the economic consequences of a tobin tax an experimental analysis abstract the effects of a tobin tax on foreign exchange markets have long been disputed we present an experiment with currency trading on two markets where either none one or both markets are taxed our results confirm the hitherto undisputed issues a tax reduces trading volume shifts market share to untaxed markets and leads to negligible tax revenues if tax havens exist concerning the controversial issues we find that i volatility effects depend on the existence of tax havens and on market size ii market efficiency decreases in taxed markets when tax havens exist and iii short term speculation is reduced

informational externalities strategic delay and optimal investment subsidies this paper examines optimal government policy when private investment generates information but investors cannot internalize the informational value their actions have to others equilibrium exhibits inefficient delay as investors adopt a wait and see approach the government can alter incentives via an investment subsidy but complications arise since future subsidies may induce investors to disregard current policy initiatives the paper shows that the government achieves its desired outcome only when the the investment subsidy is financed by a non distortionary lump sum tax when taxation is distortionary the government faces a time inconsistency problem that may prevent effective policy ce texte examine la politique optimale du gouvernement quand l investissement prive engendre de l information mais que les investisseurs ne peuvent pas internaliser la valeur informationnelle que leurs actions ont sur les autres l equilibre est marque par des delais inefficaces a proportion que les investisseurs adoptent une attitude attendre pour voir le gouvernement peut modifier les incitations en creant une subvention a l investissement mais des complications sont possibles puisque des subventions possibles dans l avenir peuvent amener les investisseurs a ne pas se prevaloir des initiatives mises de l avant par la politique courante le texte montre que le gouvernement atteint le resultat desire seulement quand la subvention a l investissement est finance par une taxe forfaitaire non distorsionnante quand la taxe cree des distorsions le gouvernement fait face a un probleme d inconsistance dans le temps qui empeche que la politique soit effective

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

the great east asian capital flow reversal reasons responses and ramifications the exodus of foreign capital combined with the flight of domestic funds abroad caused massive depreciations especially against the us dollar of the indonesian rupiah thai baht malaysian ringgit philippines peso and south korean won the currencies of the economies hereafter termed the asian 5 it also caused dramatic stockmarket falls in the greater east asian region including hong kong and singapore at times in us terms the indonesian rupiah was worth only one fifth of its june 1997 value while the thai baht and korean won lost around half their former values the philippines peso and malaysian ringgit fell some 40 per cent below pre crisis values this paper briefly examines the build up and subsequent sharp reversal of international investment in east asia in the 1990s before addressing the international public policy issue of whether international capital flows considered too unpredictable volatile and destablising by many economists should again be restricted finally the paper suggests that the impact of the redirection of international investment on the world economy should generate alternative export opportunities in other advanced and emerging regions thus minimising the contractionary effect of the asian crisis on the world economy

learning and capacity expansion under demand uncertainty a competitive dynamic model of entry into a new industry is set up and both its positive and normative aspects are studied the main assumptions are that entry is sequential that it occurs under imperfect information on the size of the market and that better information becomes available as time goes on the gradual improvement in information is due to the fact that later waves of entrants are able to observe the profitability of earlier entrants the major results reported here under suitable restrictions are that the equilibrium rate of entry is monotonically decreasing over time and that at any given point in time it is smaller than the socially optimal one when a new market opens as a result of a product being newly invented for instance or when an existing market starts to expand uncertainty with respect to its size is likely to prevail as a result of this uncertainty entry of firms into such markets typically will occur in waves some firms will enter initially while others will wait to see the consequences of that initial entry if the experience of early entrants is favourable entry will continue otherwise entry will cease hence with the introduction of a new product two phases are associated the growth phase typified by positive operating profits for existing firms and expansion of productive capacity due to entry of new firms and the mature phase typified by erosion of profits and fixed total productive capacity empiricists estimating the time pattern of investments during the growth phase have found an s shaped diffusion curve see mansfield 1986 and gort and klepper 1982 the purpose of the present paper is to theoretically characterize these time patterns and to investigate their welfare properties any attempt to model the type of entry described above must account for differences in both entry dates and resultant earnings in other words the theory must explain why the realized earnings of different cohorts of firms are not equal often such ex post differences are reconciled by assuming heterogeneity with respect to some latent underlying characteristic managerial ability for instance and attributing differences in earnings to differences in that characteristic in this paper instead earning differentials are attributable to luck only ex ante all firms are technologically identical and equally capable of forecasting market prospects and rationally acting upon those forecasts ex post some firms turn out to have entered at the right time and are for that reason more profitable the model developed in this paper analyzes a parametric example of a sequential entry problem in which the uncertainty over market size is gradually resolved over time in a bayesian setting in an environment of perfect competition and constant returns toscale a free entry equilibrium concept is introduced and the aggregate implications of the time path of investments are derived i then compare this actual time path to the optimum this comparison is interesting because the equilibrium is analysed under the

making waves to innovate or be a fast second internal finance leads to a stalemate in innovation games each firm wants to free ride on the others costly experimentation when instead innovation is financed externally e g with venture capital or initial public offerings there is an endogenous cost to delay waiting to make risky irreversible investment conveys pessimistic information i characterize the relative sizes of waves of leaders and followers in innovation cycles and the endogenous intertemporal distribution of quality as each wave builds and crashes finally old waves leave an adverse selection hangover such that too much early innovation can cause the market for future innovation to break down

a multi model study of energy supply investments in latin america under climate control policy in this paper we investigate energy supply investment requirements in latin america until 2050 through a multi model approach as jointly applied in the climacap lamp research project we compare a business as usual scenario needed to satisfy anticipated future energy demand with a set of scenarios that aim to significantly reduce co2 emissions in the region we find that more than a doubling of annual investments in absolute terms occurs in the business as usual scenario between 2010 and 2050 while investments may treble over the same time horizon when climate policies are introduced investment costs as share of gdp however decline over time in the business as usual scenario as well as the climate policy scenarios as a result of the fast economic growth of the region in the business as usual scenario cumulative investments of 1 4 trillion us are anticipated between 2010 and 2050 in electricity supply these investments increase when additional climate policies are introduced under a carbon tax of 50 tco2e in 2020 growing with a rate of 4 yr an additional 0 6 trillion us 45 of cumulative investment is needed climate control measures lead to increased investment in low carbon electricity technologies primarily based on wind and solar resources as well as ccs applied to fossil fuels and biomass our analysis suggests that in comparison to the business as usual case an average additional 21 billion us yr of electricity supply investment is required in latin america until 2050 under a climate policy aiming at 2 c climate stabilisation conversely there is a disinvestment in fossil fuel extraction and transformation for oil production a growth to 130 billion us annual investment by 2050 is anticipated in a business as usual scenario ambitious climate policy reduces this to 28 billion us mobilising the necessary additional investment capital in particular for low carbon energy technologies will be a challenge suitable frameworks and enabling environments for a scale up of public and private investment will be critical to help reach the required low carbon energy deployment levels

emissions reduction scenarios in the argentinean energy sector in this paper the leap tiam ecn and gcam models were applied to evaluate the impact of a variety of climate change control policies including carbon pricing and emission constraints relative to a base year on primary energy consumption final energy consumption electricity sector development and co2 emission savings of the energy sector in argentina over the 2010 2050 period the leap model results indicate that if argentina fully implements the most feasible mitigation measures currently under consideration by official bodies and key academic institutions on energy supply and demand such as the probiomass program a cumulative incremental economic cost of 22 8 billion us 2005 to 2050 is expected resulting in a 16 reduction in ghg emissions compared to a business as usual scenario these measures also bring economic co benefits such as a reduction of energy imports improving the balance of trade a low co2 price scenario in leap results in the replacement of coal by nuclear and wind energy in electricity expansion a high co2 price leverages additional investments in hydropower by way of cross model comparison with the tiam ecn and gcam global integrated assessment models significant variation in projected emissions reductions in the carbon price scenarios was observed which illustrates the inherent uncertainties associated with such long term projections these models predict approximately 37 and 94 reductions under the high co2 price scenario respectively by comparison the leap model using an approach based on the assessment of a limited set of mitigation options predicts an 11 3 reduction the main reasons for this difference include varying assumptions about technology cost and availability co2 storage capacity and the ability to import bioenergy an emission cap scenario 2050 emissions 20 lower than 2010 emissions is feasible by including such measures as ccs and bio ccs but at a significant cost in terms of technology pathways the models agree that fossil fuels in particular natural gas will remain an important part of the electricity mix in the core baseline scenario according to the models there is agreement that the introduction of a carbon price will lead to a decline in absolute and relative shares of aggregate fossil fuel generation however predictions vary as to the extent to which coal nuclear and renewable energy play a role

achieving co2 reductions in colombia effects of carbon taxes and abatement targets in this paper we investigate co2 emission scenarios for colombia and the effects of implementing carbon taxes and abatement targets on the energy system by comparing baseline and policy scenario results from two integrated assessment partial equilibrium models tiam ecn and gcam and two general equilibrium models phoenix and meg4c we provide an indication of future developments and dynamics in the colombian energy system currently the carbon intensity of the energy system in colombia is low compared to other countries in latin america however this trend may change given the projected rapid growth of the economy and the potential increase in the use of carbon based technologies climate policy in colombia is under development and has yet to consider economic instruments such as taxes and abatement targets this paper shows how taxes or abatement targets can achieve significant co2 reductions in colombia though abatement may be achieved through different pathways taxes and targets promote the entry of cleaner energy sources into the market and reduce final energy demand through energy efficiency improvements and other demand side responses the electric power sector plays an important role in achieving co2 emission reductions in colombia through the increase of hydropower the introduction of wind technologies and the deployment of biomass coal and natural gas with co2 capture and storage ccs uncertainty over the prevailing mitigation pathway reinforces the importance of climate policy to guide sectors toward low carbon technologies this paper also assesses the economy wide implications of mitigation policies such as potential losses in gdp and consumption an assessment of the legal institutional social and environmental barriers to economy wide mitigation policies is critical yet beyond the scope of this paper

behavioral biases in endogenous timing herding games an experimental study abstract we experimentally study behavior in an endogenous timing herding game we find that subjects respond to their type and to observed investment activity in a sensible way but there are also substantial departures from nash equilibrium some departures can be viewed as mere noise in decision making while other departures represent systematic biases reflecting subjects failure to appreciate subtle aspects of the game

technology learning for fuel cells an assessment of past and potential cost reductions abstract fuel cells have gained considerable interest as a means to efficiently convert the energy stored in gases like hydrogen and methane into electricity further developing fuel cells in order to reach cost safety and reliability levels at which their widespread use becomes feasible is an essential prerequisite for the potential establishment of a hydrogen economy a major factor currently obviating the extensive use of fuel cells is their relatively high costs at present we estimate these at about 1100 2005 kw for an 80 kw fuel cell system but notice that specific costs vary markedly with fuel cell system power capacity we analyze past fuel cell cost reductions for both individual manufacturers and the global market we determine learning curves with fairly high uncertainty ranges for three different types of fuel cell technology afc pafc and pemfc each manufactured by a different producer for pemfc technology we also calculate a global learning curve characterised by a learning rate of 21 with an error margin of 4 given their respective uncertainties this global learning rate value is in agreement with those we find for different manufacturers in contrast to some other new energy technologies r d still plays a major role in today s fuel cell improvement process and hence probably explains a substantial part of our observed cost reductions the remaining share of these cost reductions derives from learning by doing proper since learning by doing usually involves a learning rate of typically 20 the residual value for pure learning we find for fuel cells is relatively low in an ideal scenario for fuel cell technology we estimate a bottom line for specific 80 kw system manufacturing costs of 95 2005 kw although learning curves observed in the past constitute no guarantee for sustained cost reductions in the future when we assume global total learning at the pace calculated here as the only cost reduction mechanism this ultimate cost figure is reached after a large scale deployment about 10 times doubled with respect to the cumulative installed fuel cell capacity to date

endogenous timing of actions under conflict between two types of second mover advantage in a model two players heterogeneous in their information quality compete with each other with perfect information about the other player s information quality if they can decide their timings of actions endogenously the less informed player has an incentive to delay her action for learning on the other hand the more informed player wants to delay her action to prevent her information from being revealed not to enable her to learn the consict of these two types of second mover advantages yields a war of attrition although both players can bene t from acting as the follower the gain from a delay for learning is greater than that for preventing the other s learning therefore a cost for the delay in action plays an important role in characterizing the equilibrium in contrast to the literature in which only informational externalities are considered this article shows that the introduction of payoff externalities contributes to different procedures and reasoning processes through which the heterogeneous players timings of actions are decided endogenously

decentralization duplication and delay we argue that although decentralization has advantages in finding low cost solutions these advantages are accompanied by coordination problems which lead to delay or duplication of effort or both consequently decentralization is desirable when there is little urgency or a great deal of private information but it is strictly undesirable in urgent problems when private information is less important we also examine the effect of large numbers and find that coordination problems disappear in the limit if distributions are common knowledge

an equilibrium analysis of information aggregation and fluctuations in markets with discrete decisions abstract this paper shows how the interaction between decentralized information gathering and discreteness of investment decisions at the individual level can generate random fluctuations in aggregate investment that involve occasionally large allocation errors this interaction is illustrated in a model in which private information is costly to acquire and prices reveal information the unique rational expectations equilibrium outcome of the model is shown to always be noisy and characterized by investment levels which may be high simply because uninformed investors are buying under the impression that the high price is a signal of good investment opportunities

international taxation the trajectory of an idea from lorimer to brandt abstract this paper examines early proposals for the establishment of international taxes for the support of international organization for the maintenance of international order and or for development the writings examined span close to one century starting with james lorimer in 1884 and concluding with the report of the brandt commission in 1980 our focus is on works mainly written since 1940 which explore the possibility of taxation levied by a global authority on income and transactions of individuals and firms rather than the financing of aid and international organization by national governments which is sometimes regarded as equivalent to taxation

on industry life cycles delay entry and shakeout in beer brewing abstract this paper proposes a new explanation for industry shakeout an event evident in the life cycle of many industries in which the number of firms drops significantly in a short interval of time based on an in depth analysis of the shakeout in the united states beer brewing industry between 1880 and 1890 we propose that industry shakeouts naturally follow periods of mass entry by firms similar patterns are evident in two other industries we briefly examine the us automobile and tire industries while entry rates fluctuate broadly in all these industries we find that the timing of exit for a given cohort of entrants is remarkably similar over time the exit hazard rate is peaked in the first two years of every cohort s life and drops dramatically to low and stable levels for subsequent ages in this sense mass exit follows mass entry and does not require a deep explanation it is the mass entry evident in the data for these industries that requires an explanation we propose a theoretical model of information accumulation to explain entry into an industry entrepreneurs are uncertain about the profitability of the industry and this uncertainty is resolved through sufficient accumulation of information regarding the fortunes of incumbent firms delay in entry occurs solely due to the fact that it takes time to accumulate sufficient information to support more entry the resulting entry pattern from simulations of the model looks much like that observed in the industries we study

experimentation in markets we present a model of entry and exit with bayesian learning and price competition a new product of initially unknown quality is introduced in the market and purchases of the product yield information on its true quality we assume that the performance of the new product is publicly observable as agents learn from the experiments of others informational externalities arise we determine the markov perfect equilibrium prices and allocations in a single market the combination of the informational externalities among the buyers and the strategic pricing by the sellers results in excessive experimentation if the new product is launched in many distinct markets the path of sales converges to the efficient path in the limit as the number of markets grows in multi agent learning situations informational externalities may reduce the number of experiments undertaken below the socially efficient level as buyers choose among new experience goods or firms decide whether to adopt a new technology the availability of information from others decisions gives rise to a free rider problem rather than perform a costly experiment herself a buyer may opt to wait and see how the market evaluates the new product in this paper we develop a simple market model of experimentation and analyse the informational effects in a model with buyers and sellers in contrast to the one sided experimentation problems we find that equilibrium experimentation often exceeds the pareto optimal level in two sided models the first model we consider is a dynamic duopoly in continuous time with homogeneous buyers two firms with differentiated products engage in price competition over time one product has a known value while the other is new and its true value is initially uncertain to all the parties in the model the value of the product is determined by the quality of the match between consumer preferences and product characteristics additional information is acquired only through repeat purchases in each period buyers observe a noisy signal of the true value of the product we assume that all signals are publicly observable and that all uncertainty is about a common value component with this assumption all buyers and sellers condition their behaviour on the same information and we can abstract from individual differences in past observations this is justified in economic situations where public data on other buyers choices is available and informative for example when choosing among providers of communication or transportation services such as mail delivery firms or airlines it is reasonable to rely on consumer reports and other published data in addition to one s private experience we also show that our model has an alternative interpretation as one where a flow of buyers make a once and

the effects of the market structure on the adoption of evolving technologies abstract we study the speed at which technologies are adopted depending on how the market power is shared between the firms that sell technologies and the firms that buy them our results suggest that because of a double marginalization problem adoption is fastest when either sellers or buyers hold all the market power thus competition between sides of the market may delay the adoption of technologies

price dispersion and learning in a dynamic differentiated goods duopoly we study the evolution of prices set by duopolists who are uncertain about the perceived degree of product differentiation customers sometimes view the products as close substitutes sometimes as highly differentiated as the informativeness of the quantities sold increases with the price differential there is scope for active learning by firms when information has low value to the firms they charge the same price as would be set by myopic players and there is no price dispersion when firms value information more highly on the other hand they actively learn by creating price dispersion such price dispersion arises in a cyclical fashion and is most likely to be observed when the firms environment changes sufficiently often but not too frequently firms payoffs are higher when they use correlated pricing strategies contrary to what one might expect such coordination need not hurt consumers provided they are sufficiently impatient

on vertical relations and the timing of technology adoption we study the timing of new technology adoption in markets with input outsourcing and thus with vertical relations we find that technology adoption can take place earlier when firms engage in input outsourcing than when they produce the input in house hence the presence of vertical relations can accelerate the adoption of a new technology we also find that particular features of a vertically related market such as the distribution of bargaining power and the contract type through which trading is conducted can crucially affect the speed of technology adoption

should i stay or should i go bandwagons in the lab abstract we experimentally investigate the impact of strategic uncertainty and complementarity on leader and follower behavior using the model of farrell and saloner 1985 at the core of the model are endogenous timing irreversible actions and private valuations we find that strategic complementarity strongly determines follower behavior once a subject decides to abandon the status quo the probability that other players jump on the bandwagon increases sharply however there is a reluctance to lead when leading is a conditional best response we explain this deviation from the neo classical equilibrium by injecting some noise in the equilibrium concept we also find that cheap talk improves efficiency

investment timing and learning externalities abstract we study a duopoly model of investment in which each player learns about the quality of a common value project by observing some public background information and possibly the experience of his rival investment costs are private information and the background signal takes the form of a poisson process conditional on the quality of the project being low the resulting attrition game has a unique symmetric equilibrium which depends on initial public beliefs we determine the impact of changes in the cost and signal distributions on investment timing and how equilibrium is affected when a first mover advantage is introduced

ex post regret and the decentralized sharing of information abstract firms reveal private information about the value of investment through their investment decisions as a consequence they may have ex post regret once they see other firms investments we define a notion of rational expectations equilibrium for games which imposes a no regret property in this equilibrium all firms make the same investment decision but despite the absence of ex post regret the investment herd can be inefficient in addition equilibrium might not exist we introduce a notion of probabilistic existence and identify conditions under which if the number of firms is large enough information comes out so that investment herds are first best efficient with high probability and equilibrium exists with high probability journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c7 d8

taking the road less traveled by does conversation eradicate pernicious cascades abstract we offer a model in which sequences of individuals often converge upon poor decisions and are prone to fads despite communication of the payoff outcomes from past choices this reflects both direct and indirect action based information externalities in contrast with previous cascades literature cascades here are spontaneously dislodged and in general have a probability less than one of lasting forever furthermore the ability of individuals to communicate can reduce average decision accuracy and welfare

are grains of sand in the wheels of international finance sufficient to do the job when boulders are often required this paper criticises the effectiveness of a tobin tax in acting as a deterrent to short run round trip speculation on exchange rate movements it is demonstrated that given the usual magnitude of a proposed tobin tax the deterrent to short term speculation will be negligible and in all likelihood smaller than the deterrent to real trade flows and arbitrage activities finally an alternative proposal for preventing currency speculations while creating incentives for global full employment based on keynes s 1940s writings is proposed

bayesian learning in social networks we study the perfect bayesian equilibrium of a sequential learning model over a general social network each individual receives a signal about the underlying state of the world observes the past actions of a stochastically generated neighbourhood of individuals and chooses one of two possible actions the stochastic process generating the neighbourhoods defines the network topology we characterize pure strategy equilibria for arbitrary stochastic and deterministic social networks and characterize the conditions under which there will be asymptotic learning convergence in probability to the right action as the social network becomes large we show that when private beliefs are unbounded meaning that the implied likelihood ratios are unbounded there will be asymptotic learning as long as there is some minimal amount of expansion in observations we also characterize conditions under which there will be asymptotic learning when private beliefs are bounded

investment under uncertainty irreversibility and the arrival of information over time in this paper we consider a risk neutral competitive firm which is uncertain about the true state of demand we build upon arrow by demonstrating that the irreversibility of investment in physical capital together with the anticipation of receiving information and of learning the state of demand lead to 1 cautious investment behaviour and hence to lower investment levels than otherwise since the firm cannot disinvest if market conditions turn out to be less favourable than currently anticipated 2 a time varying risk premium or marginal adjustment cost which is shown to arise endogenously and to be positively related to the investment level and to the anticipation of greater information in the sense of blackwell 1951 1953 3 a gradual adjustment of the capital stock to the desired level defined as the optimal capital stock corresponding to the true state of demand

investment as a process of search this paper analyzes optimal capital accumulation in the face of structural uncertainty in which the firm does not fully know its own profit function and can discover it only through further investment it is shown that under structural uncertainty capital accumulation is gradual even when adjustment costs are linear and not convex it is further shown that structural uncertainty creates an incentive to market research the paper also presents an example of structural uncertainty in which an additional price uncertainty has a negative effect on investment contrary to the standard models

social learning and delay in a dynamic model of price competition abstract this paper studies dynamic price competition between two firms selling differentiated durable goods to two buyers whose valuations of the two goods depend on their own private type as well as that of the other buyer we derive a key intertemporal property of the equilibrium prices and construct an equilibrium based on this property we show that social learning reduces the equilibrium prices in the sense that when the buyers are more interdependent and hence have a stronger incentive to wait and see the firms respond by lowering their period 1 prices interestingly we find that this response by the firms along with the intertemporal property of the equilibrium prices implies that buyers delay their decisions less often when they become more interdependent

experimentation imitation and stochastic stability abstract do boundedly rational agents repeatedly playing a symmetric game with a unique symmetric equilibrium learn over time to play it in this paper we model the dynamic interaction of two types of such agents experimenters and imitators whose behavior is characterized by simple rules of thumb we find that the stochastic process describing their play isstable in the large it converges globally and with probability one to a compact neighborhood of the equilibrium however its local behavior near the equilibrium depends in interesting ways on the details of the model journal of economic literatureclassification number d83

energy technology roll out for climate change mitigation a multi model study for latin america in this paper we investigate opportunities for energy technology deployment under climate change mitigation efforts in latin america through several carbon tax and co2 abatement scenarios until 2050 we analyze what resources and technologies notably for electricity generation could be cost optimal in the energy sector to significantly reduce co2 emissions in the region by way of sensitivity test we perform a cross model comparison study and inspect whether robust conclusions can be drawn across results from different models as well as different types of models general versus partial equilibrium given the abundance of biomass resources in latin america they play a large role in energy supply in all scenarios we inspect this is especially true for stringent climate policy scenarios for instance because the use of biomass in power plants in combination with ccs can yield negative co2 emissions we find that hydropower which today contributes about 800 twh to overall power production in latin america could be significantly expanded to meet the climate policies we investigate typically by about 50 but potentially by as much as 75 according to all models electricity generation increases exponentially with a two to three fold expansion between 2010 and 2050 we find that in our climate policy scenarios renewable energy overall expands typically at double digit growth rates annually but there is substantial spread in model results for specific options such as wind and solar power the climate policies that we simulate raise wind power in 2050 on average to half the production level that hydropower provides today while they raise solar power to either a substantially higher or a much lower level than hydropower supplies at present depending on which model is used also for ccs we observe large diversity in model outcomes which reflects the uncertainties with regard to its future implementation potential as a result of the challenges this co2 abatement technology experiences the extent to which different mitigation options can be used in practice varies greatly between countries within latin america depending on factors such as resource potentials economic performance environmental impacts and availability of technical expertise we provide concise assessments of possible deployment opportunities for some low carbon energy options for the region at large and with occasional country level detail in specific cases

how to decarbonize the transport sector this article investigates possible evolution pathways for the transport sector during the 21st century globally and in europe under a climate change control scenario we attempt to shed light on the question how the transport sector should best be decarbonized we perform our study with the global bottom up energy systems model tiam ecn a version of the tiam model that is broadly used for the purpose of developing energy technology and climate policy scenarios which we adapted for analyzing in particular the transport sector given the global aggregated perspective of tiam ecn that in its current version yields at every point in time a single co2 price for different forms of energy use across geographic regions and economic sectors it generates a decarbonization process that for the transport sector occurs later in time than for the power sector this merely reflects that emission reductions are generally cheaper for electricity production than for transportation and that it is thus cost minimizing to spend limited financial resources available for co2 emissions abatement in the power sector first in our scenarios the use of hydrogen in internal combustion engines and fuel cells rather than electricity as energy carrier and batteries to store it gradually becomes the dominant transport technology this outcome is in agreement with some recent publications but is at loggerheads with the current popularity of the electric car based on sensitivity analysis we conclude that even if the establishment of a hydrogen infrastructure proves about an order of magnitude more costly than modeled in our base case electricity based transportation only broadly emerges if simultaneously also the costs of electric cars go down by at least 40 with respect to our reference costs one of the explanations for why the electric car is today by e g entrepreneurs often considered the supposed winner amongst multiple future transportation options is that the decision horizon of many analysts is no more than a few decades instead of a full century electric cars fit better the current infrastructure than hydrogen fueled vehicles so that from a short time perspective covering the next decade or two investments are not optimally spent by establishing an extensive hydrogen distribution network hence the path dependency created by the present existence of a vast power transmission and distribution network can make electricity the most efficient choice for transportation but only if the time frame considered is short electric transportation generally proves the more expensive alternative in our long term perspective except when electric car costs are assumed to drop substantially

delay in contests abstract why is there delay in contests in this paper we follow and extend the line of reasoning of carl von clausewitz to explain delay for a given contest technology delay may occur if there is an asymmetry between defense and attack if the expected change in relative strengths is moderate and if the additional cost of investment in future strength is low

the applicability of marginal abatement cost approach a comprehensive review abstract the marginal abatement cost mac methodology is widely used in climate change policies policy makers rely on mac to assess feasible strategies and related costs to achieve emission reduction goals this paper introduces a variety of mac methodologies aiming at solving diverse problems which utilizes various calculable logic thus producing different results and implications this study applies a mind mapping method to capture differentiation of mac methods and systematically classify mac methodologies the applicability path analysis was proposed based on principles such as stakeholder type decision making objectives cost concept strategy mode and information scope our goal is to assess the applicability of different methodologies to reduce misuse by policy makers and to serve as a guide for subsequent research which might prompt and lead to the derivation of more consequential results in future studies the results of this study suggest that the complex method is not always better than the simplified method because policy makers are required to select the appropriate method according to the type of information needed it may even be suggested that mac could be reliable by ranking relative value of options compared with baseline rather than focusing on the absolute value of individual measures

learning and information aggregation in an exit game we analyze information aggregation in a stopping game with uncertain common payos players learn from their own private experiences as well as by observing the actions of other players we give a full characterization of the symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium and show that information aggregates in randomly occurring exit waves observational learning induces the players to stay in the game longer the equilibria display aggregate randomness even for large numbers of players

information revelation and strategic delay in a model of investment we model investment as an n player game with a pure informational externality each player s payoff depends only on his own action and the state of nature however because a player s action reveals his private information players wait to see what other players will do equilibrium is inefficient because delay is costly and information is imperfectly revealed we characterize the unique symmetric perfect bayesian equilibrium and study the robustness of delay which turns out to be sensitive to the reaction speed and the number of players we establish the following results i when the period length is very short the game ends very quickly and there is a form of herding or informational cascade which results in a collapse of investment ii as the period length increases the possibility of herding disappears iii as the number of players increases the rate of investment and the information flow are eventually independent of the number of players adding more players simply increases the number who delay iv in the limit the time profile of investment is extreme a period of low investment followed either by an investment surge or a collapse

persistence and reversal in herd behavior theory and application to the decision to go public we model rational herd behavior when the underlying value changes over time with payoffs that are either dependent or independent of the underlying value we show that herding does not last forever and is not monotone in signal quality high correlation among agents actions does not necessarily imply herding this suggests alternative empirical methods are needed to detect herding the model has many applications including the ipo decision in which payoffs are state dependent the model implies that the decision to go public is more likely associated with herding than the decision to delay an ipo copyright 2002 oxford university press

would a tobin tax have saved the ems this paper scrutinizes the claim by eichengreen tobin and wyplosz 1995 that a small tax on foreign exchange transactions would help to stabilize the european monetary system we present a target zone model a la svensson 1994 in which an optimizing government is faced with a trade off between its foreign exchange and its domestic objectives the introduction of a tobin tax is shown to improve the credibility of the peg by relaxing the foreign exchange rate constraint and making it less costly for the government to stay in the fixed exchange rate system we calibrate the model using data on the french franc in 1991 93 and show that the stabilizing effect of a 0 1 tobin tax would have been quite sizeable copyright 1996 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

delay and information aggregation in stopping games with private information abstract we consider equilibrium timing decisions in a model with a large number of players and informational externalities the players have private information about a common payoff parameter that determines the optimal time to invest they learn from each other in real time by observing past investment decisions we develop new methods of analysis for such large games and we give a full characterization of symmetric equilibria we show that the equilibrium statistical inferences are based on an exponential learning model although the beliefs converge to truth learning takes place too late ex ante welfare is strictly between that without observational learning and that with full information