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Impacts of Ethanol Policy on Corn Prices: A Meta-Analysis
Horáček, Přemysl ; Havránek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Janda, Karel (referee)
Deflecting a significant portion of corn production to ethanol for fuelling purposes increases the prices of corn. Although many studies examined the relationship between biofuels and agricultural commodity prices in the last decade, their estimates vary broadly (from nil to 85%). Without knowing the precise estimates of these impacts, policymakers can hardly set the biofuel policies optimally. I conduct a meta-analysis of over 150 estimates of the effect of corn ethanol production on corn prices to bring more clarity to the issue. Furthermore, I detect substantial selective reporting bias in the literature. After controlling for this bias with the use of various methods including the mixedeffects multilevel model, the results show that the true effect of a one billion gallon expansion in corn ethanol on corn prices is about 2-3%, which is less than commonly thought.
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Price Elasticity of Electricity Demand: A Meta-Analysis
Horáček, Přemysl ; Havránek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Polák, Petr (referee)
During the last decades, one of the most intensively examined statistical relationships in energy economics has been the price elasticity of electricity demand. In this thesis, a quantitative survey of the estimates of price elasticity reported for various countries is provided. The method I use, called meta-regression analysis, indicates that the literature suffers from serious publication selection bias: positive or insignificant estimates of this elasticity are seldom reported, even though questionably large negative estimates are reported commonly. As a result, the average published estimates of price elasticity are greatly exaggerated (more than threefold in the case of short-run elasticity). By utilising the mixed- effects multilevel meta-regression, which is able to correct for publication selection bias, it is shown that the true average elasticity reaches only -0.06 in the short-run, -0.21 in the intermediate-run and about -0.43 in the long-run.
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