market price behavior of wholesale electricity products texas abstract applying a regression based approach to a newly developed sample of over 60 000 hourly observations for 01 01 2011 12 30 2017 we answer the question what moves the day ahead market dam prices for energy and ancillary services as and the real time market rtm price for energy in the electric reliability council of texas ercot our answer comprises the following findings that capture the interdependence of ercot s energy and as products 1 the dam energy price increases with the day ahead forecasts of natural gas price system load and as requirements but declines with nuclear and wind generation s forecasts 2 the as prices increase with the dam energy price and the as procurement forecasts but decline with the as offer forecasts and 3 the rtm energy price increases with the dam energy price but diverges from the dam energy price due to forecasting errors related to the dam energy price s fundamental drivers these findings imply that texas can reduce the prices for day ahead energy day ahead as and real time energy via wind generation development and demand side management further texas can improve its electricity trading efficiency by improving ercot s forecast accuracy to narrow the rtm energy price s divergence from the dam energy price

country specific oil supply shocks and the global economy a counterfactual analysis abstract this paper investigates the global macroeconomic consequences of country specific oil supply shocks our contribution is both theoretical and empirical on the theoretical side we develop a model for the global oil market and integrate this within a compact quarterly model of the global economy to illustrate how our multi country approach to modeling oil markets can be used to identify country specific oil supply shocks on the empirical side estimating the gvar oil model for 27 countries regions over the period 1979q2 to 2013q1 we show that the global economic implications of oil supply shocks due to for instance sanctions wars or natural disasters vary considerably depending on which country is subject to the shock in particular we find that adverse shocks to iranian oil output are neutralized in terms of their effects on the global economy real outputs and financial markets mainly due to an increase in saudi arabian oil production in contrast a negative shock to oil supply in saudi arabia leads to an immediate and permanent increase in oil prices given that the loss in saudi arabian production is not compensated for by the other oil producers as a result a saudi arabian oil supply shock has significant adverse effects for the global economy with real gdp falling in both advanced and emerging economies and large losses in real equity prices worldwide

tracking distortions in agriculture china and its accession to the world trade organization this article examines the impacts of china s accession to the world trade organization wto on prices in its agricultural sector the analysis uses a new methodology to estimate nominal protection rates in china s agricultural sector before its accession to the wto these new measures account for differences in commodity quality within china and between china and world markets the analysis shows that some of china s agricultural commodities are well above world market prices and others are well below the article also assesses market integration and efficiency in china it finds high degrees of integration between coastal and inland markets and between regional and village markets the remarkable improvements in market performance in recent years mean that if increased imports or exports affect china s domestic price near the border producers throughout most of china will feel the price shifts

are electricity prices affected by the us dollar to euro exchange rate the spanish case abstract the objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between spanish electricity spot prices and the us dollar euro usd euro exchange rate during the period 2005 2007 taking into account the study of the association between dollar and oil prices in order to better understand the evolution of the former over time the first finding in this study is that spanish electricity spots prices the usd euro exchange rate and oil prices are cointegrated therefore there is a long run equilibrium relationship between the three variables short run relationships have been detected between oil prices and spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate in the sense that spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate are affected by oil prices in the short run there is a transmission of volatility between usd euro exchange rate and oil prices to spanish electricity prices so although spanish electricity prices are not affected in level by the movements of usd euro exchange rate they are in volatility in this kind of scenario the conclusions confirm that for countries so dependent on external causes as spain one possible solution for guarantying the energy security would be the promotion of the renewable energies therefore we cannot ignore the impact in the internal expenses of the cost of installation and generation of green energies so there must be a balance between the increase in renewables and the reasonable market price of the electricity

impacts of climate change on self sufficiency of rice in china a cge model based evidence with alternative regional feedback mechanisms abstract climate change would pose a direct and severe challenge to china s rice production and self sufficiency here we use global trade analysis project gtap model to evaluate the impacts of climate change on the self sufficiency of rice in china due to 2 c rise in temperature and further analyze the impact and transmission mechanisms of climate change through market and trade our simulation method switches different regional mechanisms in the gtap model by employing alternative closures and scenarios our results suggest that the fluctuation in rice price is much larger than that of rice production the active regional feedback mechanism has much larger effects than the passive one in assessing climate change impacts with the passive regional feedback mechanism single regional general equilibrium srge and multi regional general equilibrium with china s shock mrge c china s rice export would decrease by more than 8 and import would increase by over 5 which leads to a decrease in rice self sufficiency by more than 0 06 percentage points with the active regional feedback mechanism multi regional general equilibrium with global shock mrge w climate change will increase china s rice export by 2 7 as rising rice exports to south korea overweight the export decrease to other countries concurrently china s rice import would decrease by 0 04 which leads to a slight increase in rice self sufficiency as a whole climate change will not severely threaten china s rice self sufficiency by the decomposition analysis climate change impacts on china s rice self sufficiency mainly depend on the changes in china s domestic rice production interestingly the source of china s rice import will switch from vietnam to pakistan under mrge w which derives from the input structure of paddy rice and rice sectors in different countries

dynamics of heating oil market prices in europe abstract this paper concerns the german and french heating oil market and attempts to establish long and short term relationships between german and french monthly heating oil prices in dollars the rotterdam spot price for the same product and the dm us and ff us exchange rates during the period from january 1987 to december 1997 to model the market over the period under consideration incorporating the gulf war we have used conventional unit root tests and sequential tests allowing structural changes long term relationships with shifts in regime detected by cointegration tests taking structural breaks into consideration are estimated the short term dynamics defined by a vector error correction vec mechanism is derived in a classic manner when in presence of a cointegrated var system the econometric results obtained are commented on from an economic point of view weak exogeneity tests are performed and the conditional vec model is deduced enabling measurement of the instantaneous impact of variations in weakly exogenous exchange rates on variations in heating oil prices in germany and france lastly a study is made of the asymmetric reaction of domestic prices to positive and negative variations in exchange rates and the rotterdam spot quotation

winds of change how high wind penetrations will affect investment incentives in the gb electricity sector abstract wind power is widely expected to expand rapidly in britain over the next decade large amounts of variable wind power on the system will increase market risks with prices more volatile and load factors for conventional thermal plant lower and more uncertain this extra market risk may discourage investment in generation capacity financial viability for thermal plant will be increasingly dependent on price spikes during periods of low wind increased price risk will also make investment in other forms of low carbon generation e g nuclear power more challenging a number of policies can reduce the extent to which generators are exposed to market risks and encourage investment however market risks play a fundamental role in shaping efficient investment and dispatch patterns in a liberalised market therefore measures to improve price signals and market functioning such as a stronger carbon price and developing more responsive demand are desirable however the scale of the investment challenge and increased risk mean targeted measures to reduce although not eliminate risk exposure such as capacity mechanisms and fixed price schemes may have increasing merit the challenge for policy is to strike the right balance between market and planned approaches

balancing energy strategies in electricity portfolio management traditional management of electricity portfolios is focused on the day ahead market and futures of longer maturity within limits market participants can however also resort to the balancing energy market to close their positions in this paper we determine strategic positions in the balancing energy market and identify corresponding economic incentives in an analysis of the german balancing energy demand we find that those strategies allow an economically optimal starting point for real time balancing and create a marketplace for flexible capacity that is more open than alternative marketplaces the strategies we proffer in this paper we believe will contribute to an effective functioning of the electricity market

managing r d in vertical relationships we study the optimal strategy for research and development r d in a buyer supplier relationship the buyer chooses whether to 1 insource a cost reducing r d to its own research subunit or to 2 outsource it to its manufacturing supplier the buyer cannot observe the r d effort in either case but can better observe the r d result when the r d is conducted internally according to our analysis the buyer prefers insourcing r d to mitigate information asymmetry when the r d cost is either small or large when the r d cost is intermediate however the buyer prefers outsourcing r d and can achieve the full information outcome first best outcome despite the information asymmetry associated with outsourcing r d moreover the buyer s preference for outsourcing high cost r d increases when the r d is more likely to succeed or to generate significant cost reductions or the r d result is more difficult to predict our analysis provides a theoretical explanation for the increasing trend of outsourcing innovation to manufacturing suppliers jel d82 l22 l23

oil prices and real exchange rates in this paper we investigate the long run relationship between real oil prices and real exchange rates by using a monthly panel of g7 countries from 1972 1 to 2005 10 we first test whether exchange rates are cointegrated with real oil prices it is shown that real oil prices may have been the dominant source of real exchange rate movements and that there is a link between real oil prices and real exchange rates we then examine the ability of real oil prices to forecast future real exchange returns panel predictive regression estimates suggest that real oil prices have significant forecasting power the out of sample prediction performances demonstrate greater predictability over longer horizons

why is there controversy regarding china s staple grain food market integration evidence and implication from price convergent club analysis there remains ongoing controversy regarding the degree to which chinese food markets are integrated some economists conclude that china s grain economy is well integrated while others argue that china s gradual reforms have led to fragmented domestic markets while others conclude that previous studies have produced mixed results to reconcile the debate this article models and analyses the behaviour of china s food grain retail markets by testing for the existence of the convergent price clustering clubs using appropriate econometric methods and price data over 1997 2010 the article finds evidence as to why the controversy remains by identifying a number of small divergent price clustering clubs where it is hard to conclude that china s food grain markets are fully integrated however given that large convergent clustering clubs were also identified it can be concluded that the degree to which chinese grain food retail markets are integrated is high this finding is important for those who plan to

the integration of major fuel source markets in china evidence from panel cointegration tests abstract the paper tests for energy price co movement in china over the new regime as part of a strategy to test for the existence of a national energy market panel cointegration test statistics suggest that not all energy commodities are spatially homogenous in prices and the processes of energy price cointegration are different over time and over groups of fuels the statistics demonstrate china s gradual spatially partial and idiosyncratic energy reform process coal and electricity price series have co moved since 2003 while the national panel cointegration test statistics suggest that gasoline and diesel price series have co moved since 1997 regional panel tests also show that there are apparently differences in the emergence of energy price co movement this suggests that regional energy markets have emerged in china one of the important lessons of the research is that an energy market has to some extent already emerged in china and as a consequence energy prices are much less distorted than previously if correct this fact is of major global significance both in terms of future environmental effects and future trade and investment negotiations as china is seen internationally as a market driven economy

the empirical role of the exchange rate on the crude oil price formation this paper adopts a novel empirical approach to the crude oil price formation for the purpose of understanding the price reactions of opec member countries to changes in the exchange rate of the us dollar against other major currencies and prices of other members the results are broadly consistent with the view of the absence of a unified opec determined price in the international crude market literature in addition the results also highlight a cross regional dimension of the crude oil market

relationships between oil price shocks and stock market an empirical analysis from china this paper investigates the interactive relationships between oil price shocks and chinese stock market using multivariate vector auto regression oil price shocks do not show statistically significant impact on the real stock returns of most chinese stock market indices except for manufacturing index and some oil companies some important oil price shocks depress oil company stock prices increase in oil volatility may increase the speculations in mining index and petrochemicals index which raise their stock returns both the world oil price shocks and china oil price shocks can explain much more than interest rates for manufacturing index

an analysis of cooperative research and development i analyze the effects of cooperative research whereby member firms agree to share the costs andfruits of a research project before they undertake it in this model industrywide agreements tend to have socially beneficial effects when the degree ofproduct market competition is low when there are r d spillovers in the absence of cooperation when a high degree of sharing is technologically feasible and when the agreement concerns basic research rather than development activities i show that a royalty free cross licensing agreement among any number offirms lowers the equilibrium level of innovation even though it increases the efficiency of r d through sharing

climate policy and power producers the distribution of pain and gain abstract climate policies do not affect all power producers equally in this paper we evaluate the supply side distributional consequences of emissions reduction policies using a simple and novel partial equilibrium model where production takes place in technology specific sites in a quantitative application hydro wind and solar firms generate power combining capital and sites which differ in productivity in contrast the productivity levels of coal gas and nuclear technologies are constant across sites we parameterise the model to analyse the effects of stylised tax and subsidy schemes carbon pricing outperforms all other instruments and crucially leads to more equitable outcomes on the supply side technology specific and uniform subsidies to carbon free producers result in a greater welfare cost and their supply side distributional impacts depend on how they are financed power consumption taxes have exceptionally high welfare costs and should not be the instrument of choice to reduce emissions or to finance subsidies aiming to reduce emissions

information management in incentive problems we extend the standard procurement model to examine how an agent is optimally induced to acquire valuable planning information before he choose an unobservable level of cost reducing effort concer

policy based reserves for power systems this paper introduces the concept of affine reserve policies for accommodating large fluctuating renewable in feeds in power systems the approach uses robust optimization with recourse to determine operating rules for power system entities such as generators and storage units these rules or policies establish several hours in advance how these entities are to respond to errors in the prediction of loads and renewable infeeds once their values are discovered affine policies consist of a nominal power schedule plus a series of planned linear modifications that depend on the prediction errors that will become known at future times we describe how to choose optimal affine policies that respect the power network constraints namely matching supply and demand respecting transmission line ratings and the local operating limits of power system entities for all realizations of the prediction errors crucially these policies are time coupled exploiting the spatial and temporal correlation of these prediction errors affine policies are compared with existing reserve operation under standard modeling assumptions and operating cost reductions are reported for a multi day benchmark study featuring a poorly predicted wind infeed efficient prices for such policy based reserves are derived and we propose new reserve products that could be traded on electricity markets

incremental reform and distortions in china s product and factor markets the purpose of economic reform is to reduce distortions and enhance efficiency however when reforms are partial and incremental individuals and local governments are often able to capture the rent inherent in the gradual transition process young 2000 warned that such rent seeking behavior might lead to increasing market fragmentation empirical studies have shown the opposite in the product market this article argues that as the rent from china s product market has been squeezed out due to deepening reforms rent seeking behavior may have shifted to the capital market further reforms are needed in the capital market to squeeze out these rent seeking opportunities just as those from the product and labor markets were squeezed out earlier

the incentive to invest in thermal plants in the presence of wind generation abstract in a deregulated market the decision to add generation rests with private investors this paper evaluates how generator profits are affected by increasing wind generation using hourly historical data for the irish single electricity market we simulate new series of electricity prices representative plant bids and wind generation we calibrate the model based on the negative correlation between electricity prices and wind generation this allows us to determine that increasing wind generation induces lower profits for all baseload plants additionally it decreases profits for baseload natural gas plants more than for less flexible coal fuelled plants which might encourage investment in less flexible plants

agency costs and innovation abstract stylized facts indicate that small firms are responsible for a disproportionate share of innovative research there are many possible explanations for this fact the paper seeks to understand this phenomenon as the outcome of an optimal assignment of tasks across individuals and organizations it is shown that incentive costs associated with a given task depend on the total portfolio of tasks that an individual or an organization undertakes mixing hard to measure activities innovation with easy to measure activities routine is particularly costly since it will either lead to misallocation of attention across tasks or to misallocation of risk larger firms are at a comparative disadvantage in conducting highly innovative research because of the costs associated with managing a heterogeneous set of tasks it is further argued that optimal organizational responses to coordination and control of routine tasks will lead to bureaucratization within the firm and to financial constraints imposed by capital markets both of which are hostile to innovation

to innovate or not to innovate incentives and innovation in hierarchies hierarchical organizations often perform poorly in inducing the adoption of innovations the authors examine a principal offering contracts to agents who make unobservable effort and adoption of innovation choices yielding moral hazard who occupy jobs of differing unobserved productivities yielding adverse selection and who engage in a repeated relationship with the principal causing a ratchet effect to arise increasing the rate of adoption of an innovation in such an organization causes the incentive costs of adoption to increase at an increasing rate relatively low rates of adoption may then be a response to the prohibitive incentive costs of higher adoption rates copyright 1990 by american economic association

comprehensive value assessment of wind power by layer great emphasis has been placed on rational value assessment of wind power in system in recent times because there are different properties in various output levels of wind power there should also be different values this paper proposes a novel method for value assessment of wind power to get a more comprehensive and accurate evaluation wind power outputs are divided horizontally based on the wind layer model then comprehensive studies of cost and benefit are conducted layer by layer furthermore the detailed characteristics in layers storage benefit and value allocation are analyzed after that the sensitivities about the chosen system parameters region size and demand side participation are discussed at length the effectiveness and rationality of the model are proved by the case study the model assesses the value of wind power more precisely and profoundly which would provide significant guidance in the setting of price policy for wind power and market supervision

on generation integrated energy storage generation integrated energy storage gies systems store energy at some point along the transformation between the primary energy form and electricity instances exist already in natural hydro power biomass generation wave power and concentrated solar power gies systems have been proposed for wind nuclear power and they arise naturally in photocatalysis systems that are in development gies systems can compare very favourably in both performance and total cost against equivalent non integrated systems comprising both generation and storage despite this they have not hitherto been recognised as a discrete class of systems consequently policy decisions affecting development or demonstration projects and policy approaches concerning low carbon generation are not fully informed this paper highlights that policy structures exist militating against the development and introduction of gies systems probably to the detriment of overall system good

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

gas generation and wind power a review of unlikely allies in the united kingdom and ireland no single solution currently exists to achieve the utopian desire of zero fossil fuel electricity generation until such time it is evident that the energy mix will contain a large variation in stochastic and intermittent sources of renewable energy such as wind power the increasing prominence of wind power in pursuit of legally binding european energy targets enables policy makers and conventional generating companies to plan for the unique challenges such a natural resource presents this drive for wind has been highly beneficial in terms of security of energy supply and reducing greenhouse gas emissions however it has created an unusual ally in natural gas this paper outlines the suitability and challenges faced by gas generating units in their utilisation as key assets for renewable energy integration and the transition to a low carbon future the single electricity market of the republic of ireland and northern ireland and the british electricity transmission trading agreement market are the backdrop to this analysis both of these energy markets have a reliance on gas generation matching the proliferation of wind power the unlikely and mostly ignored relationship between natural gas generation and wind power due to policy decisions and market forces is the necessity of gas to act as a bridging fuel this review finds gas generation to be crucially important to the continued growth of renewable energy additionally it is suggested that power market design should adequately reward the flexibility required to securely operate a power system with high penetrations of renewable energy which in most cases is provided by gas generation

merit order effects of renewable energy and price divergence in california s day ahead and real time electricity markets abstract we answer two policy questions 1 what are the estimated merit order effects of renewable energy in the california independent system operator s caiso s day ahead market dam and real time market rtm and 2 what causes the hourly dam and rtm prices to systematically diverge the first question is timely and relevant because if the merit order effect estimates are small california s renewable energy development is of limited help in cutting electricity consumers bills but also has a lesser adverse impact on the state s investment incentive for natural gas fired generation the second question is related to the efficient market hypothesis under which the hourly rtm and dam prices tend to converge using a sample of about 21 000 hourly observations of caiso market prices and their fundamental drivers during 12 12 2012 04 30 2015 we document statistically significant estimates p value 0 01 for the dam and rtm merit order effects this finding lends support to california s adopted procurement process to provide sufficient investment incentives for natural gas fired generation we document that the rtm dam price divergence partly depends on the casio s day ahead forecast errors for system loads and renewable energy this finding suggests that improving the performance of the caiso s day ahead forecasts can enhance trading efficiency in california s dam and rtm electricity markets

understanding the oil price exchange rate nexus for the fiji islands in this paper we examine the relationship between oil price and the fiji us exchange rate using daily data for the period 2000 2006 we use the generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch and exponential garch egarch models to estimate the impact of oil price on the nominal exchange rate we find that a rise in oil prices leads to an appreciation of the fijian dollar vis a vis the us dollar

capital market response to emission rights returns evidence from the european power sector prior studies on the distributional effects of the european union s emission trading scheme eu ets have so far only relied on supply and demand data empirical evidence from capital markets has been missing we address this gap and measure the ets s economic consequences using the expectations of investors towards the regulatory impact on firm value employing a multifactor model we show that returns on common stock of the largest affected industry power generation are positively correlated with rising prices for emission rights this implies that the market predicts that firms are not only able to pass on their share of the regulatory burden to customers but even achieve windfall profits by overcompensating for the costs

the empirical relationship between energy futures prices and exchange rates abstract this paper investigates the interaction between energy futures prices and exchange rates results are presented to show that futures prices for crude oil heating oil and unleaded gasoline are co integrated with a trade weighted index of exchange rates this is important because it means that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between these four variables granger causality results for both the long and short run are presented evidence is also presented that suggests exchange rates transmit exogenous shocks to energy futures prices

market price of risk implied by asian style electricity options and futures in this paper we propose a jump diffusion type model which recovers the main characteristics of electricity spot price dynamics in the nordic market including seasonality mean reversion and spiky behavior we show how the calibration of the market price of risk to actively traded futures contracts allows for efficient valuation of nord pool s asian style options written on the spot electricity price furthermore we study the evolution of the market price of risk and the risk premium over a three year time period and compare the obtained results with those reported in the literature

the evolution of hog production and potential sources for future growth in china abstract following reforms to the market china s hog industry has developed rapidly however with social and economic transitions china s hog industry is facing challenges which might restrict long term growth in production this paper analyzes the changes in regional scale organization input factors and technological progress for china s hog production over the last few decades the paper seeks to reveal the sources of hog production growth and provide some suggestions for future development of the hog industry to achieve these aims the paper uses stochastic frontier production functions and the malmquist index to measure total factor productivity tfp in the hog industry and decompose tfp into technical efficiency technological progress scale efficiency and allocative efficiency using data for 25 provinces from 1980 to 2008 the results show firstly that the tfp of hog production increased by 64 3 from 1980 to 2008 and allocative efficiency and scale efficiency improvements played a key role in this tfp growth in contrast technical efficiency and technical progress have changed little over this period secondly tfp s contribution to output was 39 7 it being less than that of factor inputs to output thirdly the results suggest that the growth of china s pork production depends mostly on the increase in the quantity of factor inputs especially feed as a consequence the key to ensuring long term and stable development of china s hog production would seem to involve focusing on enhancing total factor productivity and changing the pattern of production growth

what drives renewable energy development abstract this viewpoint reviews renewable energy development in 14 markets that differ in market structure restructured vs not restructured use of feed in tariff fit yes vs no transmission planning anticipatory vs reactive and transmission interconnection cost allocated to a renewable generator high vs low we find that market restructuring is not a primary driver of renewable energy development renewable generation has the highest percent of total installed capacity in markets that use a fit employ anticipatory transmission planning and have loads or end users paying for most if not all of the transmission interconnection costs in contrast renewable developers have been less successful in markets that do not use a fit employ reactive transmission planning and have generators paying for most if not all of the transmission interconnection costs while these policies can lead to higher penetration of renewable energy in the short run their high cost to ratepayers can threaten the economic sustainability of renewable energy in the long run

electricity market design for generator revenue sufficiency with increased variable generation we present a computationally efficient mixed integer program mip that determines optimal generator expansion decisions and hourly unit commitment and dispatch in a power system the impact of increasing wind power capacity on the optimal generation mix and generator profitability is analyzed for a test case that approximates the electricity market in texas ercot we analyze three market policies that may support resource adequacy operating reserve demand curves ordc fixed reserve scarcity prices frsp and fixed capacity payments cp optimal expansion plans are comparable between the ordc and frsp implementations while capacity payments may result in additional new capacity the frsp policy leads to frequent reserves scarcity events and corresponding price spikes while the ordc implementation results in more continuous energy prices average energy prices decrease with increasing wind penetration under all policies as do revenues for baseload and wind generators intermediate and peak load plants benefit from higher reserve prices and are less exposed to reduced energy prices all else equal an ordc approach may be preferred to frsp as it results in similar expansion and revenues with less extreme energy prices a fixed cp leads to additional new flexible ngct units but lower profits for other technologies

oil and energy price volatility it is commonly believed that since the 1973 oil crisis oil and energy prices have been more volatile than other commodity prices this study examines monthly producer prices for thousands of products over the period january 1945 through august 2005 the results show that crude oil refined petroleum and natural gas prices are more volatile than prices for about 95 of products sold by domestic producers relative to crude commodities however crude oil prices are currently more volatile than about 65 of other products and oil price volatility first exceeded the median for crude commodities following the 1986 drop in oil prices

repeated auctions of incentive contracts investment and bidding parity with an application to takeovers this article considers a two period model of natural monopoly and second sourcing the incumbent supplier invests in the first period after observing the incumbent s first period performance the buyer may break out in the second period the investment may or may not be transferable to the second source and it may be monetary or take the form of human capital we determine whether the incumbent should be favored at the reprocurement stage and how the slope of his incentive scheme should evolve over time we find that the gains from second sourcing are not so large as one might hope finally we reinterpret the second source as a raider and the breakout as a takeover we discuss the desirability of defensive tactics and obtain a rich set of testable implications concerning the size of managerial stock options the extent of defensive tactics the firm s performance and the probability of a takeover

texas s operating reserve demand curve s generation investment incentive abstract faced with reserve margin projections well below the adopted target of 13 75 of the system peak forecast the public utility commission of texas on 01 17 2019 ordered the state s grid operator the electric reliability council of texas to right shift the operating reserve demand curve ordc to increase generators revenue from energy sales in ercot s real time market rtm using a large sample of 15 min data for the backcast period of 01 01 2015 through 12 31 2018 we calculate the ordc shift s impact on rtm prices and investment incentives for natural gas fired generation ngfg had the ordc shift been in effect in the backcast period the resulting rtm price increases in 2018 could suffice to justify ngfg investment though not in the prior years of 2015 2016 and 2017 while the actual ordc shift occurred on 03 01 2019 had a large impact on rtm prices in the ensuing six month period of march august 2019 texas s planned renewable generation is expected to erode ngfg s operating profit thus diminishing the ordc s investment incentive over time hence texas s energy only market design will likely need further refinements to solve the missing money problem of inadequate ngfg investment incentive

price and volatility dynamics between electricity and fuel costs some evidence for spain abstract the purpose of this study is to investigate the causal linkages between the spanish electricity brent crude oil and zeebrugge belgium natural gas 1 month ahead forward prices following lutkepohl et al 2004 we control for the presence of a structural change in the series and then we use the johansen cointegration test and a vector error correction model vecm to embrace the analysis additionally a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic garch model is applied to explore volatility interactions between the three markets involved in the study our findings reveal that brent crude oil and zeebrugge natural gas forward prices play a prominent role in the spanish electricity price formation process furthermore causation both in price and volatility runs from brent crude oil and natural gas forward markets to the spanish electricity forward market these results are of practical importance for both the wholesale and retail markets participants as well as the regulator through the established link between the forward contracts price and the spanish tariff of last resort paid by more than 23 million of customers

market emergence and transition arbitrage transaction costs and autarky in china s grain markets using trimonthly chinese provincial grain prices from 1988 to 1995 we estimate a parity bounds model of interregional trade for four subperiods to characterize how multiple aspects of market performance change during the process of economic transition for each period we estimate the extent to which arbitrage opportunities are realized by traders the transaction costs between location pairs and the likelihood that regions do not trade trade restrictions cannot explain the pattern of uneven market development over time infrastructure bottlenecks managerial incentive reforms and production specialization policies all were likely important factors affecting market performance

how to deal with negative power price spikes flexible voluntary curtailment agreements for large scale integration of wind for the large scale integration of electricity from renewable energy sources res e the german system seems to reach its limits in 2009 the electricity wholesale market experienced serious negative prices at times of high wind and low demand the feed in system in germany consists of a fixed feed in price a take off obligation and a res priority rule and in practice only very restrictive use of res e curtailment exactly the latter is the problem we argue that the overall performance of the system would improve seriously by lifting the restrictions on the use of voluntary curtailment agreements while retaining the priority rule as such since generators of res e can only improve under this system reform investment conditions improve leading to higher installed res e capacity this in turn implies that reduced wind output due to curtailment can actually be offset by higher wind output in all periods in which there is no problem

electricity prices and fuel costs long run relations and short run dynamics the paper examines the long run relation and short run dynamics between electricity prices and three fossil fuel prices coal natural gas and crude oil using annual data for the u s for 1960 2007 the results suggest 1 a stable long run relation between real prices for electricity and coal 2 bi directional long run causality between coal and electricity prices 3 insignificant long run relations between electricity and crude oil and or natural gas prices and 4 no evidence of asymmetries in the adjustment of electricity prices to deviations from equilibrium a number of implications are addressed

testing for convergence clubs in income per capita a predictive density approach the article proposes a technique based on the predictive density of the data conditional on the parameters of the model to jointly tests for groups of unknown size in a panel and to estimate the parameters of each group the procedure is applied to the problem of identifying convergence clubs in scaled income per capita data the steady state distribution of european regional data clusters around four poles of attraction with different economic features the distribution of income per capita of oecd countries has two poles of attraction and each group clearly identifiable economic characteristics we share the uncommonness of being different j p roche

split awards procurement and innovation in many procurement settings it is possible for a buyer to split a production award between suppliers in this article we develop a model of split award procurement auctions in which the split choice is endogenous we characterize the set of equilibrium bids and allocations for optimizing agents in an environment in which suppliers are fully informed about each other s costs split award equilibria simultaneously exhibit strong collusive features and cost efficiency properties despite the former property of the equilibria upstream investment considerations may lead a buyer to prefer a split award auction format to a winner take all auction format

electricity market design for facilitating the integration of wind energy experience and prospects with the australian national electricity market abstract australia has been an early and enthusiastic adopter of both electricity industry restructuring and market based environmental regulation the australian national electricity market nem was established in 1999 and australia also implemented one of the world s first renewable energy target schemes in 2001 with significant recent growth in wind generation australia provides an interesting case for assessing different approaches to facilitating wind integration into the electricity industry wind project developers in australia must assess both potential energy market and tradeable green certificate income streams when making investments wind farm energy income depends on the match of its uncertain time varying output with the regional half hourly market price a price that exhibits daily weekly and seasonal patterns and considerable uncertainty such price signals assist in driving investments that maximize project value to the electricity industry as a whole including integration costs and benefits for other participants recent nem rule changes will formally integrate wind generation in the market s scheduling processes while a centralized wind forecasting system has also been introduced this paper outlines experience to date with wind integration in the nem describes the evolution of market rules in response and assesses their possible implications for facilitating high future wind penetrations

regulating a monopolist with unknown costs we consider the problem of how to regulate a monopolistic firm whose costs are unknown to the regulator the regulator s objective is to maximize a linear social welfare function of the consumers surplus and the firm s profit in the optimal regulatory policy prices and subsidies are designed as functions of the firm s cost report so that expected social welfare is maximized subject to the constraints that the firm has nonnegative profit and has no incentive to misrepresent its costs we explicitly derive the optimal policy and analyze its properties in their classic papers dupuit 2 and hotelling 5 considered pricing policies for a bridge that had a fixed cost of construction and zero marginal cost they demonstrated that the pricing policy that maximizes consumer well being is to set price equal to marginal cost and to provide a subsidy to the supplier equal to the fixed cost so that a firm would be willing to provide the bridge this first best solution is based on a number of informational assumptions first the demand function is assumed to be known to both the regulator and to the firm while the assumption of complete information may be too strong the assumption that information about demand is as available to the regulator as it is to the firm does not seem unnatural a second informational assumption is that the regulator has complete information about the cost of the firm or at least has the same information about cost as does the firm this assumption is unlikely to be met in reality since the firm would be expected to have better information about costs than would the regulator as weitzman has stated an essential feature of the regulatory environment i am trying to describe is uncertainty about the exact specification of each firm s cost function in most cases even the managers and engineers most closely associated with production will be unable to precisely specify beforehand the cheapest way to generate various hypothetical output levels because they are yet removed from the production process the regulators are likely to be vaguer still about a firm s cost function 12 p 684 as this observation suggests it is natural to expect that a firm would have better information regarding its costs than would a regulator the purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal regulatory policy for the case in which the regulator does not know the costs of the firm one strategy that a regulator could use in the absence of full information about costs is to give the firm the title to the total social surplus and to delegate the pricing decision to the firm in pursuing its own interests which would then be to maximize the total social surplus the firm would adopt the same marginal cost pricing strategy that the regulator would have imposed if the regulator had

the law of one price evidence from the transitional economy of china abstract this paper applies the recently developed econometric methods of panel unit root tests and nonlinear mean reversion to investigate price convergence in china the largest transitional economy in the world we find that prices did converge to the law of one price in china for an overwhelming majority of goods and services based on a large panel data set the finding sheds light on the extent of the market economy in china and casts doubt on young s proposition that the economic reform has led to the fragmentation of chinese domestic markets