The Experts below are selected from a list of 297 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Mark J. Prus - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
State Prevailing Wage Laws and School Construction Costs
Industrial Relations, 2003Co-Authors: Hamid Azari-rad, Peter Philips, Mark J. PrusAbstract:Critics of prevailing wage laws claim that their elimination will cut total public Construction Costs by 15 to 25 percent. Justification for this assertion may be found in a 1983 study comparing the cost of public Construction regulated by the Davis-Bacon Act with the cost of similar private Construction. However, this study failed to account for the difference in the cost of public and private buildings absent . Using F. W. Dodge data for 1991 to 1999, we show that the inclusion of the appropriate controls in a study of new school Construction Costs finds no statistically significant difference between the cost of public schools built with prevailing wage regulations.
Hamid Azari-rad - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
State Prevailing Wage Laws and School Construction Costs
Industrial Relations, 2003Co-Authors: Hamid Azari-rad, Peter Philips, Mark J. PrusAbstract:Critics of prevailing wage laws claim that their elimination will cut total public Construction Costs by 15 to 25 percent. Justification for this assertion may be found in a 1983 study comparing the cost of public Construction regulated by the Davis-Bacon Act with the cost of similar private Construction. However, this study failed to account for the difference in the cost of public and private buildings absent . Using F. W. Dodge data for 1991 to 1999, we show that the inclusion of the appropriate controls in a study of new school Construction Costs finds no statistically significant difference between the cost of public schools built with prevailing wage regulations.
Ted Nordhaus - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
apples and oranges comparing nuclear Construction Costs across nations time periods and technologies
Energy Policy, 2017Co-Authors: J R Lovering, Ted Nordhaus, Arthur YipAbstract:Abstract The literature on energy technology Costs, diffusion, and learning has been characterized by data limitations, partial or arbitrary data sets, apples to oranges comparisons, and imprecision in the use of key concepts and terminology. Two responses to our paper, Lovering et al. (2016), by Koomey et al. and Gilbert et al. reflect many of these problems, conflating learning curves with experience curves, trends in actual Costs with the relationship between cost estimates and final Construction Costs, and component Costs with total installed Costs. The respondents use inconsistent definitions of demonstration, first-of-a-kind, and commercial deployment across different energy technologies. They also propose to compare final installed Costs for nuclear power plants, encompassing Construction and finance Costs, across different national economies and time periods encompassing a wide range of macro-economic circumstances and finance arrangements that overwhelm any signal from trends associated with the actual Construction Costs of the plants in question. In this response, we address the specific issues raised in these papers and suggest better practices for comparing energy technology Costs, trends, and technological learning.
-
historical Construction Costs of global nuclear power reactors
Energy Policy, 2016Co-Authors: Jessica Lovering, Ted NordhausAbstract:The existing literature on the Construction Costs of nuclear power reactors has focused almost exclusively on trends in Construction Costs in only two countries, the United States and France, and during two decades, the 1970s and 1980s. These analyses, Koomey and Hultman (2007); Grubler (2010), and Escobar-Rangel and Leveque (2015), study only 26% of reactors built globally between 1960 and 2010, providing an incomplete picture of the economic evolution of nuclear power Construction. This study curates historical reactor-specific overnight Construction cost (OCC) data that broaden the scope of study substantially, covering the full cost history for 349 reactors in the US, France, Canada, West Germany, Japan, India, and South Korea, encompassing 58% of all reactors built globally. We find that trends in Costs have varied significantly in magnitude and in structure by era, country, and experience. In contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear Construction in the United States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries, including absolute cost declines in some countries and specific eras. Our new findings suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend associated with nuclear technology.
Michel Berthelemy - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
nuclear reactors Construction Costs the role of lead time standardization and technological progress
Energy Policy, 2015Co-Authors: Michel Berthelemy, Lina Escobar RangelAbstract:This paper provides the first comparative analysis of nuclear reactor Construction Costs in France and the United States. Studying the cost of nuclear power has often been a challenge, owing to the lack of reliable data sources and heterogeneity between countries, as well as the long time horizon which requires controlling for input prices and structural changes. We build a simultaneous system of equations for overnight Costs and Construction time (lead-time) to control for endogeneity, using expected demand variation as an instrument. We argue that benefits from nuclear reactor program standardization can arise through short term coordination gains, when the diversity of nuclear reactors' technologies under Construction is low, or through long term benefits from learning spillovers from past reactor Construction experience, if those spillovers are limited to similar reactors. We find that overnight Construction Costs benefit directly from learning spillovers but that these spillovers are only significant for nuclear models built by the same Architect Engineer (A-E). In addition, we show that the standardization of nuclear reactors under Construction has an indirect and positive effect on Construction Costs through a reduction in lead-time, the latter being one of the main drivers of Construction Costs. Conversely, we also explore the possibility of learning by searching and find that, contrary to other energy technologies, innovation leads to Construction Costs increases.
Peter Philips - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
State Prevailing Wage Laws and School Construction Costs
Industrial Relations, 2003Co-Authors: Hamid Azari-rad, Peter Philips, Mark J. PrusAbstract:Critics of prevailing wage laws claim that their elimination will cut total public Construction Costs by 15 to 25 percent. Justification for this assertion may be found in a 1983 study comparing the cost of public Construction regulated by the Davis-Bacon Act with the cost of similar private Construction. However, this study failed to account for the difference in the cost of public and private buildings absent . Using F. W. Dodge data for 1991 to 1999, we show that the inclusion of the appropriate controls in a study of new school Construction Costs finds no statistically significant difference between the cost of public schools built with prevailing wage regulations.