Energy advice service as perceived by Swedish homeowners

External actors can influence potential adopters to adopt energy efficiency measures. In Sweden municipality energy advisers are one such actor group who provides energy advice and information to the end users. The success of energy advice service for improvement of energy efficiency of detached houses depends on homeowners' perception towards it. In this context, we conducted a national survey of about 3000 owners of detached houses through stratified random sampling method in the summer of 2008. We found that majority of owners of detached houses consider energy advisers as an important source of information. Furthermore, many homeowners who contacted energy advisers for advice had implemented the suggestions. However, only a few homeowners had contacted an energy adviser. Our findings suggest that it is beneficial to continue the energy advice service, but more efforts are needed to increase homeowners' awareness of and satisfaction with such services.     

Extension of labor contracts and optimal backpay

This paper explains why a union and a firm might settle on a contract duration that may later be extended and characterizes the optimal backpay for the holdout period. It is shown that the choice between concluding a shorter contract that may be extended and immediately concluding a longer contract depends on the prevalence of the different types of uncertainty in the economy. It is also shown that the optimal backpay reduces the negative impact of nominal uncertainty on a worker's real income, but increases the worker's exposure to idiosyncratic uncertainty.     

Establishing preference functions for macroeconomic decision models: Some observations on Ragnar Frisch's contributions

The article reviews Ragnar Frisch's contributions to solving the problem of establishing preference functions for macroeconomic decision models, and compares Frisch's approach with other possible approaches to the problem. The article mainly considers linear and quadratic preference functions. In discussing the methodology attention is drawn to the analogy with problems in the analysis of consumer demand.     

The theory of public goods: Misplaced emphasis?

The note takes up for critical examination the tendency in the modern theory of public goods to emphasize the problem of correct revelation or concealment of preferences. It is argued that a strategy which consists in playing down one's preferences for a public good in order to get a lower share in the costs of providing the good is not likely to succed in an open political decision-making process involving elected representatives. This conclusion is supported by the fact that there seems to be little empirical evidence which shows the importance of the preference revelation issue.     

Review and comments: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont,Incentives in public decision making

This paper develops a procedure for testing the signalling hypothesis as advanced by Spence et al. The approach used is to examine directly the question of whether employers use education for purely informational purposes in their hiring decisions. An application of the method to a recruitment by the Swedish auto manufacturer Volvo is presented.     

The New Knowledge Economics

The growth in importance of intangible assets is changing our perceptions of economics and challenging ingrained managerial and organisational wisdom.     

Optimal Feedback Controls: Comparative Evaluation of the Cod Fisheries in Denmark, Iceland, and Norway

The economic efficiencies of the Danish, Icelandic, and Norwegian cod fisheries are examined. For this purpose, nonlinear aggregate models of these fisheries are constructed. Comparing the calculated optimal harvest and biomass quantities with the actual fisheries provides a measure of the degree of efficiency in these fisheries. The comparisons confirm that the cod harvesting policies of these countries have been hugely inefficient in the past. It appears that inefficiency has been increasing over the last three to four decades, even after TAC regulations replaced open access, indicating that the management policies adopted by all three countries have failed to cure overfishing.     

Partial wage indexation with real shocks

This note analyzes wage indexation from a macroeconomic viewpoint. Its purpose is to examine when wage indexation should be partial in the presence of real shocks, and it shows how the conditions for this to be the case depend on the aggregate production function, the income velocity of money, and the labor supply.