income taxes and urban spatial structure abstract this paper examines the impact of an income tax in a monocentric city where households equilibriate their allocation of time between work commuting and leisure an increase in the income tax rate lowers the implicit value of time and hence transportation costs compensated equilibrium comparative statics analysis shows that under certain conditions this results in a larger more dispersed urban area with lower land rents at the city center and less population within any given distance from the center the welfare effect of an income tax rate change is also studied and an expression for the marginal excess burden is derived the income tax produces welfare losses both because it induces substitution in favor of leisure and in favor of travel the latter accompanied by excessive spatial dispersion and consumption of space the marginal excess burden depends not only on the compensated demand elasticity for leisure but also on that for space finally the problem of benefit measurement for transportation projects in this tax distorted spatial economy is examined benefit measures should be deflated to adjust for the fact that further transportation improvements lead to reduction of land use intensity exacerbating the problem of spatial resource misallocation in an already excessively dispersed urban area

spatial variation of the marginal utility of income and unequal treatment of equals in one of the most famous contributions to the new urban economics literature mirrlees 6 showed that a utilitarian planner able to control the distribution of income or endowments across households the consumption of land or housing and the distribution of population over space would treat households with identical tastes unequally in the sense that utility levels would vary among them at the planner s optimum similar results were obtained by dixit 2 who showed that even more inequality averse social welfare functions than the utilitarian one would result in unequal treatment he concluded that only the rawlsian maximin welfare function would produce the equal treatment outcome 2 this result has generated considerable attention see e g mills and mackinnon 5 because of its apparently paradoxical nature the purpose of this note is to present a new way of thinking about and making plausible the unequal treatment result 3 to develop the intuition recall that in monocentric city models where equals are treated equally that is where households have equal endowments a market equilibrium with free mobility is characterized by equal utilities for all assuming identical preferences as is well known in the absence of congestion or other market failures this market equilibrium is pareto efficient producing the maximum feasible common level of utility imagine now a mirrlees planner coming across such an equal utility equilibrium under what conditions would the planner not want to disturb the market equilibrium clearly a necessary condition for equal treatment to be utilitarian optimal is that the marginal utility of income be the same for all households in the market equilibrium otherwise freezing the allocation of resources in every other respect social

security of supply and regulation of energy networks abstract in recent years the security of energy supplies has re emerged as a central issue in the energy policy arena in the uk and elsewhere this re emergence takes place against a backdrop of increased liberalisation of the energy markets so that security of supply needs to be revisited within this context security of supply is multifaceted but is often discussed in terms of physical availability of energy sources and their commodity price risk this paper discusses the relationship between security of supply and network regulation that is how the energy networks and appropriate regulation of them can contribute to security of supply in liberalised energy sectors energy networks are predominantly natural monopolies and as a result are generally subject to regulatory oversight we discuss a range of issues and trends that pose challenges and opportunities to network regulation and which call for new and innovative measures the paper identifies a number of areas where network regulation can play a significant role in increasing the security of supply of future energy systems

uncertainty and the timing of an urban congestion relief investment the no land case we analyze the impact of population uncertainty on the socially optimum timing of a congestion relief project in a linear monocentric city with fixed boundaries where congestion pricing cannot be implemented this project requires time to bear fruit but no urban land under certainty we show that utility maximization is roughly equivalent to a standard benefit cost analysis bca under uncertainty we derive an explicit optimal threshold for relieving congestion when the urban population follows a geometric brownian motion if the time to implement the project is short we show analytically that deciding on the timing of congestion relief based on a bca could lead to acting prematurely the reverse holds if project implementation is long and uncertainty is large enough

equilibrium and migration in dynamic models of housing markets abstract this paper presents a model of a regional housing market where households choose among competing employment opportunities offered by cities within a given system the equilibrium requirement imposed in the model requires that households be indifferent among all locations both within their current city and other cities within the region rather than in terms of exogenously determined utility or populations this construction allows the characterization of equilibrium in terms of potentially observable variables related to household income given that equilibrium can be defined in this more general manner it is natural to identify ways in which the predictions will differ from those generated by existing models capozza and helsley s j urban econ 28 1990 180 203 model of land conversion is evaluated in this context in this setting the option value associated with the ability to delay development depends directly on the degree to which the income processes are correlated across cities also increased idiosyncratic income risk does not necessarily lead to larger option values

divide and rule the economic and legal implications of the proposed ownership unbundling of distribution and supply companies in the dutch electricity sector abstract in machiavelli s theory of power the concept of divide and rule forms the main theme the ruler has absolute power and to maintain and increase such power all means are justified when viewed against the background of this theory the current debate in the netherlands on the unbundling of energy electricity gas companies can be observed as an example of divide and rule in which the dutch minister of economic affairs plays a central role yet contrary to machiavelli in his time the dutch government does in fact aim principally at the greater welfare of the dutch people it is therefore noteworthy that while important steps in the decision to unbundled have been taken there is no evidence that the dutch people will indeed benefit from the envisaged unbundling

household behavior in a monocentric urban area with a public sector abstract this paper has examined how a public sector alters the model of urban household behavior and its predictions the qualitative housing price and demand location characteristics remain unchanged by the introduction of either an exogenous or endogenous public sector in addition the household s response to tax rate and public service changes depend solely upon the nonlocational demand relationships the major impact of location per se on the household s demand vector is through an additional hicksian price term whether locational effects reinforce or vitiate nonlocational demand changes depends upon the compensated relationship between the good in question and housing this paper also investigated the design of neutral public budgets government budgets using property income or comprehensive sales taxes to finance public services cannot be neutral with respect to housing demand and location of the four types of taxes considered only a narrow based sales tax can finance public services neutrally

consumer s surplus as an exact approximation when prices are appropriately deflated a canonical price normalized form is proposed as a generalization of the ordinary consumer s surplus expression commonly used to evaluate changes in economic welfare this familiar looking formula it is proved can be rigorously interpreted as representing the first and second order terms of a taylor series expansion for the equivalent variation or willingness to pay function of a single consumer in principle the lowly consumer s surplus triangle and rectangle methodology can be rigorously defended as an exact approximation to a theoretically meaningful measure as long as prices are appropriately deflated the appropriate price deflator is derived and some implications are discussed

the effect of labor supply and tax rates on intraurban location exist only one paper wales 1978 in killingsworth s 1983 review of labor supply studies explicitly controlled for commuting the key variable in standard models of urban location more recently kohlhase 1986 developed a model of housing demand with endogenous labor supply and alperovich 1985 included income in estimates of distance functions no published empirical paper treats household intraurban location and labor supply as jointly endog

capitalization and the theory of local public finance the tiebout literature is incomplete this paper argues because it has not fully accounted for the capitalization of local fiscal variables into house values the paper explains why capitalization arises why it persists in long run equilibrium how it affects both residential location and the outcome of local voting and why it interferes with the efficiency of a system of local governments the analysis which is based on the main tiebout assumptions plus a property tax combines a model of household bids in a housing market with a median voter model of local public service determination

delivering a highly distributed electricity system technical regulatory and policy challenges abstract this paper discusses the technical regulatory and policy challenges inherent in planning and operating power systems with high penetrations of distributed energy resources der generators flexible demand and energy storage connected within electricity distribution networks many liberalised electricity systems worldwide are seeing growth in der including significant capacities of distributed renewable generation the paper starts from the premise that optimal distribution networks are those that satisfy the objective of a lowest cost power system whilst meeting customers expectations of reliability and societal desire for sustainability it highlights major challenges that policy makers face in respect of market and regulatory arrangements that support energy and flexibility provision from a large number of small variable and often uncertain resources these challenges include the need to respect the technical limits of the system and ensure its operability development of well designed mechanisms to support innovation and an appropriate share of risk between market actors a key contribution of the paper is to discuss the opportunities offered by more active distribution system operation as a substitute for capital investment and its regulatory and policy implications finally the paper presents priorities for policy to facilitate a highly distributed electricity system

on welfare measurement in cities this paper extends project evaluation in a spatial urban economy to consider the more general case of distortionary public finances if a local public improvement is financed at least in part by a distortionary property tax we show that residential land prices do not accurately measure the value of land improvements even when households are identical and the improvement is infinitesimally small the magnitude and direction of the measurement error will depend on the second order effects on aggregate demand via changes in population density at each location and on overall city size

the right man for the job this paper describes a search model with a continuum of worker and job types free entry and transferable utility we apply a second order taylor expansion to characterize the equilibrium derive the cost of search and show that it is decreasing in the substitutability of worker types this cost of search is then decomposed into three components unemployment vacancy costs and mismatch our contact technology rules out congestion effects between different worker types and therefore exhibits increasing returns to scale one third of those increasing returns in contacts are shown to be absorbed by firms and workers being more choosy the resulting equilibrium is not efficient unemployment benefits can reduce the loss by serving as a search subsidy numerical simulations of the model show that our taylor expansions are quite accurate 2004 the review of economics studies limited

hedonic prices and the benefits of public projects s scotchmer has shown that even if the population is homogeneous hedonic prices do not correctly measure long run benefit s of a large public project this paper examines the direction of err ors and shows that the use of cross sectional land rent differentials leads to overestimation of the benefits the short run benefits with fixed lot size are also considered copyright 1988 by the econometric society

beer and the tie did divestiture of brewer owned public houses lead to higher beer prices in 1989 the united kingdom monopolies and mergers commission mmc recommended measures that eventually led brewers to divest themselves of 14 000 public houses the mmc claimed that their recommendations would lower retail prices and increase consumer choice since that time however retail prices have risen this paper contains an econometric analysis of the transition period the analysis is based on a model of the relationship between retail price and retail organisational form that emphasises how exclusive dealing clauses and strategic factors interact in 1989 in an important decision the united kingdom monopolies and mergers commission mmc recommended measures that eventually led brewers to divest themselves of 14 000 public houses the mmc claimed that their recommendations would lower retail prices and increase consumer choice there is considerable doubt however that their objectives were achieved indeed since the time that the recommendations were implemented retail prices have risen it is not clear however if prices would have increased in the absence of divestiture one goal of my research is to provide an answer to this question the mmc s recommendations created an exceptional opportunity to assess the effects that different contractual arrangements have on retail prices indeed one would like to investigate this relationship ceteris paribus unfortunately however the choice of vertical market structure is normally endogenous and it is impossible to condition on all of the factors that affect the contracting decision in the uk beer industry in contrast the government ordered changes in the type and terms of the contracts under which national brewers could operate their licensed premises increased separation between brewer and publican therefore was not due to changes in economic conditions moreover some premises the free houses that were not owned by a brewer were not affected by the beer orders the existence of a control group facilitates the analysis by strengthening the conclusions that one can draw in recent years economists have moved away from simple theories of vertical

ownership unbundling and investment in electricity markets a cross country study abstract this paper is the first to explicitly test for the presence of a trade off between static and dynamic efficiency and a trade off between vertical economies and competition in a regulated industry the electricity industry we show for 16 european countries over the period 1998 2008 that higher electricity end user prices in a country subsequently lead to larger aggregate investments in the capital stock i e in generation distribution and transmission assets moreover there is a trade off between vertical economies and competition ownership unbundling and forced access to the incumbent transmission grid increases competition but come at the cost of lost vertical economies generally we find that regulation that affects only the market directly like the establishment of a wholesale market or free choice of suppliers increases aggregate investment regulation however that adversely affects the incumbent directly like ownership unbundling decreases aggregate investment spending

zoning first best second best and third best criteria for allocating land for roads this paper elaborates on the cost benefit criteria for land uses in an urban setting and on the bias which results from use of market data rather than true shadow prices in the calculation this bias has been discussed extensively in the urban economics literature especially in response to the studies of solow and vickrey 7 and solow 6 progress has been made especially by kanemoto 3 arnott and mackinnon 2 amott l and pines and saclka 151 however because of the different underlying assumptions it is difficult to evaluate and compare some of the seemingly conflicting results reported in these works the purpose of this paper is to reformulate the issues using a systematic exposition to distinguish among various cost benefit calculations and policy regimes and to derive concisely the main results with some useful extensions the cost benefit criteria evaluated in this paper refer to three types of decision making

on revenue recycling and the welfare effects of second best congestion pricing in a monocentric city abstract this paper examines congestion taxes in a monocentric city with pre existing labor taxation when road toll revenue is used to finance labor tax cuts 35 of the optimal road tax in our numerical model does not reflect marginal external congestion costs but rather functions as a ramsey mirrlees tax i e an efficiency enhancing mechanism allowing for an indirect spatial differentiation of the labor tax this adds a quite different motivation to road pricing since welfare gains can be produced even in absence of congestion we find that the optimal road tax is non monotonic across space reflecting the different impacts of labor supply elasticity and marginal utility of income which both vary over space the relative efficiencies of some archetype second best pricing schemes cordon toll flat kilometer tax are high 84 and 70 respectively when road toll revenue is recycled lump sum the optimal toll lies below its pigouvian level extensions in a bimodal framework show that the optimality of using road toll revenue to subsidize public transport depends on the initial inefficiency in public transport pricing

optimal fiscal policy for a state or local government abstract state and local government services are enjoyed by and taxes borne by two groups residents and non residents this paper addresses the question if state and local governments maximize their residents welfare and cannot distinguish between individual residents and non residents but know the aggregate characteristics of the two groups what set of taxes subsidies and public goods should they choose some of the results obtained are i even when all commodities are taxable and equity is ignored the existence of non resident consumption makes uniform taxation non optimal ii in some cases whether a commodity should be taxed or subsidized is independent of its own price elasticity iii central cities may be subsidized by suburban residents and iv the ability of state and local governments to redistribute is inversely proportional to the openness of the economy

price specification and the demand for public goods abstract nearly all public expenditure demand studies define the marginal price for publicly provided goods as the household s share of the local property tax burden or what is often called the tax price such a definition is at odds with two familiar facts taxes are ordinarily distortionary and property values are often influenced by the value of local services this paper constructs a theoretically consistent marginal tax price measure incorporating these considerations the new measure demonstrates that previous estimates of the price and income elasticities of demand for public services are biased except under very restrictive circumstances moreover the direction of this bias will depend upon the actual incidence of public spending and the tenure status of residents

revisiting electricity liberalization and quality of service empirical evidence from new zealand abstractwhat effect does the firm structure have on the quality of service delivered by networks and infrastructure industries we answer this question by empirically assessing the impacts of complete vertical separation such as ownership unbundling on the quality of service delivered by a liberalized network industry electricity distribution utilities in new zealand are considered for this purpose and are analysed using panel data econometrics the results show robust evidence that ownership unbundling contributed to a fall in the duration and frequency of supply interruptions in electricity distribution however the results also show that unbundling has no effect on reducing distribution network losses these results overall highlight the nonsimple impacts of ownership unbundling on the quality of electricity distribution we suggest that the quality of service may largely improve when considered in the economic regulation of electricity networks than completely relying on specific reform measures

local income taxation in an urban area abstract this paper indicates the response of a metropolitan area to the levying of a local income tax the analysis is focused on a central city and its surrounding suburbs but allows for migration to and from the metropolitan area of primary interest are the spatial effects of local income taxation and the associated welfare costs derived from additional transportation expenditures the analysis indicates the forms of compensation to central city high income households for the fiscal deficit they bear changes in wage rates and land rentals are derived and the question of full capitalization is considered

a markup interpretation of optimal investment rules we re examine the basic investment problem of deciding when to incur a sunk cost to obtain a stochastically fluctuating benefit the optimal investment rule satisfies a trade off between a larger versus a later net benefit we show that this trade off is closely analogous to the standard trade off for the pricing decision of a firm that faces a downward sloping demand curve we reinterpret the optimal investment rule as a markup formula involving an elasticity that has exactly the same form as the formula for a firm s optimal markup of price over marginal cost this is illustrated with several examples consider what is probably the most basic irreversible investment problem a project can be undertaken that requires a sunk cost c and yields a benefit v the cost is known and constant over time but the benefit measured as the present value at the time the cost is incurred fluctuates as an autonomous markov process vt with continuous sample paths time is continuous and

taxes pollution and optimal abatement in an urban economy abstract a closed urban spatial model is used to examine the impact on consumer renters and on absentee property owners of pollution abatement and alternative means of financing it an explicit utility function and a relatively general pollution or amenity distribution function are used the incidence effects are developed for exogenously financed abatement and for its finance through an income tax and an excise tax note also is taken of the outcome with a property tax the model also is used to consider optimal abatement from various vantage points the results of consumer utility maximization under an income tax regimen are compared with those under an excise regimen and both results are in turn compared with the outcome when a cost benefit approach is applied

aspects of growth in a system of cities abstract this paper explores and develops the modeling of growth in a system of cities in two alternative settings first we examine a large growing economy with a fully developed system of cities with perfectly malleable private and public capital local scale economies in production and diseconomies in consumption in equilibrium offset each other at the margin so that from a national point of view we have a constant returns to scale economy we show that at the steady state the number of cities grows exponentially at the rate of growth of the population we then examine the impact of technological change considering a case where public capital is not perfectly malleable in the second setting we consider the problem of growth for a small economy and discuss problems associated with the transition to the steady state we modify the previous model to describe a system of cities that is just starting to develop investment in public infrastructure capital is subject to sharp indivisibilities and as a result new cities are built at discrete points in time

regulation and investment use newly assembled data on regulation in several sectors of many oecd countries to provide evidence that regulatory reform of product markets is associated with an increase in investment a component of reform that plays a very important role is entry liberalization but privatization also has a substantial effect on investment sensitivity analysis suggests that our results are robust jel e22 l5

regulation and competition issues in thai electricity sector abstract this paper explores the issues related to regulatory reform and liberalisation leading toward competition in the thai electricity sector which is still under the monopoly control of state owned enterprises soes following an overview of the current market structure of the thai electricity sector the process of liberalisation and deregulation that contributes to the uncompetitive market structure under soes control is examined the author asserts that there are problems within the energy commission and the energy industry act be 2550 2007 that contribute to the continuance of an uncompetitive electricity supply possible reforms to the thai electricity regulation are proposed with the aim of creating market competition and efficiency in the thai electricity sector

the risk structure of land markets abstract real property as an asset class represents over half of the wealth in the united states nevertheless the structure of risk in real property markets is poorly understood this paper develops a model of urban and agricultural land prices that integrates spatial and asset pricing theories and characterizes the spatial and temporal risk structure of the land market urban land is priced by a capm and agricultural land is priced by a real option to convert into urban land we show that the price of land awaiting conversion increases with the growth rate of urban rents and unsystematic risk but decreases with risk aversion however it may be increasing or decreasing in systematic risk the free boundary for exercise determines city size which increases with the growth rate of urban rents but decreases with systematic and unsystematic risk

landscape preferences and patterns of residential development abstract i analyze a model of residential location choice where people derive utility from their proximity to open space when people have such landscape preferences then 1 equilibrium residential development is mixed with undeveloped land 2 equilibrium land price gradients depend sensitively on how land markets are organized are not generally monotonic and may or may not reflect the value of open space and 3 dynamic equilibria generally have the property that more remote areas are developed before more central areas finally when compared to optimal development equilibrium development houses too many residents too close together and remote areas are developed too soon these results imply that equilibrium development may not be sprawling enough and that policies to encourage infill development are not welfare improving

the stochastic city abstract this paper analyzes a simple model of an urban area with growth and uncertainty household income rents and prices for land follow stochastic processes even though investors are risk neutral uncertainty affects both land rents and land prices in equilibrium because the conversion of land from agricultural to urban use is irreversible growth on the other hand affects urban and agricultural land prices but not the level of rents we show that uncertainty i delays the conversion of land from agricultural to urban use ii imparts an option value to agricultural land iii causes land at the boundary to sell for more than its opportunity cost in other uses and iv reduces equilibrium city size

heterogeneous effects of regulation on the efficiency of the electricity industry across european union countries abstract this paper focuses on the relationship between the stringency of regulation oecd indicators and total factor productivity tfp growth in the electricity sectors of 19 european union countries for the period 1994 2007 both the oecd regulatory indicator and the tfp growth index have been decomposed in order to bring to light a complex picture of interrelations in which the negative impact of the overall regulation on productivity is the result of opposite forces estimation results tell us that only the stringency of entry regulation significantly reduces technological change whereas vertical integration exhibits a negative and significant impact only on the catching up process pure efficiency change lastly we found an interesting result concerning the explanatory variables of the scale efficiency change in this case only public ownership matters in other terms high levels of public in the structure ownership of electric companies guarantee improvements in reaching the optimal scale of production these heterogeneous effects are also confirmed when we use a different measure of efficiency that is the distance of the actual from the optimal reserve margin

technological externalities and economies of vertical integration in the electric utility industry abstract this paper investigates economies of vertical integration of the electric utility industry focusing on the technological externality between the generation and transmission distribution stages for this purpose a shadow cost function of the symmetric generalized mcfadden form is estimated using panel data on the transmission distribution stage of nine japanese electric utility firms the results show that there exist the technological externality effects of generation facilities on the cost of the transmission distribution stage suggesting economies of vertical integration

pigou tiebout property taxation and the underprovision of local public goods abstract pigou s proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces public service levels is examined in this paper a simple model with a national system of competing local governments is utilized to demonstrate that the use of a distorting property tax on mobile capital decreases the level of residential public services the case where public services are an intermediate producer good is also considered

urban economic theory land use and city size this book examines the economic reasons why people choose to live where they live and develops through analysis of the bid rent function a unified theory of urban land use and city size the first part of the book explicates the basic theory of urban land use and optimal city size residential location behavior of households is examined in a microeconomic framework and equilibrium and optimal patterns of residential land use are discussed the corresponding equilibrium and optimal city sizes are studied in a variety of contexts part two extends the classical theories of von thunen and alonso with the addition of externality factors such as local public goods crowding and congestion and racial prejudice the rigorous mathematical approach and theoretical treatment of the material make urban economic theory of interest to researchers in urban economics location theory urban geography and urban planning

heterogeneous impacts of regulatory policy stringency on the eu electricity industry a bayesian shrinkage dynamic analysis abstract environmental and technical efficiency in the electricity sector is a major focus of regulatory policies aimed at hastening greenhouse gas reduction and lowering energy prices for final consumers understanding the impact of market and environmental regulations on efficiency is crucial for the design and choice of policy packages at the national level the productivity response to regulations depends on unobserved country specific factors that current empirical analyses have not modelled in this framework we analyse the regulation effects on efficiency in the electricity sector for a panel of european union countries we explicitly consider the effects of the environmental regulation along with the market regulation our estimation strategy uses the bayesian shrinkage estimator which can deal with the bias aggregation problem and cross country heterogeneity it allows us to identify the different transmission channels through which regulatory policy is implemented the results highlight divergent behaviours at the country level the direct impacts of the market and environmental regulatory policies on productivity are negative around 2 7 and 2 3 respectively but the countries vary in the degree to which they are able to compensate these negative effects

equilibrium and the core in alonso s discrete population model of land use conventional wisdom tells us that with no market failure and local non satiation of preferences the core is at least as large as the collection of competitive equilibrium allocations we con rm this for a standard model featuring land next we consider the public land ownership version of the model if the role of land ownership and rent distribution is assumed by a government that ploughs back rent at least in excess of its agricultural value to its citizens the equilibrium remains efficient but no longer need be in the core

the tiebout model bring back the entrepreneurs several recent papers in the literature have reformulltlated the nature of equilibrium in ifiebout mo lels by alssliuim ing an exogenous number of communities inflexible commullity l ou alaries anti in pirticular inactive lantlowners and developers ihis paper argues that these assumptions are unwarranted and resul1t iin in eterminate solutions and incorrect analyses determinate lon1g run1 solutions require equilibrium in intercommui land markets which in turn require giving lantlowners and or entrepreneurial leveloelers an active role in the models the role of politics in these models and its juxtaposition with entrepreneurial activities are also analyzed

review of proposals for practical power sector restructuring and reforms in a dynamic electricity supply industry abstract south africa s electricity supply industry esi remains a vertically integrated monopoly despite global trends towards restructuring the monopolistic nature of the esi could hinder the development of distributed power systems as penetration of renewable electricity increases the research aims to rationalise south africa s esi evolution propose practical power sector restructuring in the short to medium term and to determine their potential impact the research methodology included a single case study instrument with embedded sub units of analysis primary research data was gathered using semi structured interviews with industry experts in addition to which secondary data from government documents and archival records were used for triangulation research results conclude that south africa s esi grew due to techno economic industrialisation factors while apartheid era policies influenced the esi in only some specific respects the vertically integrated status quo was sustained in the post transformation period due to government s focus on social imperatives lack of regulatory policy certainty and conflicts in political ideology south africa did not experience the pre conditions that triggered global power sector reforms in the late 20 th century but these pre conditions are now becoming evident privatisation of eskom generation and introduction of wholesale and retail competition are not practical in the short to medium term proving the infeasibility of the standard model of reform locally the introduction of an independent system and market operator ismo using a single buyer model is seen as the most favourable and practical option with the ismo owning transmission infrastructure the research suggests that esi changes will increase system efficiencies economic performance and private sector involvement but will not reduce electricity tariffs the scenarios challenges and proposals identified in this research are also applicable to other countries in africa and other developing regions of the world that have similar social and political backgrounds ensuring sustainable supply of electricity

the arguments for and against ownership unbundling of energy transmission networks abstract the question this paper addresses is what is the evidence for the superiority of the ownership unbundled transmission models i e uk or nord pool hybrid over other models we assess the theoretical costs and benefits of ownership unbundling and judge these to be generally positive though these may be potentially offset by the actual reorganisation costs of the ownership unbundling process next we assess the empirical evidence this is in two forms econometric evidence from samples of countries and case studies of reforms in particular jurisdictions the econometric evidence is weak due to problems with simultaneity of reform steps and a lack of studies but the case study evidence is compelling we conclude with a discussion of the issues faced by countries considering implementing ownership unbundling we conclude that evidence seems to be that ownership unbundling of transmission is a key part of energy market reform in the most successful reform jurisdictions

ideas institutions and interests in the politics of cross border electricity interconnection greenlink britain and ireland abstract increasing electricity interconnection is necessary for both closer market integration and facilitating more renewable generation across the european union however progress on the ground has been slow this paper adds to the literature on the politics of interconnection through a case study of a proposed link between ireland and great britain we analyse how the institutional setting for investment has evolved at eu and member state level and how the influence of stakeholders is mediated by the ability of actors to define their interests and by institutional points of entry using this framework we examine the greenwire greenlink project we find first that developments in the institutional context especially the adoption of a new cap and floor regime for merchant investment by the gb regulator have had both positive and negative impacts on the project second we find that regulators and governments in the two markets have found it hard to define their interests in the project and its net social benefit due to informational complexities and changes in information over time third the project has met with local public opposition that is strong but which has little leverage due to a lack of institutional entry points

the impact of ownership unbundling on cost efficiency empirical evidence from the new zealand electricity distribution sector abstract several countries around the world have introduced reforms to the electric power sector one important element of these reforms is the introduction of an unbundling process i e the separation of the competitive activities of supply and production from the monopole activity of transmission and distribution of electricity there are several forms of unbundling functional legal and ownership new zealand for instance adopted an ownership unbundling in 1998 as discussed in the literature ownership unbundling produces benefits and costs one of the benefits may be an improvement in the level of the productive efficiency of the companies due to the use of the inputs in just one activity and a greater level of transparency for the regulator this paper analyzes the cost efficiency of 28 electricity distribution companies in new zealand for the period between 1996 and 2011 using a stochastic frontier panel data model a total cost function and a variable cost function are estimated in order to evaluate the impact of ownership unbundling on the level of cost efficiency the results indicate that ownership separation of electricity generation and retail operations from the distribution network has a positive effect on the cost efficiency of distribution companies in new zealand the estimated effect of ownership separation suggests a positive average one off shift in the level of cost efficiency by 0 242 in the short run and 0 144 in the long run

heterogeneous policies heterogeneous technologies the case of renewable energy this paper investigates empirically the effect of market regulation and renewable energy policies on innovation activity in different renewable energy technologies for the eu countries and the years 1980 to 2007 we built a unique dataset containing information on patent production in eight different technologies proxies of market regulation and technology specific renewable energy policies our main finding is that compared to privatisation and unbundling reducing entry barriers is a more significant driver of renewable energy innovation but that its effect varies across technologies and is stronger in technologies characterised by potential entry of small independent power producers in addition the inducement effect of renewable energy policies is heterogeneous and more pronounced for wind which is the only technology that is mature and has high technological potential finally ratification of the kyoto protocol which determined a more stable and less uncertain policy framework amplifies the inducement effect of both energy policy and market liberalisation

labor supply and housing demand for one and two earner households the jointness of labor and housing decisions is explicitly modelled in a consumer demand framework behavior of seven demographic groups differentiated by marital status employment status and the presence of children is estimated from a micro data set results indicate that 1 decisions regarding work hours and housing consumption are interdependent choices and 2 responses to market signals differ significantly by demographic group results are likely to be superior to single equation studies or studies based on aggregate data

hedonic prices and cost benefit analysis abstract hedonic prices have been used to evaluate the willingness to pay for attributes we reformulate the notion of hedonic price from a composite price on housing to a unit price on traded quantities in conformity with long run competitive equilibrium theory this formulation was suggested but not developed by rosen j polit econ 82 no 1 1974 34 35 by first characterizing an efficient allocation of consumers to space we show that hedonic unit prices can be understood as a bid rent function which supports the efficient allocation this is despite the fact that the lots over which consumers bid are themselves endogenous we show that unit hedonic prices reveal preferences in a manner different from composite hedonic expenditures

reforming small electricity systems under political instability the case of nepal this paper assesses the issues and options in reforming small electricity sector systems in general while citing nepal as a specific case political instability and increasing electricity demand are two major complicating factors in power sector reform of small systems such as that of nepal lessons from international experience suggest that measures such as cost reflecting pricing restructuring and independent regulation are important for the success of reforms in small systems the creation of an independent regulatory authority is more important than unbundling of the sector in the present context of nepal accounting separation of the main activities may be a pragmatic restructuring approach given the present political and market condition as the systems gradually grow larger vertical separation of the system and horizontal splitting of the generation segment and competition in organised wholesale market followed by privatisation remains an option in the long run

utilitarianism and horizontal equity the case for random taxation this paper establishes that far from being able to derive the principle of horizontal equity from utilitarianism the principle is actually in consistent with utilitarianism in a variety of circumstances we derive conditions under which a it is optimal to impose random tax schedules ex post randomization and b it is optimal to randomize the tax schedules imposed on a set of otherwise identical individuals ex ante randomization the implications for optimal tax theory are discussed more generally it is shown that there are a number of potentially important economic situations with which the principle of horizontal equity may be inconsistent not only with utilitarianism but even with pareto optimality this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

capitalization of intrajurisdictional differences in local tax prices comment in his recent article in this review bruce hamilton attempted to extend peter mieszkowski s 1969 1972 analysis of property tax incidence he correctly notes that mieszkowski s model does not describe a market equilibrium hamilton s model accounts for the tax and benefit incidence of an intrajurisdictional property tax and it delineates the competitive market adjustments due to capitalization effects he then draws several conclusions regarding fundamental urban economic problems however hamilton s model fails to describe a market equilibrium for the identical reason mieszkowski s fails potential supply adjustments generated by capitalization are neglected the purpose of this comment is to correct the hamilton model by including sufficient conditions to obtain a market equilibrium our reformulation of the model indicates that some of hamilton s urban policy conclusions are utterly incorrect while others are valid only under very restrictive assumptions consider a hamiltonian metropolitan area comprised of three jurisdictions 1 a homogeneous high income housing hih community 2 a homogeneous l w income housing lih community and 3 a mixed community consisting of a percent of units of lih and 1 a units of hih in the initial pretax equilibrium property values reflect only resource costs a public service benefit is then provided equally to each house in every community a proportional property tax is levied in each community based on the value of the average property in the jurisdiction there are no net capitalization effects in the two homogeneous communities because the benefit per household equals the tax however the mixed community is characterized by short run intrajurisdictional net benefit differentials inbd the lih receive a fiscal surplus and the hiii incur fiscal burden due to average cost pricing of the public services hamilton concludes that the net benefit differences are capitalized into property values land is assumed to bear the capitalization effects because capital is mobile p 748 fn 9 hamilton defines this posttax capitalization state as efficient in supply of housing and public service because land value differentials exactly reflect the present value of inbd see pp 748 750 752 for hamilton s conclusion to hold we must assume the relative speeds of adjustment i e mobility of capital renters and land differ in that order with capital exhibiting the greatest degree of mobility this assumption is not inconsistent with hamilton s model and is no doubt generally accepted it is essential to note that capitalization requires at least partial immobility of one or more factors assuming nonzero elasticities of factor substitution 2 furthermore the hamilton efficient state implies land is completely immobile and thus bears the full burden of inbd the immobility of land eliminates substitution possibilities so an intrajurisdictional tax imposes only income effects an

electricity prices and public ownership evidence from the eu15 over thirty years abstract this paper studies the impact of corporate ownership on residential net of tax electricity prices when the ownership effect is separated from the liberalisation effect and from other drivers of change after a discussion of a simple conceptual model and of earlier literature we use iea and oecd data for the eu15 over nearly three decades panel econometrics suggests that after controlling for other factors public ownership is associated with lower residential net of tax electricity prices in western europe the impact of liberalisation on prices is smaller and more uncertain

commuting and taxes theory empirics and welfare implications we examine the effect of interstate differences in income taxes on commuting times our theoretical model introduces a border into a model of an urban area and shows that differences in average tax rates distort commuting patterns but the sign of the effect depends on whether taxes are residence based or employment based empirically tax differentials have a large effect on commuting times for affluent households and mobile households we show that commuting times are a sufficient statistic to measure the spatial welfare effects of tax policy the model and empirical design can be used by economists to study other policy differences this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

estimation of a labour supply model with censoring due to unemployment and underemployment this study proposes and implements a method of labour supply estimation which is appropriate when the sample contains unemployed and underemployed workers the estimation method consists of excluding unemployed and underemployed workers from the sample and then using to avoid selection bias an extension of heckman s approach to the case where two correlated selection rules generate the sample hausman s specification test is then used to determine whether ignoring constrained workers has led to biases in traditional labour supply estimates and the empirical results suggest that previous estimates of several important parameters are biased since the biases go in the direction that would be predicted by the hypothesis that the unemployed and underemployed are constrained the results support this hypothesis

urban development with lags abstract this paper specifies a model of urban development under uncertainty when there is a lag between the decision to begin a project and its completion these lags have three important effects first the deterrent effect of uncertainty on development is smaller with lags than without them second in some cases development occurs later under uncertainty than with certainty third lags may lead to leapfrog development when distant land is developed prior to nearby land