capital as a factor of production in oecd agriculture measurement and data this article provides a farm sector comparison of levels of capital input for fourteen oecd countries for the period 1973 to 2002 the starting point for construction of a measure of capital input is the measurement of capital stock estimates of depreciable capital are derived by representing capital stock at each point of time as a weighted sum of past investments the weights correspond to the relative efficiencies of capital goods of different ages so that the weighted components of capital stock have the same efficiency estimates of the stock of land are derived from balance sheet data we convert estimates of capital stock into estimates of capital service flows by means of capital rental prices comparisons of levels of capital input among countries require data on relative prices of capital input we obtain relative price levels for capital input via relative investment goods prices taking into account the flow of capital input per unit of capital stock in each country

cleaner energy for sustainable future this special issue of the journal of cleaner production focuses on energy for sustainable future it is designed to mirror the increasing relevance of renewable energy sources and improved efficiency as crucial topics for practitioners in industry for governmental policy makers as well as for civic service providers researchers and educators the purpose of this special issue is to serve as a catalyst for dialogue the global warming related to co2 emissions coupled with steeply rising energy prices and the recent global financial institutional melt down are causing massive societal concerns and give rise to increasing demand for ways to improve societal and individual energy efficiency and for ways to shift increasingly to alternative low or non carbon based energy systems until recently industrial energy efficiency improvements have focused on improvements on efficiency rather than on the integration of renewable sources the aim of this special issue is the identification of policies to support the development and implementation of technologies and management approaches we can employ to make the transition to more sustainable societies the collection of papers in this special issue provide a foundation for students researchers scholars practitioners and policy makers interested in making sustainable development more than a metaphor the papers include focus upon ways for a improving industrial process to achieve improvements in energy efficiency b minimising waste disposals and reducing their impact through better management c reducing co2 emissions by making progress toward lower carbon renewable energy based systems d improving production of biofuels and hydrogen production systems facilitated by employing cleaner production and novel lca tools e improving integration of advanced materials and energy efficient equipment in different industrial sectors current and future developments in national and world economies are closely connected to sustainable efficient and safe usage of raw materials and upon energy based on cleaner production concepts and approaches that are ecologically and economically appropriate for the short and for the long term future of society these challenges have received considerable attention in the media and scientific journals over the last several years the idea of developing a specialised conference focussed upon them was put forward on various occasions focus upon them became reality on the 5th and 6th may 2008 in the historic castle of veszprem hungary the current premises of the hungarian academy of science which hosted the workshop the workshop was a stimulating event and an overwhelming success with nearly 100 contributors from africa north america asia and europe representing 28 countries after a comprehensive selection and thorough reviewing procedure 11 papers were selected for this special issue

testing for asymmetric information in insurance markets the first goal of this paper is to provide a simple and general test of the presence of asymmetric information in contractual relationships within a competitive context we also argue that insurance data are particularly well suited to such empirical investigations to illustrate this claim we use data on contracts and accidents to investigate the extent of asymmetric information in the french market for automobile insurance using various parametric and nonparametric methods we find no evidence for the presence of asymmetric information in this market

tracking distortions in agriculture china and its accession to the world trade organization this article examines the impacts of china s accession to the world trade organization wto on prices in its agricultural sector the analysis uses a new methodology to estimate nominal protection rates in china s agricultural sector before its accession to the wto these new measures account for differences in commodity quality within china and between china and world markets the analysis shows that some of china s agricultural commodities are well above world market prices and others are well below the article also assesses market integration and efficiency in china it finds high degrees of integration between coastal and inland markets and between regional and village markets the remarkable improvements in market performance in recent years mean that if increased imports or exports affect china s domestic price near the border producers throughout most of china will feel the price shifts

the role of transnational dimensions in emerging economy technological innovation systems for clean tech the technological innovation system tis framework and its system functions have become a popular analytical tool for the study of clean tech innovation there is increasing attention for the role of emerging economies in global clean tech innovation but the applicability of tis to emerging economies cases is not entirely straightforward a key issue is the limited geographical considerations in particular transnational dimensions in tis whereas earlier perspectives on innovation in emerging economies have stressed the role of such transnational dimensions this paper elaborates transnational tis actor networks and institutions categorizes these in relation to tis functions and describes their potential to induce or block tis development in emerging economies we draw on insights from the perspectives of national learning systems international technology transfer and global production networks for this purpose we conclude that the potential effects of these transnational dimensions may be accurately grasped by the existing list of system functions lending credence to its further application of the tis framework on emerging economy case studies policy makers in emerging economies should recognize these transnational dimensions and seek to optimize their potential effect on domestic tis development taking in to consideration a realistic assessment of its role in the global tis

co evolution entropy as a new index to explore power system transition a case study of china s electricity domain abstract power systems are bound to experience a long transition process which involves not only changes in technology but also changes in user practices regulations industrial networks infrastructures and cultures there are conflicts among these factors on account of the mutual uncoordinated changes which would hinder the development of power systems therefore keeping permanent coordination of numerous factors is a great challenge for the power system evolution current evaluation methods of power system evolution do not pay sufficient attention to the co evolution of factors particularly for technology society finance and policy as well as insight from innovation studies and the sociology of technology hence we propose a new index co evolution entropy which can indicate the positive negative entropy interaction coordinating system evolution then based on socio technical system we identify 14 factors participating in the evolution of power system from three layers landscape regime and niche finally we apply this index to china s electricity domain for identifying the evolution obstacles of non coordinates and propose a strategy to improve the system s co evolution results show that 1 the change in co evolution entropy from different layers has different characteristics for example the landscape mainly possesses negative entropy but the regime holds positive entropy 2 the power system s co evolution entropy changes from 0 043 to 0 154 and reaches the maximum 0 054 in 2000s which indicates that china s power system begins the coordinated development through a run in 3 the co evolution of the power system is hindered by too much policy intervention however technology innovation and electricity market opening could enhance its co evolution we also derive strategic policy recommendations from the analysis result and present a co evolution concept to improve the socio technical system

demand pull technology push and government led incentives for non incremental technical change abstract rising expectations about future demand for new technologies increase the incentives for investments in innovation by enlarging payoffs to successful innovations how well does this notion of demand pull apply to non incremental technological change when demand is largely attributable to actions by governments in this case inventors of the most important inventions did not respond positively to strong demand pull policies filing of highly cited patents declined precipitously just as demand for wind power created a multi billion dollar market three explanations for this apparent inconsistency with the demand pull hypothesis played a role 1 the rapid convergence on a single dominant design limited the market opportunity for non incremental technical improvements 2 even though the policies implemented were stringent enough to stimulate demand uncertainty in their longevity dampened the incentives for inventions that were likely to take several years to pay off and 3 alternative explanations such as declining r d funding and weakening presidential engagement on energy appear to have been important

demand and innovation schmookler re examined schmookler s demand pull hypothesis implying that innovation is a function of market demand has been widely accepted re reading schmookler s invention and economic growth we discover a statistical inadequacy re estimating his cross section results in a different way we find somewhat lower coefficients moreover the direction of causality appears to be far from obvious an independent cross sectional test of the schmookler hypothesis in the netherlands based on r d instead of patent data shows similar results the relationship between indicators of demand and innovation turns out to be generally weaker but in most cases still significant and the results suggest that there is a simultaneous relationship between demand and innovation the latter may be explained by the concept of the innovation multiplier which has implications for macro economic modelling 1 re reading schmookler schmookler s 13 finding of a strong relationship between investment in capital goods users industries and patent applications by capital goods producing sectors has been generally accepted by economists as evidence that patenting is a function of effective demand demand pull hypothesis quite a number of case studies have followed schmookier s seminal work but there have been

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

local demand pull policy and energy innovation evidence from the solar photovoltaic market in china abstract market demand is an important driver for inducing innovation with many empirical studies supporting the demand induced innovation hypothesis critiques of such studies however emphasize that new empirical evidence that can address existing empirical challenges is needed furthermore existing literature disagrees about whether the locus of demand pull policy matters in this paper we use empirical evidence from the distributed solar photovoltaic pv market in china to address the following questions 1 is there evidence of demand induced innovation 2 does the effect of local demand pull policy differ from the effect of non local demand pull policy on demand induced innovation to address these questions we develop and analyze an original database of pv balance of system bos patents in the distributed pv market filed between 2005 and 2014 in china our results support the demand induced innovation hypothesis and suggest that only local demand significantly induces pv bos innovations in the distributed pv market in china the different effects of local demand and non local demand emphasize the importance of local markets and local policies lending some support to bottom up approaches to clean energy governance

does government r d policy mainly benefit scientists and engineers conventional wisdom holds that the social rate of return to r d significantly exceeds the private rate of return and therefore r d should be subsidized in the u s the government has directly funded a large fraction of total r d spending this paper shows that there is a serious problem with such government efforts to increase inventive activity the majority of r d spending is actually just salary payments for r d workers their labor supply however is quite inelastic so when the government funds r d a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages using cps data on wages of scientific personnel this paper shows that government r d spending raises wages significantly particularly for scientists related to defense such as physicists and aeronautical engineers because of the higher wages conventional estimates of the effectiveness of r d policy may be 30 to 50 too high the results also imply that by altering the wages of scientists and engineers even for firms not receiving federal support government funding directly crowds out private inventive activity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

is a slowdown in agricultural productivity growth contributing to the rise in commodity prices a slowdown in the rate of agricultural productivity growth is thought by many observers to be contributing to the recent rise in agricultural prices in this article i decompose sources of output growth in global agriculture into aggregate input and total factor productivity tfp components and examine whether productivity growth slowed substantially in the years leading up to the recent rise in commodity prices contrary to widely held perceptions i find no evidence of a general slowdown in sector wide agricultural tfp at least through 2006 if anything the growth rate in agricultural tfp accelerated in recent decades however the results do show a slowdown in the growth of agricultural investment accelerating tfp growth largely offset decelerating input growth to keep the real output of global agriculture growing at about 2 per year since the 1960s regionally however agricultural productivity performance has been uneven these findings have important implications for the appropriate supply side policy response to the current agricultural price crisis

does european union environmental policy pass a costâ benefit test most european union countries are committed to some form of regulatory impact assessment and in some cases these assessments involve the formal use of cost benefit analysis the european treaty of union also calls for a comparison of costs and benefits for all european regulations despite this only a limited number of regulations have been subject to cost benefit analysis using a variety of sources this paper investigates whether or not a selection of major environmental regulations would pass a cost benefit test the general answer is that while some do most do not this finding has major implications for the efficiency of european environmental legislation and reflects on the willingness of member states to sign up to inefficient regulation

the economics of technical change this paper reviews the recent rapidly growing literature on technical change in the economy it concentrates on innovations and their diffusion at firm and industry level since this was the area designated as relatively weak in earlier literature surveys the review argues that the extensive empirical evidence and theoretical analysis now available presents a basic challenge to neoclassical theory after indicating some weaknesses in the neo schumpeterian literature the paper concludes by advocating an experiment with a new form of assessment by neighboring disciplines to economics itself which would take full account of the fundamental issues at stake in this modern methodenstreit c 1994 academic press inc copyright 1994 by oxford university press

how do policies for efficient energy use in the household sector induce energy efficiency innovation an evaluation of european countries abstract research on innovation induced by climate mitigation policy has been focused predominantly on the supply side of the energy system despite considerable climate mitigation potential on the demand side less attention is given to the innovation effect of policies addressing the household sector based on a comprehensive data set including 550 policy measures over 30 years 1980 2009 and covering 21 european countries we find based on econometric estimations that policies targeting efficient energy use in the household sector significantly increase the number of patented energy efficiency inventions a comparison of the different policy types reveals a particularly strong influence from financial subsidies and energy labels the results indicate that policies supporting early market adoption of energy efficient technologies are effective in fostering innovation

danish and norwegian wind industry the relationship between policy instruments innovation and diffusion this article compares the role of policy instruments in stimulating long term technological change in danish and norwegian wind industry it concludes that although predictability has periodically been low denmark s broad portfolio of policies and measures has been well adapted to the different stages in the development of its wind industry this has contributed to a high degree of innovation successful establishment in niche markets high degree of diffusion and establishment of domestic and international mass markets and in recent years an increasingly successful replacement of senescent technology with new the motivation of norway s wind energy policies and measures at least up until the late 1990s has been to increase power supply rather than to stimulate industrial development and technological change policies and measures have been weaker than in denmark have been less stable over time and stimulated the demand side much less they have not sufficiently covered the wind industry s perceived needs on different stages in the development of new technology and have not sufficiently stimulated continuous improvement learning and new product development dynamic efficiency in industry this has been part of the reason why there has been only a limited extent of innovation and diffusion of wind technology in norway

testing choice experiment for benefit transfer with preference heterogeneity benefit transfer is a cost effective method for estimating the value of environmental goods that relies on information obtained in previous studies the multiattribute approach of choice experiments should provide advantages in terms of benefit transfer allowing differences in environmental improvements between sites as well as differences in socioeconomic and attitude characteristics between respondent populations this article investigates the capability of choice experiment method to be used in environmental benefit transfer when a random parameters approach is used to allow for preference heterogeneity we find that the inclusion of respondents taste heterogeneity reduces the magnitude of the transfer error

is public r d a complement or substitute for private r d a review of the econometric evidence is public r d spending complementary and thus additional to private r d spending or does it substitute for and tend to crowd out private r d conflicting answers are given to this question we survey the body of available econometric evidence accumulated over the past 35 years a framework for analysis of the problem is developed to help organize and summarize the findings of econometric studies based on time series and cross section data from various levels of aggregation laboratory firm industry country the findings overall are ambivalent and the existing literature as a whole is subject to the criticism that the nature of the experiment s that the investigators envisage is not adequately specified we conclude by offering suggestions for improving future empirical research on this issue

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

the impact of china s economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth this paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post 1978 increase in china s agricultural productivity data on post 1978 chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases we also use our method to calculate incentive indices giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre 1978 regime

is there a relationship between public expenditures in energy r d and carbon emissions per gdp an empirical investigation abstract energy innovation plays a crucial role in the reduction of carbon emissions in order to design climate and energy policies that promote the development deployment and diffusion of new energy technologies policy makers not only require a theoretical understanding of the energy innovation system but also empirical evidence of the effects that policy actions have had this paper focuses on public energy r d a traditional and controversial option among the various climate technology policies and empirically analyses its relationship with carbon emissions per gdp i e carbon intensity and its two components energy intensity and the carbon factor evidence of the causality links that have prevailed in 13 advanced economies over the 1980 2004 period has been obtained through dynamic panel models our findings confirm that government r d spending is not sufficient by itself to boost the energy innovation process public energy r d has been successful in improving energy efficiency at country level but it has failed to have a significant impact on the carbon factor and carbon intensity at the same time the formation of energy r d budgets is found to be significantly affected by carbon trends

effects of policies on patenting in wind power technologies abstract this paper explores the effects of policies and other factors driving innovation in wind power technologies in twelve oecd countries over more than two decades patent counts are used as an indicator for innovation the factors considered are generally derived from the systems of innovation literature count data econometric model were used for the estimations the suggest that patenting in wind power technology is positively related to public r d in wind power reflecting supply side policy the stock of wind capacity reflecting learning effects the number of patents per capita reflecting a country s innovative capacity and the share of green party voters reflecting the legitimacy of the technology in particular the presence of production or capacity targets for wind power or renewable energy sources and a stable policy environment reflecting policy process appear to be favourable for patenting wind power technologies these results are robust to various model specifications distributional assumptions and alternative classifications of wind power technologies in the patent search

reforms the weather and productivity growth in china s grain sector we use disaggregate county level production data to study the effects of economic reform on china s grain production between 1980 and 1990 china s grain production area is divided into five regions based on geographic agronomic and meteorological criteria regional grain production functions are estimated and weather is explicitly modeled the institutional impact of economic reform was found to explain about 38 of the production growth from 1980 to 1985 this is lower than the estimates reported in many previous studies regional differences in efficiency gains from economic reform and in the effects of weather on grain production are found to be significant

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

research productivity and output growth in chinese agriculture recent attempts to quantify the sources of growth in chinese agriculture have attributed an exceptionally large share of this growth to the contemporary institutional and market reforms within china to analyze this important issue we use a newly constructed panel data set that includes an agricultural research or stock of knowledge variable our results suggest that while still a significant source of growth the direct growth promoting consequence of institutional change and market reforms have been overstated by these earlier studies research induced technical change accounts for a significant share 20 of the growth in agricultural output since 1965

ftt power a global model of the power sector with induced technological change and natural resource depletion abstract this work introduces a model of future technology transformations for the power sector ftt power a representation of global power systems based on market competition induced technological change itc and natural resource use and depletion it is the first component of a family of sectoral bottom up models of technology designed for integration into the global macroeconometric model e3mg itc occurs as a result of technological learning produced by cumulative investment and leads to highly nonlinear irreversible and path dependent technological transitions the model uses a dynamic coupled set of logistic differential equations as opposed to traditional bottom up energy models based on systems optimisation such differential equations offer an appropriate treatment of the times and structure of change involved in sectoral technology transformations as well as a much reduced computational load resource use and depletion are represented by local cost supply curves which give rise to different regional energy landscapes the model is explored for a single global region using two simple scenarios a baseline and a mitigation case where the price of carbon is gradually increased while a constant price of carbon leads to a stagnant system mitigation produces successive technology transitions leading towards the gradual decarbonisation of the global power sector

joint r d in low carbon technology development in china a case study of the wind turbine manufacturing industry abstract china faces the dual challenges of climate change and increased energy demand these challenges in turn increase the demand for wind energy development along with rapid growth in manufacturing capacity chinese companies have aspired to increase their innovation capacity in order to enhance their competitiveness in the market joint research and development r d is an attractive path for chinese companies striving to advance their r d capacity this paper examines joint r d between chinese wind turbine manufacturing companies and foreign design firms assessing the performance of joint r d activities in china using the structure conduct performance scp framework the study found that joint r d has improved chinese companies technical capacity human resources and financial growth however the effect on chinese companies innovation capacity is still limited because of unequal technical capacities of the two sides in collaboration as well as their preference for augmenting profits rather than technical capacity current joint r d mode is only the extension of licensing mode in wind turbine manufacturing industry

causality between public policies and exports of renewable energy technologies this article investigates the causal relationship between public policies and exports of renewable energy technologies using panel data from 18 countries for the period 1991 2007 a number of panel unit root and cointegration tests are applied time series data on public policies and exports are integrated and cointegrated the dynamic ols results indicate that in the long run a 1 increase in government r d expenditures rad increases exports ex by 0 819 ex and rad variables respond to deviations from the long run equilibrium in the previous period additionally the blundell bond system generalized methods of moments gmm is employed to conduct a panel causality test in a vector error correction mechanism vecm setting evidence of a bidirectional and short run and strong causal relationship between ex and the contribution of renewable energy to the total energy supply cres is uncovered cres has a negative effect on ex whereas ex has a positive effect on cres we suggest some policy implications based on the results of this study

patterns of attention to renewable energy in the british farming press from 1980 to 2013 abstract the farming sector is a major actor in developing renewable energy providing sites feedstock and investment media coverage can both drive and reflect levels of interest in renewable energy and affect policy support and farmer decision making about deployment this paper presents a content analysis of attention to renewable energy in the british farming press from 1980 to 2013 identifying the topics which sparked sustained media interest cycles of increased attention to specific types of renewable energy are made evident through quantification of article frequencies and qualitative analysis of content the findings contribute to the explanation of the role of information in the diffusion of renewable energy wind energy and liquid biofuels have received the most attention with multiple attention cycles whereas photovoltaics and anaerobic digestion have received focused attention only in recent years policy changes particularly support measures emerge as the most important driver of media attention although public controversies particularly in relation to wind energy lead to longer periods of attention attention typically increases when opportunities in renewable energy emerge and then quickly shifts to a longer stage of focused attention in which opportunities problems and solutions are explored and advice is offered before attention declines the media thus clearly play a role in informing farmers about opportunities arising in relation to renewable energy technology and policy developments but are less helpful in providing on going and consistent information about recurrent and more complex problems thus the farming press appears likely to have the strongest impact on early adopters of renewable technologies but is unlikely to contribute to diffusion at later stages when potential adopters are less willing to bear uncertainties

embedding landfill diversion in economic geographical and policy settings we analyse the process of landfill diversion embedding the dynamics in a frame where economic geographical and policy variables enter the arena we aim at investigating in depth what main drivers may be responsible for such a phenomenon we exploit a rich panel dataset covering all the 103 italian provinces the case study on italy is worth being considered provided that italy is a main country in the eu thus offering important pieces of information on the evaluation of policies evidence shows that the observed decoupling between economic growth and landfilling is driven by a mix of structural factors as population density and waste management strategies if on the one hand the landfill tax is not arising as a significant driver of the phenomenon other waste management instruments are associated with high significant negative effect on landfilled waste in association to the features of the tariff system we also underline the key role played by the share of separated collection in driving down land

on the sources and significance of interindustry differences in technological opportunities abstract the set of technological opportunities in a given industry is one of the fundamental determinants of technical advance in that line of business we examine the concept of technological opportunity and discuss three categories of sources of those opportunities advances in scientific understanding and technique technological advances originating in other industries and in other private and governmental institutions and feedbacks from an industry s own technological advances data from the yale survey on industrial research and development are used to measure the strength of various sources of technological opportunity and to discern interindustry differences in the importance of these sources we find that interindustry differences in the strength and sources of technological opportunities contribute importantly to explanations of cross industry variation in r d intensity and technological advance

the sustainable energy concept making sense of norms and co evolution within a large research facility s energy strategy abstract the analysis presents an evolving energy concept and strategy at an energy intensive research facility in order to contribute understanding of how organisations may implement renewable energies and improve energy efficiency whilst also delivering broader socio economic benefits a framework is developed that infuses institutional perspectives with a micro level view it facilitates positioning of strategy against instrumental altruistic and factual relational extremes and analysis of organisational strategy in the face of internal external stakeholder and institutional forces applied to a seven year case this supports understanding of strategy purpose and inputs as they co evolve along a project time line it is found that the energy strategy evolves from a dominantly instrumental but stakeholder driven position towards approaches aligned with deliberate public good provision in areas beyond direct organizational interests and that changes required significant redefinition of the design and operational models developments are explained as largely the result of internal agency and culture building influences from an energy department equipped with concrete management tools and autonomy at the case level the study concludes that the energy concept implementation has sparked a change in energy management at large global research facilities the work also demonstrates that longitudinal multi level institutional analysis can contribute to deeper understanding of strategy development

a global and local endogenous experience curve model for projecting future uptake and cost of electricity generation technologies abstract a global and local learning model gallm has been developed to project the cost and global uptake of different electricity generation technologies to the year 2050 this model features three regions endogenous technological learning within and across those regions various government policies to facilitate technological learning and a penalty constraint which is used to mimic the effect market forces play on the capital cost of electricity generation technologies this constraint has been added as market forces have been a strong factor in technology pricing in recent years global regional and component experience curves have been developed for some technologies the model with the inclusion of these features projects a diverse range of technologies contributing to global electricity generation under a carbon price scenario the penalty constraint leads to gradual and continual installations of technologies and because the constraint provides a disincentive to install too much of a technology it reduces the impact of uncertainty in the learning rate alternative forms of the penalty constraint were tested for their suitability it was found that with a zero and lower cost version of the constraint photovoltaics are installed in a boom and bust cycle which is not supported by past experience when the constraint is set at a high level there are fewer installations

why do firms do basic research with their own money abstractthe question to be addressed is why do private firms perform basic research with their own money interest in this question derives from both analytical and utilitarian considerations there is empirical evidence in the united states which provides the main context for this paper supporting the view that basic research makes a significant contribution to the productivity growth of the economy 4 7 it is widely held that social returns from basic research are significant and higher than private returns and it is for this reason that most such activities continue to be financed by the taxpayer this also implies that measures aimed at increasing basic research by the private sector will be welfare improving in the united states the federal government in the years since the second world war has provided the vast majority of all funds devoted to basic research although the federal share has been declining in recent years and although that share is at its lowest level in about 20 years it still constitutes about two thirds of the total 10 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

environmental policy design innovation and efficiency gains in electricity generation this paper explores the relationship between environmental regulation innovation and competitiveness drawing upon a unique dataset on environmental regulations directed at combustion plants a global dataset of power plants and a global dataset of environmental patents the analysis is conducted in two stages first a nonparametric frontier analysis is implemented to estimate efficiency scores including a measure of technological innovation based on patent stocks second econometric methods are applied to analyse the role of policy stringency and policy design on efficiency our estimation sample covers thermal power plant sectors in 20 countries from 1990 to 2009 the results show that the stringency of environmental regulations is a significant determinant of productive efficiency with respect to pollutant emissions as well as fuel use however these effects turn negative once the level of stringency leaps over a certain threshold in addition the paper concludes that the positive effect of regulatory stringency can be diminished by a negative effect of regulatory differentiation with measures which are differentiated across plant size and age having negative consequences and these effects are increasing over time this finding is important given the prevalence of size and vintage differentiated policies in many countries finally it is found that integrated approaches to environmental innovation are more likely to bring about efficiency improvements than end of pipe technologies

renewable energy gathers steam in south africa abstract south africa s renewable energy independent power producers procurement programme the rei4p is an extensive initiative to install 17 8 gw of electricity generation capacity from renewables wind solar biomass biogas and hydropower over the period 2012 2030 although at the outset the rei4p seemed an expensive option designed only to deflect criticism of south africa s high carbon footprint and excessive dependence on coal based electricity generation the escalating costs of the latter the rapidly falling costs of photovoltaic and wind power and the increasingly competitive bidding process of the rei4p have changed this prospect at the conclusion of round three the weighted cost of energy has reached a 23 discount to the cost of new coal based generation and a 28 discount to global renewable energy prices the bidders commitments to local employment creation have similarly increased from 11 to 18 jobs mw the programme is now well placed to deliver on a broad range of objectives including regional development and black economic empowerment however maximum benefit from the rei4p will not be secured without some revision to aspects of the bidding and procurement process more specifically the local content provisions need to be tightened to drive higher levels of local manufacturing

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

when firms make sense of environmental agendas of society abstract the objective of this article is to present arguments for the need to obtain knowledge about how firms make sense of environmental agendas of society several empirical studies point out that highly formalized and rational management methods to manage environmental decisions are not appropriate in a firm s planning theoretical contributions within the field of organizational theory are critical to the rational actor approach that concentrates on firms as economic units acting in rational ways in order to increase profit instead recent organizational theories suggest using sociocultural theory in analyzing a firm s interpretation of societal agendas methods and results from an empirical qualitative case study based upon non rationalistic theory are presented and discussed the theoretical discussion and the empirical results call for a need to broaden environmental thinking about how to motivate firms to act in an environmental manner

the impact of r d on innovation for wind energy in denmark germany and the united kingdom this paper examines the impact of public research and development r d support on cost reducing innovation for wind turbine farms in denmark germany and the united kingdom uk first we survey the literature in this field the literature indicates that in denmark r d policy has been more successful than in germany or the uk in promoting innovation of wind turbines furthermore such studies point out that subsidy induced capacity expansions were more effective in the uk and denmark in promoting cost reducing innovation than in germany the second part of the paper describes the quantitative analysis of the impact of r d and capacity expansion on innovation this is calculated using the two factor learning curve 2flc model in which investment cost reductions are explained by cumulative capacity and the r d based knowledge stock time series data were collected for the three countries and organized as a panel data set the parameters of the 2flc model were estimated focusing on the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the parameters across countries we arrived at robust estimations of a learning by doing rate of 5 4 and a learning by searching rate of 12 6 the analysis underlines the homogeneity of the learning parameters enhancing the validity of the 2flc formulation

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

u s energy research and development declining investment increasing need and the feasibility of expansion investment in energy research and development in the u s is declining despite calls for an enhancement of the nation s capacity for innovation to address environmental geopolitical and macroeconomic concerns we examine investments in research and development in the energy sector and observe broad based declines in funding since the mid 1990s the large reductions in investment by the private sector should be a particular area of concern for policy makers multiple measures of patenting activity reveal widespread declines in innovative activity that are correlated with research and development r d investment notably in the environmentally significant wind and solar areas trends in venture capital investment and fuel cell innovation are two promising cases that run counter to the overall trends in the sector we draw on prior work on the optimal level of energy r d to identify a range of values which would be adequate to address energy related concerns comparing simple scenarios based on this range to past public r d programs and industry investment data indicates that a five to ten fold increase in energy r d investment is both warranted and feasible

invention and innovation in the chemical industry demand pull or discovery push abstract this paper describes a study of the determinants of the rate direction and scale of inventive and innovative activity in the chemical industry over the period 1830 1980 statistical data are interpreted in the light of case study material in three major sectors dyestuffs plastics and pharmaceuticals theories of technical change and economic growth particularly those of schmookler and schmpeter are examined in relation to this material on the chemical industry the findings suggest that the importance of demand pull and discovery push factors and the validity of schmookler s and schumpeter s theories vary over an industry s life cycle

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

effects of technological change and institutional reform on production growth in chinese agriculture recent rapid agricultural production growth in chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs technological change and institutional reform an accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors institutional change like the introduction of the household production responsibility system has contributed to past growth in production however technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs in particular land continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes

municipal waste kuznets curves evidence on socio economic drivers and policy effectiveness from the eu waste generation and waste disposal are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis in general waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation incineration and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the eu25 to assess the effects of different drivers economic structural policy and the eventual differences between western and eastern eu countries we show that for waste generation there is still no waste kuznets curve wkc trend although elasticity to income drivers appears lower than in the past landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention and in terms of landfill and incineration as expected they are respectively decreasing and increasing with policy acting as a strong driver eastern countries appear to be performing generally quite well thus benefiting from eu membership and related policies in terms of environmental performance we can conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation there are some first positive signs of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and robust landfill diversion and varying evidence of a significant role of the eu waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s our evidence suggests that if while landfill diversion is currently associated to a delinking partly explained by eu policies waste prevention must be the next objective of waste regulation efforts

determinants of agriculture s relative decline thailand during economic development agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output a number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature but their relative historical significance has not been clear this paper develops an econometric methodology to analyze this issue and applies it to time series data for thailand the study investigates the importance of relative commodity prices factor endowments and technical progress as explanations for changing sectoral gdp shares of agriculture manufacturing and services it is concluded that the movement in thailand s aggregate factor endowment relative to labor was the most important determinant of agriculture s relative decline

accounting for agricultural decline with economic growth in taiwan abstract in this paper we propose an empirical model to decompose the evolution of the agricultural gdp share of taiwan into three components price changes factor endowment changes and technological change the full sample period is 1967 to 1997 the data were first tested to assess whether the time series are nonstationary and cointegrated after confirming their nonstationarity and cointegrated relation ship we then employ an error correction model ecm in the empirical estimation to capture the dynamic as well as long run equilibrium relationship among those economic variables the results suggest that relative prices have a positive influence on the share of agriculture in gdp in both the long run and the short run an increase in capital per unit of labor on the other hand is associated with a smaller agricultural share this result is consistent with the rybczynski theorem technical change has been biased in favor of this sector the strong negative impact of the change in factor endowments seems to dominate any possible positive effect of relative prices and technical change this result makes a strong case for a heckscher ohlin type model as a basis of understanding the development of the taiwanese economy

dynamic incentives by environmental policy instruments a survey abstract in this paper i survey and discuss recent developments on the incentives provided by environmental policy instruments for both adoption and development of advanced abatement technology a main conclusion to be drawn from the literature is that under competitive conditions market based instruments usually perform better than command and control moreover taxes may provide stronger long term incentives than tradable permits if the regulator is myopic if the government can anticipate new technology or is able to react on it optimally regulatory policies by virtue of administered prices taxes and policies by setting quantities issuing tradable permits are almost equivalent the literature also shows that under competitive conditions there is no difference between auctioning permits and grandfathering moreover timing and commitment of environmental policy is not crucial for adoption under competitive conditions commitment has positive incentive effects however if an r d sector has market power in the presence of market imperfections the ranking of the different policy instruments is ambiguous

china s regional agricultural productivity growth in 1985 2007 a multilateral comparison1 in this study we estimate total factor productivity tfp growth as well as multilateral tfp index for 25 contiguous china provinces over the 1985 2007 period agricultural output growth for each province was decomposed into tfp growth and input growth where input growth was further disaggregated into contributions from growth of labor capital land and intermediate goods over the study period tfp growth contributed 2 7 percentage points to output growth annually which was slightly higher than the input growth contribution of 2 4 percentage points per annum on average the annual rate of productivity growth peaked during 1996 2000 at 5 1 it slowed in 2000 2005 to a rate of 3 2 per annum and declined in the most recent years 2005 2007 to 3 7 differences in productivity among regions persisted over the entire period the tendency toward faster tfp growth in relatively well off coastal regions may imply a widening of regional inequality

governing the transition of socio technical systems a case study of the development of smart grids in korea abstract this paper examines the motivations processes and outcomes of the development of smart grids in south korea through the perspectives of governance and innovation systems drawing on desktop research and semi structured interviews this paper has two major findings first the development of smart grids in korea has been shaped by various factors including macroeconomic policy the role of the government and experimentation the complex interactions between these factors at the landscape regime and niche levels has impacted on the development of smart grids second while korea s government led approach has its strengths in driving change it has also exposed weaknesses in the country s ability to mobilise the private sector and consumer participation major obstacles including partial electricity market reform and public distrust exist a systemic perspective is needed for policy in order to accommodate the changes required for smart grid development regulatory reforms particularly price setting mechanisms and consumer engagement are priority areas for policy change

the two faces of market support how deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry the recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies while there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very effective in bringing technologies to the market it is less understood how these policies affect technological innovation to shed more light on this important question we conducted comparative case studies with a global sample of 9 firms producing solar photovoltaic pv modules complemented by in depth interviews with 16 leading pv industry experts we propose that on the one hand policy induced market growth serves as an important catalyst for innovative activity as it raises the absolute level of firm investments in technological exploration on the other hand however deployment policies create an incentive for firms pursuing more mature technologies to shift their balance between exploitation and exploration toward exploitation firms focusing on less mature technologies cannot tap the potentials of exploitative learning to the same extent as those with more mature technologies therefore stimulating strong market growth may raise the barrier to market entry for less mature technologies we conclude that when designing deployment policies great care should be taken to avoid adverse effects on technological diversity and a premature lock in into more established technologies

productivity and international competitiveness of agriculture in the european union and the united states this study looks at international competitiveness of agriculture in the european union and the united states the most intuitive concept is that of price competitiveness we calculate relative prices for 11 member states of the european union and the united states for the period 1973 2002 we assume that markets are perfectly competitive and in long run equilibrium so that the observed price always equals average total cost as measured by the cost dual to the production function this assumption is used in our calculation of relative competitiveness and productivity gaps between the european union and the united states and in our decomposition of relative price movements between changes in relative input prices and changes in relative productivity levels

energy prices and induced innovation abstract the received theory of induced innovation implies that input prices as well as other economic factors such as demand and market structure determine the extent and nature of the optimizing firm s allocation of resources to research activity this paper investigates the effects of large increases in the prices of energy and other intermediate materials during the early to mid 1970s on the amount of r d performed by u s manufacturing firms the evidence indicates that industries most affected by these price increases maintained the highest growth rate of r d expenditure holding constant output growth

demand pull government policies to support product service system activity the case of energy service companies escos in the uk product service systems psss constitute a family of service based business models designed to satisfy our societal needs in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner to date however pss application has remained niche due to a variety of critical barriers this paper explores how demand pull national government policies could support pss activity by addressing these barriers and cultivating market demand lessons are drawn from a case study of how regulatory economic incentive informative and procurement policies have supported energy service company esco activity in the uk a sub set of the pss family focused on energy service provision subsequently five policy recommendations are presented to support pss activity 1 balancing economic incentives and regulatory disincentives 2 promoting indirect policy support 3 redesigning existing market structures 4 promoting locally led pss activity and 5 creating stable policy frameworks the paper warns however that national government policy cannot easily address all pss barriers such as customer preferences international developments technological progress and inherent business model weaknesses pointing to the need for other complementary solutions furthermore other governance actors beside national government could also implement pss supporting policies

compulsive policy making the evolution of the german feed in tariff system for solar photovoltaic power abstract in recent years policy approaches that build upon the notion of innovation systems have enjoyed increasing attention in science technology and innovation policy but while the usefulness of systemic thinking in policy making has been demonstrated in a large number of empirical settings we still lack a detailed understanding of the dynamics at play when policy makers address systemic problems in this paper we show how complex interdependencies and the uncertain nature of technological change shape the process of targeted policy interventions in socio technical systems toward this end we analyzed the evolution of the german feed in tariff fit system for solar photovoltaic power a highly effective and widely copied policy instrument targeted at fostering the diffusion and development of renewable energy technologies we find that the policy has been subject to a considerable amount of changes many of which are the result of policy makers addressing specific system issues and bottlenecks interestingly however often these issues themselves were driven by unforeseen technological developments induced by previous policy interventions we argue that the pattern of policy serving as both a solution to and a driver of technological bottlenecks shows strong similarities with what rosenberg 1969 called compulsive sequences in the development of technical systems by shedding more light on how the characteristics of socio technical systems affect policy interventions our framework represents a first step toward more closely integrating the literature on innovation systems with the work on policy learning

inventor networks in renewable energies the influence of the policy mix in germany technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support various policy instruments that can broadly be categorized as technology push demand pull or systemic constitute part of the policy mix for renewable energies our goal is to gain insights into the influence of this policy mix on the intensity and organization of inventive activities for wind power and photovoltaics in germany since the 1980s we examine the effect of different instruments on the size and structure of co inventor networks based on patent data our results indicate notable differences between the technologies the network size for wind power is driven by technology push and systemic instruments while in photovoltaics demand pull is decisive for network growth by and large the instruments complement each other and form a consistent mix of policy instruments the structure of the networks is driven by demand pull for both technologies systemic instruments increase interaction especially in the wind power network and are complementary to demand pull in fostering collaboration

a network analysis using metadata to investigate innovation in clean tech implications for energy policy abstract clean technology clean tech is a large and increasing sector research and development r d is the lifeline of the industry and innovation is fostered by a plethora of high tech start ups and small and medium sized enterprises smes any empirical based attempt to detect the pattern of technological innovation in the industry is challenging this paper proposes an investigation of innovation in clean tech using metadata provided by crunchbase metadata reveal information on markets products services and technologies driving innovation in the clean tech industry worldwide and for san francisco the leader in clean tech innovation with more than two hundred specialised companies a network analysis using metadata is the employed methodology and the main metrics of the resulting networks are discussed from an economic point of view the purpose of the paper is to understand specifically specializations and technological complementarities underlying innovative companies detect emerging industrial clusters at the global and local metropolitan level and finally suggest a way to realize whether observed start ups smes and clusters follow a technological path of complementary innovation and market opportunity or instead present a risk of lock in the discussion of the results of the network analysis shows interesting implications for energy policy particularly useful from an operational point of view

livestock in china commodity specific total factor productivity decomposition using new panel data studies of total factor productivity tfp in livestock production are rare but when available provide useful information especially in the context of developing countries such as china where livestock is becoming more important in the domestic agricultural economy we estimate tfp for four major livestock products in china employing the stochastic frontier approach and decompose productivity growth into its technical efficiency te and technical progress components efforts are made to adjust and augment the available livestock statistics the results show that growth in tfp and its components varied between the 1980s and the 1990s as well as over production structures while there is evidence of considerable technical innovation in china s livestock sector te improvement has been relatively slow

from government to market and from producer to consumer transition of policy mix towards clean mobility in china abstract this paper proposes a new typology that classifies innovation policy instruments into two dimensions government selection versus market selection and producer orientation versus consumer orientation such a typology articulates the importance of consumer behavior in the policy design for a transition and the relevance for the market to select target subjects of policy during the deployment stage of clean technology innovation we apply this typology to policy instruments of china s new energy vehicle nev industry between 1991 and 2015 in order to explain the industry s rapid growth the focus of china s policy mix has transited from government selection to market selection and from producer orientation to consumer orientation other than the new typology this paper traces the entire history of policy transition within china s nev industry and finds the transition to be a result of policy learning thus contributing to future empirical studies of this industry