price formation in electricity forward markets and the relevance of systematic forecast errors since the liberalisation of the european electricity sector forward and futures contracts have gained significant interest of market participants due to risk management reasons for pricing of these contracts an important fact concerns the non storability of electricity in this case according to economic theory forward prices are related to the expected spot prices which are built on fundamental market expectations in the following article the crucial impact parameters of forward electricity prices and the relationship between forward and future spot prices will be assessed by an empirical analysis of electricity prices at the european energy exchange and the nord pool power exchange in fact price formation in the considered markets is influenced by historic spot market prices yielding a biased forecasting power of long term contracts although market and risk assessment measures of market participants and supply and demand shocks can partly explain the futures spot bias inefficiencies in the analysed forward markets cannot be ruled out

forecasting energy markets using support vector machines abstract in this paper we investigate the efficiency of a support vector machine svm based forecasting model for the next day directional change of electricity prices we first adjust the best autoregressive svm model and then we enhance it with various related variables the system is tested on the daily phelix index of the german and austrian control area of the european energy exchange ee wholesale electricity market the forecast accuracy we achieved is 76 12 over a 200 day period

efficiency and equalization payments in a federal system of government a synthesis and extensions of recent results this paper investigates the rationale for a system of equalization transfers in a federal system of government the existing sources of inefficiency of resource allocation in economies with more than one level of government are synthesized in the framework of a simple decentralized multiprovince model with mobile factors of production the sources of inefficiency arise first because migrants respond at the margin to incorrect signals owing to the phenomena of rent sharing and fiscal exterality and second because of global rather than local inefficiencies the model is then extended to consider the role of the federal government in providing intergovernmental transfers in the face of such inefficiencies in addition to synthesizing the sources of inefficiency in federal models the equity arguments for equalization are briefly recounted efficacite et paiements de perequation dans un systeme federal de gouvernement synthese et extensions de certains resultats recents ce memoire examine la logique qui soustend un systeme de paiements de perequation dans un systeme fdderal de gouverement les auteurs utilisent un modele simple d un systeme multi provincial decentralise avec des facteurs de production mobiles pour definir les sources d inefficacite dans l allocation des ressources dans les dconomies qui possedent plus d un niveau de gouvernement ces inefficacites proviennent de ce que d abord ceux qui se deplacent le font en reponse a la marge a des signaux incorrects engendres par le partage de la rente sur la base de la residence et par les phenomenes d exteralites fiscales elles sont aussi le resultat d inefficacites globales plutot que locales dans le cadre de ce modele les auteurs analysent le role du gouvernement federal effectuant des transferts inter gouverementaux pour corriger ces inefficacites en plus de presenter une synthese des sources d inefficacite dans les regimes federaux les auteurs font un bref rappel en passant a l ensemble des arguments fondes sur l equite qu on utilise pour rationaliser les paiements de perequation this paper is a linear combination of two papers presented at the may 1982 meetings of the canadian economics association in halifax entitled the case for equalization payments by the authors and recent developments in the theory of regional economic policy in canada by boadway the authors are grateful for comments by the discussants jim johnson and baxter macdonald and by jack mintz brian scarfe gerard belanger david sewell tom courchene and the referees we are especially heavily indebted to dan usher for many stimulating comments and suggestions while the work was in progress some of the above persons will undoubtedly disagree with the emphasis we have chosen to put on various aspects of the analysis for policy purposes support for some of this work has been provided by the economic council of canada and is gratefully acknowledged canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xv no 4 november novembre 1982 printed in canada imprimd au canada 0008 4085 82 0000 0613 01 50 1982 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 127 on wed 12 oct 2016 04 27 47 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms 614 robin boadway and frank flatters

stochastic modeling of financial electricity contracts abstract we discuss the modeling of electricity contracts traded in many deregulated power markets these forward futures type contracts deliver either physically or financially electricity over a specified time period and is frequently referred to as swaps since they in effect represent an exchange of fixed for floating electricity price we propose to use the heath jarrow morton approach to model swap prices since the notion of a spot price is not easily defined in these markets for general stochastic dynamical models we connect the spot price the instantaneous delivery forward price and the swap price and analyze two different ways to apply the heath jarrow morton approach to swap pricing either one specifies a dynamics for the non existing instantaneous delivery forwards and derives the implied swap dynamics or one models directly on the swaps the former is shown to lead to quite complicated stochastic models for the swap price even when the forward dynamics is simple the latter has some theoretical problems due to a no arbitrage condition that has to be satisfied for swaps with overlapping delivery periods to overcome this problem a practical modeling approach is analyzed the market is supposed only to consist of non overlapping swaps and these are modelled directly a thorough empirical study is performed using data collected from nord pool our investigations demonstrate that it is possible to state reasonable models for the swap price dynamics which is analytically tractable for risk management and option pricing purposes however this is an area of further research

political competition and voter mobility the existing model of political competition is extended to allow voters to live in different regions and to migrate between regions in response to an inter regional transfer policy we then show that regions have a different weight in the expected vote function of political parties this gives parties an incentive to bias the transfer policy in favour of relatively high weight regions with potentially adverse efficiency and equity effects however we then show that parties always propose efficient and equitable regional transfers regardless of whether regions have different weights if there is some mobility of citizens across regions mobility constrains parties to act efficiently and equitably even though they face an incentive to act otherwise however when voters are immobile political competition leads to inequitable though efficient outcomes

market specific news and its impact on forward premia on electricity markets abstract this paper studies the impact of market specific news on the short term forward premia on the nordic electricity market i show that the short term premia between the day ahead and intra day electricity prices on the nordic market can be partly explained by the arrival of news specific to the power market by exploring the types of news i show that production failures are most important in shaping premia production disruptions in coal powered units are most frequent and have the greatest effect on the differences between the day ahead and intra day prices

income redistribution in a common labor market when households are mobile among jurisdictions income redistribution by individual jurisdictions creates fiscal externalities a model of interjurisdictional migration is used to study the nature of this redistributive externality analysis of optimal redistribution and optimal corrective subsidies from higher level governments shows that benefit levels for the recipients of income transfers and tax rates on mobile taxpayers should be equalized across jurisdictions a system of jurisdictions with a common labor market can achieve welfare improvements through coordination of domestic redistributive policy or through the intervention of a higher level government copyright 1991 by american economic association

robust estimation and forecasting of the long term seasonal component of electricity spot prices when building stochastic models for electricity spot prices the problem of uttermost importance is the estimation and consequent forecasting of a component to deal with trends and seasonality in the data while the short term seasonal components daily weekly are more regular and less important for valuation of typical power derivatives the l ong term seasonal components ltsc seasonal annual are much more diffi cult to tackle surprisingly in many academic papers dealing with electricity spot price modeling the importance of the seasonal decomposition is neglected and the problem of forecasting it is not considered with this paper we want to fill the gap and present a thorough study on estimation and forecasting of the ltsc of electricity spot prices we consider a battery of models based on fourier or wavelet decomposition combined with linear or exponential decay we find that all considered wavelet base d models are significantly better in terms of forecasting spot prices up to a year ahead than all considered sine based models this result questions the validity and usefulness of stochastic models of spot electricity prices built on sinusoidal long term seasonal components

the overnight risk premium in electricity forward contracts abstract we analyze the risk premium on electricity forward contracts traded for the nordic and german austrian electricity markets we argue that finding risk premiums by analyzing overnight returns is more relevant than the frequently used ex post approach the derivatives in these markets can be characterized as trading products and hedging products each contract shows a clear increase in trading volume and liquidity when approaching maturity we link this to a testable hypothesis where financial traders are compensated for holding price risk and where the sign and magnitude of the risk premium changes depending on the hedging pattern of producers and retailers incorporating this in regressions we find that there are higher risk premiums in the period before the forwards become front products compared to the risk premiums in the front period quarterly and monthly contracts show the most significant results

redistribution and administrative federalism in this paper redistribution is studied in the presence of migration externalities administrative federalism is defined as a constitution where statutory tax and transfer levels are set nationally while local administrations may refuse to pay the transfer or rebate the tax in single cases thereby introducing horizontal inequity with risk aversion this is less attractive than reducing the level of redistribution in a horizontally equal way it is shown that administrative federalism leads to higher transfers and higher utilitarian welfare than decentralized decisions that it may implement the first best solution and that horizontal inequality never occurs in equilibrium

carbon pricing and electricity markets the case of the australian clean energy bill abstract we examine the impact of the clean energy bill on the price behavior of electricity futures contracts in the australian national electricity market first we compute ex ante forward risk premiums in the pre tax period until june 2012 then derive market implied expectations about additional costs of the carbon pricing mechanism cpm on generators as well as pass through rates during the carbon tax july 2012 june 2014 and post tax after july 2014 periods our results suggest that the observed carbon premiums became increasingly higher once the carbon tax had been proposed and subsequently legislated in 2011 during periods where market participants could be relatively certain that the tax would be effective we find expected carbon pass through rates between 67 and 150 which seem to be inversely related to emission intensities in the regional markets our results are also a clear indication of strong policy uncertainty with regards to the cpm and suggest that in the future a stable and long term policy framework would be required for a carbon pricing mechanism to have its full effect

where should the elderly live and who should pay for their care we consider a model with a population consisting of earners and retired persons elderly care is publicly provided there is one big city where congestion effects and agglomeration forces are at work and a number of small villages we show how the externalities related to population mobility lead to an inefficient spatial distribution of earners and retirees and we characterize the second best solution decentralization of this solution in a fiscal federalism structure requires the use of taxes and subsidies proportional to the number of earners and retired persons living in the city and the villages

tax competition and income redistribution an empirical analysis for switzerland tax competition is supposed to lead to thecollapse of the welfare state because first it willbecome difficult for a single jurisdiction to levy aredistribution tax upon the rich and mobile andsecond such a policy if undertaken in onejurisdiction will attract poor individuals from otherjurisdictions and erode internal redistributionpolicies in this paper the impact of personal incometaxes and transfers on residence decisions oftaxpayers is analyzed with swiss subfederal data therelationship of tax competition and the erosion of theswiss welfare state is tested with aggregate data onincome redistribution

hourly electricity prices in day ahead markets this paper focuses on the characteristics of hourly electricity prices in day ahead markets in these markets quotes for day ahead delivery of electricity are submitted simultaneously for all hours in the next day the same information set is used for quoting all hours of the day the dynamics of hourly electricity prices does not behave as a time series process instead these prices should be treated as a panel in which the prices of 24 cross sectional hours vary from day to day this paper introduces a panel model for hourly electricity prices in day ahead markets and examines their characteristics the results show that hourly electricity prices exhibit hourly specific mean reversion and that they oscillate around an hourly specific mean price level furthermore a block structured cross sectional correlation pattern between the hours is apparent

redistribution within and across the regions of a federation the authors reconsider the literature on redistribution within a federation with mobile agents they conclude that redistribution is a function best assigned to the national government local governments with diverse preferences for redistribution distort individual migration decisions the authors also examine the fiscal externality literature which has made an efficiency argument for interregional transfers they show that if local governments have the same preferences for redistribution the nash equilibrium is efficient if preferences are diverse the authors show that nationally imposed interregional transfers do not address the source of the inefficiency nevertheless interregional transfers are shown to be a part of decentralized behavior

pricing of electricity futures based on locational price differences the case of finland abstract we find that the pricing of finnish electricity market futures has been inefficient during the latest 10 years when the trading volumes of electricity price area differentials epads have more than doubled even though the calculated futures premium on epads is related to some risk measures and the variables capturing the demand and supply conditions in the spot electricity markets there has been a significant positive excess futures premium in the finnish market and financial market participants should have been able to utilize this also in economic terms this finding is new and relevant for the participants of the nordic electricity markets also in the future because both the speculative and hedging based trading is increasing in the nordic markets

optimality free mobility and the regional authority in a federation abstract this paper examines the efficiency properties of a federation characterized by strategically competing regions and freely mobile homogeneous individuals analyses of this economy have concluded that achieving a pareto optimal will require intervention by a national authority this paper makes one basic point the nash equilibrium of regional authority behavior is pareto optimal the implication is that there is no role for a national authority in either providing interregional transfers or correcting for decentralized provision of public goods the nash equilibrium involves samuelson public goods provision and regions purchasing preferred population distributions with optimal interregional transfers

forward premia in electricity markets a replication study abstract motivated by mixed empirical evidence for the risk premium theory of bessembinder and lemmon 2002 i perform a replication study by rerunning simulations the risk premium theory links forward premia to the statistical properties of the anticipated distribution of spot power prices in an equilibrium approach my simulations closely following those run in the original paper support the first three hypotheses but not hypothesis 4 an increase in mean demand can thus result in a lower forward premium for some ranges of parameter values the replication results do not explain the mixed empirical support for the theory

decentralized and efficient control of transboundary pollution in federal systems abstract decentralized control of transboundary pollution in federal systems can be efficient when population crowding is socially costly in this paper an upstream region abates pollution or makes an interregional income transfer to the downstream region with the sole intent of deterring immigration because either instrument abatement expenditure or interregional income transfer alone implements an efficient population distribution between the regions interregional income transfers are unnecessary for efficiency without explicit income transfers each region provides the efficient portion of the aggregate level of pollution abatement in the nash equilibrium

the impressive contribution of canadian economists to fiscal federalism theory and policy the study of fiscal federalism has been central to the research of canadian economists since the rowell sirois report to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the canadian economics association it is fitting to take stock of their contributions we focus on the period since 1982 and emphasize the main scholarly publications of an inclusive array of canadian economists and economists in canadian universities our attention is devoted to applications in the context of federal and provincial governments setting aside related issues in municipal government finance we briefly discuss instances where the fiscal federalism literature has informed policy debates including through policy research institutes government commissions and international organizations la contribution impressionnante des economistes canadiens a la theorie et a la politique du federalisme fiscal l etude du federalisme fiscal a ete un element central de la recherche des economistes canadiens depuis la commission rowell sirois au moment de celebrer le 50eme anniversaire de la fondation de l association canadienne d economique le moment est approprie pour prendre la mesure de leurs contributions on se concentre sur la periode apres 1982 et on souligne les principales publications savantes d un ensemble inclusif d economistes canadiens et d economistes dans les universites canadiennes une attention particuliere est portee aux applications dans le contexte federal et provincial mettant de cote les enjeux relies a la finance municipale on discute brievement des instances ou la litterature sur le federalisme fiscal a eclaire les debats de politiques publiques y compris a travers les instituts de recherche sur les politiques publiques les commissions gouvernementales et les organisations internationales

rockets and feathers in power futures markets evidence from the second phase of the eu ets abstract this paper examines the possibility of asymmetric transmission of co 2 prices to electricity futures prices in the second phase of the european emission trading scheme we would like to assess whether output prices tend to respond more quickly to input price increases than decreases this phenomenon is known as rockets and feathers in the literature compared to zachmann and von hirschhausen 2008 who carried out a similar analysis for germany in the first phase of the emission trading scheme with data from 2005 to 2006 our study spans a longer timeframe july 2007 june 2010 with a presumably more mature permit market and includes three additional european countries france belgium and the netherlands results do not provide empirical evidence of statistically significant differences in the response of power prices to positive and negative shocks in co 2 allowance and fuel markets

a stochastic fuel switching model for electricity prices abstract this paper develops and applies a novel electricity price model we reproduce the merit order of a thermal dominated electricity system by establishing a non linear dependency of wholesale electricity prices on the prices of fuels coal and natural gas and of co 2 emission allowances the coefficients are estimated using a markov switching regression this approach might prove valuable for cross hedging positions in the fuel electricity and emission spot markets it is also of use for studying the degree to which electricity prices in different countries reflect fuel and emission cost applying the model to the electricity markets of the uk and germany we find that british electricity prices are quite well explained by short run cost factors while the german ones are less well explained

assistance to the poor in a federal system abstract this paper explores the roles of different levels of government in assisting the poor using a model incorporating utility interdependence the paper first presents some theoretical results indicating how levels of poor relief vary with the extent of mobility of the poor under both centralized and decentralized systems of support it then provides a survey of the empirical work on migration of the poor along with a brief historical discussion of the experience under the english poor laws the concluding section turns to normative issues and contends that mobility of the poor is a basic source of inefficiency in wholly decentralized systems of support this inefficiency along with certain other equity considerations establishes a role for the central government in assistance to the poor

risk sharing in a federation with population mobility and long horizons in this paper risk sharing among individuals within and across regions in a federation with population mobility and infinite horizons is considered it is shown that the regional authorities will not fully exploit gains from interregional risk sharing when population mobility is imperfect in the nash equilibrium there is complete risk sharing among the individuals within each region however which corresponds to the policies of the central authority regional authorities who care about their reputation may be able to commit to an efficient allocation it is possible that improvements in the degree of mobility will make such commitments less likely jel classification h77 e61 and f36 le partage du risque dans une federation ou la population est mobile et l horizon temporel long ce memoire examine le partage du risque entre personnes a l interieur des regions et entre regions dans une federation ou il y a mobilite de la population et horizon temporel infini on montre que les autorites regionales n exploiteront pas pleinement les gains en provenance d un partage inter regional du risque quand la mobilite de la population est imparfaite cependant dans un equilibre a la nash il y a partage complet du risque entre les individus de chaque region ce qui correspond aux politiques des autorites centrales les autorites regionales qui tiennent a leur reputation peuvent etre capables de s engager a une allocation efficace il est possible que les ameliorations dans le degre de mobilite rendent ces engagements moins probables

why do rich countries prefer free trade over free migration the role of the modern welfare state abstract according to traditional trade theory heckscher ohlin free trade and free migration are equivalent measures of economic integration leading both to an equalization of factor prices this prediction is in sharp opposition to the observed preference of rich countries for free trade over free migration we provide an explanation for this inconsistency the redistribution policies in the countries social welfare in countries with a relatively small number of low skilled native workers is higher with free trade than with free migration due to redistribution of income towards immigrating workers

stochastic price modeling of high volatility mean reverting spike prone commodities the australian wholesale spot electricity market it is commonly known that wholesale spot electricity markets exhibit high price volatility strong mean reversion and frequent extreme price spikes this paper employs a basic stochastic model a mean reverting model and a regime switching model to capture these features in the australian national electricity market nem comprising the interconnected markets of new south wales queensland south australia and victoria daily spot prices from 1 january 1999 to 31 december 2004 are employed the results show that the regime switching model outperforms the basic stochastic and mean reverting models electricity prices are also found to exhibit stronger mean reversion after a price spike than in the normal period and price volatility is more than fourteen times higher in spike periods than in normal periods the probability of a spike on any given day ranges between 5 16 in nsw and 9 44 in victoria

revisiting the relationship between spot and futures prices in the nord pool electricity market abstract this work discusses potential pitfalls of applying linear regression models for explaining the relationship between spot and futures prices in electricity markets in particular the bias coming from the simultaneity problem the effect of correlated measurement errors and the impact of seasonality on the regression results studying a 13 year long 1998 2010 price series of spot and futures prices at nord pool and employing regression models with garch residuals we show that the impact of the water reservoir level on the risk premium is positive which is to be expected but contradicts the results of botterud et al 2010 we also show that after taking into account the seasonality of the water level the storage cost theory proposed by botterud et al 2010 to explain the behavior of convenience yield has only limited support in the data

storage and the electricity forward premium we develop and test a model describing the influence of natural gas storage inventories on the electricity forward premium the model is constructed by linking the effect of gas storage constraints on the higher moments of the distribution of electricity prices to an established model of the effect of those moments on the forward premium the model predicts a sharply negative effect of gas storage inventories on the electricity forward premium when demand for electricity is high and space heating demand for gas is low empirical results based on pjm data strongly support the model

cycles in deregulated electricity markets empirical evidence from two decades abstract in this article we discuss the cycle hypothesis in electricity generation which states that the introduction of deregulation in an electricity system might lead to sustained fluctuations of over and under capacity the occurrence of cycles is one of the major threats for electricity markets as it affects the security of supply and creates uncertainty in both the profitability of electricity companies and in consumer prices we discuss the background for these cycles using analogies with other capital intensive industries along with evidence from the analysis of behavioral simulation models as well as from experimental electricity markets using data from the oldest deregulated markets we find support for the hypothesis in the case of the english and chilean markets based on an autocorrelation analysis evidence from the nordpool market is more ambiguous although we might be observing the first half of a cycle in generation capacity comparing a simulation of the english market performed in 1992 with the actual performance we can observe that the qualitative behavior of the model is consistent with the actual evolution finally we discuss possible mechanisms for damping cycles in electricity generation such as mothballing capacity payments and reliability markets

a framework for reviewing the trade offs between renewable energy food feed and wood production at a local level high fuel prices and concerns about energy security and anthropogenic climate change are encouraging a transition towards a low carbon economy although energy policy is typically set at a national level tools are needed for people to engage with energy policy at regional and local levels and to guide decisions regarding land use distributed generation and energy supply and demand the aim of this paper is to develop a per capita approach to renewable energy demand and supply within a landscape and to illustrate the key trade offs between renewable energy food animal feed and wood production the chosen case study area 16 000 ha of marston vale england is anticipated to have a population density midway between that for england and the uk the daily per capita demand for energy for heat 31 kwh transport 34 kwh and electricity 15 kwh when combined 80 kwh was seven fold higher than the combined demand for food 2 kwh animal feed 6 kwh and wood 4 kwh using described algorithms the combined potential energy supply from domestic wind and photovoltaic panels solar heating ground source heat and municipal waste was limited 10 kwh p 1 d 1 additional electricity could be generated from landfill gas and commercial wind turbines but these have temporal implications using a geographical information system and the yield safe tree and crop yield model the capacity to supply bioethanol biodiesel and biomass food feed and wood was calculated and illustrated for three land use scenarios these scenarios highlight the limits on meeting energy demands for transport 33 and heat 53 even if all of the arable and grassland area was planted to a high yielding crop like wheat the described framework therefore highlights the major constraints faced in meeting current uk energy demands from land based renewable energy and the stark choices faced by decision makers

poverty and urban public expenditures cities in the us bear a disproportionate responsibility for the public expenditures that grow out of poverty because they contain disproportionate numbers of the poor and because a substantial part

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

the effect of long term expansion on the evolution of electricity price numerical analysis of a theoretically optimised electricity market abstract a decision support tool is proposed for optimising the expansion planning of a semi liberalised electricity market whilst the underlying interaction of the generating mix with electricity prices is researched in the long run a nonlinear stochastic programming algorithm is used for handling multiple uncertainties optimising the power sector characteristics both in terms of financial and environmental performance two endogenous models and an exogenous one are analysed and compared the endogenous model results indicate that consumers might benefit by the moderate electricity prices in case the optimal loads and capacity orders are rendered the exogenous model is insensitive to generating mix variations the long term actions suggested for system operators are comprised of the permits issued for new entries they are affected by the evolution of electricity prices since the permits granted for conventional technologies are maintained when their profits are rising the permits granted for renewable technologies are also maintained thus allowing cleaner electricity production to be induced to the grid the optimal bid strategies of generators interact with their dispatching schedule and the diversification of their load curves the relevant bids are primarily driven by the merit order the plants are dispatched in the assigned load levels may be raised in profitable producers so that their profit is maximised they might be restrained instead in case there are no significant prospects for individual profits the lognormal distribution of electricity price results is characterised by increasing variance over time indicating that the model is more robust in the most imminent solutions

estimating the commodity market price of risk for energy prices the purpose of this paper is to estimate the market price of risk mpr for energy commodities the ratio of expected return to standard deviation the mpr sign determines whether energy forward prices are upward or downward biased predictors of expected spot prices we estimate mprs using spot and futures prices while accounting for the samuelson effect we find long term mprs generally positive and short term negative consistent with positive energy betas and hedging respectively in spot electricity markets mprs in day ahead prices agree with short dated futures our results relate risk premia to informed hedging decisions and futures prices to forecast expected prices

efficient tax exporting in a multijurisdiction economy with free mobility of households between communities some portion of any community s tax is incident upon nonresident landowners it is shown that when the objective of a community is taken to be the level of satisfaction of its residents a fully efficient allocation is a nash equilibrium of the decentralized game in general no local tax structure that restricts a community s tax base to residents can attain the optimum thus tax exporting is necessary for independent local government behavior to be consistent with efficiency

on transition probabilities of regime switching in electricity prices we analyze the transition probabilities of regime switching in electricity prices by explicitly incorporating the underlying demand supply structure we show that the transition probabilities of electricity prices cannot be constant and depend on both the current demand level relative to the supply capacity and the trends of demand fluctuation these results not only contrast with the assumption of constant transition probabilities on which many regime switching models are built but also provide new insights on the determinants of the state dependent transition probabilities of regime switching

short term forecasting of electricity prices for miso hubs evidence from arima egarch models this study estimates three time series models arima arima egarch and arima egarch m for hourly real time electricity prices for each of the five hubs of the midwest independent system operator miso and examines the in and out of sample forecasting performance of the respective models the results from the arima models reveal the presence of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity recognizing the possibility of asymmetric time varying volatility the egarch specification for the variance equation demonstrates the presence of an inverse leverage effect in electricity prices for each hub with respect to forecasts no one model clearly dominates the others in terms of in sample forecasting performance based on four forecast evaluation statistics however the arima egarch m model outperforms the other models michigan hub is the exception in terms of the out of sample forecasting performance

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

migration with fiscal externalities abstract this paper analyses the distribution of a country s population among regions when migration involves fiscal externalities the main question addressed is whether a decentralized decision making of regional governments can produce an optimal population distribution as recently asserted or a centralized intervention is indispensable as argued before in the literature in analysing this issue it is assumed that migration is costly and accordingly the problem is modelled in a dynamic setup it turns out that while with costless mobility the fiscal externality is fully internalized by voluntary interregional transfers with costly mobility centrally coordinated transfers still remain indispensable for achieving the socially optimal allocation

hedging local volume risk using forward markets nordic case abstract with focus on the nordic electricity market this paper develops hedging strategies for an electricity distributor who manages price and volume risk from fixed price agreements on stochastic electricity load whereas the distributor trades in the spot market at area prices the financial contracts used for hedging are settled against the system price area and system prices are correlated with electricity load as are price differences in practice however this is often disregarded here we develop a joint model for the area price the system price and the load accounting for correlations and we suggest various strategies for hedging in the presence of local volume risk we benchmark against a strategy that ignores correlation and hedges at expected load as is common practice in the industry using data from 2013 and 2014 for two danish bidding areas we show that our best hedging strategy reduces gross loss by 5 8 and 13 6 and increases gross profit by 3 8 and 9 5 respectively although this is partly due to the inclusion of correlation we show that performance improvement is mainly driven by the choice of risk measure

on models with an uncongestible public good and a continuum of consumers abstract this short note shows that models with an uncongestible or mildly congestible public good and a non atomic continuum of consumers have an interesting but unfortunate property only an infinite level of public good provision in the continuum economy can be approximated by feasible public good levels in a sequence of economies with finite populations we discuss the theoretical and practical problems this creates for familiar models that employ a continuum of consumers and a finite level of an uncongestible public good

conflicts between decentralized renewable electricity production and landscape services a spatially explicit quantitative assessment for switzerland abstract the production of decentralized renewable electricity often collides with provisioning regulating and cultural services of the landscape in this paper we operationalize the landscape service approach and generate conflict maps between three renewable energies wind pv forest biomass and six competing landscape services nutrition and materials aesthetics physical and experiential interactions heritage and symbolic content water and liquid flows lifecycle maintenance habitat and gene pool protection media content analysis and expert interviews were used to ground truth the national conflict maps in several swiss regions and to understand to what degree the national conflict assessments match the regional and local perceptions of these conflicts in switzerland approximately 40 000 km 2 biomass from forests is by far the least conflicting renewable energy followed by pv on roofs for the latter 68 of the technically feasible energy potential can be generated with low conflicts and more is expected with new materials wind has a high conflict potential only 12 of the technically feasible energy potential is low conflict pv on open land marginal land and shrubland is at the moment not currently feasible in switzerland the accuracy of our conflict assessment is sufficiently high to estimate the proportion that socially sustainable energy could cover of the overall energy gap of 22 25 twh yr caused by the phase out of swiss nuclear plants by 2050 low conflict solar energy from rooftops could contribute approximately 30 of the required 22 25 twh yr intensified wood production and wind energy could add another 40 the gap of approximately 30 must come from undisputed energy sources such as biogas from recycled organic material from centralized renewable energies such as geothermal or large hydropower or from new or technologically improved renewable energies the presented decision support tools are a timely contribution to the designation of legally binding zones for renewable energy production

landscape externalities from onshore wind power the expansion of renewable energy is a central element of the german federal government s climate and energy policy the target for 2020 is to produce 30 of the electricity from renewable energies wind power has been selected to be a major contributor to this change replacing old wind turbines by modern ones and building new turbines on land will be crucial in meeting this target however the expansion of onshore wind power is not universally accepted in several regions of germany residents are protesting against setting up new wind turbines to determine the negative effects two choice experiments were applied in westsachsen and nordhessen germany in both regions the externalities of wind power generation until 2020 based on today s state of technology were measured the results show that negative landscape externalities would result from expanding wind power generation using latent class models three different groups of respondents experiencing different degrees of externalities were identified

the relationship between spot and futures prices in the nord pool electricity market abstract we analyze 11 years of historical spot and futures prices from the hydro dominated nord pool electricity market we find that futures prices tend to be higher than spot prices the average convenience yield is therefore negative but varies by season and depends on the storage levels in hydro reservoirs the average realized return on holding a long position in the futures market is also negative the negative convenience yield and risk premium contrast empirical findings in most other commodity markets we argue that differences between the supply and demand sides in terms of risk preferences and the ability to take advantage of short term price variations can contribute to explain the observed relationship between spot and futures prices in addition our analysis shows that the relationship between spot and futures prices is clearly linked to the physical state of the system such as hydro inflow reservoir levels and demand

attachment to home and efficient purchases of population in a fiscal externality economy abstract this paper examines the efficiency properties of an economy characterized by strategically competing regions and individuals with varying degrees of attachment to home in an otherwise standard fiscal externality setting regional authorities may make interregional transfers in purchasing preferred populations however there is a range of distributions of resources over which neither region makes transfers nevertheless all equilibrium allocations resulting from the nash behavior of regional authorities including those that involve no transfers are efficient therefore in contrast to the standard conclusions of the fiscal externality literature there is no efficiency role for a central authority

risk premiums in the german day ahead electricity market this paper conducts an empirical analysis of risk premiums in the german day ahead electricity wholesale market we compare hourly price data of the european energy exchange eex auction and of the continuous over the counter otc market which takes place prior to the eex auction data provided by the energy exchange austria exaa has been used as a snapshot of the otc market two hours prior to the eex auction ex post analysis found market participants are willing to pay both significant positive and negative premiums for hourly contracts the largest positive premiums were paid for high demand evening peak hours on weekdays during winter months by contrast night hours on weekends featuring lowest demand levels display negative premiums additionally ex ante analysis found a strong positive correlation between the expected tightness of the system and positive premiums for this purpose a tightness factor has been introduced that includes expectations of fundamental factors such as power plant availability wind power production and demand hence findings by longstaff and wang 2004 can be supported that power traders in liberalised markets behave like risk averse rational economic agents

evaluation of the trading development in the iberian energy derivatives market the efficiency of the iberian energy derivatives market in its first five and a half years is assessed in terms of volume open interest and price the continuous market shows steady liquidity growth its volume is strongly correlated to that of the over the counter otc market the amount of market makers the enrolment of financial agents and generation companies belonging to the integrated group of last resort suppliers and the otc cleared volume in its clearing house the hedging efficiency measured through the ratio between the final open interest and the cleared volume shows the lowest values for the spanish base load futures as they are the most liquid contracts the ex post forward risk premium has diminished due to the learning curve and the effect of the fixed price retributing the indigenous coal fired generation this market is quite less developed than the european leaders headquartered in norway and germany enrolment of more traders mainly international energy companies financial agents energy intensive industries and renewable generation companies is desired market monitoring reports by the market operator providing post trade transparency otc data access by the energy regulator and assessment of the regulatory risk can contribute to efficiency gains

evaluating ecosystem service trade offs with wind electricity production in switzerland in switzerland different types of land use including electricity production compete directly for little available space the swiss energy strategy relies heavily on incorporating renewable sources of electricity including wind in order to ensure long term efficient socially acceptable and sustainable electricity production land use conflicts should be addressed and properly managed through a comprehensive and balanced process we propose a method to apply the ecosystem service es approach combined with an optimisation tool to tackle the complex problems posed by wind electricity development in a topographically challenging landscape marxan was used as optimisation software to evaluate assess and quantify the trade offs between es provisioning and wind electricity production expressing different es in comparable units and evaluating the costs to the system when these are lost versus the benefits gained from wind electricity production generated an output of possible solutions when compared to similar studies modelling wind electricity output that avoid negative interaction with es throughout switzerland the current results using the optimisation tool marxan suggest a solution requiring 13 5 fewer turbines 1903 in an average solution in order to produce 12 twh yr of wind generated electricity and 18 fewer turbines 842 on average to produce 5 twh yr thus using optimisation software can lead to more efficient spatial planning solutions our methodology can be applied toward cost effective renewable energy development that minimises opportunity cost in terms of foregone es provisioning

pricing of contracts for difference in the nordic market abstract the purpose of this paper is to give an introduction to and a pricing analysis of a new forward locational price differential product contracts for difference cfd introduced the 17th of november 2000 at nord pool the nordic electricity exchange to our knowledge there is no literature available of how the nordic cfds are priced the cfd is a forward market product with reference to the difference between the future seasonal area price and system price by using available historical trading prices and spot prices for four seasonal contracts and one yearly contract we analyze the relationships between the contract prices and the value of the underlying asset for the first four seasonal contracts it appears that cfds traded at nord pool are mostly over priced relative to the underlying asset pricing theory for forward contracts explains this by the presence of a majority of risk averse consumers who are willing to pay a risk premium for receiving the future price differential we utilize statistical analysis with regard to the contract prices and the underlying asset and find some interesting relationships the analysis is preliminary due to the fact that the cfd market is relatively new