial ineligibility incomplete or missing information and other reasons the application and hazard outcomes depend on past programme behaviour and observed characteristics the results indicate that a household s application and participation history affect its subsequent application success and programme tenure

welfare reform when recipients are forward looking in 1996 the aid to families with dependent children program was replaced with the temporary assistance for needy families tanf program this paper considers the effects of two specific components of tanf time limits and work requirements on employment marriage and welfare participation a discrete choice dynamic programming model is used and parameter estimates are obtained using data from the panel study of income dynamics policy simulations show that a five year lifetime time limit results in a 60 percent reduction in welfare use and that a substantial part of this reduction occurs because recipients are forward looking

the welfare cost of means testing pensioner participation in income support we estimate parametric and semi parametric binary choice models of benefit take up by british pensioners and use a revealed preference argument to infer the cash equivalent value of disutility arising from stigma or complexity of the claims process these implicit costs turn out to be relatively small averaging about 3 4 per week across income support recipients using the foster greer thorbecke measure of poverty among pensioners we find that allowing for implicit claim costs incurred by benefit recipients raises the measured degree of poverty by not more than 13 copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

the labour supply unemployment and participation of lone mothers in in work transfer programmes in work transfer schemes have recently been suggested as a device for encouraging labour force participation and reducing the severity of the disincentives associated with out of work income support schemes here we estimate a discrete choice labour supply model which allows for endogenous in work welfare programme participation we also allow for involuntary unemployment so as to distinguish between programme non participation and an inability to obtain work and thereby generate an eligibility to the programme

a life cycle consistent empirical model of family labour supply using cross section data this paper estimates a utility maximising model of the joint determination of male and female labour supplies using a sample of married couples from the u k family expenditure survey the emphasis is on the estimation of within period preferences that are consistent with intertemporal two stage budgeting under uncertainty however the approach we adopt provides an alternative method of estimating certain aspects of life cycle behaviour to the fixed effects constant approach of heckman and macurdy 1980 macurdy 1981 and browning deaton and irish 1985 moreover it relaxes some of the underlying restrictions that are implicit in these constant models under uncertainty

the role of policy in energy transitions lessons from the energy liberalisation era the aim of this paper is to discuss the period of energy privatisation and liberalisation which began in the 1980s within its wider historical context the key issues are what has been learned from this recent period and how significant is it in the light of an energy transition to low carbon energy system by 2050 energy liberalisation has led to positive and globally widespread but modest efficiency gains but a lack of clearly visible direct benefits to households in many countries it has significantly improved the governance of monopoly utilities via independent regulators the prospects for competition and innovation and the quality of policy instruments for environmental emissions control through the emergence of trading mechanisms we conclude that it is not liberalisation per se that will determine the movement towards a low carbon energy transition but the willingness of societies to bear the cost which will be significant no matter what the extent of liberalisation

a structural model of multiple welfare program participation and labor supply work on estimating the labor supply effects of high marginal tax rates in welfare programs has been hindered by the difficulty of estimating the effects of participation in multiple welfare programs simultaneously the authors solve this problem by applying methods of simulation estimation to a model of labor supply and multiple program participation the results show asymmetric wage and tax rate effects with fairly large wage elasticities of labor supply but very inelastic responses to moderate changes in cumulative marginal tax rates implying that high welfare tax rates do not necessarily induce major reductions in work effort copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

an economic model of welfare stigma perhaps the most basic assumption of the economic theory of consumer demand is that more is better than less virtually all of the major propositions of consumer theory can in a certain sense be derived from the assumption that goods are good interestingly however this tenet seems to be violated by the behavior of many individuals in the low income population for many turn out to be eligible for a positive welfare benefit but do not in fact join the welfare rolls for example it has been estimated that in 1970 only about 69 percent of the families eligible for afdc aid to families with dependent children participated in the program see richard michel 1980 the corresponding percentage for afdc u the program for which families with an unemployed male are eligible was only 43 percent and the participation rate in the food stamp program was only 38 percent see maurice mcdonald 1977 this phenomenon has puzzled many investigators because such individuals do not locate on the boundaries of their budget sets consequently most investigators ignore the problem when studying the effects of welfare programs on behavior in this paper this seemingly irrational rejection of an increase in income is modeled as resulting from welfare stigma that is from disutility arising from participation in a welfare program per se 1 the existence of stigma has been amply documented in the sociological literature patrick horan and patricia austin 1974 lee rainwater 1979 where interviews of recipients have often uncovered feelings of lack of self respect and negative self characterizations from participation in welfare nevertheless this phenomenon has not been modeled and many questions consequently remain when is the disutility of participation strong enough to prevent participation shouldn t we expect individuals to weigh the disutility of participation against the potential benefit in their decisions what is the elasticity of participation with respect to the potential benefit also in a slightly different vein how are the work disincentives of welfare affected by stigma these questions have been given scant attention by economists yet they are crucial for our ability to predict the impact of various welfare programs on the lowincome population here these questions are addressed by modeling nonparticipation as a utility maximizing decision the model is developed and estimated for the afdc program 2 the model posits an individual utility function containing not just disposable income but

the value of medicaid interpreting results from the oregon health insurance experiment we develop frameworks for welfare analysis of medicaid and apply them to the oregon health insurance experiment across different approaches we estimate low income uninsured adults willingness to

child care choices and children s cognitive achievement the case of single mothers we evaluate the effect of child care versus maternal time inputs on child cognitive development using single mothers from the nlsy79 to deal with nonrandom selection of children into child care we exploit the exogenous variation in welfare policy rules facing single mothers in particular the 1996 welfare reform and earlier state level policy changes generated substantial increases in their work child care use we construct a comprehensive set of welfare policy variables and use them as instruments to estimate child cognitive ability production functions in our baseline specification we estimate that a year of child care reduces child test scores by 2 1

the impact of power market reforms on electricity price cost margins and cross subsidy levels a cross country panel data analysis abstract one of the main expectations from power market reform has been a reduction in both price cost margins and cross subsidy levels between industrial and residential consumers this paper focuses on this issue by looking at the impact of the electricity industry reforms on residential and industrial electricity price cost margins and their effect on cross subsidy levels between consumer groups using panel data for 63 developed and developing countries covering the period 1982 2009 empirical models are developed and analyzed the research findings suggest that there is no uniform pattern for the impact of reform process as a whole on price cost margins and cross subsidy levels each individual reform step has different impact on price cost margins and cross subsidy levels for each consumer and country group our findings imply that reform steps have different impacts in different countries which supports the idea reform prescription for a specific country cannot easily and successfully be transferred to another one so transferring the formal and economic structure of a successful power market in a developed country to developing countries is not a sufficient condition for good economic performance of the electricity industries in developing countries furthermore the study suggests that power consumption income level and country specific features constitute other important determinants of electricity price cost margins and cross subsidy levels

the impact of regulatory quality and corruption on residential electricity prices in the context of electricity market reforms abstract the european electricity markets have been undergoing significant regulatory reforms since the introduction of the first liberalisation directive in 1996 theory predicts that liberalisation promotes cost efficient production and competition and hence leads to lower prices the goal of this paper is to assess the impact of regulatory quality and non compliance with the law on electricity prices in the context of electricity market reforms we address problems of endogeneity by using the blundell blond system gmm estimator and find that vertical integration and market concentration lower end user prices all else equal moreover improving regulatory quality and reducing corruption both have a negative impact on prices when holding other factors constant the intensity of the reforms has limited impact on electricity prices when these reforms are introduced in an institutional environment characterised by high levels of corruption and low quality regulation

incentives work getting teachers to come to school we use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in india in treatment schools teachers attendance was monitored daily using cameras and their salaries were made a nonlinear function of attendance teacher absenteeism in the treatment group fell by 21 percentage points relative to the control group and the children s test scores increased by 0 17 standard deviations we estimate a structural dynamic labor supply model and find that teachers respond strongly to financial incentives our model is used to compute cost minimizing compensation policies jel i21 j31 j45 o15

the possibility of an immiserizing transfer under uncertainty in a two country two commodity trade model with production uncertainty an international transfer can harm the recipient and benefit the donor this result holds even when equilibrium prices are stable moreover the form in which the transfer is paid can matter for the welfare consequences of the transfer

structural estimation of family labor supply with taxes estimating a continuous hours model using a direct utility specification this paper proposes a new method for estimating family labor supply in the presence of taxes this method accounts for continuous hours choices measurement error unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for work the nonlinear form of the tax code and fixed costs of work in one comprehensive specification estimated on data from the 2001 psid the resulting elasticities for married males are consistent with those found elsewhere in the literature but female wage elasticities are substantially smaller than those found in most of the literature simulations of recent tax acts predict small effects on the labor supply of married couples

the food stamp participation and labor supply of married couples an empirical analysis of joint decisions this paper examines the effect of the food stamp program on intrafamily labor supply and program participation decisions married couples simultaneously choose the labor supply of the husband and wife and whether to participate in the food stamp program using data from the survey of income and program participation the author estimates a nested multinomial logit model simulations indicate smaller labor supply effects to changes in the food stamp benefit than the previous research which focused on single parents married couple program participation is found to be relatively responsive to changes in food stamp benefits

explaining and forecasting results of the self sufficiency project this paper studies the self sufficiency project ssp a controlled randomized experiment concerning welfare by estimating a model of endogenous skill accumulation multidimensional job opportunities and time varying opportunity costs of labour market time methods for estimating dynamic programming models with unobserved heterogeneity are extended to account for unexpected policy interventions and endogenous sample selection and initial conditions parameters are identified and consistently estimated by imposing optimal responses to the exact form of the ssp earnings supplement and the experimental program which induces exogenous variation between treatment groups and within groups as treatment progresses the estimated model tracks primary outcomes well in and out of sample except for underestimating trends in the sample of new welfare applicants predictions from counterfactual experiments run counter to non structural results reported elsewhere and they suggest that details of the ssp s design are critical for interpretation of results the separate ssp plus treatment may have longer lasting and more generalized impacts than the in sample impacts suggest copyright oxford university press

sharing rule identification for general collective consumption models we propose a method to identify bounds i e set identi cation on the shar ing rule for a general collective household consumption model unlike the eects of distribution factors it is well known that the level of the sharing rule cannot be uniquely identi ed without strong assumptions on preferences across households of dierent compositions our new results show that though not point identi ed without these assumptions narrow bounds on the sharing rule can be obtained we get these bounds by applying revealed preference restrictions implied by the collective model to the household s continuous aggregate demand functions we obtain informative bounds even if nothing is known about whether each good is public private or assignable within the household though having such infor mation tightens the bounds we apply our method to us 1999 2009 psid data this application obtains tight sharing rule bounds that yield useful conclusions regarding the eects of income and wages on intrahousehold resource sharing and on the prevalence of individual as opposed to household level poverty

linkages among welfare food assistance programmes and labour supply evidence from the survey of programme dynamics at the centre of the debate on welfare reform is whether incentives based systems help poor families move out of poverty into jobs recent data from the first survey of programme dynamics longitudinal and the 1998 experimental data files allow evaluation of the interaction among the food stamp programme fsp temporary assistance for needy families tanf programme and labour force participation under different programme design and economic conditions a model that incorporates jointly determined programmes participation and work decisions is applied to a sample of working age lower income and asset households participation in tanf increases the probability of fsp participation and decreases the probability of being in the work force working decreases the probability of receiving food stamps work tanf and fsp participation are related and tanf and fsp participation rates among poor households who are potentially eligible for tanf are sensitive to changes in programme parameters as expected labou

an empirical analysis of the effects of joint decisions on food stamp program temporary assistance for needy families and labor force participation this study examines the interaction between food stamp program fsp and temporary assistance for needy families tanf program participation provides a model of joint decisions made by households on fsp tanf and labor force participation and explains why households choose different alternatives we use the first survey of program dynamics spd longitudinal data and the 1998 spd experimental data files the modeling component consists of estimating equations to predict the probability of particular choices made by households the households choose the alternative that gives the highest utility the results show that the program parameters do matter variations across states in payment standards benefit reduction rates and income disregards help to identify household choices

the declining credit quality of u s corporate debt myth or reality in recent years the number of downgrades in corporate bond ratings has exceeded the number of upgrades leading some to conclude that the credit quality of u s corporate debt has declined however an alternative explanation of this apparent decline in credit quality is that the rating agencies are now using more stringent standards in assigning ratings an ordered probit analysis of a panel of firms from 1978 through 1995 suggests that rating standards have indeed become more stringent implying that at least part of the downward trend in ratings is the result of changing standards bond ratings play a key role in corporate financing and investment decisions a corporation that can issue higher rated bonds usually receives better terms than one that can issue only lower rated bonds by law or policy some investors can purchase only bonds with an investment grade rating a restriction which in some asset pricing models would affect the relative prices of financial assets numerous articles in the popular press have presumed that the credit quality of the debt of u s corporations has been declining over the last couple of decades the comprehensive study by lucas and lonski 1992 of moody s rating changes of corporate debt is consistent with this presumption to cite their statistics in 1970 moody s downgraded 21 issues and upgraded 23 issues but over the following years the number of bonds downgraded began to exceed by substantial margins the number of bonds upgraded and by 1990 moody s downgraded 301 issues and upgraded only 61 their study includes both investment and noninvestment grade bonds but internal data from donaldson lufkin jenrette confirm that this trend also applies to investment grade bonds alone in a somewhat different context grundy 1997 documents similar trends in the ratings of preferred shares over the 1965 to 1990 period as the credit quality of a firm s corporate debt decreases that firm will face a greater probability of financial distress which at the extreme translates into bankruptcy there is some debate as to the effect of financial dis

rural urban welfare program and labor force participation nonmetro poor in the midwest participate more in the labor force and less in welfare programs than metro poor we formalize how household composition capital labor market conditions and state specific regulations define opportunity sets then estimate a bivariate binomial probit model of work and program participation choices an oaxaca decomposition analysis is conducted to compare differences in characteristics to differences in behavior in explaining the two groups choices we find no behavioral basis for the difference in labor market participation and while most of the lower midwestern nonmetro welfare program participation is due to demographics some is due to different life cycle behavior

the mexican electricity sector policy analysis and reform 1992 2009 this article analyses the cause effect relation of the structural reform in the mexican electricity sector called the public electricity service act from 1992 to 2009 one of the main arguments of the reform is to attract private investment in order to reduce the financial load of the government in infrastructure for the development of the national electric power system by means of six modalities power self supply cogeneration small power production independent power production power export and power import the article presents the global context of reforms adopted in 1990 the major policies and events are presented in chronological order before and after reform in addition it analyses the new institutional framework the evolution of modalities technologies of electricity generation and tariffs the main conclusion is that the result of reform could be considered a partial progress the independent power production modality shows greater participation while power self supply and cogeneration are lower the subsidy policy is maintained progress is needed in policies and strengthening and also in updating regulatory and normative frameworks

impacts on investments and transmission distribution loss through power sector reforms abstract this study analyses original panel data from 86 countries between 1985 and 2006 econometric methods were used to identify the effects of different policy devices of power sector reforms on performance indicators installed capacity per capita transmission and distribution loss in the countries analyzed the research findings suggest that reform variables such as the entry of independent power producers ipps unbundling of generation and transmission establishment of regulatory agencies and the introduction of a wholesale spot market are the driving forces of increasing generation capacity as well as reducing transmission and distribution loss in the respective regions in this study we can assume that firstly different electric industry s reform policies measures have different impacts on geographically and economically diverse countries secondly a country s state of economic development has a different impact on policy effects of reforms thirdly coexistent with independent regulatory agencies reform policy becomes more powerful in realizing sector performances

immiserizing transfer under variable returns to scale this paper examines the welfare consequences of a unilateral transfer for both the transfer paying and the transfer receiving country in which the production functions are subject to variable returns to scale we obtain the conditions for the strong paradox that is the welfare of the transfer paying country improves and that of the transfer receiving country declines in the standard two country framework the conditions for the weak paradox that is both the transferor and transferee gain or lose simultaneously and the normal results that is the transferor loses and the transferee gains are also derived transferts appauvrissants quand les rendements a l echelle sont variables ce memoire examine les effets de bien etre d un transfert unilateral a la fois pour le pays donateur et le pays recipiendaire quand les fonctions de production ont des rendements variables a l echelle les auteurs d6veloppent les conditions qui sous tendent le paradoxe fort i e le cas oii le bien r ils d6rivent aussi les conditions qui sous tendent le paradoxe faible i e le cas oui les deux pays gagnent ou

estimating taxable income responses with elasticity heterogeneity abstract we explore elasticity heterogeneity in the estimation of the elasticity of taxable income eti and propose potentially valid instruments we show that previously used instruments are not valid and yield weighted averages of etis of different taxpayers plus a bias using the nber tax panel for 1979 1990 we find a weighted average eti of 0 57 when using all available variation in budget set changes provided by the tax reforms in the data our results also demonstrate that elasticity heterogeneity is an important explanation for the remarkable divergence of estimates in the previous literature

estimating and decomposing productivity growth of the electricity generation industry in malaysia a stochastic frontier analysis this study examines the total factor productivity tfp growth of the malaysian electricity generation industry over the 1998 to 2005 period the stochastic frontier analysis sfa approach is used to measure tfp change and decompose tfp growth into efficiency change and technical progress we find that it achieved average annual tfp growth of 2 34 with technical change contributing the most to the tfp growth over the eight year period we hence hypothesise that the new power plants with their newer capital embodied technologies commencing during the sample period are likely to be the main reason for this strong technical change in addition it is also noted that this estimate for the malaysian electricity generation industry is larger than the estimate obtained for the electricity sector as a whole where we obtain 1 34 per year for a comparable period

viewpoint empirical evidence and tax policy design lessons from the mirrlees review this paper examines the role of evidence in drawing up the recommendations for tax reform in the mirrlees review the arguments are organised loosely under five related headings i key margins of adjustment ii measurement of effective tax rates iii the importance of information and complexity iv evidence on the size of responses v implications from theory for tax design although the mirrlees review focuses on all aspects of tax reform the focus is this paper is on the taxation of earnings with some examples drawn from the taxation of consumption and savings ce memoire examine le role des resultats dans la confection des recommandations pour la reforme fiscale dans l enquete mirrlees les arguments sont regroupes sous cinq rubriques i les importantes marges d ajustement ii la mesure des taux d imposition effective iii l importance de l information et de la complexite iv constat sur la taille des reponses et v les implications pour la theorie du design des politiques d imposition meme si l enquete mirrlees a examine tous les aspects de la reforme fiscale ce texte met l accent sur l impot sur les remunerations avec quelques exemples portant sur l impot sur la consommation et l epargne

effects of regulatory reforms in the electricity supply industry on electricity prices in developing countries electric power sector reforms in the electricity supply industry have had an impact on industrial and household prices in developing countries in latin america the former soviet union and eastern europe using original panel data for 83 countries during the period from 1985 to 2002 we examine how each policy instrument of the reform measures influenced electricity prices for countries in the above regions we found that variables such as entry of independent power producers ipp unbundling of generation and transmission establishment of a regulatory agency and the introduction of a wholesale spot market have had a variety of impacts on electricity prices some of which were not always consistent with expected results the research findings suggest that neither unbundling nor introduction of a wholesale pool market on their own necessarily reduces the electric power price in fact contrary to expectations there was a tendency for the price to rise however coexistent with an independent regulator unbundling may work to reduce electricity prices privatization and the introduction of foreign ipp and retail competition lower electricity prices in some regions but not all

structural estimation of a model of school choices the boston mechanism vs its alternatives we model household choice of schools under the boston mechanism bm and develop a new method applicable to a broad class of mechanisms to fully solve the choice problem even if it is infeasible

the 1993 eitc expansion and low skilled single mothers welfare use decision previous studies on low skilled single mothers focus generally either on the binary welfare use or work decision however work among welfare participants has increased steadily since the mid 1990s this study estimates the role of the 1993 earned income tax credit eitc expansion on the decline of welfare caseloads using a bivariate probit model using monthly survey of income and program participation sipp information i find that the 1993 eitc expansion has at least the same effect on reducing welfare use as the welfare reform initiatives moreover the elasticity estimates indicate that single mothers especially those who were not employed and dependent solely on welfare before the expansion were the most responsive to the policy initiatives finally the increase in work among welfare participants is due to the relative ineffectiveness of the policies in reducing the net population of those who are on welfare and work simultaneously

a 100 year review of electricity policy in ireland 1916 2015 abstract over the past century ireland s electricity sector has undergone a significant transformation this paper documents the nation s struggle to build an electricity system to improve security of electricity supply through portfolio diversification and to promote indigenous energy sources this was a challenge for an electrically isolated island with little natural resources the paper also identifies the ineffective policy decisions that left ireland exposed to the 1970s energy crises the crises did however provide a clear impetus for focusing irish energy policy going forward the successful deployment and integration of large scale wind power was due to strong national and supranational policy decisions in 2015 ireland had the third highest wind energy share of national electricity demand 22 8 of all iea wind member countries the paper also traces ireland s transition through market reform regional fragmentation and looks onwards to the eu internal market for electricity in essence this paper provides a holistic view of the implications of various policy decisions on the electricity sector along with the stresses of external factors on the electricity market and should be useful for policy makers elsewhere faced with similar decisions

estimating labor supply responses and welfare participation using a natural experiment to validate a structural labor supply model in this paper we formulate and estimate an economic model of labor supply and welfare participation the model is estimated on data on single men from quebec drawn from the 1986 canadian census budget sets for each work welfare combination accounting for income taxes tax credits and welfare benefit rules are derived using a microsimulation model we validate our model by comparing reactions to a welfare reform that implied a dramatic increase in welfare benefits predicted by our model to those obtained by using a regression discontinuity approach the results show that our model is capable of recovering actual changes in labor supply and welfare participation we also show the advantage of having estimated a structural model by illustrating how labor supply and welfare participation change when benefit levels change

immiserizing transfers from abroad abstract this paper shows that an international transfer payment may paradoxically immiserize the recipient country or increase the donor country s welfare even when world markets are stable despite the traditional view that such a paradox theoretically requires market instability to demonstrate this paradoxical possibility the paper extends the conventional trade theoretic analysis to admit exogenous distortions created by tax cum subsidies in domestic production or endogenous distortions due to additionality requirements imposed by the donor on the recipient this analysis of immiserizing transfers from abroad immediately suggests significant implications for important policy issues including the evaluation of real benefits from foreign aid

household unemployment and the labour supply of married women a recent reform to the uk unemployment insurance ui system has reduced the duration of entitlement from 12 to six months the ui and welfare systems interact in the uk in such a way that exhaustion of ut for married individuals has potentially large disincentive effects on the labour supply of spouses a model of labour supply is estimated for married women allowing for endogenous unemployment durations of husbands and wives we distinguish between transfer programme induced incentive effects correlation between labour supply and wages within couples complementarity between the leisure times of spouses and a discouraged worker effect

estimation with response error and nonresponse error in survey data originates from failure to contact the sample and from false answers to verifiable questions these errors may be systematic and associated with uncooperative or unreliable respondents zabel modeled attrition in the survey of income and program participation and found systematic demographic and design effects bollinger and david modeled response error and identified correlations to income per capita in this analysis we link missing interviews in a panel and response error through a trivariate probit analysis robustness of the correlation between attrition and response error is examined by comparing variants of the model the joint model of response error and attrition becomes the first stage of a pseudolikelihood estimate of a model of food stamp participation the model is significantly different from naive probit on the survey data

welfare the earned income tax credit and the labor supply of single mothers during 1984 1996 welfare and tax policy were changed to encourage work by single mothers the earned income tax credit was expanded welfare benets were cut welfare time limits were added and welfare cases were terminated medicaid for the working poor was expanded as were training programs and child care during this same time period there were unprecedented increases in the employment and hours of single mothers we show that a large share of the increase in work by single mothers can be attributed to the eitc and other tax changes with smaller shares for welfare benet cuts welfare waivers training programs and child care programs