annual and cropping season environmental production conditions effects on smallholder technical efficiency in sub saharan africa evidence from ethiopia this article investigates the impact of environmental production conditions on smallholder farmers technical efficiency in ethiopia for wheat maize and sorghum farming we use a household panel data set with annual and cropping season environmental production conditions to estimate the technical efficiency scores the results show that including environmental production conditions in the stochastic frontier has a significant impact on farmers technical efficiency scores technical efficiency scores improve when environmental production conditions are incorporated in the stochastic frontier thus accounting for environmental production conditions reduces the inefficiencies that otherwise may be attributed to the characteristics of smallholder farmers

optimal bidding scheduling and deployment of battery systems in california day ahead energy market an optimal supply and demand bidding scheduling and deployment design framework is proposed for battery systems it takes into account various design factors such as the day ahead and real time market prices and their statistical dependency as well as the location size efficiency lifetime and charge and discharge rates of the batteries utilizing second life used batteries is also considered without loss of generality our focus is on the california independent system operator iso energy market and its two available bidding options namely self schedule bidding and economic bidding while the formulated stochastic optimization problems are originally nonlinear and difficult to solve we propose a methodology to decompose them into inner and outer subproblems accordingly we find the global optimal solutions within a short amount of computational time all case studies in this paper are based on real market data

an investigation of the role of china s urban population on coal consumption abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between urban population real gdp electricity production and coal consumption in china for the period 1971 2009 using a vector autoregression framework and a modified version of the granger 1969 causality test proposed by toda and yamamoto j econ 66 1995 225 the results suggest that there is causality running from gdp to coal consumption the variance decomposition analysis report that urban population and coal affect electricity production variability over the forecast period we also find that increasing urban population may negatively affect china s gdp over time policy measures aimed at influencing gdp could ultimately affect coal consumption

economic analysis of coal price electricity price adjustment in china based on the cge model in recent years coal price has risen rapidly which has also brought a sharp increase in the expenditures of thermal power plants in china meantime the power production price and power retail price have not been adjusted accordingly and a large number of thermal power plants have incurred losses the power industry is a key industry in the national economy as such a thorough analysis and evaluation of the economic influence of the electricity price should be conducted before electricity price adjustment is carried out this paper analyses the influence of coal price adjustment on the electric power industry and the influence of electricity price adjustment on the macroeconomy in china based on computable general equilibrium models the conclusions are as follows 1 a coal price increase causes a rise in the cost of the electric power industry but the influence gradually descends with increase in coal price and 2 an electricity price increase has an adverse influence on the total output gross domestic product gdp and the consumer price index cpi electricity price increases have a contractionary effect on economic development and consequently electricity price policy making must consequently consider all factors to minimize their adverse influence

the crucial relationship among energy commodity prices evidence from the spanish electricity market the main purpose of this article is twofold to analyze a the long term relation among the commodities prices and between spot electricity market price and commodity prices and b the short term dynamics among commodity prices and between electricity prices and commodity prices data between 2002 and 2005 from the spanish electricity market was used econometric methods were used in the analysis of the commodity spot price namely the vector autoregression model the vector error correction model and the granger causality test the co integration approach was used to analyze the long term relationship between the common stochastic trends of four fossil fuel prices one of the findings in the long term relation is that the prices of fuel and the prices of brent are intertwined though the prices of brent ten to move to reestablish the price equilibrium another finding is that the price of electricity is explained by the evolution of the natural gas series

estimation of stochastic frontier production functions with time varying parameters and technical efficiencies using panel data from indian villages abstract a stochastic frontier production function with time varying technical efficiencies is estimated using panel data from icrisat s village level studies in three indian villages given the specifications of a linearized version of a cobb douglas stochastic frontier production function with coefficients which are a linear function of time the hypothesis that the traditional response function is an adequate representation of the data is accepted for only one of the three villages the hypothesis of time invariant technical inefficiencies is not rejected for one of the two villages for which significant technical inefficiencies exist the hypothesis of time invariant elasticities of the input variables is rejected for two of the three villages further the hypothesis that hired and family labour are equally productive is accepted in only one of the three villages the technical efficiencies of individual farms exhibited considerable variation in the two villages with either time invariant or time varying technical efficiencies

economic and environmental impacts of electricity subsidy reform in kuwait a general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper examined economic and environmental impacts of reducing electricity subsidy in kuwait a social accounting matrix sam was constructed together with energy consumption with co2 emission were compiled and then calibrated with a computable general equilibrium cge model a simulation experiment was conducted by applying a 30 reduction of subsidy to the electricity sector this policy shock was applied to the model in two scenarios in scenario 1 the subsidy reduction was applied and results were compared with the baseline scenario given in the sam this yielded adverse economic effects on most endogenous variables but positive environmental benefits in terms of co2 emission reduction electricity tariff increased by three fold from 2 to 6 fils 0 7 cents to 2 cents per kwh gdp fell by 0 5 and aggregate household welfare declined by 0 8 in scenario 2 subsidy reduction was accompanied with cash transfers to compensate user losses the subsidy deducted from the electricity sector was allocated to users according to their share in base year total expenditure on electricity the results indicated that such transfers would reduce the adverse economic effects co2 emissions fell by 0 5 the gdp and household welfare effects were reversed rising by 0 4 and 0 1 respectively

technical efficiency and productivity of maize producers in eastern ethiopia a study of farmers within and outside the sasakawa global 2000 project abstract this paper investigates the technical efficiency of two samples of maize producers in eastern ethiopia one involving farmers within the sasakawa global 2000 project and the other involving farmers outside this program the study uses stochastic frontier production functions in which the technical inefficiency effects are assumed to be functions of the age and education of the farmers together with the time spent by extension advisers in assisting farmers in their agricultural production operations for the cross sectional data obtained for the 1995 96 agricultural year cobb douglas stochastic frontiers are found to be adequate representations of the data given the specifications of the translog stochastic frontiers for farmers within and outside the project the empirical results indicate that farmers within the sg 2000 project are more technically efficient than farmers outside the project relative to their respective technologies the mean frontier output of maize for farmers within the sg 2000 project is significantly greater than that for the farmers outside the project

risk based electricity procurement for large consumers in a competitive electricity market consumers seek strategies to procure their energy needs from different resources pool bilateral contracts and their own generation facilities at minimum cost while controlling the risk in this paper a novel method is proposed to address the electricity procurement problem of large consumers using the concept of information gap decision theory the method can be used as a tool for assessing the risk levels considering whether a large consumer is risk taking or risk averse regarding its midterm procurement strategies in the proposed method procurement decisions are evaluated by means of two criteria the first criterion is the robustness of the decision against experiencing high procurement costs and the second one is the opportunity of taking advantage of low procurement costs the pool price is considered an uncertain variable and it is assumed that the large consumer has an estimate of the prices in this study two models of uncertainty are addressed for the pool price based on the concept of weighted mean squared error using a variance covariance matrix and the expected procurement cost is modeled using a joint normal probability distribution function a case study illustrates the working of the proposed technique

exploring the impacts of a carbon tax on the chinese economy using a cge model with a detailed disaggregation of energy sectors abstract this paper applies a computable general equilibrium model to investigate the impacts of a carbon tax on china s economy and carbon emissions based on china s 2010 input output table to obtain robust simulation results we further disaggregate the energy sectors into eight departments according to energy use characteristics the empirical results indicate that a moderate carbon tax would significantly reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel energy consumption and slightly reduce the pace of economic growth however a large carbon tax has a significantly negative impact on china s economy and social welfare moreover a large carbon tax would entail marked price changes in china of the fossil fuels in use reducing coal consumption would have the greatest impact on reducing carbon emissions and the ad valorem duty rate for coal would be the highest after levying a carbon tax because it has the highest carbon emission coefficient therefore china should strive to promote clean coal technology which may be crucial to reducing carbon emissions moreover levying a carbon tax would improve the use of clean energy which would be an effective means of reducing carbon emissions therefore the chinese government should formulate the regulations for and pass a carbon tax as early as possible to achieve its carbon emission abatement target and further contribute to mitigating climate change

efficiency in agricultural production the case of peasant farmers in eastern paraguay abstract this paper contributes to the productivity literature in developing country agriculture by quantifying the level of efficiency for a sample of peasant farmers from eastern paraguay a stochastic efficiency decomposition methodology is used to derive technical allocative and economic efficiency measures separately for cotton and cassava an average economic efficiency of 40 1 for cotton and of 52 for cassava is found which suggests considerable room for productivity gains for the farms in the sample through better use of available resources given the state of technology gains in output through productivity growth have become increasingly important to paraguay as the opportunities to bring additional virgin lands into cultivation have significantly diminished in recent years no clear strategy to improve farm productivity could be gleaned from an examination of the relationship between efficiency and various socioeconomic variables one possible explanation for this finding is the existence of a stage of development threshold below which there is no consistent relationship between socioeconomic variables and productivity if this is the case then our results suggest that this sample of paraguayan peasants are yet to reach such a threshold hence improvements in educational and extension services for example would be needed to go beyond this threshold once this is accomplished additional productivity gains would be obtained by further investments in human capital and related factors

efficiency differentials in peasant agriculture and their implications for development policies this paper reviews the theoretical and empirical work on allocative efficiency in traditional agriculture and presents a new study of technical efficiency among tanzanian cotton farmers the theoretical arguments are shown to apply primarily in a competitive context that differs significantly from that in which peasant farms operate re analysis of earlier empirical studies shows that on average the marginal value products of inputs differ by more than 40 per cent from the marginal factor costs to which they should be equated under allocative efficiency our own study among tanzanian cotton farmers in geita district reveals that output could be increased by 51 per cent if all farmers achieved those levels of technical efficiency that were in fact achieved by the best farmers in the sample using the same inputs and technologies that the less efficient used these results indicate that the efficiency hypothesis may not be applicable to much of peasant agriculture and that development policies might fruitf

risk constrained generation asset arbitrage in power systems a competitive generating company genco can maximize its payoff by optimizing its generation assets this paper considers the genco s arbitrage problem using stochastic price based unit commitment while considering the associated risks the genco may consider arbitrage opportunities in purchases from qualifying facilities qfs as well as simultaneous trades with spot markets for energy ancillary services fuel and emission allowance the tradeoff between maximizing expected payoffs and minimizing risks due to market price uncertainties is modeled explicitly by including the expected downside risk as a constraint the downside risk is defined as the unfulfilled profit the monte carlo simulation is applied to generate scenarios and scenario reduction techniques are applied to reduce the number of scenarios while maintaining a good approximation of the exact solution the proposed case studies illustrate the significance of arbitrage in multi commodity markets and the importance of considering the uncertainty of market prices

energy caps alternative climate policy instruments for china abstract decoupling fossil energy demand from economic growth is crucial for china s sustainable development especially for addressing severe local air pollution and global climate change an absolute cap on coal or fossil fuel consumption has been proposed as a means to support the country s energy and climate policy objectives we evaluate potential energy cap designs that differ in terms of target fuel point of control and national versus regional allowance trading using a global numerical general equilibrium model that separately represents 30 provinces in china first we simulate a coal cap and find that relative to a cap on all fossil fuels it is significantly more costly and results in high localized welfare losses second we compare fossil energy cap designs and find that a national cap on downstream fossil energy use with allowance trading across provinces is the most cost effective third we find that a national fossil energy cap with trading is nearly as cost effective as a national co2 emissions trading system that penalizes energy use based on carbon content as a fossil energy cap builds on existing institutions in china it offers a viable intermediate step toward a full fledged co2 emissions trading system

education and technical efficiency in small farm production differences in technical efficiency are observed as differences in the physical output produced from a given bundle of physical inputs these differences are not considered in the traditional theory of the firm wherein the output resulting from a particular input bundle is specified as the maximum possible according to the latest technology presupposing technical efficiency the theory of the firm concentrates on allocative efficiency on the choice of the particular input bundle that maximizes profit given prices and the technically efficient production function the best utilization of any particular input combination according to henderson and quandt is a technical not an economic problem 1 economic theory notwithstanding empirical studies of production must take into account differences in the utilization of inputs since in the real world producers are not all equally efficient it is conceptually convenient to divide the output variation observed over a number of firms into two parts one that stems from variation in physical inputs and another that reflects differences in technical efficiency timmer has developed an approach by which to compare the technical efficiency of firms using linear programming he determines the function that relates physical inputs to output for the most efficient of a sample of firms in other words he finds the production surface that is the envelope of all the observation points he calls this function the technical frontier the relative tech

carbon pricing and energy efficiency improvement why to miss the interaction for developing economies an illustrative cge based application to the pakistan case abstract carbon energy taxes and energy efficiency improvement are studied well in the recent years for their potential adverse impacts on economy especially for lost production and international competitiveness and rebound effects however little attention has been paid to investigate them jointly which can not only prevent fall of energy services cost and thereby rebound effect but reduce the associated macroeconomic costs this study thus employs a 20 sector cge model to explore separately the impacts of carbon tax and its coordinated implementation with energy efficiency improvement on the pakistan economy the country underwent enormous pressure of energy security issues as well as climate change fallouts in the last couple of years and can be regarded as a suitable candidate for energy environmental conservation policies to be considered at a broader context with more concrete efforts the simulation results show that the impact of carbon tax on gdp is negative but resulting reductions in pollutant emissions are relatively high moreover the gdp is expected to grow comparatively positive when analyzed with improvements in energy efficiency with even higher decline in energy consumption demand and so emissions this simultaneous economic and environmental improvement would thus have positive implications regarding sustainable development of the country

weather shocks coping strategies and consumption dynamics in rural ethiopia summary rural households adopt a broad range of strategies to cope with adverse weather shocks previous studies have examined the effectiveness of individual coping strategies in mitigating the impact of adverse weather shocks but no study to date has presented a comprehensive evaluation of alternative coping strategies we employ household panel data spanning 15 years to estimate the impact of weather shocks on consumption and poverty dynamics in rural ethiopia along with the effectiveness of household coping strategies in alleviating the impact of shocks we find that rainfall increases are positively associated with per adult equivalent consumption while high temperatures are negatively associated with consumption in terms of household coping strategies formal social safety net transfers mitigate the impact of adverse rainfall shocks on consumption and off farm employment mitigates the impact of high temperature shocks simulations suggest that rainfall shocks and formal social safety net transfers significantly influence household poverty dynamics by contrast high temperature shocks and off farm employment have less impact on poverty dynamics the results highlight the need for social protection programs that support existing household coping strategies and that can rapidly respond to weather shocks

oil shock and economic growth in japan a nonlinear approach abstract this paper investigates the relationship between oil price shock and economic growth on the basis of the nonlinear approach developed by hamilton hamilton j 2001 a parametric approach to flexible nonlinear inference econometrica 537 573 we use the approach also in hamilton hamilton j 2003 what is an oil shock journal of econometrics 363 398 of capturing this relationship in japan in a nonlinear model the idea is that negative oil price shocks price increase tend to have larger impact on growth than positive shocks do our empirical evidence confirmed the existence of nonlinearity between these two variables and a flexible nonlinear model is estimated additionally several other form of nonlinearity are estimated and tested

the linkage between oil price shocks and economic growth with inflation in the presence of technological advances a cge model abstract this study examines whether oil price shocks are inflationary in the us we increase the price of oil in the year 2000 in a manner consistent with the oil price shock of 1973 74 and let the economy experience a hicksian technological change then using a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model we conduct our analyses under two separate cases 1 regular economic growth and 2 low economic growth we also run three technological scenarios 1 no technology change 2 technological advances in the manufacturing and refining sectors and 3 technological advances in the manufacturing refining chemical and service sectors the effects of these changes are analyzed over the next 20 years until the year 2020 our results suggest that while a shock of the magnitude experienced in the 1970s will have a fairly severe effect on such things as gasoline and refinery prices the aggregate price changes will be largely dissipated over time at the aggregate level furthermore the aggregate level of prices cpi and ppi will fall over time as the level of technological advances rise under both growth scenarios there are several reasons why we would obtain such results first of all the structure of the us economy has changed remarkably since the early 1970s rather than being a manufacturing based economy the us is largely a service based economy today and hence it is more protected form raw materials shortages second the economy has had a steady history of strong growth and the faster an economy grows the quicker disruptions to that economy are dissipated finally our economy is experiencing rapid technological advances in information systems which have served to reduce costs and maintain output in a wide number of economic sectors

technical efficiency in developing country agriculture a meta analysis abstract a meta analysis is performed to review empirical estimates of technical efficiency te in developing country agriculture the objective of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence estimates of mean te a data set of 51 observations of te from 32 studies is used in order to test if specific characteristics of the data and econometric specifications account for systematic differences in the efficiency estimates results using the two limit tobit procedure indicate that factors such as primal versus dual number of fixed inputs and number of variable inputs increase average te estimates on the other hand using the cobb douglas functional form and cross sectional data yields a lower level of te other factors including the number of variables in the model crop type stochastic versus deterministic frontiers and sample size do not seem to significantly affect estimates of te across studies

impacts of a rise in electricity tariff on prices of other products in vietnam abstract this study examines the impacts of increasing electricity tariff to the long run marginal cost on prices of other products using a static input output approach it is found that such an increase would drive up the prices of all other products although the aggregate price impact from such an increase is not large it would be socially difficult to implement this increase at one time particularly given that vietnam is facing high inflation rate a roadmap for electricity tariff increase is thus discussed

the asymmetry of the impact of oil price shocks on economic activities an application of the multivariate threshold model this paper applies the multivariate threshold model to investigate the impacts of an oil price change and its volatility on economic activities changes in industrial production and real stock returns the statistical test on the existence of a threshold effect indicates that a threshold value does exist using monthly data of the us canada and japan during the period from 1970 to 2002 we conclude i the optimal threshold level seems to vary according to how an economy depends on imported oil and the attitude towards adopting energy saving technology ii an oil price change or its volatility has a limited impact on the economies if the change is below the threshold levels iii if the change is above threshold levels it appears that the change in oil price better explains macroeconomic variables than the volatility of the oil price and iv if the change is above threshold levels a change in oil price or its volatility explains the model better than the real interest rate

self scheduling of large consumers with second order stochastic dominance constraints this paper develops a decision making framework for mid term scheduling problems of the large industrial consumers the proposed approach is based upon the recently introduced class of stochastic programming problems established by the concept of second order stochastic dominance ssd in this paper it is assumed that the electricity price and the rate of availability unavailability of the generating unit forced outage rate are the sources of uncertainty in the decision making problem in the developed ssd constrained stochastic programming problem the consumer risk is managed by minimization of the pool procurement as the objective function and economic issues e g cost minimization are considered in the sd constraint furthermore while most approaches optimize the cost subject to an assumed demand profile our method enforces the electricity consumption to follow an optimum profile for mid term time scheduling i e three months 12 weeks so that the total production will remain constant simulation results for a typical cement factory as an industrial consumer and comparison to a mean risk approach with cvar risk measure revealed the interesting results and benefits of the proposed approach

market driven coal prices and state administered electricity prices in china this paper analyzes how the chinese government adjusts electricity prices for both industrial and residential users in response to changes in coal prices using an asymmetric error correction model our results show that there is a long term relation between the coal price and electricity prices but the relationship is weak especially for residential pricing in the short run we find electricity prices are adjusting faster upwards than downwards price adjustment towards long run equilibrium is faster for residential users upwards than downwards on the other hand we find no evidence of asymmetric equilibrium adjustment in the electricity price for industrial use the weak long term relationship reflects the rigidity in electricity pricing and government s reluctance to subject end users to fluctuations of raw materials cost shifts

predicting technical effciency in stochastic production frontier models in the presence of misspecification a monte carlo analysis this paper provides a theoretical explanation for the sensitivity of technical efficiency measures to the choice of functional specification in stochastic production frontier models it is shown that inappropriate functional specifications translate into a misspecification in the conditional mean of the stochastic frontier regression model this misspecification in turn results in estimates of technical efficiency confidence intervals and production elasticities being biased even asymptotically monte carlo simulations reveal that the severity of the bias depends on the functional specification and the percentage contribution of the variance of technical inefficiency to the total variance of the composed errors

the impact of oil price shocks evidence from the industries of six oecd countries most of the studies about the macroeconomic consequences of oil price shocks have been focused on us aggregate data in contrast to these studies this paper empirically assesses the dynamic effect of oil price shocks on the output of the main manufacturing industries in six oecd countries the pattern of responses to an oil price shock by industrial output is diverse across the four european monetary union emu countries under consideration france germany italy and spain but broadly similar in the uk and the us moreover evidence on cross industry heterogeneity of oil shock effects within the emu countries is also reported

optimal energy management of an industrial consumer in liberalized markets this paper presents an optimization model for mid term management of a thermal and electricity supply system of an industrial consumer under liberalized energy markets electricity is supplied from the electric grid or from a gas engine while thermal energy is satisfied through a boiler or the mentioned gas engine the objective is to minimize the overall annual energy supply costs in order to make optimal contracting decisions mixed integer linear programming is applied to solve the problem since binary decision and operation variables have been employed a realistic case is presented to illustrate the model capabilities

price maker economic bidding in two settlement pool based markets the case of time shiftable loads in this paper a new scenario based stochastic optimization framework is proposed for price maker economic bidding in day ahead and real time markets the presented methodology is general and can be applied to both demand and supply bids that is no restrictive assumptions are made on the characteristics of the pool and its agents however our focus is on the operation of time shiftable loads with deadlines because they play a central role in creating load flexibility and enhancing demand response and peak load shaving programs both basic and complex time shiftable load types are addressed where the latter includes time shiftable loads that are uninterruptible have per time slot consumption limits or ramp constraints or comprise several smaller time shiftable subloads four innovative analytical steps are presented in order to transform the originally nonlinear and hard to solve price maker economic bidding optimization problem into a tractable mixed integer linear program accordingly the global optimal solutions are found for the price and energy bids within a relatively short amount of computational time a detailed illustrative case study along with multiple case studies based on the california energy market data are presented it is observed that the proposed optimal price maker economic bidding approach outperforms optimal price maker self scheduling as well as even load distribution

the impact of natural gas price control in china a computable general equilibrium approach abstract this paper depicts the natural gas price control behavior of the chinese government in an imperfect competition market structure using a static cge model it simulates the effect of changes in natural gas price control policy on carbon emission and the economic effects in view of demand side and supply side based on the above we also analyze the carbon emission mechanism from economic and energy structure perspective the results show that an increase in natural gas price can reduce carbon emission or tends to cause a long term decline in the surplus profit rate of the natural gas industry moreover the increase in natural gas price may raise the cpi and reduce actual gdp and residents welfare on the contrary a decrease in natural gas price may reduce cpi and enhance resident welfare however the long term actual gdp will not increase but carbon emission will increase and the surplus profit rate of the natural gas industry may reduce in the short term and increase in the long term on the other hand both increase and decrease in natural gas prices may result in a decrease of the actual gdp level in the long term the elimination of price control in natural gas supply may increase actual gdp and residents welfare and reduce cpi meanwhile it may increase carbon emissions and improve the profitability of the natural gas industry

smallholder technical efficiency controlling for environmental production conditions abstract smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined yet few data sets collect necessary detailed information on environmental production conditions this oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions moreover because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in cote d ivoire we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers estimated technical inefficiency

correlation between chinese and international energy prices based on a hp filter and time difference analysis abstract to establish a reasonable system and mechanism for chinese energy prices we use the granger causality test hodrick prescott hp filter and time difference analysis to research the pricing relationship between chinese and international energy prices we find that chinese and international crude oil prices changed synchronously while chinese refined oil prices follow the changes of international oil prices with the time difference being about 1 month to 2 months further australian coal prices granger causes chinese coal prices and there is a high correlation between them the u s electricity price is influenced by the wti crude oil price the u s gasoline price and the henryhub gas price due to the unreasonable price setting mechanism and regulation from the central government china s terminal market prices for both electricity and natural gas do not reflect the real supply demand situation this paper provides quantitative results on the correlation between chinese and international energy prices to better predict the impact of international energy price fluctuations on china s domestic energy supply and guide the design of more efficient energy pricing policies moreover it provides references for developing countries to improve their energy market systems and trading and to coordinate domestic and international energy markets

purchase allocation and demand bidding in electric power markets the purchase allocation problem is one of the most important problems faced by an electric energy service provider under new market environments the optimal purchase allocation problem for dual electric power markets and demand bid generation are discussed in this paper the price volatility is explicitly considered in purchase allocation problems and the sequential nature is modeled by conditional stochastic characteristics an analytical solution for the optimal allocation is derived with given demand and statistical characteristics of the market prices the method for generating demand bids for purchaser based on market allocation and price forecasting is then developed the numerical simulations for market allocation and bid generation are demonstrated based on the actual data of the u s california power market

risk financial markets and human capital in a developing country this paper explores the link between financial market incompleteness and human capital accumulation we examine how child school attendance responds to seasonal fluctuations in the income of agrarian households using panel data from rural india to pinpoint market imperfections we study responses to aggregate and idiosyncratic as well as to anticipated and unanticipated income shocks our main finding is that seasonal fluctuations in school attendance are a form of self insurance but one which does not result in a substantial loss of human capital on average

frontier production functions and technical efficiency a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics abstract the modelling and estimation of frontier production functions has been an important area of econometric research during the last two decades forsund lovell and schmidt 1980 and schmidt 1986 present reviews of the concepts and models involved and cite some of the empirical applications which had appeared to their respective times of publication this paper seeks to update the econometric modelling of frontier production functions associated with the estimation of technical efficiency of individual firms a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics is an important part of the paper

impact of unit failure on forward contracting a generating unit can sell its production in the pool facing the financial risk inherent to volatile pool prices alternatively it can sell its production through the futures market at comparatively stable but smaller average prices unlike the pool forward contracts involve an obligation to sell during a specified time period and if the unit fails it should buy energy from the pool to meet its futures market commitments hence taking into account its forced outage rate the unit should determine the appropriate mix of pool and futures market involvement so that its expected profit is maximized for a prespecified risk level on profit variability within this context this paper analyzes the impact of the degree of unavailability of the generating unit on its forward contracting decisions a detailed case study illustrates the analysis performed

price maker self scheduling in a pool based electricity market a mixed integer lp approach this paper addresses the self scheduling problem faced by a price maker to achieve maximum profit in a pool based electricity market an exact and computationally efficient mixed integer linear programming milp formulation of this problem is presented this formulation models precisely the price maker capability of altering market clearing prices to its own benefits through price quota curves no assumptions are made on the characteristics of the pool and its agents a realistic case study is presented and the results obtained are analyzed in detail

location specificity settler type and productive efficiency a study of the mahaweli project in sri lanka increasing agricultural production and the reduction of rural inequality in income distribution are major goals of irrigated land settlement in developing countries we discuss the levels and determinants of observed differences in technical and allocative efficiency among farmers and the resulting inequality in a major irrigated land settlement scheme in sri lanka the analysis is carried out in three seperate stages first stochastic frontier production functions are estimated then farmer specific measures of efficiences are obtained on the basis of these functions finally these efficiency measures are regressed on several explanatory variables differences in human capital endowments among settler types as well as uneven distribution of water are important determinants of farmer efficiency

kuwait s energy subsidy reduction examining economic and co2 emission effects with or without compensation abstract this paper examined economy wide impacts of reducing energy subsidy in kuwait a social accounting matrix sam was constructed and a computable general equilibrium cge model was developed the cge model was used to simulate separate and combined effects of a 25 reduction of subsidy to three energy products natural gas oil and electricity this policy shock was applied to the model in two scenarios in each round the subsidy reductions were applied to each energy product separately in turn and then finally simultaneously to all energy products in the first scenario subsidy reductions were applied and results were compared with the baseline scenario given in the sam this yielded adverse effects across a range of endogenous variables it leads to large energy price increases as high as 255 for electricity gross domestic product gdp marginally declined by 0 28 in scenario 2 the subsidy reduction was accompanied with cash transfers to energy users a compensation for welfare loss the amount of transfer was equivalent to the sum of the amount of subsidy reductions the results indicated that such transfers would reduce the adverse effects of the policy reform the effects on gdp was reversed it rose by 1 01 the price effect was slightly lower electricity price rose by 245 finally sensitivity of the model results was examined by varying the elasticity of the substitution of composite energy and capital in production greater possibility of substitution seems to cause subsidy reform to have much larger positive or smaller adverse economy wide effects the simulation experiments suggest that subsidy reform would need to be accompanied by demand side stimulus or supply side initiatives to encourage energy conservation

natural gas price effects in china based on the cge model abstract natural gas is a clean energy source with many benefits and its proportion in the energy consumption structure in china has been gradually increasing over the recent years since the price of natural gas in china has been controlled and maintained at a relatively low level by the government reforming the natural gas industry in china has been the matter of much attention in light of its macroeconomic effects on the overall economy using the computable general equilibrium model and the 2012 social accounting matrix the results show increases in natural gas prices lead to an increase in the consumer price index cpi and lead to reductions in gdp the chemical industry sector is strongly influenced by a natural gas price increase furthermore chemical fertilizer manufacturing industry and chemical products manufacturing have very significant effects in china therefore the government may gradually establish and improve the management of natural gas price to avoid negative effects and implement a differential price as the industries exhibit different levels of resistance in response to natural gas price changes