Alternative Energy Strategies for the United Kingdom Revisited: Market Competition and Sustainability

Energy and electricity demand forecasts for Britain made in the late 1970s by a research team from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), under the leadership of Gerald Leach, are assessed with the benefit of hindsight. These researchers broke the energy market down into some 400 end-use, fuel, and appliance categories. They then assessed the potential for energy saving in physical terms, using available technical fixes, for each category. The resulting “bottom-up” projecitons of energy consumption departed from the historic correlation with economic growth, or “top-down” approach. It enabled the IIED team to postulate an alternative, low energy strategy for the United Kingdom to 2025. This study subsequently had a great influence on energy planning elsewhere in the industrialized world, although it was not without its detractors.The IIED energy demand projections are reviewed in the context of both the greatly increased market competition in the UK from 1979 onward, and the need to achieve sustainable development. It is shown that, although total primary energy consumption in the mid-1990s was much in line with the forecasts in the Leach report, the reasons for this and the structure of the newly competitive energy market are quite different from that originally postulated. However, the critics of the IIED team did little better. Long-term energy projections (25–50 years) as one-off, static exercises appear to be of little value for energy planning purposes. They can, as in the case of the Leach report, be a great source of data and ideas, as well as stimulating debate about new strategies. It is argued that rolling projections using a rather broad, sectoral approach that is continuously updated at not greater than five-year intervals, in a similar manner to econometric forecasts, are more useful for energy planning purposes.     

RISK DECISIONS FOR BEEF PRODUCTION SYSTEMS IN THE COLOMBIAN SAVANNAS

A beef simulation model was used to examine a range of production possibilities for increasing the output of extensive ranching systems in the tropical savannas of eastern Colombia through the use of sown grass-legume pastures of higher inherent digestibility than that of the native species. Generalised stochastic dominance was used to compare some promising alternatives with the unimproved savanna-based production system and with each other. As the planning horizon of the decision maker was reduced, so variability, measured as the coefficient of variation of output, increased significantly. The impact of risk on the long-term acceptability of a complete investment was limited.     

Immigration and the Australian Macroeconomy: Perspective and Prospective

Australia has long been a nation of immigrants. The economic purposes of migration and its economic consequences are major public policy issues. This selective review of research looks at the macroeconomic dimensions of this issue for Australia.     

Chambers as Educator and Mentor

Adopting a personal tone, this article explores Ray Chambers' impact on accounting and management education and through that his impact on accounting thought and practice. As mentor and colleague for over a quarter of a century, Chambers left many wonderful impressions, some of which are described here. The article describes some of the influences on the innovations and approaches of a great teacher. Familial and early working life experiences are shown to have greatly influenced his views on accounting, finance and management, and hence his innovations in accounting and management education at both the Sydney Technical College and the University of Sydney. His research, writings and teachings continually stressed the need to apply common sense to common experience. The article concludes by noting Chambers' perennial pursuit of seeking evidence to test his ideal solution to eradicate the follies and infelicities that plagued then (and still plague today) accounting thought and practice. Chambers regarded having such an ideal as the essence of being a researcher.     

Kinky perceived demand curves and Keynes–Negishi equilibria

The label "Keynes–Negishi equilibria" is attached here to equilibria in a monetary economy with imperfectly competitive product and labor markets where business firms and labor unions hold demand perceptions with kinks: as posited in Negishi's 1979 book Microeconomic Foundations of Keynesian Macroeconomics . Such equilibria are defined in a general equilibrium model, and shown to exist. Methodological implications are briefly discussed in a concluding section.