Transition Inequity: gendered employment trends in New Zealand’s energy industries

Energy industries are experiencing a period of rapid and sustained change as nations seek to meet climate policy targets. In Aotearoa New Zealand a gap in both information about and attention to the gendered dimensions of the proposed low-emissions transition has emerged. This silence has implications for the distributive impacts of any transition. We present data illustrating the sub-sector variation in women’s employment, pay, tenure and executive representation in both the electricity and fossil fuel industries. Recommendations are presented for more sustained policy attention to how an energy transition, given current gendered employment trends, is unlikely to be inclusive or just.

Economic Problems of Our Time

In this paper, we aim to look at the main problems which arose or aggravated in recent years, concerning the economic crisis, stagnation, inequalities, and globalisation, what we call ‘the terrible four’. These are partly old problems (and we trace them back in economic history), but they have become more profound in the last decades. Notwithstanding the fantasy of economists that has led to suggest the possibility to make use of new instruments of economic policy, some of them are politically constrained, which implies the impossibility for the Government to reach its economic policy targets. In fact, if the number of instruments is less than that of targets, the Government becomes a ‘lame duck’.

Effects of Some Monetary Policy Targets on Inflation and Inflation Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria

The persistent inflationary pressure despite monetary policy targets has become a phenomenon of interest among researchers. The study investigates the effects of monetary policy targets on inflation and its volatility in Nigeria using data spanning from 1985 to 2019. The ADF unit root test used confirmed that all the variables under study are integrated order zero in their level series. A Comparison of inflation volatility models (ARCH and GARCH models) with appropriate error distribution using AIC indicated that ARCH (1) is most appropriate. The results of least squares (LS) and maximum likelihood (ML) ARCH methods of estimation for the model specifications showed that measures of monetary policy targets such as narrow money supply (M1), broad money supply(M2), net domestic credit(NDC), net credit to government(NCG) and credit to private sector(CPS) have no significant effect on inflation and inflation volatility respectively except M2. However, M2 effect spurs inflation rather than curbing it. Hence, it becomes imperative for the government to make proactive policies targeted to reduce inflationary pressures so as to attain price stability in Nigeria’s economic space. Keywords: monetary policy targets, inflation, Volatility models.

Economizing the Uneconomic: Markets for Reliable, Sustainable, and Price Efficient Electricity

Current electricity markets do not efficiently achieve policy targets i.e., sustainability, reliability, and price efficiency. Thus, there are debates on how to achieve these targets by using either market mechanisms e.g., carbon and capacity markets, or non-market mechanisms such as offer-caps, price-caps, and market-monitoring. At the same time, major industry changes including demand response management technologies and large scale batteries bring more elasticity to demand; such changes will impact the methodology needed to achieve the above mentioned targets. This work provides market solutions that capture all three policy targets simultaneously and take into account the above-mentioned industry changes. The proposed solutions are based on: (i) a model of electricity markets that captures all the above mentioned electricity policy targets; (ii) mechanism design and the development of a framework for design of efficient auctions with constraints (individual, joint homogeneous, and joint non-homogeneous). The results show that, within the context of the proposed model, all policy targets can be achieved efficiently by separate capacity and carbon markets in addition to efficient spot markets. The results also highlight that all three policy targets can be achieved without any offer-cap, price-cap, or market monitoring. Thus, within the context of the proposed model, they provide clear answers to the above-mentioned policy debates.