the demand for energy cross country evidence using the florida model abstract income and own price elasticities of demand for energy for 51 countries in 1980 are presented based on pooled estimates from an 11 good demand system estimated with the florida model results indicate income elasticities of demand for energy are significantly larger than unitary for all countries and own price elasticities of demand for energy range between 0 8 and 1 0

the demand for energy evidence from a cross country demand system abstract some new evidence on the income own price elasticities of demand for energy consumption by consumers is presented estimates are derived from a complete system of cross country demand equations with energy being one of the commodities considered

household production and the short and long run demand for electricity this paper deals with the residential demand for electricity a theoretical model is formulated which is based on intertemporal optimization in a household production context the model is estimated using a dynamic version of the pls partial least squares approach most important determinants of electricity consumption are the prices of appliances and of those goods which can either be purchased in the market or produced at home the dynamic interrelationship between capital stock and electricity consumption is also an important element of the estimated model

evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms performance in crete a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach this article attempts to integrate the production and the efficiency based approaches for evaluating the impact of extension on farms performance for this purpose the nonneutral production frontier model is used and the empirical analysis refers to a sample of farms from crete greece the empirical results support the proposed formulation instead of either the production or the efficiency based formulations as extension was found to have a statistically significant effect on closing both the technology and management gaps public and private extension services were found to be competitive in the production function and complementary in the technical inefficiency effect function in addition farms using both public and private extension services achieved a higher degree of technical efficiency than those using either public or private extension services and farms with no extension services were found to be the least efficient

caught in a productivity trap a distributional perspective on gender differences in malawian agriculture in targeting poverty gains sub saharan african governments have emphasized the alleviation of gender differences in agricultural productivity the empirical studies on the gender gap however have frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic and topical coverage and or details on intra household dynamics the study provides a nationally representative analysis of the gender gap in malawi and decomposes it for the first time at the mean and at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution into i a portion driven by gender differences in levels of observable attributes the endowment effect and ii a portion driven by gender differences in returns to the same set of observables the structure effect sequentially the authors unpack the relative contributions of different factors towards the gender gap and suggest future research priorities to inform policy interventions the authors find that while female managed plots are on average 25 percent less productive 82 percent of this differential is explained by differences in endowments mainly due to high value crop cultivation and levels of household adult male labor inputs the factors driving the structure effect include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer the gender gap increases across the productivity distribution ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent at the 90th percentile while it is explained predominantly by the endowment effect in the first half of the distribution the contribution of the structure effect towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile

economic efficiency and supply response of women as farm managers comparative evidence from western kenya summary this paper assessed the relative economic efficiency and output supply and input demand responses of women farmers in western kenya the results showed that women are as technically and allocatively efficient as men however neither men nor women have absolute allocative efficiency women farmers are equally responsive to price incentives in terms of output supply and input demand while education and extension contact have significant effects on overall maize supply and input demand only extension contact has significant effects among women farmers the paper discusses a number of significant results and concludes with implications for policy

energy conservation investment do consumers discount the future correctly we argue that the apparently high discount rates attributed to investors making energy conservation investments are not irrational or the result of some market failure rather they may result from an investor recognizing that many conservation investments entail substantial sunk costs in the presence of these costs and uncertainty over future conservation savings consumers should use a higher hurdle rate for investment than if there were no uncertainty simulations suggest that the hurdle rate should be about four times greater than the standard rate an implication of our model is that tax subsidies for the purchase of conservation capital are likely to be ineffective we discuss alternative policy approaches which are more likely to increase energy efficient investment namely mandatory efficiency standards and energy taxes

estimating labor supply and production decisions of self employed farm producers abstract this paper proposes a model oriented towards integrating farm households production and consumption decisions into a unified theoretical and econometric framework it is argued that in contrast with other forms of economic organization farm households utility and profit maximization decisions are not likely to be independent econometric estimation of a farm household model using canadian data suggests that utility and profit maximizing decisions are not indeed independent and moreover that there are significant gains in explanatory power and efficiency by estimating the consumption and production equations jointly

the sensitivity of consumption of oil products to price changes an econometric investigation abstract this paper presents a small econometric model of the supply and demand of motor spirit diesel fuel oil and other gas diesel oil by modelling at this level of disaggregation it is possible to identify the dynamic structure of each market and estimate own price and cross price elasticities

a dynamic putty semi putty model of aggregate energy demand energy conservation dominated the adjustments of the energy decade the present study develops further the aggregate analysis to revisit the question of energy flexibility within the context of a multi factor dynamic model the resulting model preserves various adding up constraints cross equation parameter restrictions and consistent indexes within an ad hoc stock adjustment dynamic process applications to data for the usa and japan confirm the estimates of large long run elasticities under the assumption of a slow adjustment process

access to capital and agrarian production organisation there are two problems both universal that entrepreneurs in any economy must contend with firstly an agent generally has access only to a limited amount of working capital secondly workers hired by an agent are subject to moral hazard and this necessitates their supervision this paper models for an agrarian economy the constraints imposed on entrepreneurs activities by these two problems and endogenously determines the various organisational forms of production as well as the allocation of resources that will obtain with a simple model we endeavour to explain a diverse set of empirical observations pertaining to the less developed countries in terms of the general processes that determine the distribution of income among the various agents and the hierarchical relationships that develop among them agricultural production typically involves a period of several months between the time the inputs are purchased and the time the output is marketed access to working capital and hence to the credit market thus plays an important role in a farmer s production decisions the distribution of access to credit in turn tends to be an important determinant of income distribution in poor agrarian economies credit is invariably rationed according to the ability to offer collateral the amount of working capital a farmer can mobilise therefore depends on the amount of land he owns which is often a good proxy for his overall wealth and thus his ability to offer collateral further since hired hands have a propensity to shirk they need to be supervised and therefore the

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

how much of the labor in african agriculture is provided by women the contribution of women to labor in african agriculture is regularly quoted in the range of 60 to 80 percent using individual disaggregated plot level labor input data from nationally representative household surveys across six sub saharan african countries this study estimates the average female labor share in crop production at 40 percent it is slightly above 50 percent in malawi tanzania and uganda and substantially lower in nigeria 37 percent ethiopia 29 percent and niger 24 percent there are no systematic differences across crops and activities but female labor shares tend to be higher in households where women own a larger share of the land and when they are more educated controlling for the gender and knowledge profile of the respondents does not meaningfully change the predicted female labor shares the findings question prevailing assertions regarding substantial gains in aggregate crop output as a result of increasing female agricultural productivity

promotion of market access for renewable energy in the nordic power markets this study investigates how renewable targets for the nordic power market might be achieved at the lowest costs the instruments investigated are fixed feed in tariff economically sound premium based feed in tariff and shadow prices for co2 emissions we utilize a real time price based simulation model in the analysis we show that even with strong assumptions regarding the emission permit price the targeted level of wind power is not reached without feed in tariffs emission trading produces the lowest total emissions but with the highest total costs from the studied instruments the most cost efficient way to reach the targets for wind energy market shares is the premium based feed in tariff this tariff is also the most cost efficient way to reduce co2 emissions

self selection bias in the evaluation of voluntary energy conservation programs while voluntary energy conservation programs have been extensively promoted by electric utilities and public utility commissions their effectiveness has been insufficiently critiqued this paper contributes to the growing evaluation of such programs by measuring the net energy savings directly attributable to an actual set of programs the analysis explicitly corrects for the self selection bias that can arise in program evaluation the correction is found to be important traditional evaluation methods are subject to considerable bias correcting for this bias the amount of program induced energy savings is found to be considerably less than traditionally believed copyright 1988 by mit press

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

household demand for energy in the uk abstract many demand systems have recently been estimated which treat consumer expenditure on energy as one of a small number of similar expenditure groups this study formulates a simple demand system in which expenditures on individual fuels are also examined and into which the role of the stock of energy using appliances is integrated it goes on to adopt a particular functional form for consumer preferences and then fits the resultant econometric system to quarterly british data

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

spatial and temporal variations of marginal electricity generation the case of the finnish nordic and european energy systems up to 2030 abstract assumptions related to energy generation often play a decisive role in abatement studies for estimating the effects of demand side interventions however there can be significant geographical and temporal variation in the emission intensities of electricity generation in different regions the aim of this article is to describe how spatial and temporal variations related to a particular energy system may affect an electricity generation unit operating on the margins the approach takes the generation mix within interconnected electricity markets and the exchange of electricity between these markets into account the short term 2009 2010 and long term until 2030 hour by hour marginal electricity generation unit and marginal emission intensities are identified for electricity use using the finnish nordic and european energy systems as actual cases the estimated marginal electricity generation technology and marginal emission intensities for electricity use differed significantly within the studied time horizon and between the studied countries and energy systems furthermore due to the projected structural changes in the energy systems i e changes in the fuel mix and electricity generation technologies the carbon dioxide co 2 intensity of marginal electricity generation will decrease in the nordic countries and in the eu in the long term however the approach used for calculating the effect of change in electricity exchange on the margin increased the variability of the results considerably for some nordic countries such as sweden and norway whose export of electricity was high and whose marginal generation mix differed significantly from the european system furthermore the spatial and temporal variations of marginal electricity generation will increase in the future this variation combined with the interconnections between market areas for exchanging electricity in the eu will require improved understanding of the impacts of exchanged marginal electricity generation on the possible emission leakage between eu countries to better inform policy decisions

the impact of vat introduction on uk residential energy demand an investigation using the cointegration approach abstract over a two year period which started in april 1994 the real price of energy to uk households was expected to rise by 17 5 as a result of value added tax vat introduction the regressive nature of the tax forced the government to limit vat on residential fuel to 8 using a cointegration approach to take account of the non stationarity fuel consumption time series this paper estimates real energy and fuel specific price and income elasticities for the period 1974 1 1994 1 they suggest that natural gas has a positive real energy price elasticity indicating that as real price of energy rises households scrap inefficient heaters and invest in more efficient ones principally natural gas these estimates enable projections to be made of the impact of the introduction of vat and imply a rise in natural gas consumption as a result of the additional vat although at the expense of other less efficient fuels overall residential energy consumption however is unlikely to fall significantly from the tax suggesting that it is an inappropriate way of achieving environmental objectives

diffusion of solar electricity in the network of private actors as a strategic experiment to mitigate climate change abstract low carbon experiments offer interesting opportunities for climate change mitigation they can be seen as niche activities that eventually challenge the existing regime of energy production and consumption the role of actors in these potential transitions has not been extensively studied this study bridges this gap by analysing ten cases of joint procurement experiments of on grid solar photovoltaic energy in finland the study deepens the understanding of how such experimenting can contribute to climate change mitigation in an area that in many countries is still a largely untapped source of change the study shows that the expansion of solar pv can be enhanced through joint procurement experiments which thereby become strategic the joint procurement lowered several barriers of adoption and can therefore accelerate diffusion of solar pv significantly even when there is a lack of explicit political support in the form of a subsidy system joint procurements help to overcome one of the most important barriers of solar panel purchase the price but the joint procurement experiments also offer important social support to the peers the positive image of solar electricity greatly empowers consumers and increases acceptance of large investment costs further mainstreaming of the experiments towards a regime shift would benefit from institutional support that eases the laborious process of joint procurement and that strengthens the small scale producers negotiating position relative to the utilities and power network operators in trading surplus electricity

the rural non farm sector issues and evidence from developing countries abstract the rural non farm sector has traditionally been viewed as a low productivity sector which produces low quality goods it is often expected to wither away as a country develops recent years have seen a shift away from this position towards recognition that the rural non farm sector can and often does contribute to economic growth rural employment poverty reduction and a more spatially balanced population distribution this paper reviews the literature on the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of this more recent perspective focussing on the experience in developing countries the paper documents the size and heterogeneity of the sector pointing to evidence that in many countries the sector is expanding rather than declining the issues associated with measuring the sector s economic contribution are discussed followed by empirical assessments for several countries and regions the distributional impact of non farm earnings is examined and it is found that a pro poor impact while by no means inevitable can be considerable the sector s trajectory over time in different settings is reviewed and the scope for and experience of various policy interventions is discussed

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

the gender gap in agricultural productivity the role of market imperfections abstractthis paper hypothesises that labour and credit market imperfections by discouraging off farm income generating activities and restricting access to inputs respectively affect female farm productivity more deeply than male productivity the paper develops a theoretical model which decomposes the contribution of various market imperfections to the gender productivity gap empirically we show that agricultural labour productivity is on average 44 per cent lower on female headed plots than on those managed by male heads 34 per cent of this gap is explained by differences in labour market access and 29 per cent by differences in credit access

comparing residential water demand estimates under decreasing and increasing block rates using household data using a new model formulation and data from a sample of colorado utilities we investigated the price specification controversy marginal price versus average revenue when estimating residential water demand the improved statistical fit using average

perception of price when price information is costly evidence from residential electricity demand a bstract residential electricity consumption is an example of a good for which it is costly to determine marginal price since price changes with the quantity purchased according to multistep block rate schedules this paper investigates the effect of the price information problem on consumers price perceptions an alternative hypothesis of average price perception is tested against the marginal price postulate which assumes wellinformed consumers the model which includes a price perception variable allows the estimation of the price to which consumers actually respond the empirical results support the hypothesis that consumers respond to average price perceived from the electricity bill

real time pricing in the nordic power markets abstract in this paper we study the potential effects of real time pricing rtp of electricity on the need for long run capacities in the nordic power markets a characteristic of the nordic power market is the large variety of production technologies of which hydro and nuclear power are capacity constrained we analyze the impact of rtp on the need for total peak and midmerit capacities total demand prices peak demand hours and economic welfare we have also studied whether the results of rtp are sensitive to the simultaneous implementation of tradable emission permits we find that rtp diminishes the need for total capacity even with inelastic demand our results show that even with modest assumptions related to rtp participation the annual midmerit and peaker capacity efficiency savings amount to 97 million euros which are around 6 of their total annual investment costs the price of the peak demand hour clearly diminishes as the share of the rtp customers increases or demand becomes more price elastic we compare rtp and tradable emission permits as two separate instruments in reaching energy use efficiencies and show how these two instruments must be seen as complementary and not as substitutable instruments we show how rtp and tradable emission permits have a positive correlation in promoting market access of renewable energy sources we find that welfare effects of the implementation of rtp are positive

rational habit formation abstract this paper discusses consumer demand under rational habit formation if consumer tastes change endogenously through habit stocks depending on past consumption the rational consumer will make allowance of the future habit forming effects of current consumption a model with rational habit formation is made formally equivalent to an intertemporal consumer model without habit formation by redefining the cost of consumption and wealth the cost of consumption is obtained by adding the cost of future induced consumption to the rental price of the commodity the extended wealth concept is obtained by subtracting the cost of the initial stocks of habits and the cost of future physically necessary consumption from wealth the paper also investigates the implication of rational habit formation for constructing one period cost of living indices

shadow wages allocative inefficiency and labor supply in smallholder agriculture this article introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households marginal revenue product of self employed labor from their shadow wage this method is therefore robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor allocation decisions in the presence of uncertainty market frictions locational preferences etc we illustrate the method using data from rice producers in cote d ivoire these data like previous studies reveal significant systematic differences between shadow wages and the marginal revenue product of family farm labor we demonstrate how one can exploit systematic deviations in the present case related to household characteristics such as the land labor endowment ratio to control for both unobservable wages and prospective allocative inefficiency in labor allocation in structural household labor supply estimation

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

hourly based greenhouse gas emissions of electricity cases demonstrating possibilities for households and companies to decrease their emissions abstract greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production are a crucial part of the environmental impact assessments of any kind of product service or consumption usually average annual emissions are used but lately there has been increased interest in the daily based and hourly based emission coefficients for electricity in such markets where the technology mix in the production process includes technologies with different emission factors there is potential for large variation in hourly based emission factors and consequently this offers potential for decreasing the emissions by real time based demand management however in real life the timing of electricity use in households and companies has restrictions in this paper we show illustrative household and company cases with realistic shifts in the timing of electricity use we determine hourly based emission factors and give examples of how emissions may be decreased in households and companies by changing usage patterns and consequently the timing of electricity use with the total amount of electricity consumed remaining unchanged the examples show decreases of emissions in the range 3 8 due to optimised timing indicating that there is important potential for managing hourly based demand loads and the resulting emissions even with realistic assumptions of the timing of consumption

assets activities and rural income generation evidence from a multicountry analysis summary this paper examines the links between the assets and the economic activities of rural households in developing countries to provide insight into how the promotion of certain key assets particularly education land and infrastructure influences the economic choices of these households nationally representative data from 15 countries which form part of the rural income generating activities riga database are used in the analysis the results indicate that improved land access is linked to agricultural production and thus will lead households to take on average this path for improving household welfare higher levels of education and greater access to infrastructure appear to be most closely linked to non agricultural wage employment