Papers by Elena Verdolini
Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis, Jan 31, 2016
Expert elicitations are now frequently used to characterize uncertain future technology outcomes.... more Expert elicitations are now frequently used to characterize uncertain future technology outcomes. However, their usefulness is limited, in part because: estimates across studies are not easily comparable; choices in survey design and expert selection may bias results; and overconfidence is a persistent problem. We provide quantitative evidence of how these choices affect experts' estimates. We standardize data from 16 elicitations, involving 169 experts, on the 2030 costs of five energy technologies: nuclear, biofuels, bioelectricity, solar, and carbon capture. We estimate determinants of experts' confidence using survey design, expert characteristics, and public R&D investment levels on which the elicited values are conditional. Our central finding is that when experts respond to elicitations in person (vs. online or mail) they ascribe lower confidence (larger uncertainty) to their estimates, but more optimistic assessments of best-case (10th percentile) outcomes. The effec...
Review of Environment Energy and Economics Re3, Jan 31, 2012
The present article briefly discusses the results of an expert elicitation survey on solar techno... more The present article briefly discusses the results of an expert elicitation survey on solar technologies carried out within the ICARUS project on innovation in carbon-free energy technologies. Sixteen leading European experts from the academic world, the private sector and international institutions took part in this survey on Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies. The elicitation process collected probabilistic information on
Review of Environment Energy and Economics Re3, Jul 27, 2012
In the period 2010-2011 we carried out a survey of fifteen leading European experts on the future... more In the period 2010-2011 we carried out a survey of fifteen leading European experts on the future of advanced (second and third generation) biofuel technologies. The survey focuses on eliciting probabilistic information on the future costs of these technologies and on the potential role of RD&D (Research, Development and Demonstration) The information gathered from the experts sheds light on the
Review of Environment Energy and Economics Re3, Nov 8, 2012
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of energy efficiency in fossil-fuel... more This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of energy efficiency in fossil-fuel electricity generation across 29 OECD countries over the period 1975-2006, with particular attention to the role played by technological development and the availability of energy efficient technologies in the market. This contribution is novel in three respects: first, we concentrate in empirically assessing the contribution of different determinants of energy-efficiency, which include input mix in power generation, the capacity ratio at which power plants are run as well as the age of the technology used. Second, we devote particular attention devoted to the issue of technical change and technological availability: using patent data for carefully selected innovations in fossil fuel technologies for power generation, we build an index which proxies for technological development in the field of power production and measures technological changes. Third, by spelling out the relationship between energy efficiency and carbon intensity of the power sector, we are able to assess the impact of technological availability and changes in the input mix on CO2 emissions of the power sector. The results presented here show that, while input mix, capacity utilization and new investment in capacity play a significant role in increasing energy efficiency, also the stock of knowledge, or stock of available technologies, has a positive effect. Turning to carbon intensity dynamics, given the link between increased efficiency and lower CO2 emissions, we conclude that technological change has negative and significant effect on carbon intensity, while the changing input mix affects CO2 intensity both through an increase in efficiency as well as a lowering of the input weighted emission factor.
Notwithstanding the central role attributed to technology transfer (TT) and the effort to promote... more Notwithstanding the central role attributed to technology transfer (TT) and the effort to promote it through the creation of permanent international bodies such as the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice of the UNFCCC, very little is known about the determinants of this process with respect to energy technologies. This paper marries the literature on international trade with that on innovation and TT in carbon efficient technologies, making a number of important contributions. First, a model of monopolistic competition shows how the decision to export a blueprint/technology depends on market and institutional characteristics of the receiving country, on the distance between the sending and the receiving countries, on the quality of the innovator's ideas and on variable and fixed costs of production. Asymmetry of TT are the result of differences in innovation levels and ideas productivity.
Études de l'OCDE sur l'innovation environnementale, 2013
Journal of International Economics, 2015
ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the effect of skilled migration on two measures of innovation, paten... more ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the effect of skilled migration on two measures of innovation, patenting and bibliometric data, in a panel of 20 European countries between 1995 and 2008. The empirical findings show that a larger pool of migrants in the skilled professions is associated with higher levels of knowledge creation. Skilled migrants contribute both to the creation of “private” knowledge, measured by the number of patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and to more “public” basic research, measured by the number of citations to published articles. This finding is robust, in that it uses both an occupation-based and an education-based index of skilled migration, as well as an instrumental variable estimation accounting for the endogeneity of the skilled migrants indicator and to a number of robustness checks. Our results suggest that policy efforts aiming at attracting skilled migrants to Europe and employing them in skilled professions, such as those put forward in the Europe 2020 Strategy, will indeed foster EU competitiveness in innovation.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of energy efficiency in fossil fuel... more This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of energy efficiency in fossil fuel electricity generation across 28 OECD countries over the period 1981-2006, with particular attention to the role played by technological development and the availability of energy efficient technologies in the market. This contribution is novel in three respects: first, empirically assess the effects of different determinants of energy efficiency, which include the input mix in electricity generation, the capacity ratio at which power plants are run, as well as the characteristics of the production technology. Second, we focus on the role of technological availability: using patent data for carefully selected innovations in fossil-fuel technologies, we build an indicator which proxies for technological developments in fuelefficient electricity generation. Third, by formalizing the relationship between fuel efficiency and carbon intensity, we assess the impact of changes in the input mix and in technological availability on CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. Results show that input mix, capacity utilization and new investment in capacity play a significant role in increasing energy efficiency. Increasing the stock of available technologies (or stock of knowledge) is also associated with higher efficiency levels. Given the link between increased efficiency and lower CO2 emissions, we conclude that technological change has a negative and significant effect on carbon intensity, while the changing input mix affects CO2 intensity both through an increase in efficiency as well as by lowering the input-weighted emission factor.
In the period 2010-2011 we carried out a survey of fifteen leading European experts on the future... more In the period 2010-2011 we carried out a survey of fifteen leading European experts on the future of advanced (second and third generation) biofuel technologies. The survey focuses on eliciting probabilistic information on the future costs of these technologies and on the potential role of RD&D (Research, Development and Demonstration) The information gathered from the experts sheds light on the
The present article briefly discusses the results of an expert elicitation survey on solar techno... more The present article briefly discusses the results of an expert elicitation survey on solar technologies carried out within the ICARUS project on innovation in carbon-free energy technologies. Sixteen leading European experts from the academic world, the private sector and international institutions took part in this survey on Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies. The elicitation process collected probabilistic
In this survey we review the literature that studies the relationship between environmental polic... more In this survey we review the literature that studies the relationship between environmental policy and technical change. We divide the literature in two broad areas of research. First, we look at the studies that evaluate the impact of environmental regulation on technological change after the implementation of environmental policy (ex-post). Second, we introduce the studies that assess the impact of environmental regulation on innovation dynamics before the implementation of environmental policy (ex-ante). While the first group is dominated by * We thank Henk Folmer and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
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Papers by Elena Verdolini