the wage impact of trade unions in the uk public and private sectors there is a growing gap in the union membership wage premium between public and private sector workers in the united kingdom using the labour force surveys of 1993 2006 the gap between the membership premium in the public and private sectors closes with the addition of three digit occupational controls although significant wage premia remain in both sectors however using the workplace employment relations survey of 2004 the public sector union membership wage premium remains roughly twice the size of the private sector membership premium having accounted for workplace fixed effects and workers occupations job characteristics qualifications and demographics

the crowding hypothesis and comparable worth although women s pay and occupational distribution have improved during the past few years it is still true that women earn considerably less than men and that their occupational distribution is substantially different because progress has been slow toward equality in the labor market some have called for a comparable worth policy proponents of this approach argue that occupational segregation contributes to the earnings disparity between women and men one theoretical justification for this position is the crowding hypothesis this paper first explains this theory and presents a method used to test its principal hypothesis it then describes an extension of this design for estimating the phenomenon that comparable worth policies address empirical studies conducted in this area are viewed and new findings are presented finally limitations of this analysis are discussed i introduction

the structure of the female male wage differential is it who you are what you do or where you work the efficacy of policies to narrow the malelfemale wage differential depends partly on the size of the portion s of the gap targeted previous research finds no between sex wage gap within occupations within employer job cell this is the first study to disentangle segregation by occupation from that based on employer or on job cell in five industries controlling for other forms of segregation occupational segregation produces a gap of 11 percent manufacturing to 26 percent services the wage gaps from establishment and job cell segregation are about 6 percent each since comparable worth acts on the occupation and job cell components it has a potentially large impact

shaming the corporation the social production of targets and the anti sweatshop movement as social movements co evolve with changes in states and markets it is crucial to examine how they make particular kinds of actors into focal points for the expression of grievances and the demand for rights but researchers often bracket the question of why some kinds of organizations are more likely than others to become targets of social movement pressure we theorize the social production of targets by social movements rejecting a simple reflection model to focus on configurations of power and vulnerability that shape repertoires of contention empirically we extend structural accounts of global commodity chains and cultural accounts of markets to analyze the production of targets in the case of the anti sweatshop movement of the 1990s using a longitudinal firm level dataset and unique data on anti sweatshop activism we identify factors that attracted social movement pressure to particular companies firms power and positions strongly shaped their likelihood of becoming targets of anti swea

international trade and labor market discrimination textabstractwe embed a competitive search model with labor market discrimination or nepotism into a two sector two country framework in order to analyze how labor market discrimination impacts the pattern of international trade and also how trade trade affects discrimination discrimination or nepotism reduces the matching probability and output in the skilled labor intensive differentiated product sector so that the country with more discriminatory firms has a comparative advantage in the simple sector as countries alter their production mix in accordance with their comparative advantage trade liberalization can then reinforce the negative effect of discrimination on development in the more discriminatory country and reduce its effect in the country with fewer discriminatory firms similarly the profit difference between non discriminatory and discriminatory firms increases in the less discriminatory country and shrinks in the more discriminatory one in this way trade can further reduce discrimination in a country where it is less prevalent and increase it where it is more firmly entrenched

market clearing with stochastic security part i formulation the first of this two paper series formulates a stochastic security constrained multi period electricity market clearing problem with unit commitment the stochastic security criterion accounts for a pre selected set of random generator and line outages with known historical failure rates and involuntary load shedding as optimization variables unlike the classical deterministic reserve constrained unit commitment here the reserve services are determined by economically penalizing the operation of the market by the expected load not served the proposed formulation is a stochastic programming problem that optimizes concurrently with the pre contingency social welfare the expected operating costs associated with the deployment of the reserves following the contingencies this stochastic programming formulation is solved in the second companion paper using mixed integer linear programming methods two cases are presented a small transmission constrained three bus network scheduled over a horizon of four hours and the ieee reliability test system scheduled over 24 h the impact on the resulting generation and reserve schedules of transmission constraints and generation ramp limits of demand side reserve of the value of load not served and of the constitution of the pre selected set of contingencies are assessed

cournot equilibrium calculation in power networks an optimization approach with price response computation since deregulated power markets are very often oligopolistic ones efficient models that are able to describe strategic behavior of firms must be developed in particular transmission constraints can easily increase the opportunities of market players to exercise market power this paper presents a model that describes the firms strategic interaction based on nash cournot equilibrium when the power network is taken into account specifically this paper introduces a new iterative algorithm that explicitly considers how the production at a certain bus affects the whole network and consequently models the opportunities for the firms of exercising market power taking into account their ability to influence the composition of the set of constrained lines the theoretical basis of the method as well as a case study based on the central european network is included

equal employment opportunity law and firm profitability based on a sample of 260 cases reported in the wall street journal between 1964 and 1986 this study finds that the equity value of firms charged with violating equal employment opportunity eeo laws fell at the time that a suit decision or settlement was announced most dramatically the value of firms involved in class action suits fell 15 6 percent on average around the time of the suit further the average loss to shareholders exceeds the amount firms are required to spend to settle the case this may be due to the expected costs of changing employment practices or to the information about the firm s management that is revealed by the case a staggering number of statutes amendments and court decisions regulating equal opportunity in employment have been passed during the past 25 years firms found guilty of violations of equal employment opportunity laws have been required to pay millions of dollars in back pay and to alter their employment practices to comply with the laws this study measures the costs to firms resulting from government and private lawsuits and the further costs of losing those suits i address this question by examining changes in the market value of the equity of firms at the time a lawsuit is filed for a violation of an equal employment opportunity eeo law and at the time a decision of guilty or a settlement

discrimination in an equilibrium search model i construct an equilibrium search model where some employers have a distaste for hiring minority workers and show that this bias results in economic discrimination against minority workers although only unprejudiced firms hire minority workers minority workers receive lower wages than workers not facing discrimination whenever any employers in the market have a distaste for minority workers one implication of the model is that gender or racial wage differentials understate the utility loss from discrimination in addition the wages of minority workers increase when their proportion increases in the labor market

labor earnings discrimination and the racial composition of jobs this paper examines the effect of the racial composition of labor markets on wage rates and the racial wage gap the wage rates of white as well as black workers are significantly lower in industry occupationregional groups with high densities of black workers while the racial wage gap does not vary systematically with respect to racial density interpretation of racial gap estimates can be sensitive to inclusion of a racial density variable particularly in sparse specifications an explanation for the wage density relationship cannot be established but results are most consistent with a quality sorting explanation and to a lesser extent the crowding hypothesis

modeling greenhouse gas reduction from the australian electricity sector the australian electricity sector is expected to undergo major changes to reduce the current sectoral co2 emission of 190 million tons to 96 million tons by 2050 this paper summarizes two major modeling studies that have been undertaken since 2006 to understand the full set of investment price and financial impact on existing generators especially coal based generators we have used a long term capacity and dispatch optimization model to comprehensively analyze both least cost and market led expansion of the system to accommodate alternative emission reduction targets from a shallow cut to a deep cut the modeling results demonstrate the cost of meeting the target can be over 30 billion in npv terms a mix of clean coal technologies gas and nuclear technologies is expected to displace the existing stock of conventional coal which varies significantly depending on the emission reduction target the analysis also show that mandatory renewable targets or technology standards are inefficient policies in comparison to a market based policy such as the proposed emissions trading scheme

market clearing with stochastic security part ii case studies this paper analyzes the market clearing formulation with stochastic security developed in its companion paper through two case studies solved using mixed integer linear programming techniques the generation and reserve schedules as well as the nodal prices of energy and security are assessed under various conditions such as a line flow limits b when nonspinning reserve is excluded from the formulation c demand side valuation of energy not served d generator ramping limits and e the set of pre selected contingencies

gender discrimination estimation in a search model with matching and bargaining this article develops a search model of the labor market with matching bargaining and employers taste discrimination in which under necessary but standard distributional assumption it is possible to separately identify gender discrimination and unobserved productivity differences the equilibrium shows that both prejudiced and unprejudiced employers wage discriminate maximum likelihood estimates on cps data indicate that half of the employers are prejudiced average female productivity is 6 5 lower and two third of the gender earning differential may be explained by prejudice an affirmative action policy is implemented resulting in a redistribution of welfare from men to women at no cost for employers welfare

search bargaining and employer discrimination this article analyzes becker s 1957 1971 theory of employer discrimination within a search and wage bargaining setting discriminatory firms pay workers who are discriminated against less and apply stricter hiring criteria to these workers the highest profits are realized by firms with a positive discrimination coefficient moreover once ownership and management are separated both highest profits and highest utility can be realized by firms with a positive discrimination coefficient thus market forces like entry or takeovers do not ensure that wage differentials due to employer discrimination disappear

leveraging reputational risk sustainable sourcing campaigns for improving labour standards in production networks ethical or socially sustainable sourcing mechanisms mandating labour standards among the suppliers and subcontractors that organisations source goods and services from are becoming more common the issue of how labour activist groups such as trade unions can encourage organisations to adopt and strengthen these mechanisms within domestic production networks is largely unexplored using three cases of domestic sustainable sourcing campaigns developed by unions in britain the strategies used by labour activists the characteristics of the organisations targeted and the motivations of lead firms for improving sourcing practices are analysed the article makes a significant contribution by demonstrating that organisational susceptibility to reputational risk is a key factor influencing the capacity of activist groups to convince and compel their targets to improve sourcing practices it argues that different types of organisations are susceptible to reputational damage in different ways that risk events provide opportunities for unions to strengthen their leverage against target organisations and that the multidimensional nature of corporate reputation needs to be better considered for understanding how campaigns are framed and executed

impacts of network constraints on electricity market equilibrium nash equilibrium is usually used as the solution of generator s strategic bidding in electricity markets the available literature has shown by simulation that multiple market equilibria or no pure equilibrium may be induced after the inclusion of network constraints transmission constraints this paper presents a systematical analysis for the impacts of network constraints on the market equilibrium in oligopolistic electricity markets in our modeling the independent system operator iso dispatches generation and determines nodal prices via solving an optimal power flow opf and the individual generator optimizes its submitted supply function with nash supply function equilibrium sfe strategy after taking into account iso s decision making process on dispatched generations and nodal prices the conditions for the existence of equilibrium are given and it is shown that there may be multiple equilibria or no pure nash equilibrium the equilibrium if it exists will be at a point where generators pay no congestion charge

an equilibrium search matching model of discrimination abstract a model in which firms have incomplete information about workers at the hiring stage is shown to entail discrimination as the unique stable equilibrium outcome even if no agents have a taste for discrimination and groups are ex ante identical groups which are discriminated against e g blacks women earn lower wages and endure longer unemployment spells

energy and reserve market designs with explicit consideration to lost opportunity costs the primary goal of this work is to investigate the basic energy and reserve dispatch optimization cooptimization in the setting of a pool based market of particular interest is the modeling of lost opportunity cost introduced by reserve allocation the authors derive the marginal costs of energy and reserves under a variety of market designs they also analyze existence algorithm and multiplicity of optimal solutions the results of this study are used to support the reserve market design and implementation in iso new england control area

racial disparity in unemployment abstract in the united states black workers earn less than their white counterparts and have higher rates of unemployment empirical work indicates that most of this wage gap is accounted for by differences in cognitive skills that emerge at an early age in this paper we demonstrate that the same is not true for black white disparity in unemployment a large unexplained unemployment differential motivates the paper s second contribution a potential theoretical explanation this explanation is built around a model that embeds statistical discrimination into the subjective worker evaluation process that lies at the root of the efficiency wage theory of equilibrium unemployment

competition and gender prejudice are discriminatory employers doomed to fail according to becker s famous theory on discrimination gary becker 1957 the economics of discrimination university of chicago press entrepreneurs with a strong prejudice against female workers forgo profits by submitting to their tastes in a competitive market their firms lack efficiency and are therefore forced to leave we present new empirical evidence for this prediction by studying the survival of start up firms in longitudinal matched employer employee data we find that firms with strong preferences for discrimination approximated by a low share of female employees relative to the industry average have significantly shorter survival rates this is especially relevant for firms starting out with female shares in the lower tail of the distribution competition at the industry level additionally reduces firm survival and accelerates the rate at which prejudiced firms are weeded out we also find evidence for employer learning as highly discriminatory start up firms that manage to survive submit to market powers and increase their female workforce over time

a game theoretic analysis of wind generation variability on electricity markets wind generation variability in an energy only market such australian national electricity market nem can create significant revenue uncertainties for incumbent generators and substantially increase price risks faced by retailers this paper presents a cournot game model to formally analyze how high volatility of wind generation in a concentrated energy only market can raise the peak shoulder period of typically low wind generation prices to offset the foregone revenue during off peak periods of high wind generation a monte carlo simulation around a cournot game is formulated as an inter temporal nonlinear optimization problem to assess these issues the model is implemented for the south australian zone of the australian nem that has experienced high growth in wind generation in recent years the model results support some of the observed spot pricing behavior in the region in recent years these findings have significant ramifications for the efficacy of the energy only market in scenarios with high penetration of intermittent generation

deliverable robust ramping products in real time markets the increasing penetration of variable energy resources has led to more uncertainties in power systems flexible ramping products frp have been adopted by several electricity markets to manage the uncertainties we reveal that neglected line congestion for frp may not only cause infeasibility but also result in a failure of cost recovery to address the deliverability issues on frp this paper proposes a new concept deliverable robust ramping products drrp in real time markets the drrp includes generation ramping reserve and generation capacity reserve the drrp is deliverable and immunized against any predefined uncertainty it also fully addresses the bid cost recovery issue caused by the line congestion in existing frps the prices of drrp are derived within the affine adjustable robust optimization aaro framework these prices can be used to identify valuable reserves among available reserves and quantify the values of flexible resources that provide reserves this paper also proposes a general approach to obtaining the time decoupled prices for drrp and generation which can be used for the market settlement of the first interval only in real time markets simulations on a 3 bus system and the ieee 118 bus system are performed to illustrate the concept of drrp and the advantages of drrp compared to existing frp

balancing supply and demand under mixed pricing rules in multi area electricity markets market clearing has always been an issue of great interest and research as liberalized electricity markets evolved over time in many countries as trading in electricity evolves rapidly multi area power exchanges appear to substitute the local markets the tie lines constitute a significant parameter in multi area power exchanges since congestion leads to price differentiation prices are affected by physical e g network constraints yet they should sometimes follow regulatory policy rules which do not necessarily reflect or depend on physical characteristics until now all approaches in clearing a multi area power dispatch or a multi area market are based on a zonal or nodal pricing model which is applied uniformly to both production and demand within the same zone or at each node these approaches are not able to deal with complex pricing rules which impose price discrimination for supply or demand entities within the same area this paper presents a mathematical approach for the solution of a multi area dispatch in which production and demand of the same area may be cleared in different prices the main principle is the formulation of a mixed complementarity problem for the system equilibrium conditions in which supply and demand are associated to explicitly or implicitly defined prices illustrative implementations and test results for a simple five zone system and the 73 bus ieee rts 96 are presented

an oligopolistic model of an integrated market for energy and spinning reserve in this paper a model for oligopolistic competition in electricity markets is presented most previous proposed models have been static and focused only on the energy market incentives for strategic behavior in contrast in this paper a multiperiod market for energy and spinning reserve sr is considered by including such factors the competition among participants is modeled with more realism competition in the energy market is modeled by means of conjectured supply functions while conjectured reserve price response functions are used to consider the generators ability to alter the sr prices the resulting equilibrium problem is modeled in terms of complementarity conditions based upon a complementarity model the opportunity cost between the energy and sr markets is derived for oligopolistic markets the proposed model is illustrated by a six node network using a dc approximation

robust security constrained unit commitment and dispatch with recourse cost requirement with increasing renewable energy resources price sensitive loads and electric vehicle charging stations in the power grid uncertainties on both power generation and consumption sides become critical factors in the security constrained unit commitment scuc problem recently worst scenario based robust optimization approaches are employed to consider uncertainties this paper proposes a non conservative robust scuc model and an effective solution approach the contributions of this paper are three fold first the commitment and dispatch solution obtained in this paper can be directly used in day ahead market as it overcomes two issues conservativeness and absence of robust dispatch which are the two largest obstacles to applying robust scuc in real markets secondly a new concept recourse cost requirement similar to reserve requirement is proposed to define the upper bound of re dispatch cost when uncertainties are revealed thirdly a novel decomposition approach is proposed to effectively address the well known computational challenge in robust approaches simulation results on the ieee 118 bus system validate the effectiveness of the proposed novel model and solution approach

connecting the intraday energy and reserve markets by an optimal redispatch electricity markets based on simple bids provide a very high degree of transparency and simplicity however simple bids fail to capture many well known characteristics of generating units and therefore the responsibility for obtaining feasible schedules is transferred to market participants the purpose of this paper is to help the generating utility to automatically analyze the last energy program cleared in the market and in case this program is technically unfeasible to provide an alternative schedule by re dispatching the generating units this is achieved by formulating an optimization problem where the objective is to find the cheapest and feasible instantaneous power trajectory of each generator trying to minimize the differences between its hourly average values and the last energy program as the objectives of the utility can vary during the day three different models are presented two of them are formulated as a joint energy and reserve dispatch in order to take into account possible commitments acquired in the ancillary services market of agc regulation in this sense a novel approach for considering discontinuous ancillary regulation curves is proposed some numerical examples are included to illustrate the essential features of the models

bidding strategy of virtual power plant for participating in energy and spinning reserve markets part i problem formulation this paper addresses the bidding problem faced by a virtual power plant vpp in a joint market of energy and spinning reserve service the proposed bidding strategy is a non equilibrium model based on the deterministic price based unit commitment pbuc which takes the supply demand balancing constraint and security constraints of vpp itself into account the presented model creates a single operating profile from a composite of the parameters characterizing each distributed energy resources der which is a component of vpp and incorporates network constraints into its description of the capabilities of the portfolio the presented model is a nonlinear mixed integer programming with inter temporal constraints and solved by genetic algorithm ga

stakeholder forces of socially responsible supply chain management orientation this project investigates salient stakeholder forces of socially responsible supply chain orientation srsco in the apparel and footwear sector focusing on fair labor management issues srsco was conceptualized as a composite of internal organizational direction and external partnership for a creation and continuation of fair labor conditions throughout the supply chain primary stakeholders identified were consumers regulation industry and media a total of 209 mail survey responses from sourcing managers of u s apparel and footwear companies were analyzed two dimensions of srsco were confirmed internal direction and external partnership consumer and industry peer pressures were found significantly related to internal direction while industry peers and media were significantly related to the external partnership regulation was not significantly related to either internal direction or external partnerships lack of regulation forces to govern labor issues and roles of consumers industry peers and media in promoting fair labor management are discussed in this article

tnc motives for signing international framework agreements a continuous bargaining model of stakeholder pressure over the past decade discussion has flourished among practitioners and academics regarding workers rights in developing countries the lack of enforcement of national labour laws and the limited protection of workers rights in developing countries have led workers rights representatives to attempt to establish transnational industrial relations systems to complement existing national systems in practice these attempts have mainly been operationalised in unilateral codes of conduct recently however negotiated international framework agreements ifas have been proposed as an alternative despite their growing importance few studies have empirically studied ifas this paper starts to fill this gap by studying why corporations adopt ifas based on a qualitative study of the process leading to the signing of a recent ifa the study s findings complement existing research into why corporations adopt ifas codes of conduct and csr policies by demonstrating that corporate motives can be linked to a desire to retain a trusting relationship with the labour union movement in addition the findings indicate that the discrete campaign model of stakeholder pressure dominant in previous research should be complemented by a continuous bargaining model of stakeholder pressure the paper concludes by discussing differences between these conceptual models of stakeholder pressure and avenues for future research

strategic bidding in secondary reserve markets electricity markets are based on several sequential energy and reserve trading mechanisms to constantly maintain the balance between generation and demand during the last years reserve markets are getting much importance all around the world with the increasing social awareness of the renewable energy benefits additional reserve quantities and larger remunerations are being implemented by the regulators since this renewable energy is highly dependent on weather conditions uncertainties utilities are therefore demanding more and more powerful models to better optimize their reserve bidding curves to be sent to the system operators this paper describes a new methodology to obtain an optimized real bidding curve for the secondary spinning reserve market the approach is based on the maximization of a company profit assuming a set of residual demand curves scenarios for its competitors representation and considering the day ahead market opportunity cost to build the reserve cost curve the case study validates the main features of the proposed methodology by its application to the spanish secondary reserve market this methodology is being daily used by one of the most important electricity companies in spain

impact of optimal storage allocation on price volatility in energy only electricity markets recent studies show that the fast growing expansion of wind power generation may lead to extremely high levels of price volatility in wholesale electricity markets storage technologies regardless of their specific forms e g pump storage hydro large scale or distributed batteries are capable of alleviating the extreme price volatility levels due to their energy usage time shifting fast ramping and price arbitrage capabilities in this paper we propose a stochastic bilevel optimization model to find the optimal nodal storage capacities required to achieve a certain price volatility level in a highly volatile energy only electricity market the decision on storage capacities is made in the upper level problem and the operation of strategic regulated generation storage and transmission players is modeled in the lower level problem using an extended stochastic bayesian cournot based game the south australia sa electricity market which has recently experienced high levels of price volatility and a 30 bus ieee system are considered as the case studies our numerical results indicate that 50 price volatility reduction in the sa electricity market can be achieved by installing either 430 mwh regulated storage or 530 mwh strategic storage in other words regulated storage firms are more efficient in reducing the price volatility than strategic storage firms

pricing energy and ancillary services in integrated market systems by an optimal power flow a detailed ac opf based formulation for procuring pricing and settling energy and ancillary service in simultaneous auctions by integrated market systems is presented the paper provides clear definitions of locational marginal prices for energy and ancillary service marginal prices in terms of lagrange multipliers the characteristics of the prices are analyzed especially when economic substitution among ancillary services is required the paper also evaluates the conditions under which opportunity costs are incurred to units that provide ancillary services it is particularly shown that the intuitive belief that the provision of regulation down service does not incur opportunity cost to the provider in general is not true

the effects of competition and equal treatment laws on gender wage differentials discrimination if it is inefficient can be eliminated by competition in most countries it is also forbidden by law this paper evaluates the influence of economic and legal factors on the portion of male female wage differentials that is not explained by other worker characteristics and may be due to discrimination we use a new international data set of suitable gender wage gap measures constructed from the results of existing studies meta analysis of the data shows that increased competition and adoption of international conventions concerning equal treatment laws both reduce gender wage gaps while legislation that prevents women from performing strenuous or dangerous jobs tends to increase it doris weichselbaumer and rudolf winter ebmer

operating reserve model in the power market most of the current research on operating reserve markets assumes that the required capacity is predetermined which means that the demand of operating reserve capacity is inelastic this paper considers that operating reserve capacity in a power system is flexible and that one should optimize it by cost benefit analysis based on the reliability evaluation of the generation system a clearing model of the operating reserve market is proposed to determine the optimal reserve capacity and simultaneously clear the operating reserve market the model is discussed on both uniform price and pay as bid auction mechanisms by using a heuristic method we suggest an efficient algorithm to solve the model case studies for reliability test system rts96 demonstrate the usefulness and efficiency of the proposed model

the contribution of environmental and social standards towards ensuring legitimacy in supply chain governance increasingly companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility csr in supply chains this is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders yet a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies using them as a legitimacy front this strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long term trust in these instruments of csr meaning that all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies therefore this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company s aim but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards this research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research comparing four different social and environmental standards revealing weaknesses and strengths it exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data

continuous time marginal pricing of electricity the current practice of discrete time electricity pricing starts to fall short in providing an accurate economic signal reflecting the continuous time variations of load and generation schedule in power systems this paper introduces the fundamental mathematical theory of continuous time marginal electricity pricing we first formulate the continuous time unit commitment problem as a constrained variational problem and subsequently define the continuous time economic dispatch ed problem where the binary commitment variables are fixed to their optimal values we then prove that the continuous time marginal electricity price equals to the lagrange multiplier of the variational power balance constraint in the continuous time ed problem the proposed continuous time marginal price is not only dependent to the incremental generation cost rate but also to the incremental ramping cost rate of the units thus embedding the ramping costs in calculation of the marginal electricity price the numerical results demonstrate that the continuous time marginal price manifests the behavior of the constantly varying load and generation schedule in power systems

security constrained unit commitment with ac constraints in a restructured power market the independent system operator iso executes the security constrained unit commitment scuc program to plan a secure and economical hourly generation schedule for the day ahead market this paper introduces an efficient scuc approach with ac constraints that obtains the minimum system operating cost while maintaining the security of power systems the proposed approach applies the benders decomposition for separating the unit commitment uc in the master problem from the network security check in subproblems the master problem applies the augmented lagrangian relaxation lr method and dynamic programming dp to solve uc the subproblem checks ac network security constraints for the uc solution to determine whether a converged and secure ac power flow can be obtained if any network violations arise corresponding benders cuts will be formed and added to the master problem for solving the next iteration of uc the iterative process will continue until ac violations are eliminated and a converged optimal solution is found in this paper a six bus system and the ieee 118 bus system with 54 units are analyzed to exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed approach

discrimination nepotism and long run wage differentials the wage discrimination model developed by becker has been criticized for predicting that competitive forces will lead to the disappearance of racial discrimination in the long run we have reformulated the model in terms of nepotism toward white workers rather than discrimination against black workers in this new framework both nepotistic and taste neutral firms are expected to survive the competitive struggle in the long run therefore the new framework is consistent with long run as well as short run racial wage differentials

utilization of real time balancing market for transmission system control under uncertainty an algorithm facilitating automated purchase of energy on real time balancing market is proposed in this paper the main inputs of the algorithm are a prediction of the area control error its uncertainty in the form of a standard deviation and a set of previously procured ancillary services contracted power reserves available for power balance control the algorithm evaluates all possible power balance scenarios for the closest hour in a probabilistic manner and gives a cost optimal recommendation for the real time balancing market demand a case study on realistic data for the czech republic control area was performed by simulation of the power balance control with a monte carlo simulator of the czech transmission system the results showed potential for savings on the regulation energy costs

energy and reserve dispatch in a multi zone electricity market competitive bidding for ancillary services a s in addition to bidding for energy is increasingly recognized as an important part of electricity markets in this paper an lp based approach is presented for solving the multi product i e energy and a s products multi zone area physical market dispatch problem the approach can explicitly represent various constraints such as reserve requirement constraints network security limits and sharing of constrained resource capacity e g maximum unit generation between energy and reserve the joint dispatch method which dispatches energy and reserve market concurrently is extended to allow inter zonal reserve trading in a multi zone competitive pool numerical examples are included to demonstrate the salient characteristics of the joint dispatch solution

a game theoretic model for strategic maintenance and dispatch decisions maintenance decisions in an oligopolistic market attains a strategic dimension because gencos are often able to manipulate market prices through capacity withdrawal a closely related issue is that of strategically withholding generation from available capacity an analytic framework is presented that enables joint evaluation of maintenance and generation strategies the cournot nash equilibrium cne concept is extended for intertemporal decision making on maintenance and generation for multiple gencos each genco maximizes its profit by strategically putting its capacity on maintenance as well as withholding generation from available capacity taking into account its rival gencos decisions the cne problem is posed as a continuous or mixed integer nonlinear programming optimization problem duality theory is employed to derive insights about the marginal profit that a genco may earn from an increment in its availability in an oligopolistic market setup illustrative numerical examples are presented of cne maintenance and generation strategies and these are compared and contrasted against those of a perfectly competitive scenario

contingency constrained reserve requirements in joint energy and ancillary services auction this paper presents a security constrained unit commitment model for energy and ancillary services auction which can be used by an iso to optimize reserve requirements in electricity markets the proposed day ahead algorithm determines reserve requirements by simulating contingencies rather than specifying the requirements as fixed system constraints to address the computational complexity the original auction problem is decomposed into a master problem for solving unit commitment and subproblems for considering network security constraints numerical examples show that the proposed joint auction model can clear energy and ancillary services bids simultaneously while minimizing the total operating cost and satisfying transmission security constraints

consumer discrimination and self employment self employment rates and incomes differ significantly by race we show that these differentials arise in markets with consumer discrimination and incomplete information about the price of the good and the race of the seller equilibrium income distributions have two properties mean black incomes are lower than mean white incomes and the returns to ability are lower for black than for white sellers able blacks therefore are less likely to self select into the self employment sector than able whites using the 1980 census data we find that observed racial differences in the self employment income distributions are consistent with the theoretical predictions

incorporating post zonal reserve deployment transmission constraints into energy and ancillary service co optimization this paper presents a new approach implemented in miso day ahead and real time energy and ancillary service market clearing processes to address the reserve deliverability issue in this approach miso enhanced the co optimization process to incorporate post zonal reserve deployment transmission constraints reserves are procured within the co optimization to meet both market wide reserve requirements and ensure their deliverability on a zonal basis as a result zonal market clearing prices mcps for reserves can properly reflect the effects of zonal reserve deployment on transmission constraints under consideration

security constrained unit commitment for simultaneous clearing of energy and ancillary services markets this paper introduces a security constrained unit commitment scuc model with emphases on the simultaneous optimization of energy and ancillary services markets benders decomposition is used to decouple the scuc into a unit commitment uc master problem and hourly network security checking subproblems lagrangian relaxation is used to decouple the uc problem into individual single unit commitment problems dynamic programming is used to find the optimal commitment decision a simultaneous marginal curve algorithm is proposed to find the optimal values of energy and ancillary services a six bus system with three units and the ieee 118 bus system with 54 units are analyzed to illustrate the proposed model

is there less discrimination in occupations where recruitment is difficult the authors empirically test the cross sectional relationship between hiring discrimination and labor market tightness at the level of the occupation to this end they conduct a correspondence tes

stochastic multiobjective market clearing of joint energy and reserves auctions ensuring power system security in this paper a stochastic multiobjective framework is proposed for day ahead joint market clearing the proposed multiobjective framework can concurrently optimize competing objective functions including augmented generation offer cost and security indices overload index voltage drop index and voltage stability margin besides system uncertainties including generating units and branches contingencies and load uncertainty are explicitly considered in the stochastic market clearing scheme the solution methodology consists of two stages which firstly employs roulette wheel mechanism and monte carlo simulation mcs for random adaptive 24 h scenario generation wherein the stochastic multiobjective market clearing procedure is converted into its respective deterministic equivalents scenarios in the second stage for each deterministic scenario a multiobjective mathematical programming mmp formulation based on the epsiv constrained approach is implemented for provision of spinning reserve sr and nonspinning reserve nsr as well as energy the mmp formulation of the market clearing process is optimized while meeting ac power flow constraints and expected interruption cost eic the ieee 24 bus reliability test system rts 24 bus is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method

institutional emergence in an era of globalization the rise of transnational private regulation of labor and environmental conditions1 why have systems of transnational private regulation recently emerged to certify corporate social and environmental performance different conceptions of institutional emergence underlie different answers to this question many scholars argue that firms create certification systems to solve problems in the market a view rooted in a conception of institutions as solutions to collective action problems the author develops a different account by viewing institutions as the outcome of political contestation and by analyzing conflict and institutional entrepreneurship among a wide array of actors using a comparative case study design the analysis shows how these arguments explain the formation of social and environmental certification associations both theoretical approaches are needed but strong versions of the market based approach overlook an important set of dynamics that the author calls the political construction of market institutions the analysis shows how both problem solving in markets and

public policies on corporate social responsibility the role of governments in europe over the last decade corporate social responsibility csr has been defined first as a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and cleaner environment and second as a process by which companies manage their relationship with stakeholders european commission 2001 nowadays csr has become a priority issue on governments agendas this has changed governments capacity to act and impact on social and environmental issues in their relationship with companies but has also affected the framework in which csr public policies are designed governments are incorporating multi stakeholder strategies this article analyzes the csr public policies in european advanced democracies and more specifically the eu 15 countries and provides explanatory keys on how governments have understood designed and implemented their csr public policies the analysis has entailed the classification of csr public policies taking into consideration the actor to which the governments policies were addressed this approach to the analysis of csr public policies in the eu 15 countries leads us to observe coinciding lines of action among the different countries analyzed which has enabled us to propose a four ideal typology model for governmental action on csr in europe partnership business in the community sustainability and citizenship and agora the main contribution of this article is to propose an analytical framework to analyze csr public policies which provide a perspective on the relationships between governments businesses and civil society stakeholders and enable us to incorporate the analysis of csr public policies into a broader approach focused on social governance

international trade and the gender wage gap new evidence from india s manufacturing sector summary this study examines how increasing competitive forces from india s trade liberalization have affected women s relative wages and employment neoclassical theory implies that costly discrimination against female workers should diminish over time with increased competition we incorporate this idea into a theoretical model of competition and industry concentration and test the model using repeated cross sections of india s national sample survey organization nsso household survey data merged with trade and production data from 1983 to 2004 estimates from ordinary least squares ols and fixed effects regressions at the industry level indicate that increasing openness to trade is associated with larger wage gaps in india s concentrated manufacturing industries

multicommodity spatial cournot model for generator bidding analysis conventional behavioral models such as cournot to analyze generator behavior do not reflect many of the complexities of advanced electricity markets dispatch and pricing in a number of advanced pool based electricity markets worldwide explicitly recognize the co optimization of ancillary services as well as transmission constraints this paper discusses the development of and experiments with a multimarket cournot model that deals with co optimization of multiple commodities namely energy and various classes of ancillary services and deals with transmission constraints that separate these commodity markets spatially we also discuss the multimarket extension of the cournot model to deal with bilateral contracts for energy a nonlinear programming formulation of the proposed model and the analysis of nodal prices are presented followed by a detailed set of experiments using a simple three node system the model is expected to add to understanding of complex interactions between energy and ancillary services markets and further the impact transmission capacity limits may have on exercise of market power of each of these markets

residual demand curves for modeling the effect of complex offering conditions on day ahead electricity markets residual demand curves rdcs can be used to represent the strategic interaction of participants in electricity markets rdcs relate the energy that an agent can buy or sell in one hour with the clearing market price that would be obtained in such hour assuming the market is organized as simple bid independent auctions despite the fact that they have been widely used in the literature the existence of time and or spatial constraints in the market clearing algorithm makes the rdcs not directly applicable this paper tries to overcome these difficulties by extending the concept of rdcs to zonal pricing markets where complex offering conditions and transmission constraints are taken into account therefore the rdcs are redefined in order to capture such effects which are usually neglected or oversimplified a new method for computing the redefined rdcs is established and its application to the iberian electricity market is presented the results show that modeling complex conditions and transmission constraints in rdcs can have a significant effect when compared to the standard approach found in the literature therefore the method presented in this paper modeling the effect of firm s decisions on market prices in a more accurate way

linear complementarity models of nash cournot competition in bilateral and poolco power markets two cournot models of imperfect competition among electricity producers are formulated as mixed linear complementarity problems lcps and a simple example is presented to illustrate their application the two models simulate bilateral markets the models include a congestion pricing scheme for transmission but other transmission pricing approaches can also be represented in this framework the two models differ from each other in that one has no arbitrage between nodes of the network while in the other model arbitragers erase any noncost based differences in price the latter bilateral model turns out to be equivalent to a cournot model of a poolco the models differ from other cournot market models in that they include both of kirchhoff s laws via a dc approximation can include arbitragers possess unique solutions and are readily solved by efficient lcp algorithms the key assumption that permits their formulation as lcps is that each producer naively assumes that its output will not affect transmission prices

labour leverage in global value chains the role of interdependencies and multi level dynamics the global segmentation of production and distribution has resulted in highly complex global value chains gvcs where vertical and horizontal dynamics are equally important in determining working conditions and providing points of leverage for labour borrowing notions of multi level governance we propose an analytical framework for describing and explaining success and failure of labour agency when attempting to improve working conditions along gvcs our starting point is that the high complexity of gvcs and the absence of a global overarching authority have been balanced by the emergence of governance mechanisms of different forms and at different levels an assessment of these mechanisms which emphasize process over institutions reveals how different types of interactions and interdependencies along gvcs impact on labour s use of power we argue that in order to fully situate labour agency within governance debates any future research agenda needs to be driven by micro level bottom up approaches

managing price risk in a multimarket environment in a competitive electricity market a generation company genco can manage its trading risk through trading electricity among multiple markets such as spot markets and contract markets the question is how to decide the trading proportion of each market in order to maximize the genco s profit and minimize the associated risk based on the mean variance portfolio theory this paper proposes a sequential optimization approach to electric energy allocation between spot and contract markets taking into consideration the risks of electricity price congestion charge and fuel price especially the impact of the fuel market on electric energy allocation is analyzed and simulated with historical data in respect of the electricity market and other fuel markets in the u s simulation results confirm that the proposed analytic approach is consistent with intuition and therefore reasonable and feasible for a genco to make a trading plan involving risks in an electricity market

forecasting functional time series with a new hilbertian armax model application to electricity price forecasting a functional time series is the realization of a stochastic process where each observation is a continuous function defined on a finite interval these processes are commonly found in electricity markets and are gaining more importance as more market data become available and markets head toward continuous time marginal pricing approaches forecasting these time series requires models that operate with continuous functions this paper proposes a new functional forecasting method that attempts to generalize the standard seasonal armax time series model to the l 2 hilbert space the structure of the proposed model is a linear regression where functional parameters operate on functional variables the variables can be lagged values of the series autoregressive terms past observed innovations moving average terms or exogenous variables in this approach the functional parameters used are integral operators whose kernels are modeled as linear combinations of sigmoid functions the parameters of each sigmoid are optimized using a quasi newton algorithm that minimizes the sum of squared errors this novel approach allows us to estimate the moving average terms in functional time series models the new model is tested by forecasting the daily price profile of the spanish and german electricity markets and it is compared to other functional reference models

an empirical study of applied game theory transmission constrained cournot behavior restructured energy markets present opportunities for the exercise of market power meaning market players can potentially maintain prices in excess of competitive prices in this paper we investigate cournot equilibrium in a simple example network we analyze three market players in a transmission constrained system and consider nonconstant marginal cost several scenarios are evaluated that show a pure strategy equilibrium can break down even when a transmission constraint exceeds the value of the unconstrained cournot equilibrium line flow

capacity and energy only markets under high renewable penetration this paper presents a multi nodal intertemporal cournot gaming model with transmission constraints and uses it to simulate energy only and capacity energy market designs in the presence of uncertainties stemming from intermittent renewable power generation both market paradigms are compared to a competitive benchmark in order to determine which one performs better in a concentrated market with significant penetration of wind and solar generation as a specific example the model is applied to the south australian zone of the australian national electricity market nem the simulation results for the time interval 2013 2030 show that the capacity energy market has the potential to induce significant new capacity and push prices much closer to the competitive level in contrast to the current energy only market design

a simulation model for a competitive generation market the simulation of a wholesale electricity market should go beyond a simple optimization based on the operating costs of the generating units a model of a competitive electricity market must consider the market structure the strategy of the market participants and any other factor that lead to prices different from costs this paper presents cosmee a model of a wholesale electricity market based on simple bids that estimates expected bid prices and quantities system hourly prices and generation schedules taking into account the bidding strategies of generators and the structure of the market the model reflects the profit maximizing behavior of the market agents subject to different types of constraints cosmee has been used to simulate a real wholesale market

an equilibrium search model with coworker discrimination this article analyzes the effect of coworker discrimination on wage and unemployment differentials between males and females using a search model an increase in female participation drives up the wage offer to female workers and raises female employment moreover an increase in the degree of discrimination by males results in gains to them in terms of higher wages and lower unemployment but results in losses to females in terms of lower wages and higher unemployment the benefit to males provides an explanation for the persistence of discrimination