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Charcoal is a dominant energy source in urban areas of Uganda, and increases in retail prices in the past have led to social unrest. This paper assesses the relationship between charcoal and fuel prices to determine whether fuel prices influence the retail price of charcoal. We specify a transportation cost model for charcoal supply and derive the reduced-form equilibrium price function. We estimate an error-correction model for the equilibrium price with monthly data from July 2010 to January 2021 to determine whether there are long-term and/or short-term relationships between the retail and supply prices of charcoal and the prices of diesel and other fuel types. As the price data are integrated of orders zero and one, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test is used. The results show that there is a long-term relationship (cointegration) between the retail price of charcoal and the supply price of charcoal and the price of kerosene, which is a substitute energy source for the end users. The prices of firewood and diesel are not statistically significant in the model. The long-term equation includes a positive trend, indicating that the retail price of charcoal is increasing more over time than implied by the supply price of charcoal and the price of kerosene. The increasing demand from a growing urban population and the reduced supply from deforestation are trends that will increase the equilibrium price of charcoal, as observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that climate change makes the weather more erratic. As the combination of temperature and precipitation is a major driver of grain crop productivity, more frequent extreme rainfalls and heat waves, flooding and drought tend to make grain production and hence grain prices more volatile. We analyze daily prices during the growing season for corn and wheat over the period 1971–2019 using an EGARCH model. There have been occasional spikes in price volatility throughout this period. We do not, however, find that grain prices have become more volatile since the 1970s, with an exception for a small but statistically significant upward trend in wheat price volatility. To the extent that climate change has caused more frequent weather extremes affecting crop yields, it appears that the price effects have been softened, most likely through farmers' adaption to climate changes, introduction of more stress-tolerant hybrids, storage, regional and international trade and risk management instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we test whether producers in the southern Norway price zone utilize information on available transmission capacity to induce transmission congestion in their price zone to exercise market power or not. Endogeneity results for import congestion suggest that congestion is endogenous during late night and morning hours implying that producers in southern Norway restrict their output to induce transmission congestion into their price zone. We find an average markup of about 19.5 percent above the marginal cost during these hours. These results point that NordPool's policy of making transmission capacity information public to ensure market transparency is not welfare maximizing as strategic producers can use this information to anticipate and induce transmission congestion into their price zone for driving prices away from the competitive levels. Keywords: Induced transmission congestion, Market power, Import capacity, NordPool, Statnett, 1. INTRODUCTION Since the liberalization of electricity markets around the world, studying the incentives for and estimating the extent of producers' market power have been on the research agenda (Borenstein [...]

The study aimed at examining the drivers of energy efficiency among households that use grid electricity. Specifically to assess: the effect of awareness, Government incentive, and ICT investments on energy efficiency. A stochastic frontier analysis was carried out using cross-sectional survey data. Most households were found to be aware of energy efficiency. Households that had knowledge of energy efficiency labels, and apply any form of energy saving measure were relatively less inefficient. Likewise, households that; received the Government incentive of free energy saving bulbs; invested in ICT to change from post-paid to prepaid meters; and those using individual/unshared meters were also less inefficient. Further, inefficiency was lower for households residing in planned estates and/or rented homes, and relatively higher for households with backup energy resources. Therefore, implementing and popularizing appliance energy efficiency labels and codes may potentially increase energy efficiency levels in Uganda. The study also recommends increased investment in; energy efficient appliances, individual prepay meters, and incentivizing households with the opportunity to test energy saving technologies free of charge. All-inclusive awareness programmes capturing type of residence and publicity for individual meter use for tenants are pertinent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan’s banking industry has gone through significant transformation from being in a heavily state regulated and controlled environment to a more liberalized market structure in recent years. This liberalization of banking industry in Pakistan has raised concerns over the dominant banks’ exercise of market power on account of increase in market concentration due to mergers and acquisitions, high profitability in banking sector and increasing interest rate spread. Present study therefore explicitly tests the market conduct of banks using quarterly panel data of 30 banks from 2004 to 2012 and employing Panzar–Rosse, Bresnahan–Lau, Hall–Roeger and Boone’s approaches to study market power. Our findings suggest that Pakistan’s banking industry is working in a competitive environment and we find little evidence for the exercise of market power by the dominant banks. Our results remain robust across all these approaches to measure market power. These findings indicate that the liberalization and deregulation of Pakistan’s banking industry has been successful in improving the competitive conditions in the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overhead power transmission lines cause external costs including aesthetic impacts on the landscape. We use the contingent valuation method to estimate the external costs from these aesthetic impacts, and find that the social benefits of avoiding these negative impacts on the landscape exceed the costs of burying the lines as underground cables. Our best-estimate of the aesthetic benefits from burying the power lines was three times as large as the cost. These conclusions were based only on an assessment of the aesthetic impacts. Impacts of overhead power lines on wildlife and human health would likely make burial of power lines even more attractive. These results were obtained in an urban setting. Additional studies are needed to assess the costs associated with aesthetic impacts in rural and pristine natural areas, where power line construction is increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes towards risk are measured for households in Northern Zambia using an experimental gambling approach with real payoffs that at maximum were equal to 30% of average total annual income per capita. The results of the experiment show decreasing absolute risk aversion and increasing partial risk aversion. Determinants of risk aversion are investigated using random effects interval regression model exploiting the panel data structure of the repeated experiments. Wealth indicator variables are found to be significant, and partial relative risk aversion decreases as wealth increases. Females are found to be more risk averse than males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]