No abstract

Feed-in Tariff (FIT) is the long-term agreement between governments and firms investing in solar energy, where governments guarantee to purchase the energy produced by firms. This research aims to reveal the optimal FIT design for Photovoltaic (PV) investments in Turkey. Choice Experiment based questionnaire was conducted on solar energy firms to investigate the investment preferences and monetary worth of each FIT component for investors. We found that FIT design with longer contract duration creates positive value for PV investments, while low payment amount per kWh, tax policy for imported PV panels, and license fee decrease the attractiveness of PV investments.

Cluster analysis is often used to determine housing submarkets. However, commonly used methods cannot handle mixed-mode data when variables of different types and units are combined. We propose new similarity measures that handle both continuous and categorical variables using normalization and discretization steps and partial match criteria. These measures are used in agglomerative hierarchical clustering with a formulation where the optimal number of clusters is automatically determined without a priori information regarding the number of submarkets. The experiments using housing sales data show that the proposed measures perform better than the commonly used standardized Euclidean distance in identifying submarkets.

Objective: International and domestic benefit transfers of the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) are conducted and the transfer errors are examined for Turkey. Methods: For the international transfers, (1) unit-value transfer with income adjustment, (2) the method developed by ECOTEC (2001) for EU candidate counties and (3) Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) derived for Turkey by recent literature are examined. For the domestic transfers, transfer errors are compared between unit-value transfer with income adjustment and function transfer methods. Results: While the lower-bound ECOTEC estimate results in the least transfer error, the unit-value transfer with income adjustment using the lower bound OECD value is also confirmed as "Very Good Fit" transfer if the income elasticity of VSL is 2.0-2.5 for the international benefit transfer. For the domestic transfer, unit-value transfer with income adjustment with base value = 740,838 TL (in 2012 TL) and the elasticity = 0.5 resulted in "Good Fit". When the transfer is necessary between the sites with different background risks, the function transfer with the basic demographic variables could improve the transfer results. Conclusions: We confirmed the applicability of benefit transfer practices for Turkey in both international and domestic context and identified the recommended methods of transfers together with the specific level of the income elasticities of VSL.

The motivations and reasons for smoking initiation, continuation, and cessation for women are different from men. This paper investigates the differences in smoking rate and intensity by gender in Turkey from 2008 to 2014. The results indicate significant differences in the decision to smoke and how much to smoke by gender. Results further indicate that the positive effects of the anti-smoking policies are fading away over time. Especially for women, the smoking and consumption levels are higher in 2014 than in 2008. This study argues that policies designed to combat the initialization and the intensity of smoking should account for the behavioural differences observed across genders.