EMC Working Papers

• Croatia should commission a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) as a pioneer of new types of nuclear power station

This short policy report considers the opportunities available to the Croatian government for the utilisation of new nuclear technology for domestically produced energy.

As other European countries struggle to balance their desire for a reliable energy supply with their contribution to climate change, recent advances in nuclear technologies present a solution.

This paper evaluates the energy efficiency of EU countries over the period 2000-2010. At the first stage, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is employed, combining multiple energy consumption data, economic outputs, structural indicators, and environmental factors. The efficiency estimates obtained from the analysis are evaluated in a second stage through a multiple criteria decision aiding methodology (MCDA). The proposed non-parametric approach combining DEA with MCDA enables the modeling of the problem in an integrated manner, providing not only energy efficiency estimates, but also supporting the analysis of the main contributing factors, as well as the development of a benchmarking model for energy efficiency evaluation in country level.

There is a great hype about Brazil's pre-salt oil potential and the impact it will eventually have on the global oil market. Some sources say that it could vault Brazil to seventh place in the world rankings in terms of proven oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates. Others claim that Brazil could emerge as a major oil producer and exporter and that will certainly change the balance of oil distribution in the world with very important geopolitical implications for the United States' dependence on Middle East oil. Others, in contrast, see Brazil as an overstated high-risk oil province whose pre-salt oil is extremely challenging and very costly to produce. The reality, as always, is somewhere in between. Even with Brazil's growing oil reserves and accelerating production, the country could never become a major oil exporter as all the incremental oil production will be needed to fuel the country's economic growth. Brazil could only aspire to remain self-sufficient if its current economic growth continues its surge into the future. While Brazil's oil wealth will certainly accelerate the country's ascent into the top ranks of the world's economic powers, it will hardly make a dent in the global oil market and the price of oil.

The major premises of the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) are that firms are bundles of idiosyncratic resources and capabilities and that firms with valuable, rare, inimitable and nonsubstitutable resources and capabilities outperform in their industries (Barney, 2001; Dierickx and Cool, 1989; Wernerfelt, 1984, 1995). Drawing on Barney (1991), Miller and Shamsie (1996) define property-based resources as appropriable resources controlled by the corporation through property rights, and in contrast, knowledge-based resources are those "protected from imitation not by property rights but by knowledge barriers", and often include technical, creative or collaborative skills (1996: 522).

This paper uses the resource-based view framework to conduct a comparative analysis of the major European oil and gas companies. This study will look at six companies namely BP, Eni, Repsol, Shell, Statoil, and Total, and identify which resources are drivers and determinants of their competitive advantage and financial performance. Drawing on the framework of property-based and knowledge-based resources, the paper will analyse six resource categories of oil and gas companies namely annual capital expenditure, annual changes in liquids and gas reserves, annual replacement ratios, refinery distillation capacity and number of service stations, number of employees and net income per employee, and annual levels of drilling activity in exploration and development with a disaggregation of successful and unsuccessful wells drilled.

A central goal that has eluded most countries in sub-Saharan Africa is to effectively manage their natural resources, develop diversified and prosperous economies, and as a result improve the standard of living of their citizens. This paper draws from the framework of diversification and economic growth, resource-based industrialization, resource curse hypothesis, ownership and control, and political structure and economic choices to examine how Nigeria and Angola managed their oil and gas resources from th 1970s and the outcome of their choices. The findings show that both countries were poorly equipped to diversify their economies and failed to achieve economic prosperity for their citizens. The contribution that this paper makes is to clearly outline and discuss key lessons that emerging oil producers in sub-Saharan Africa can learn from Nigeria and Angola for them to successfully manage their hydrocarbon resources.