Does oil price uncertainty affect energy use?

Theory predicts that the presence of fixed costs affects the relationship between energy use and energy price changes, as the firm's output and investment decisions respond differently to energy price increases and decreases. The asymmetry in response to energy price changes is exacerbated by uncertainty with respect to future energy prices, but to date the empirical literature does not explicitly take uncertainty into account. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we develop a new measure of energy price uncertainty. Second, we apply the measure to explain energy use in 8 OECD countries between 1978 and 1996, trying to identify whether indeed energy price uncertainty effects the asymmetry resulting from changes in energy use.

A NOTE ON HIGH DISCOUNT RATES AND DEPLETION OF PRIMARY FORESTS

Conventional wisdom implies that high discount rates accelerate depletion of tropical forests. As shown in this article, this result does not necessarily hold in a two-state variable model that distinguishes between primary and secondary forest stocks. In the context of a fixed concession period and imperfect government control, logging of primary forests may be both accelerated and depressed as discount rates increase.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Asymmetric adaptations to energy price changes

The effectiveness of policies to reduce the use of energy depend on the elasticity of substitution between the various inputs and on the rate of technological progress. This paper presents a theoretical model emphasising energy investments\' characteristics of uncertainty and irreversibility that result in testable hypotheses concerning the relative values of substitution parameters and rates of technological change in periods of high and increasing energy prices and in periods of low prices. Estimation results for a panel of sectors of the Dutch economy show that the elasticity of substitution between energy and other inputs is low in periods of low energy prices, whereas it is significantly higher in the preceding period of high and increasing energy prices. Furthermore, energy-saving technological progress in periods of high and increasing energy prices is also significantly higher than if energy prices are low and falling. The regression results suggest that, due this asymmetric response of firms to changes in energy prices, taxing energy in the current period of low energy prices will not yield substantial reductions in energy use of Dutch industry.

Threshold Effects of Energy Price Changes

The effectiveness of policies to reduce the use of energy depend on the elasticity of substitution between the various inputs and on the rate of technological progress. This paper presents a theoretical model emphasising energy investments’ characteristics of uncertainty and irreversibility that result in hypotheses concerning the relative values of substitution parameters and rates of technological change in periods of high and increasing energy prices and in periods of low prices. The theoretical model suggests that threshold level effects exist. Firms are induced to substitute away from energy only if prices of energy exceed a certain threshold level and they reverse the technology only if prices are low enough. Using panel data for the Dutch economy we do not find threshold effects in the level of energy prices.

Threshold effects of energy price changes

This paper presents a theoretical model emphasising energy investments’ characteristics of uncertainty and irreversibility. The theoretical model suggests threshold effects. Firms are induced to substitute away from energy only if prices of energy exceed a certain threshold level and they reverse the technology only if energy prices are low enough. Estimating a simple investment relation using panel data for the Dutch economy, we find evidence for threshold effects.

Lattice model study of the thermodynamic interplay of polymer crystallization and liquid-liquid demixing

We report Monte Carlo simulations of a lattice-polymer model that can account for both polymer crystallization and liquid-liquid demixing in solutions of semiflexible homopolymers. In our model, neighboring polymer segments can have isotropic interactions that affect demixing, and anisotropic interactions that are responsible for freezing. However, our simulations show that the isotropic interactions also have a noticeable effect on the freezing curve, as do the anisotropic interactions on demixing. As the relative strength of the isotropic interactions is reduced, the liquid-liquid demixing transition disappears below the freezing curve. A simple, extended Flory-Huggins theory accounts quite well for the phase behavior observed in the simulations.Comment: Revtex, 7 pages, the content accepted by J. Chem. Phy

The steady-state of heterogeneous catalysis, studied by first-principles statistical mechanics

The turn-over frequency of the catalytic oxidation of CO at RuO2(110) was calculated as function of temperature and partial pressures using ab initio statistical mechanics. The underlying energetics of the gas-phase molecules, dissociation, adsorption, surface diffusion, surface chemical reactions, and desorption were obtained by all-electron density-functional theory. The resulting CO2 formation rate [in the full (T, p_CO, p_O2)-space], the movies displaying the atomic motion and reactions over times scales from picoseconds to seconds, and the statistical analyses provide insights into the concerted actions ruling heterogeneous catalysis and open thermodynamic systems in general.Comment: 4 pages including 3 figures, Related publications can be found at http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm

Melting of Polydisperse Hard Disks

The melting of a polydisperse hard disk system is investigated by Monte Carlo simulations in the semigrand canonical ensemble. This is done in the context of possible continuous melting by a dislocation unbinding mechanism, as an extension of the 2D hard disk melting problem. We find that while there is pronounced fractionation in polydispersity, the apparent density-polydispersity gap does not increase in width, contrary to 3D polydisperse hard spheres. The point where the Young's modulus is low enough for the dislocation unbinding to occur moves with the apparent melting point, but stays within the density gap, just like for the monodisperse hard disk system. Additionally, we find that throughout the accessible polydispersity range, the bound dislocation-pair concentration is high enough to affect the dislocation unbinding melting as predicted by Kosterlitz, Thouless, Halperin, Nelson and Young.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure