Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) have been implemented in many US states as a mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and become more energy independent. One of these states, Colorado, has enacted an RPS requiring 20% of electricity sold within the state come from renewable sources...

This paper develops a stylized supply-demand model for a mineral / nonrenewable commodity. It embodies important distinctions between short-run and long-run mineral supply and the derived demand for minerals as intermediate goods in production sectors with differing intensities of use. This...

The terms of trade debate initiated by Raul Prebisch and Hans Singer over 60 years ago continues to this day and is unlikely to be resolved soon. However, even if Prebisch and Singer are right and the terms of trade of countries exporting primary products are falling, to suggest that these...

Growth regressions are often influenced by extreme observations in the sample. We demonstrate the usefulness of a simple Monte Carlo method as a diagnostic for sample robustness. We apply the technique to a data set used by Mehlum et al. (2006), who show that institutional quality is decisive...

Today, a confluence of factors, such as growing concerns about associated consumption externalities and socioeconomic pressures, is building the momentum towards reducing fossil fuel consumption for road transport and rationalizing prices to reflect direct, indirect and externality costs. While...

Understanding how drivers respond to fuel price changes has important implications for highway congestion, accidents, carbon policy, local air pollution and taxation. We examine the underexplored relationship between fuel prices and carpooling. Using a simple theoretical model we show that...

This paper uses the band-pass filter approach of Cuddington and Jerrett (2008) to (i) study longterm trends in crude oil and coal prices and (ii) to search for evidence of super cycles in these energy commodity prices. Although Cuddington and Jerrett found evidence of super cycles in metals...

For univariate functions, we compute optimal breakpoint systems subject to the condition that the piecewise linear approximation (or, under- and overestimator) never deviates more than a given δ-tolerance from the original function, over a given finite interval. The linear approximators, under-...

Following up on Rebennack and Kallrath (2012), in this paper, for functions depending on two variables, using refinement heuristics, we automatically construct triangulations subject to the condition that the continuous, piecewise linear approximation, under- or overestimation never deviates...

Wind power has the potential to reduce emissions associated with conventional electricity generation. Using detailed, systemic hourly data of wind generation and emissions from plants in ERCOT (Texas), CAISO (California), and MISO (Upper Midwest), we estimate the SO₂, NOₓ and CO₂ emissions...