carbon prices and fuel switching a quasi experiment in electricity markets within the pennsylvania new jersey maryland electricity market delaware and maryland participate in the regional greenhouse gas initiative rggi but other states do not providing a quasi experimental setting to study the rggi program using a difference in difference framework we find that overall the rggi program led to 6 22 million short tons of co2 reduction per year in delaware and maryland or about 19 10 of the average total potential annual emissions in these two states from 2009 to 2013 counterintuitively however the reduction is mainly achieved through reduction of coal inputs and emission leakage instead of fuel switching from coal to natural gas or from fossil fuel coal and natural gas to non fossil fuel

utilities privatization and the poor lessons and evidence from latin america abstract the perception that privatization hurts the poor is growing and creating a backlash against the private provision of basic infrastructure services at the same time governments are finding themselves fiscally strapped searching for ways to finance the large investments needed to expand services to the poor in latin america a laboratory for privatization evidence exists which sheds light on the privatization experience this paper analyzes the channels through which the poor might either lose or gain from privatization examines the evidence accumulated on what has actually happened and then discusses the policy options available to decision makers who want to increase efficiency while at the same time dealing with the infrastructure needs of the poor that have been identified as being important for their welfare in that context the issue of whether welfare considerations should form part of the regulatory approach to privatized services is examined the paper s major aims are to shed light on the issue of who can and does benefit from privatization of utilities and to guide policy makers in the choices

oil windfalls and export diversification in oil producing countries evidence from oil booms abstract this paper examines the factors behind export diversification in oil countries specifically we investigate the impact of oil booms on export diversification through an empirical framework the paper finds that economy s export structure before the oil boom determines whether oil windfalls might affect the diversification process thus an oil boom negatively affects export diversification only if countries initially exhibit low levels of diversification in countries with a high level of diversification before the boom an oil boom has no impact on diversification these results are based on a large sample of 134 countries and are robust to various sensitivity analyses they are corroborated with data from the manufacturing sector which show that oil booms only reduce diversification in countries with a small manufacturing sector prior to the boom

aggregation effects on price and expenditure elasticities in a quadratic almost ideal demand system while it is well known that demand elasticities calculated at the macro level will in general differ from those calculated at the micro level because of aggregation effects there remain the questions of how large the effects are and how they vary with the degree of nonuniformity in the income distribution we explore those questions with models based on a quadratic version of the almost ideal demand system we investigate the elasticity differences theoretically and then calibrate the models and generate numerical results using income data for seven countries with widely different distributions the aggregation effects are found generally to be rather small even with highly nonuniform income distributions

leviathan resists the endogenous relationship between privatization and firm performance using a panel dataset of privatized cement firms in turkey this paper models and finds support for the simultaneous relationship between privatization and firm performance it is found that favorable short run performance weak market potential higher employment lower socio economic development concentrated voter preferences and weaker representation of right wing parties in the firms locality delay the timing of privatization the paper also finds that privatization increases output in the medium term by reducing the labor stock and promoting the adoption of more advanced technology such that production shifts from constant to decreasing returns to scale

benefits and challenges of electrical demand response a critical review advances in it control and forecasting capabilities have made demand response a viable and potentially attractive option to increase power system flexibility this paper presents a critical review of the literature in the field of demand response providing an overview of the benefits and challenges of demand response these benefits include the ability to balance fluctuations in renewable generation and consequently facilitate higher penetrations of renewable resources on the power system an increase in economic efficiency through the implementation of real time pricing and a reduction in generation capacity requirements nevertheless demand response is not without its challenges the key challenges for demand response centre around establishing reliable control strategies and market frameworks so that the demand response resource can be used optimally one of the greatest challenges for demand response is the lack of experience and the consequent need to employ extensive assumptions when modelling and evaluating this resource this paper concludes with an examination of these assumptions which range from assuming a fixed linear price demand relationship for price responsive demand to modelling the highly diverse distributed and uncertain demand response resource as a single centralised negative generator adopting fixed characteristics and constraints

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

how serious is the aggregation problem an empirical illustration heterogeneity in consumer behaviour may create problems with aggregation across consumers if so we may not be able to make correct inferences about behaviour based on aggregated data however using micro estimates to predict aggregate demand responses to policy changes may also create a bias if not aggregated properly this may sound like a catch 22 situation but it is not as it is possible to calculate both micro and aggregate demand responses based on microdata the size of the aggregation bias is an empirical question in this article we show how to calculate theoretically consistent aggregate demand responses we use both micro and macro data for norwegian household electricity consumption to illustrate the magnitude and direction of different aggregation biases we find considerable aggregation biases in particular when estimating with macro data

winners and losers from the privatization and regulation of utilities lessons from a general equilibrium model of argentina a computable general equilibrium cqe model is used to estimate the macroeconomic and distributional effects of the privatization and regulation of utilities in argentina begun in 1989 based on data available after the privatization that indicate different kinds of efficiency gains in electricity gas water and telecommunications both the privatization and effective regulation are estimated to yield significant macroeconomic benefits gains from the privatization accrue mainly to high income classes while gains from the effective regulation of newly privatized utilities accrue mainly to low income classes computable general equilibrium cge estimates of overall employment effects suggest that privatization was not a major contributor to the dramatic rise in unemployment in argentina between 1993 and 1995 this rise was more likely due to the tequila effect of an interest rate shock

infrastructure privatization and changes in corruption patterns the roots of public discontent abstract this paper offers a theory of how the degree of corruption that prevails in a society responds to changes in the ownership structure of major public service providers we show that there are cases in which privatization even though it fosters investments in infrastructure also opens the door to more corruption the public dissatisfaction towards privatization is then crucially affected by the changes in the degree and pattern of corruption our model thus helps understand the seemingly paradoxical situation prevailing in latin america where most studies find that privatizations have been efficiency enhancing and have fostered investments and at the same time popular dissatisfaction with the process is extremely high especially among the middle class we show that this line of explanation is consistent with the evidence from surveys in the region

the benefits of privatization evidence from mexico critics of privatization often argue that its benefits come at a high cost to society the authors test the validity of this criticism for mexico s privatization program one of the world s largest case by case programs assessing the performance of newly privatized firms in such areas as profitability and efficiency they find that these firms quickly close the gap with their peers in the private sector their findings suggest that the firms profit gains come from productivity gains 52 percent layoffs 33 percent and higher prices 15 percent

does the old age pension scheme improve household welfare evidence from india abstract as india s population has been ageing due to declines in fertility and mortality rates more policy emphasis has been placed on reducing poverty among the elderly the present study aims to examine the effect of indira gandhi national old age pension scheme ignoaps on household welfare indicators such as consumption expenditure income assets and poverty using the household longitudinal data based on the india human development survey in 2004 5 and 2011 12 we have applied the propensity score matching to build a counterfactual group and have used the propensity score weighted fixed effects model to eliminate time invariant unobservable household characteristics the results show that the ignoaps participation increased consumption expenditure food and non food expenditure and assets while reducing the household labour supply the sub sample estimations show that these effects are observed only when recipients are women however the results of difference in difference model imply that the poverty reducing effect deteriorated in 2011 12 after the government made several changes to programme specifications in 2007 this was likely because some households which accessed ignoaps after 2007 reduced the labour supply significantly while keeping the level of consumption

public health investments and the infant mortality gap evidence from federal sanitation interventions on u s indian reservations abstract to what extent do differential levels of investment in public health inputs explain observed differences in health outcomes across socioeconomic and racial groups this study investigates the impact of 3700 projects that were part of a widespread federal initiative to improve sanitation infrastructure on u s indian reservations starting in 1960 sanitation investment substantially reduced the cost of clean water for households leading to sharp reductions in both waterborne gastrointestinal disease and infectious respiratory disease among native american infants the sanitation program was quite cost effective in part because improvements in the overall disease environment also reduced infectious respiratory disease among nearby white infants despite the health externalities federal sanitation interventions explain almost forty percent of the convergence in native american and white infant mortality rates in reservation counties since 1970

gold exploitation and socioeconomic outcomes the case of burkina faso abstract in the early 2000s burkina faso launched several legal reforms aimed at increasing gold production this resulted in a gold mining boom making gold the main export product and the main source of economic growth of the country we hypothesize that gold extraction improved population living standards this paper investigates how the gold boom in burkina faso which began in 2007 has affected socioeconomic outcomes we use a simple theoretical model to motivate the testing of several hypotheses regarding these impacts employing a difference in differences strategy as well as panel data models we estimate the impacts using data from household surveys undertaken in 2003 and 2009 and administrative data consistent with our model the results suggest that areas hosting gold extraction have better average living standards in terms of headcount ratios poverty gaps and household expenditures than do areas without gold however the gold boom is also shown to have potentially increased local inequality and child labor in areas with these income gains these results demonstrate the importance of proactive government policy in mitigating negative welfare impacts

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

water for life the impact of the privatization of water services on child mortality while most countries are committed to increasing access to safe water and thereby reducing child mortality there is little consensus on how to actually improve water services one important proposal under discussion is whether to privatize water provision in the 1990s argentina embarked on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world including the privatization of local water companies covering approximately 30 percent of the country s municipalities using the variation in ownership of water provision across time and space generated by the privatization process we find that child mortality fell 8 percent in the areas that privatized their water services and that the effect was largest 26 percent in the poorest areas we check the robustness of these estimates using cause specific mortality while privatization is associated with significant reductions in deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases it is uncorrelated with deaths from causes unrelated to water conditions

impact of improved water services in informal neighbourhoods in ouagadougou abstractthis article examines the impact of a project to improve water services in underserved neighbourhoods in ouagadougou on household water access conditions we used the propensity score matching method to analyse data from a survey carried out in 2011 and found that the improvement project cut the cost of water neighbourhood wide by 94 cfa francs per cubic meter reduced the portion of this expense by 1 of the average household budget and cut the daily time to collect water by 10 13 min the results that we obtained through the propensity score matching method differ from those obtained by simply comparing the averages of the neighbourhoods participating in the project to those that did not participate this indicates that the propensity score matching method of impact evaluation is valuable in supplying decision makers with nonbiased estimates of the link between ease of access to water and poverty reduction

decentralization and pollution spillovers evidence from the re drawing of county borders in brazil decentralization can improve service delivery but it can also generate externalities across jurisdictional boundaries we examine the nature and size of water pollution externalities as rivers flow across jurisdictions panel data on water pollution in brazilian rivers coupled with county splits that change the locations of borders allow us to identify the spatial patterns of pollution as rivers approach and cross borders controlling for fixed effects and trends specific to each location the theory of externalities predicts that pollution should increase at an increasing rate as the river approaches the downstream exit border that there should be a structural break in the slope of the pollution function at the border and that a larger number of managing jurisdictions should exacerbate pollution externalities we find support for all four predictions in the data satellite data on growth in night time lights along rivers show that local authorities allow more settlements to develop close to rivers in the downstream portions of counties which is the likely underlying mechanism the border effects on pollution are not as pronounced when the cost of inter jurisdictional coordination is lower

empirical evidence on satisfaction with privatization in latin america since the 1980s privatization of formerly state owned firms has been extensively implemented by governments across latin america despite the fact that most evaluations of the process fail to find significant adverse efficiency and welfare effects there has been a strong surge in public discontent with such policy in the region this paper performs a systematic empirical analysis of the determinants of such dissatisfaction using survey data from latinobarometro covering 17 countries over the period 1998 2008 complemented by country level data on macroeconomic political and institutional aspects as well as data on privatization dissatisfaction appears to respond to absolute and relative welfare effects and the authors find a robust u shaped effect in term of education and income levels with individuals in the middle of such distributions being more critical with the outcome of privatizations

sensitivity of price elasticity of demand to aggregation unobserved heterogeneity price trends and price endogeneity evidence from u s data abstract price elasticity estimates of residential electricity demand vary widely across the energy economics and policy literature in this paper we seek to explain these findings using three nationwide datasets from the u s the american housing survey forms eia 861 and the residential energy consumption survey we examine the role of the sample period level of aggregation use of panel data use of instrumental variables and inclusion of housing characteristics and capital stock our findings suggest that price elasticities have remained relatively constant over time upon splitting our panel datasets into annual cross sections we do observe a negative relationship between price elasticities and the average price whether prices are rising or falling appears to have little effect on our estimates we also find that aggregating our data can result in both higher and lower price elasticity estimates depending on the dataset used and that controlling for unit level fixed effects with panel data generally results in more inelastic demand functions addressing the endogeneity of price and or measurement error in price with instrumental variables has a small but noticeable effect on the price elasticities finally controlling for housing characteristics and capital stock produces a lower price elasticity

income distribution and aggregation disaggregation biases in the measurement of consumer demand elasticities abstract we investigate the issue of aggregation and disaggregation biases in demand elasticities drawing on income distribution data for seven countries we calculate the likely range of differences between elasticities evaluated at average income and corresponding aggregate average elasticities

what do we learn about consumer demand patterns from micro data the aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand to do this we utilize a time series of repeated cross sections covering some 4 000 households in each of 15 years employing a number of different aggregation procedures we conclude that aggregate data alone are unlikely to produce reliable estimates of structural price and income coefficients however once certain aggregation factors as well as trend and seasonal components are included an aggregate model is not necessarily outperformed across all demand equations in terms of forecasting ability jel d12 c52 c31 the purpose of this paper is to develop a complete consumer demand system based on a time series of individual household data and to use it to measure the biases introduced into the study of consumer de mand behavior when aggregate data are used in place of the appropriate microeco nomic data we assess the suitability of ag gregate data through the impact on income and price elasticities and by evaluating the ability of both micro and aggregate based models to forecast aggregate consumer de mand the biases introduced by the use of aggregate data depend upon the way that household characteristics interact with in come and price effects and on departures of demand systems from linearity we explore the structure of microeconomic demand sys tems and the role of household characteris tics in the behavior of consumer demand both for the light this may shed on the pattern of future demands and for the im plications this behavior has for issues of aggregation consumer demand patterns typically found in micro data sets vary considerably across households with different household characteristics and with different levels of income we model this variability by making intercept and slope parameters in the budget share equations of our demand sys tem depend on household characteristics and by allowing for nonlinear total log expenditure terms in fact in theory consistent demand systems it is total ex penditure rather than disposable income that is allocated across goods we find that this general framework leads to a well specified data coherent demand system which is a quadratic extension of the popu lar almost ideal model of angus s deaton and john muellbauer 1980 the micro level estimates are shown to be sensitive to the treatment of endogeneity of total expen diture and to the specification of interaction terms with household characteristics in ad dition this specification is also shown to possess many attractive features for the evaluation of aggregate models

introduction to the jbes symposium on program and policy evaluation meyer each of the articles in this group relies on changes in state or provincial policies over time to identify the effect of policy changes states instituting reforms constitute the treatment group whereas nonreforming states are assumed to provide a valid control group the treatment control parison is made after differencing state observations across years for example in their article on canadian national health insurance jon gruber and maria hanratty use the fact that canadian provinces introduced national health insurance at different times to estimate the effect of national health insurance on changes in labor market outcomes the presumption is that contemporaneous changes in neighboring provinces provide a control for labor market trends that are unrelated to health care reform similarly in their article on minimum wages taeil kim and lowell taylor use the variation afforded by california s increase in the state minimum wage in the late 1980s the presumption underlying this work is that within narrowly defined sectors engaged in retail trade changes in employ

what determines access to piped water in rural areas evidence from small scale supply systems in rural brazil summary this paper investigates whether small scale water supply systems implemented and operated by water user associations increase access to piped water supply in rural brazil by more than systems by local governments starting from 15 to 16 in the year 2000 access rates in rural areas with water user associations increased to 33 4 in 2010 in areas with local government supply systems access rates only increased to 24 9 based on data from brazilian census and the national water and sanitation survey the empirical analysis in this paper shows that the observed difference is effectively due to project type choice additionally it points toward higher accountability as a potential reason for better results of community based projects in municipalities where social groups requested a new system before the local government started implementation and therefore public awareness for the project was higher the increase in access rates is comparable to the increase in municipalities with water user association projects the same is true if local media is present or political competition in local elections is higher as the effect of project type on access rates might be confounded by simultaneous drivers of project type choice and access rates the quantitative analysis is based on a difference in difference estimator in combination with kernel matching to overcome the endogeneity of project type the treatment effect revealed by this analysis is robust to various specification changes and the robustness checks show no structural differences between treatment and control groups that could bias the results the calculation of matching weights for the kernel matching is informed by semi structured interviews with academics and sector experts in brazil explaining the determinants of project choice the interviews highlight the political economy behind infrastructure expansion in rural brazil