market based biogas sector development in least developed countries the case of cambodia in many of the least developed countries the energy security conundrum is how to provide affordable safe and clean energy to a low income rural population household level generation of biogas from animal waste for both cooking and lighting while producing high quality organic fertiliser is increasingly proposed as a viable part of the solution for farming households since the early 1990s international development organisations often in cooperation with the national government have attempted to introduce biogas technologies in many least developed countries but most initiatives failed in this landscape of failed biogas development programmes the national biodigester programme nbp cambodia started in 2006 with the aim to establish a permanent market oriented and self financed biogas sector the results show the development of a sustainable domestic biodigester sector a rapid diffusion of biodigesters among poor rural households but still ambivalences on financial independency from external funding and carbon finance the conclusion is that a pure market model for biogas development in the rural area of the least developed countries will not easily work governmental regulation and coordination will remain needed and carbon finance will not easily fully replace oda and governmental financial support

modeling the effects of adjustment programs on income distribution abstract this paper introduces the general structure of the micro macro economywide simulation model maquette used in several case studies on the impact of adjustment policies on the distribution of income the description of the maquette emphasizes how the short and medium run effects of adjustment packages are incorporated in a general equilibrium model and explains the common structure and variants in the specification and estimation of relationships in product factor financial and foreign exchange markets simulations are used to illustrate the role of differences in assumptions about market adjustment mechanisms e g fix price or flex price closed or open financial system on the effects of adjustment policies on the distribution of income adjustment to an external shock through devaluation or through fiscal retrenchment is then contrasted for an economy with different degrees of financial and foreign trade openness the simulations show that assumptions about macroeconomic closures and behavioral parameters matter a great deal in determining the productive and distributive effects of a shock and a country s adjustment to that shock

migration remittances and the family remittances by migrants along with migration itself are elements in a migrant familys intertemporal contractual arrangement the reasons why the migrant and his family voluntarily enter into a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement with each other rather than with a 3rd party are discussed and the conditions under which the contractual arrangement is self enforcing are identified both parties can usually benefit from a number of pareto efficient mutual contractual arrangements this gives rise to an indeterminacy problem solved through a bargaining process between the parties who consequently converge to a contractual arrangement implying a specific flow of migrant to family remittances the chosen contractual arrangement reflects the relative bargaining powers of the parties and variables impinging upon these powers thus bear upon remittances in the light of these arguments tests are conducted on observed remittance behavior across individual migrants in botswana authors

remittances financial development and growth abstract despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied this paper studies one of the links between remittances and growth in particular how local financial sector development influences a country s capacity to take advantage of remittances using a newly constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints this finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used and is robust to a number of robustness tests including threshold estimation we also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population

as a renewable energy hydropower for sustainable development in turkey the most important renewable sources are hydropower biomass geothermal solar and wind turkey s geographical location has several advantages for extensive use of most of these renewable energy sources in recently electricity has demand increased significantly it is the fastest growing end use of energy therefore technical economic and environmental benefits of hydroelectric power make it an important contributor to the future world energy mix in the world particularly in the developing countries renewable energy resources appear to be one of the most efficient and effective solutions for sustainable energy development in turkey turkey s geographical location has several advantages for extensive use of most of the renewable energy sources this paper deals with policies to meet increasing energy and electricity demand for sustainable energy development in turkey turkey has a total gross hydropower potential of 433 gwh year but only 125 gwh year of the total hydroelectric potential of turkey can be economically used

growth equity and the environment in chile issues and evidence abstract chile has grown at an annual rate of 7 over the past decade income distribution however deteriorated for the poor and middle class before the economy reached full capacity when real wages began to rise and unemployment to fall growth has been export led putting pressure on stocks of native forests and fishery and mining resources environmental quality worsened before 1990 reversing these trends would require extra investments on the order of 1 of gdp over many years

migration remittances and inequality a sensitivity analysis using the extended gini index abstract this paper uses the extended gini inequality index to examine the sensitivity of measurements of impacts of migrant remittances on the distribution of household income by size to different value judgements when measuring inequality the results illustrate the robustness of earlier findings that the impacts of migration on village income distributions differ for different types of migration and for different periods in a village s migration history the magnitude of these impacts however appears to be quite sensitive to the weights attached to incomes at different points in the village income distribution for example in a village with considerable mexico to u s migration experience remittances from mexico to u s migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution however the extended gini analysis shows that this favorable impact decreases as more weight is attached to incomes in the poorest households this finding is consistent with the view that barriers to high paying mexico to u s migration work exist for households at the bottom of the village income distribution

renewable micro generation of heat and electricity review on common and missing socio technical configurations abstract a widespread adoption of distributed generation dg technologies in energy systems can play a key role in creating clean reliable energy and support the targets of emission reduction a transition from current modes of production to a significant deployment of renewable energy technologies can fundamentally affect the structure of the industry and change the way energy is produced transmitted and sold the current paper provides an extended review of the socio technical configurations of micro generation based on journal publications and reports during the 21st century the paper analyses currently existing and missing configurations and discusses technology and policy implications to support proliferation of micro generation technology and local energy production from renewable sources the potential for new configurations can be found particularly in heat producing micro generation with solar heat heat pumps and biomass developing further the operations and maintenance of distributed generation technologies and business models appears an area that calls for further innovation and corresponding innovation policy measures third party service and community driven deployment models can aide the proliferation of distributed generation and further innovation therein justifying the introduction of feed in tariffs to attract such models during their early diffusion

adjustment and social costs in chile during the 1980s abstract traditional analysis of adjustment programs tends to underestimate the welfare costs because it assumes that a contraction of nontradable production will close the expenditure income gap while the resulting excess supply of tradables will automatically be exported in chile however tradable output contracted sharply falling almost two thirds as much as nontradable output the conventional analysis also ignores the effect of adjustment on unemployment rates and on real wages this paper argues that the adjustment measures of the 1980s were regressive even though the government was successful in targeting its expenditures toward the very poor during the period of fiscal retrenchment among the regressive adjustment measures were the subsidies to holders of dollar denominated debt provided by the central bank in addition policies to reduce expenditures raised the unemployment rate over 26 reduced real wages by 20 for almost five years and reduced health housing and education budgets by 20 per capita finally the required real devaluation raised the cost of living for the poor

optimal installation of small hydropower plant a review abstract most of the countries have access to large amounts of water through rivers and canal with this renewable resource electricity can be generated without polluting the environment because of the increasing in electricity demand it is important to estimate the future potential of hydropower it would then be possible to plan development through mix of energy and implement measures to control the development of the electricity market by the use of sustainable small hydropower projects in the present paper attempt has been made to review the different types of model developed to evaluate the cost of the small hydropower projects a review on the different types of correlations developed by earlier investigators has also been presented the present review attempts to cover the benefits such as clean development mechanism cdm internal rate of return irr for financial viability of such projects a review on the different types of optimization techniques is also been presented to minimize the cost of the installation of shp projects

investment timing and optimal capacity choice for small hydropower projects this paper presents a method for assessing small hydropower projects that are subject to uncertain electricity prices we present a real options based method with continuous scaling and we find that there is a unique price limit for initiating the project if the current electricity price is below this limit it is never optimal to invest but above this limit investment is made according to the function for optimal size the connection between the real option and the physical properties of a small hydropower plant is dealt with using a spreadsheet model that performs a technical simulation of the production in a plant based on all the important choices for such a plant the main results of the spreadsheet are simulated production size and the investment costs which are in turn used for finding the value of the real option and the price limit the method is illustrated on three different norwegian small hydropower projects

the shadow value of migrant remittances income and inequality in a household farm economy this article offers econometric evidence that income remittances sent home by family migrants stimulate household farm incomes indirectly by relieving credit and risk constraints on household farm production a high but unequally distributed shadow value of migrant remittances appears to reinforce an equalising direct effect of remittances on the income distribution across a sample of household farms in rural mexico

business models of heat entrepreneurship in finland abstract this paper presents the business models of small scale heat energy production in finland firstly the development of heat entrepreneurship in the country is presented including the remarkable growth of small and medium size enterprises smes in the last 15 years secondly the concept of business model business architecture of product service flows and earning logics is modified to the framework of wood heat production the business model concept and its sub concepts is applied in a brief review of current heat energy businesses in finland we arrive at a business model of heat entrepreneurships that are public companies utilities public private partnerships private companies and cooperatives energy saving company esco network model of large enterprise and franchising descriptive cases of these models are presented finally the paper concludes with a discussion on the applicability of the business models in different operational environments and geographical contexts

remittance receipts and allocation a study of three african countries remittances may influence household expenditures poverty rates development and investments in the receiving country using world bank survey data from ethiopia uganda and kenya the influence of remitters and recipients characteristics on remittance amounts and allocation is examined effects of the remitter receiver characteristics on remittance amounts are generally similar between countries such similarities imply a potential similar effect of policies in these countries age household income frequency of communication family relations with remitter and country the recipient resided in influence remittance allocation recipients in ethiopia and uganda are more likely to allocate remittance towards savings than those in kenya

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

manufacturing output employment and real wages in the 1980s labour s loss until the century s end during the 1980s most developing countries experienced sharp declines in manufacturing output and real wages whilst their manufacturing sectors were supposedly restructured or made more competitive by having to confront market forces this article examines the extent to which macroeconomic adjustment and industrial restructuring policies succeeded in achieving their objectives

do international migration and remittances reduce poverty in developing countries summary few studies have examined the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in the developing world this paper fills this lacuna by constructing and analyzing a new data set on international migration remittances inequality and poverty from 71 developing countries the results show that both international migration and remittances significantly reduce the level depth and severity of poverty in the developing world after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international migration and controlling for various factors results suggest that on average a 10 increase in the share of international migrants in a country s population will lead to a 2 1 decline in the share of people living on less than 1 00 per person per day after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international remittances a similar 10 increase in per capita official international remittances will lead to a 3 5 decline in the share of people living in poverty

the postsocialist transitions in comparative perspective policy issues and recent experience abstract this paper examines the postsocialist transition in eastern europe the reforms in china and the postdirigiste transitions in latin america the paper analyzes the initial conditions that gave rise to processes of reform in the different countries the main strategies for economic reform shock treatment gradualism and mixed strategies discussing their conditioning factors and rationale the actual record of these policies in terms of key indicators of economic performance such as inflation gdp growth external sector sustainability progress in privatization and the social costs of adjustment in addition the paper discusses interdependencies between economic and political reforms during the course of systemic transformation

revisiting the threshold effect of remittances on total factor productivity growth in south asia a study of bangladesh and india abstractboth bangladesh and india are among the top recipient of remittances in absolute terms however in relative terms remittances as a per cent of gdp the two countries stand at 6 1 and 2

techno economic evaluation of small hydro power plants in greece a complete sensitivity analysis abstract hydropower has by far been the most mature renewable energy resource used for electricity generation in our planet recently the investors interest was whipped up by the mass development of small hydropower shp stations as they are the most prosperous for additional hydropower penetration in developed electricity markets in greece the increasing interest for building shp stations got off the ground since 1994 ever since an enormous number of requests keep piling up in the greek regulatory authority of energy and the ministry of development with the object of creating new shp stations of total capacity over 600 mw the present work is concentrated on the systematic investigation of the techno economic viability of shp stations the study is concluded by a sensitivity analysis properly adapted for the local market financial situation in order to enlighten the decision makers on the expected profitability of the capital to be invested according to the results obtained the predicted internal rate of return irr values are greater than 18 for most shp cases analysed finally as per the sensitivity analysis carried out the installation capacity factor the local market electricity price annual escalation rate and the reduced first installation cost are found to be the parameters that mostly affect the viability of similar ventures

remittances institutions and economic growth summary there is considerable debate regarding the relative contribution of international migrants remittances to sustainable economic development while officially recorded remittances to developing countries have increased over the last decade research has not come to a consensus over whether remittances have a positive or negative impact on long run growth this paper argues that contradictory findings have emerged when looking at the remittances growth link because of an omitted variable bias specifically remittances will be more likely to contribute to longer term growth in countries with higher quality political and economic policies and institutions

on the causal nexus of remittances and poverty reduction in bangladesh the aim of this article is to investigate the causal relationship between remittances and poverty reduction in bangladesh over the period 1976 to 2010 this issue is of fundamental importance for the developing economy of bangladesh we apply newly developed methods by hacker and hatemi j 2006 2012 that are based on simulations and are robust to the violation of statistical assumptions especially when the sample size is small as is the case in this article our estimation results reveal that causality nexus of poverty and remittances is bi directional we also find that the causal impact of poverty reduction on remittance is stronger than the reverse impact this finding implies that bangladeshi policy makers can influence remittances through poverty reduction in the long run

on migration and risk in ldcs the authors develop the hypothesis that aversion to risk rather than expectations of higher income is the primary motivation for rural urban migration in developing countries this hypothesis maintains that an optimizing risk averse small farmer family will try to place a family member in the urban sector in order to diversify its income portfolio an additional hypothesis related to risk is also considered at the individual rather than the family level annotation

a closer look at small hydropower projects in india social acceptability of two storage based projects in karnataka abstract associated with being green clean and small scale small hydroelectric power shp projects generally enjoy a positive image in india shp promises answers to issues such as meeting a growing electricity demand facilitating lucrative investment opportunities and climate change considerations the features of being green clean and small scale have contributed to the assumption of shp as an essentially uncontested technology empirical studies questioning this assumption are scarce research on shp has so far remained rather hypothetical and policy level focused this article investigates the social acceptability of small hydroelectric plants in india by empirically looking at how people engage with these plants it thereby underlines the importance of studying technologies in their local context based on a detailed case study analysis of two shp projects in karnataka india the article shows how shp projects are contested on the local level the engagement of local people played a crucial role in the contestation of the plants and led to significant and unexpected outcomes and effects the article highlights the importance of having a broader perspective in the development of shp that goes beyond a mindset of technological fixes this includes taking account of existing water infrastructure and a broader range of water users the article shows that the implementation of shp projects does not take place in a void rather complex existing physical and social realities on the ground matter for the development and performance of shp

unequal but fluid social mobility in chile in comparative perspective a major finding in comparative mobility research is the high similarity across countries and the lack of association between mobility and other national attributes with one exception higher inequality seems to be associated with lower mobility evidence for the mobility inequality link is however inconclusive largely because most mobility studies have been conducted in advanced countries with relatively similar levels of inequality this article introduces chile to the comparative project as the 10th most unequal country in the world chile is an adjudicative case if high inequality results in lower mobility chile should be significantly more rigid than its industrialized peers this hypothesis is disproved by the analysis despite vast economic inequality chile is as fluid if not more so than the much more equal industrialized nations furthermore there is no evidence of a decline in mobility as the result of the increase in inequality during the market oriented transformation of the country

migration remittances and inequality estimating the net effects of migration on income distribution this paper examines the net effects of migration and remittances on income distribution potential home earnings of migrants are imputed as are the earnings of non migrants in migrant households in order to construct no migration counterfacmals to compare with the observed income distribution including remittances the earnings functions used to impute migrant home earnings are estimated from observations on non migrants in a selection corrected estimation framework which incorporates migration choice and labor force participation decisions for a sample of households in bluefields nicaragua migration and remittances increase income inequality when compared with the no migration counterfactual 1998 elsevier science b v

micro hydro power in the uk the role of communities in an emerging energy resource research around micro hydro power is focused on technical aspects with limited understanding of the social organisation and environmental implications we examine the ways in which micro hydro is engaged by people and organisations as a means of contributing to the uk s policy ambition for renewable energy we bring to the fore the way in which expertise is used and contested a web based review of micro hydro schemes in the uk was undertaken and a detailed evaluation of two schemes in the north of england was conducted to determine how expertise and contestation figures in community schemes results demonstrate a rapid expansion of micro hydro in the uk ownership control is highly community based until now research around micro hydro has been dominated by technical approaches with schemes defined in terms of hardware we propose a third dimension to walker and cass s 2007 classification of renewable energy developments the environmental dimension we suggest this dimension of micro hydro is critical both in terms of the extent to which resources can be realised but also the ways in which it might attract controversy in particular around how expertise is used and valued