pro environmental households and energy efficiency in spain the residential building sector is a major driver of current and future energy consumption and associated emissions which can be potentially mitigated through significant energy efficiency ee improvements in both emerging and developed countries yet there are several persistent barriers that hinder the attainment of ee improvements in this area using data from a 2008 national representative survey of spanish households this paper is interested in the determinants of ee related decisions in particular a discrete choice model empirically analyzes whether pro environmental households are more likely to invest in ee and to adopt daily energy saving habits we show that households with eco friendly behaviors are more likely to investment in well differentiated ee measures as well as to steer daily habits towards energy savings however no effects are found for households with environmental attitudes based on stated willingness to pay to protect the environment in addition to this households belonging to higher income groups and education levels are more likely to invest in ee but not to adopt energy saving habits while households with older members are less likely to invest in ee and show fewer eco friendly habits

design for the environment a quality based model for green product development green product development which addresses environmental issues through product design and innovation as opposed to the traditional end of pipe control approach is receiving significant attention from customers industries and governments around the world in this paper we develop a quality based model for analyzing the strategic and policy issues concerning the development of products with conflicting traditional and environmental attributes on the demand side of the problem we use the framework of conjoint analysis to structure the preferences of the ordinary and green customers on the supply side we apply the theories in optimal product design and market segmentation to analyze the producer s strategic decisions regarding the number of products introduced and their prices and qualities on the policy side we evaluate the effects of environmental standards on the economic and environmental consequences of green product development by jointly considering the interactions among the customers preferences the producer s product strategies and the environmental standards imposed by governments we present some interesting findings that can be used to manage and regulate the development of green products two major findings show that green product development and stricter environmental standards might not necessarily benefit the environment

liquidity flows and fragility of business enterprises abstract this paper develops a macroeconomic model in which funds are channeled to entrepreneurs through long term relationships between entrepreneurs and lenders the flow of funds to a relationship may be low causing it to break up due to insufficient liquidity multiple pareto ranked steady states emerge from complementarity between financial intermediation reflected by the number of relationships and households incentives to provide funds this complementarity also serves as a mechanism for propagating aggregate shocks financial collapse may become inescapable if a shock destroys sufficiently many relationships

monetary and financial interactions in the business cycle this paper develops a computable general equilibrium model in which endogenous agency costs can potentially alter business cycle dynamics the model resembles the influential theoretical work of ben bernanke and mark gertler 1989 two sources of shocks are considered productivity shocks and monetary shocks the model is parametrized to match key features of u s aggregate activity the principal result of the analysis is that agency costs add very little to the basic business cycle dynamics copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

the liquidity effect and money demand abstract i suggest a liquidity effect model in which financial intermediation costs are determined by aggregate economic activity an expansionary monetary shock leads to a persistent contraction in the loan deposit rate spread a persistent liquidity effect and a persistent real expansion a feature of this expansion is that nominal prices respond sluggishly to monetary shocks as an equilibrium outcome

modelling household energy expenditures using micro data this paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy in the united kingdom at the level of the individual household a two stage budgeting model of household demand for energy conditional on durable ownership is developed at the first stage income is allocated between energy and nonenergy consumption while at the second stage energy expenditure is disaggregated the second stage allocation is assumed to be between gas electricity and a composite good other fuels estimation takes place using a sample of some 50 000 households drawn from the annual u k family expenditure survey for the years 1972 83 a source that has not been fully exploited in the analysis of energy demand to date copyright 1989 by royal economic society

green hypocrisy environmental attitudes and residential space heating expenditure popular media make claims of a green hypocrisy groups which have the strongest attitude towards the environment also have the highest emissions this study examines whether environmental behaviours beliefs and attitudes are associated with space heating energy use in the uk in order to test for evidence of a green hypocrisy in the uk the largest proportion of household energy use is for space heating we find that environmental behaviours are negatively correlated with heating expenditures while environmentally friendly attitudes and perceptions are not associated with lower heating expenditure further the effect of these attitudes and behaviours does not change as income increase there seems to be little evidence of a green hypocrisy amongst the uk public with respect to space heating

credit mismatch and breakdown abstract this paper studies the phenomenon of mismatch in a decentralized credit market where borrowers and lenders must engage in costly search to establish credit relationships our dynamic general equilibrium framework integrates incentive based informational frictions with a matching process highlighted by i borrowers endogenous market entry and exit decision entry frictions and ii time and resource costs necessary to locate credit opportunities search frictions a key feature of the incentive compatible loan contract negotiated between borrowers and lenders is the interaction of informational frictions in the form of moral hazard with entry and search frictions we find that the removal of entry barriers can eliminate incentive based equilibrium credit rationing more generally entry and incentive frictions are important in understanding the extent of credit rationing and credit mismatch while search and incentive frictions are important for understanding credit market breakdown

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

search financial market frictions and monetary transmission this paper evaluates the implications of search and matching frictions in the financial market for the bank lending channel of monetary policy borrowers and lenders participate in a decentralized loan market for the purpose of establishing long term credit relationships and the provision of loanable funds to productive firms locating credit relationships is costly in terms of time and real resources and the interest rate is negotiated via a bargaining mechanism this structure is incorporated into an otherwise standard monetary business cycle framework and used to study how such frictions in the credit market contribute to explaining the contemporaneous impact and propagation of monetary growth shocks and inflation while anticipated inflation negatively impacts real activity it can also increase loan market participation and the inflow of newly established credit relationships it is shown that i bargaining and costly search mitigates the traditional inflation tax effect of monetary injections and ii the existence of long term lending relations tends to dampen liquidity effects monetary shocks in this environment lead to larger liquidity effects relative to the frictionless case and are capable of generating persistence in the nominal interest rate labor consumption and output it can also explain the excess volatility of credit creation relative to output and the observation that overall credit creation can lead output over the business cycle

transaction services inflation and welfare this paper is motivated by empirical observations on the comovements of currency velocity inflation and the relative size of the credit services sector we document these comovements and incorporate into a monetary growth model a credit services sector that provides services that help people economize on money our model makes two new contributions first we show that direct evidence on the appropriately defined credit service sector for the united states is consistent with the welfare cost measured using an estimated money demand schedule second we provide estimates of the welfare cost of inflation that have some new features

gross loan flows we present a series of stylized facts about gross loan flows and how they vary over time bank size and region we define loan creation as the sum of the change in bank loans at all banks that increased loans since last quarter loan destruction is similarly defined as the absolute value of the change in loans at all banks that decreased loans the gross flow akin to what the labor literature calls reallocation is the sum of creation and destruction

energy consumption for space heating a discrete continuous approach energy demand for space heating is estimated using a discrete continuous choice model which focuses on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and energy consumption the model is estimated on norwegian micro data and the two stages of the model are estimated simultaneously the capital cost and the operating cost of the heating systems are both found to have a significant impact on the choice of heating system furthermore the results show that household characteristics are important variables in residential energy models energy price elasticities and income elasticities are also estimated

liquidity loanable funds and real activity abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of two traditional explanations of the monetary black box linking money and real activity the liquidity effect and the loanable funds effect these effects are modeled with a monetary production economy in which central bank injections of cash are funnelled into the economy through the credit market since only borrowers have direct access to the newly injected cash monetary injections cause nominal interest rates to fall if firms are borrowers then monetary injections also increase current and future real activity

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in great britain in great britain several policy measures have been implemented in order to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions in the domestic sector this could for example be achieved by improving space heating efficiency and thus decreasing heating expenditure however in order to efficiently design and implement such policy measures a better understanding of the determinants affecting heating expenditure is needed in this paper we examine the following determinants socio economic factors building characteristics heating technologies and weather conditions in contrast to most other studies we use panel data to investigate household demand for heating in great britain our data sample is the result of an annual set of interviews with more than 5000 households starting in 1991 and ending in 2005 the sample represents a total of 64 000 observations over the fifteen year period our aim is to derive price and income elasticities both for britain as a whole and for different types of household our results suggest that differences exist between owner occupied and renter households these households react differently to changes in income and prices our results also imply that a number of socio economic criteria have a significant influence on heating expenditure independently of the fuel used for heating understanding the impacts of different factors on heating expenditure and impact differences between types of household is helpful in designing target oriented policy measures

environmental impact of the substitution of imported soybean meal with locally produced rapeseed meal in dairy cow feed abstract growing public concerns about the traceability safety and environmental friendliness of food products provide an incentive for shorter supply chains in agricultural production here we assessed the environmental impacts of the substitution of imported soybean meal with locally produced rapeseed meal in french dairy production systems using a life cycle approach two feeding rations based on either french produced rapeseed meal or brazilian produced soy meal as concentrates were compared for nine impact categories including global warming ecotoxicity and eutrophication crop production was the main contributor to most impacts while overseas transport of soy meal only had a marginal effect the soybean ration appeared more environmentally efficient than the rapeseed ration because it involved less intensive management practices in particular regarding synthetic fertilizers consumption however land use changes brought about by soybean cultivation should also be examined

a resilience based policy evaluation framework application to european rural development policies abstract given the major changes that rural areas have undergone and are continuing to undergo serious problems of achieving sustainable development are being experienced these changes have multiple characters varying from changes in ecosystem conditions to changes in socio economic impacts due to for example food and financial crises nowadays there is an increasing awareness of the need to develop rural policies that support adaptive strategies of stakeholders in response to a disturbance we propose that resilience thinking offers a framework that could be helpful in the governance of rural changes this framework is based on the complexity of the social ecological system and takes into account the unpredictable future as it emphasizes adaptive approaches to management as such it helps evaluate to what extent rural development policies contribute to the resilience of rural areas nine criteria were developed including thirteen specifications in order to evaluate the usability and usefulness of the proposed framework a case study has been performed that specifically investigated the degree of resilience of a european rural development policy i e the spending of extra funds generated through compulsory modulation under the 2009 health check in the netherlands

demand for space heating in apartment blocks measuring effects of policy measures aiming at reducing energy consumption abstract panel data covering the period 1984 1995 on energy consumption and technical characteristics of apartment blocks from denmark are analysed in order to measure effects of policy measures aimed at reducing the consumption of energy for space heating results indicate that building regulations have been important in reducing energy consumption in new buildings furthermore conditional price responses are estimated to be relatively small or non existent indicating small short run effects of fuel taxes on energy consumption in apartment blocks finally a consultancy scheme implemented with the purpose of improving knowledge about the potential for energy savings is found to have had moderate effects

heterogeneous borrowers liquidity and the search for credit abstract we develop a general equilibrium model of credit formation where borrowers and lenders must search for matches and where the composition of borrowers adjusts to satisfy equilibrium entry conditions when market liquidity dries up as a result of fundamental shocks to the system fewer borrowers will participate in the credit market with low quality borrowers suffering disproportionately because of a flight to quality however less liquid credit markets need not be associated with lower social output because the effect of higher average quality may outweigh that of reduced market participation depending crucially on the source of the liquidity shock

ecosystem services and agriculture cultivating agricultural ecosystems for diverse benefits crop and rangelands are over 25 of the earth s land area and they are expanding agricultural ecosystems rely on a suite of supporting ecosystem services to provide food fiber and fuel as well as a range of accompanying but non marketed ecosystem services es ecosystem services from agriculture include regulation of water and climate systems aesthetic and cultural services as well as enhanced supporting services such as soil fertility many of these es are appreciated by people but they lack markets so they lack the incentives for provision that come with prices for public policy decisions to take them into account non market valuation techniques are needed such as travel cost contingent valuation hedonic valuation and cost based or factor income approaches this article offers an overview of es from agriculture and non market valuation methods as it introduces the articles in this special section on ecosystem services and agriculture understanding how ecological functions generate es is fundamental to management but so too is understanding how humans perceive and value those services research is required both to design cost effective incentives to provide es and to measure which kinds of es could provide the greatest overall welfare benefits to society agricultural ecosystems offer newly recognized potential to deliver more diverse ecosystem services and mitigate the level of past ecosystem disservices this special section of ecological economics conveys both how these are becoming possible and the challenges to science and public policy design of turning that potential into reality

the role of risk and trust attitudes in explaining residential energy demand evidence from the united kingdom recent research into the determinants of household energy consumption has aimed to incorporate findings from economics sociology and psychology in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors determining energy demand the current paper contributes to this nascent stream of literature by studying the relationship between risk attitudes trust propensity and energy consumption at the household level drawing on the british household panel survey a well known data set in the context of energy studies i show that trust is negatively correlated with household energy demand while higher risk tolerance leads to increases in residential energy use potential explanations for these findings are investigated suggesting that risk preferences may be related with overall appliance stock and the size of the rebound effect

interactions in swiss households energy demand a holistic approach abstract this article analyzes the interactions and possible trade offs between direct energy consumption and embodied energy requirement of households in switzerland in order to assess the net impacts of standard energy policies focusing exclusively on direct energy use direct and embodied energy demand of swiss households are estimated by combining consumption data of a national expenditure survey with data on energy intensity from life cycle analysis using a system of equations and an instrumental variable approach we find that both domains are driven by same determinants but that there is no evidence for significant substitution between them we also find an increasing effect of income on both domains with particularly important effects on embodied energy from a policy perspective our findings highlight a concern that economic growth could bring about an increasing global energy demand through energy requirement for non energy commodities however the wide spread policies targeting direct energy are unlikely to cause a substantial shift in household consumption to embodied energy

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

business cycles and labor market search the quantitative implications of labor market search for economic fluctuations are evaluated in the context of a real business cycle model incorporating labor market search into the model is found to improve its empirical performance along several dimensions in particular hours now fluctuate substantially more than wages and the contemporaneous correlation between hours and productivity falls in addition the model replicates the observation that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons overall the empirical results suggest that the labor market search environment embodies a quantitatively important propagation mechanism copyright 1996 by american economic association

energy consumption for space heating of west german households empirical evidence scenario projections and policy implications abstract both the technical characteristics of buildings e g insulation standards and the utilisation patterns of households are important determinants of the space heating demand of private households therefore this paper examines to what extent socio economic characteristics of households household size social position income etc are suitable to explain household s behaviour concerning space heating given technical building characteristics on the other hand energy efficiency factors derived from technical simulation models are scrutinised the empirical basis of this analysis is the official household survey 1988 for west germany containing about 44 000 data sets therefrom it turns out that the german insulation standards of buildings have been less effective in the past than assumed on the basis of technical simulations by means of scenario calculations projections of the heating energy demand for space heating in the future are obtained sketching the effect of different possible socio economic developments on the space heating consumption and analysing different political options concerning building insulation standards for new buildings and the existing building stock

green returns to education does schooling contribute to pro environmental behaviours evidence from thailand we investigate whether there are green returns to education where formal education encourages pro environmental behaviours using nationally representative surveys on environmental issues in thailand to establish the causal relationship between education and green behaviours we exploit the instrumental variables strategy using the supply of state primary schooling i e the corresponding number of teachers per 1000 children which varies over time and across regions as the instrument while controlling for regional cohort and income effects we find that more years of schooling lead to a greater probability of taking knowledge based environmentally friendly actions a great deal but not cost saving pro environmental actions in addition the paper finds no significant impact of formal education on concern about global warming nor the willingness to pay for environmental tax

the cyclical behavior of household and business investment in a cash in advance economy abstract this paper focuses on a monetary explanation of two business cycle regularities i business and household investment are positively correlated and procyclical and ii business investment tends to lag household investment over the cycle our general equilibrium framework is essentially a standard cash in advance economy where households purchase both non durable and durable consumption goods and businesses accumulate productive capital financial intermediaries provide interest bearing deposits to households and loanable funds to finance business investment it is shown that the adaptation of particular interest rate rules by the monetary authority provides a mechanism to capture both the timing and direction of business and household investment the results are then discussed within the context of recent limited participation models which emphasize the liquidity effects of monetary shocks

the benefits of lending relationships evidence from small business data this paper empirically examines how ties between a firm and its creditors affect the availability and cost of funds to the firm we analyze data collected in a survey of small firms by the small business administration the primary benefit of building close ties with an institutional creditor is that the availability of financing increases we find smaller effects on the price of credit attempts to widen the circle of relationships by borrowing from multiple lenders increases the price and reduces the availability of credit in sum relationships are valuable and appear to operate more through quantities rather than prices

inflation and financial sector size abstract traditionally the cost of expected inflation has been seen as the shoeleather cost of going to the bank more often this paper focuses on the other side of these transactions i e on the increased production of financial services i construct a model in which households must make purchases either with money or with costly transactions services produced by firms in the financial services sector in the model a higher inflation rate leads households to substitute purchased transactions services for money balances thereby boosting the size of the financial services sector a test of the model using cross sectional data finds that the size of a nation s financial sector is strongly affected by its inflation rate the empirical results provide an alternative way to measure the costs of inflation these costs appear to be large