measuring the influence of canadian carbon stabilization programs on natural gas exports to the united states via a bottom up intertemporal spatial price equilibrium model abstract in this paper we present the results of a study of the impact of canadian carbon stabilization programs on exports of natural gas to the united states this work was based on a study conducted for the us environmental protection agency the gas systems analysis model gsam developed by icf consulting for the us department of energy was used to gauge the overall impact of the stabilization programs on the north american natural gas market gsam is an intertemporal spatial price equilibrium spe type model of the north american natural gas system salient features of this model include characterization of over 17 000 gas production reservoirs with explicit reservoir level geologic and economic information used to build up the supply side of the market on the demand side four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power generation are characterized in the model lastly both above and below ground storage facilities as well as a comprehensive pipeline network are used with the supply and demand side characterizations to arrive at estimates of market equilibrium prices and quantities and flows

supply storage and service reliability decisions by gas distribution utilities a chance constrained approach this paper explores the trade offs among purchases storage and service reliability decisions faced by natural gas distribution utilities the short term demand for natural gas fluctuates because of the weather to encourage load leveling the pipeline transmission companies that supply the utilities use a demand contract that charges utilities based on their peak day needs and often charge for a minimum daily purchase requirement whether that purchase is made or not the policy variables available to the utility include increasing its storage capacity and providing interruptible service to some customers thereby lowering reliability of service there are also technological constraints on the maximum storage gas flows to explore these trade offs a chance constrained cost minimization problem is formulated two decision rules for gas purchases and storage operation are examined in these rules an initial decision is made at the beginning of each month about either the level of purchases or the level of

a large scale linear complementarity model of the north american natural gas market abstract the north american natural gas market has seen significant changes recently due to deregulation and restructuring for example third party marketers can contract for transportation and purchase of gas to sell to end users while the intent was a more competitive market the potential for market power exists we analyze this market using a linear complementarity equilibrium model including producers storage and peak gas operators third party marketers and four end use sectors the marketers are depicted as nash cournot players determining supply to meet end use consumption all other players are in perfect competition results based on national petroleum council scenarios are presented

travel advice or trade embargo the impacts and implications of official travel advice abstract the purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the provision of official travel advice gives rise to the opportunity for tourism to be used as a political bargaining tool based on a case study of the gambia it suggests that the detail and accuracy of travel advice issued by government agencies may be influenced by broader political objectives and considers the implications of this for tourists and the tourism industry it also questions the role of governments as impartial providers of travel advice

dynamic pricing in the presence of social learning and strategic consumers when a product of uncertain quality is first introduced consumers may choose to strategically delay their purchasing decisions in anticipation of the product reviews of their peers this paper investigates how the presence of social learning affects the strategic interaction between a dynamic pricing monopolist and a forward looking consumer population within a simple two period model our analysis yields three main insights first we find that the presence of social learning has significant structural implications for optimal pricing policies in the absence of social learning decreasing price plans are always preferred by the firm by contrast in the presence of social learning we find that i if the firm commits to a price path ex ante preannounced pricing an increasing price plan is typically announced whereas ii if the firm adjusts price dynamically responsive pricing prices are initially low and may either rise or decline over time second we establish that under both preannounced an

strategic eurasian natural gas market model for energy security and policy analysis formulation and application to south stream abstract the mathematical formulation of a strategic eurasian natural gas market model is presented the model represents horizontal oligopolistic relationships among producers bilateral market power between producer russia and transit ukraine countries detailed transport constraints and operation decisions over a 20 year time horizon to demonstrate the model s capabilities a financial and market analysis of the proposed south stream gas pipeline from russia via the black sea to south europe is summarized insights obtained include the following first expectations of high demand growth in europe and or transit risks do not justify the construction of the south stream pipeline because under all demand and ukraine transit interruption scenarios the net benefits to the south stream participants are negative the npv ranges from 1 9 billion bn to 7 4 bn second ukraine s perception of high transit market power vis a vis russia may trigger the construction of the otherwise unprofitable south stream project thus under ukraine s high transit market power scenario the npv of south stream ranges between 2 4 bn and 24 5 bn third we find that the south stream investment increases the efficiency of the european gas market under the following conditions i when gas demand in europe grows 2 per year up to 2030 ii when ukraine poses high transit market power or iii under a combination of severe transit risks through ukraine and low demand scenarios in europe it should be noted that the value of south stream to both its project sponsors and the market as a whole is much higher when ukraine exercises transit market power than under the high demand scenario therefore whether ukraine is likely to wield market power is crucial to the success of the south stream project because that is the only scenario in which the project yields both a positive expected npv to its sponsors and the highest value to the market as a whole

a marginal cost pricing model for gas distribution utilities we develop a natural gas distribution utility pricing model that includes optimization of supply mix and capacity expansion financial analysis of revenue requirements and design of either average cost or marginal cost based rates and apply it using data from the east ohio gas company the results clearly point to the superiority of marginal cost over average cost pricing policies in terms of lesser capital requirements better capacity utilization and higher end use economic efficiency

most favored customer protection versus price discrimination over time how should a seller price capacity that has no salvage value to heterogeneous customers whose valuations are private information there are two periods and the seller cannot precommit to prices in the later period one option is price discrimination first price high then discount later if excess capacity remains by offering most favored customer protection the seller can charge more in advance but will leave capacity unsold with positive probability she favors the mfc protection when capacity is large and leans toward price discrimination when customers are more uncertain about the degree of excess demand in the first period

examining the benefits of load shedding strategies using a rolling horizon stochastic mixed complementarity equilibrium model abstract as a result of government policies increasing the amount of electricity generated from fluctuating renewable sources in many countries the requirement for flexibility in the corresponding electricity systems increases on the demand side load shedding is one demand response mechanism contributing to an increased flexibility traditionally load shedding was based on rather static or rotational strategies whereby the system operator chooses the consumers for load shedding however ongoing technological developments provide the basis for smarter and more efficient load shedding strategies we therefore examine the costs and strategies associated with such mechanisms by modelling an electricity market with different types of generators and consumers some consumers provide flexibility through load shedding only while others additionally have the ability to generate their own electricity focussing on the impacts of how and to whom consumers with own generation ability can supply electricity the presence of market power and generator uncertainty we propose a rolling horizon stochastic mixed complementarity equilibrium model where the individual optimisation problems of each player are solved simultaneously and in equilibrium we find that a non static strategy reduces consumer costs while allowing consumers to provide own generation to the whole market results in minimal benefits the presence of market power was found to increase costs to consumers

lowering saudi arabia s fuel consumption and energy system costs without increasing end consumer prices using a multi sector equilibrium model of the saudi energy system that handles administered prices in a mixed complementarity formulation we present results from a set of policy scenarios that lower oil consumption in the country some of these scenarios are the solutions to mathematical programs subject to equilibrium constraints mpecs that maximize the net economic gain for the saudi economy the policies examined have the potential to generate economic gains exceeding 23 billion usd in 2011 or about 4 of saudi arabia s gdp this economic gain comes mainly from inter sectoral fuel pricing policies that incent shifting the mix in technologies that generate electricity and produce water from energy intensive technologies to more efficient ones we show that when complemented by credits for investments in solar and nuclear power generation capacities a modest increase in the transfer prices of fuels among sectors is sufficient to produce economic gains close to those achieved by deregulating transfer prices the approach we develop here is an alternative to the classic recommendation of deregulating inter sectoral fuel prices in situations where the conditions for successful liberalized markets do not exist it is a template for introducing the notions of incentivizing behavior using prices into countries that rely more on administrative procedures than markets leading to a deeper understanding of how markets can lead to economic gain

the national energy modeling system a large scale energy economic equilibrium model the national energy modeling system nems is a large scale mathematical model that computes equilibrium fuel prices and quantities in the u s energy sector and is currently in use at the u s department of energy doe at present to generate these equilibrium values nems iteratively solves a sequence of linear programs and nonlinear equations this is a nonlinear gauss seidel approach to arrive at estimates of market equilibrium fuel prices and quantities in this paper we present existence and uniqueness results for nems type models based on a nonlinear complementarity variational inequality problem format also we document mathematically for the first time how the inputs and the outputs for each nems module link together

a mixed complementarity based equilibrium model of natural gas markets we present a new multiseasonal multiyear natural gas market equilibrium model based on the concept of a competitive equilibrium involving the market participants producers storage reservoir operators peak gas operators pipeline operators marketers and consumers the first three classes are depicted as price takers consistent with perfect competition the pipeline operations are described with regulated tariffs but also involve congestion pricing as a mechanism to allocate scarce pipeline capacity the marketers are price takers in all markets except in sales to consumers in which they compete as nash cournot players finally consumers are described by demand curves for each of the four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power we show that the equilibrium model is an instance of a mixed nonlinear complementarity problem ncp and provide sufficient detail not generally seen in previous complementarity models of natural gas the ncp formulation is derived from considering the karush kuhn tucker optimality conditions of the optimization problems faced by these participants under mild conditions we show that this ncp has a solution and under additional reasonable conditions we show that the market prices are unique we also validate the model on a representative sample network with nine market participants and three seasons using four scenarios

optimal best price policy abstract a best price policy bp is a promise by a seller to give her customer a refund if she reduces her price after the customer has already purchased the product we characterize the optimal bp policy as when the seller can control both the policy length when the promise expires and the refund scale what portion of the price difference is refunded we explain why the policy length is finite and varies across industries in a setting where consumers valuations decline over time we show that a finite length bp allows the seller to commit to not lowering her price too soon while at the same time letting her capture some of the benefits of intertemporal price discrimination however because the decline in consumers valuations is uncertain a bp does not allow the monopolist to achieve the profit she could earn with a full commitment

durable good monopoly and best price provisions best price provisions guarantee buyers that the prices they pay are the lowest available if the seller subsequently cuts price then each previous buyer is entitled to a refund a durable good monopolist who offers certain forms of these provisions can construct a consistent plan yielding the same profits as rental agreements and contracts with explicit quantity commitments the provisions require special circumstances to be practical but they are simple and effective and appear in a variety of economic settings three applications are discussed international commodity agreements markets for electric turbogenerators and markets for financial claims copyright 1990 by american economic association

price guarantee for advance selling in the presence of preorder dependent social learning abstract in this paper we study the price guarantee policies of a seller practicing the advance selling strategy in the presence of preorder dependent social learning there are two types of consumers in the market in the advance selling period the high type consumers arrive and make the preorder decision based on their valuation of the product in the regular selling period the low type consumers arrive and make the purchase decision based on their valuation which is a result of the preorder dependent social learning with a price guarantee policy the preorder consumers are compensated fully or partially for the difference between the advance selling price and the regular selling price we model the seller and two types of consumers sequential decision game within the framework of rational expectation we investigate two price guarantee policies 1 the full price refund policy in which the refund always covers the full price difference and 2 the constant refund policy in which the refund is a fixed constant we show that while the advance selling model with constant refund policy is always better or at least not worse than the base model without price guarantee the model with full price refund policy is better than the base model if and only if the high type consumers valuation exceeds a threshold we find that the dominance relationship between the full price refund policy and the constant refund policy is determined by the segment size of the high type consumers and their valuation of the product through numerical study we find that such dominance relationship also depends on the high type consumers belief of the rational risk our findings provide important managerial insights for managers in the practice of advance selling

a complementarity model for the european natural gas market abstract in this paper we present a detailed and comprehensive complementarity model for computing market equilibrium values in the european natural gas system market players include producers and their marketing arms which we call traders pipeline and storage operators marketers lng liquefiers regasifiers tankers and three end use consumption sectors the economic behavior of producers traders pipeline and storage operators liquefiers and regasifiers is modeled via optimization problems whose karush kuhn tucker kkt optimality conditions in combination with market clearing conditions form the complementarity system the lng tankers marketers and consumption sectors are modeled implicitly via appropriate cost functions aggregate demand curves and ex post calculations respectively the model is run on several case studies that highlight its capabilities including a simulation of a disruption of russian supplies via ukraine

tourism and economic development the beach disease abstract this paper analyses empirically the danger of a dutch disease effect in tourism dependent countries in the long run data on 134 countries of the world over the period 1970 2007 is used in a first step the long run relationship between tourism and economic growth is analysed in a cross country setting the results are then checked in a panel data framework on gdp per capita levels that allows to control for reverse causality non linearity and interactive effects it is found that there is no danger of a beach disease effect on the contrary tourism dependent countries do not face real exchange rate distortion and deindustrialisation but higher than average economic growth rates investment in physical capital such as for instance transport infrastructure is complementary to investment in tourism

the shift in global crude oil market structure a model based analysis of the period 2013 2017 abstract this paper analyzes the recent developments in the global oil market investigating how the 2014 2016 price collapse and the following opec agreement affected the crude oil market structure and the behavior of major suppliers to this end we develop a partial equilibrium model with a spatial structure for the global crude oil market and simulate the market for the period between 2013 and 2017 under different market structure setups the simulation results reveal that although the oligopolistic market structures fit overall well to the realized market outcomes they are not successful at explaining the low prices during 2015 and 2016 which instead are closer to estimated competitive levels we further suggest that from 2014 onward the market power potential of major suppliers has shrunk considerably supporting the view that the market has become more competitive we also analyze the saudi arabia and russia led opec agreement and find that planned production cuts in 2017 particularly of saudi arabia and russia were below the levels of estimated non competitive market structure setups

a stochastic version of a stackelberg nash cournot equilibrium model we consider a stochastic version of the stackelberg nash cournot model proposed by murphy et al 1983 ln the first stage the leader chooses and announces his production level taking into account the reaction of the followers the decision of the leader is taken when market demand is uncertain in the second stage the followers knowing the leader s output react to this level according to the cournot assumption at this stage demand is known we study the extension of the murphy et al model and give a numerical illustration of this model using the european gas market

a stochastic dynamic programming model for scheduling of offshore petroleum fields with resource uncertainty abstract norwegian deliveries of natural gas to europe have grown considerably over the last years additionally plans involve even greater supplies introducing major gas fields as the troll field the market for natural gas may to a large extent be viewed as a contractual market this is normally explained by the big investments involved in development and transport in such a perspective the supplier s planning problem of scheduling fields and pipes may prove important in order to be able to meet contractual agreements this paper describes a model of stochastic dynamic programming type which may be viewed as a first attempt in solving this type of problem the main focus in this model is on project scheduling and resource uncertainty each project s production profile is viewed as a stochastic variable then a possible goal could be to minimize expected deviation from a given predicted contract profile we use the term spsp stochastic project scheduling problem to refer to our problem besides a simplified description of the mathematical model the paper also describes some tests with model examples these examples are constructed to obtain some interesting non intuitive effects the paper concludes with some remarks on complexity and speedup possibilities

measuring the effects of price controls using mixed complementarity models abstract government involvement in managing domestic prices of energy and other commodities is a major issue in emerging economies we examine one aspect of the problem price controls when governments set or cap prices we show how a mixed complementarity problem mcp formulation can be used to model and assess the impacts of price controls in multi sector economic equilibrium models both the gains from deregulation and the consequences of imposing new or altering existing regulations can thus be measured we present three distinct models that capture different price control situations firms have to meet demand and receive an implicit subsidy demand rationing occurs due to an associated price control constraint and subsidies limit demand rationing we present an approach to measuring the effects on the equilibrium in the first case and the levels of disequilibrium induced by price controls in the other cases we also show how to determine the most efficient allocation program when a government engages in rationing we illustrate the cases described by these models using markets that have or had price controls

examining market power in the european natural gas market in this paper we develop a mixed complementarity equilibrium model for the european natural gas market this model has producers as cournot players with conjectured supply functions relative to their rivals as such these producers can withhold production to increase downstream prices for greater profits the other players are taken to be perfectly competitive and are combined with extensive pipeline seasonal and other data reflecting the current state of the market four market scenarios are run to analyze the extent of market power by these producers as well as the importance of pipeline and storage capacity

tourism in the gambia problems and proposals abstract this paper analyses the development constraints which confine the gambia to being one of the poorest countries in the world the programmes designed to reduce these constraints are outlined in particular tourism is identified as an appropriate development strategy using primary data tourism in the gambia its development and administration are described in some detail althoiugh a prima facie case can be made extolling the virtues of tourism in that country the industry is beset by a range of problems the juxtaposition of the country s growing reliance on tourism against increasing stagnation in the sector is a focus of particular concern constraints in the tourism sector are identified in the spheres of policy formulation and implementation capital investment human resource endowment existing and potential tourist markets seasonality issues and product resource base for each constraint identified a management strategy is proposed in essence the article is an advocation of sustainable tourism development for the gambia based on long term holistic planning including appropriate resource development community involvement education and training

strategic management of multi year natural gas contracts in electricity markets combined cycle gas turbine ccgt plants show some advantages such as better economies of scale or lower co2 emission rates in comparison to other technologies in addition due to their flexible operation ccgt plants are a useful support for the integration of the growing renewable energy installed capacity consequently during the last years ccgt plants have proliferated in electricity systems increasing the global demand of natural gas ng in order to guarantee the ng supply and to hedge the price volatility electricity generation companies gencos sign supply contracts with ng producers typically ng producers force long term contracts in order to recover their huge capital investments therefore gencos should optimize the exercise of the supply contracts in the long term scope in order to maximize their profits in the electricity market however the optimal exercise of the supply contracts on behalf of the gencos could be impeded because of possible bottlenecks in the ng system accordingly this paper proposes a methodology to incorporate both the characteristics of ng supply contracts and the congestions in the ng system in an electricity market model that could support the decision making process on behalf of the gencos a study case illustrates the methodology

modeling strategic investment decisions in spatial markets abstract markets for natural resources and commodities are often oligopolistic in these markets production capacities are key for strategic interaction between the oligopolists we analyze how different market structures influence oligopolistic capacity investments and thereby affect supply prices and rents in spatial natural resource markets using mathematical programming models the models comprise an investment stage and a supply stage in which players compete in quantities we compare three models a perfect competition and two cournot models in which the product is either traded through long term contracts or on spot markets in the supply stage tractability and practicality of the approach are demonstrated in an application to the international metallurgical coal market results may vary substantially between the different models the metallurgical coal market has recently made progress in moving away from long term contracts and more towards spot market based trade based on our results we conclude that this regime switch is likely to raise consumer rents but lower producer rents while the effect on total welfare is negligible

strategic waiting for consumer generated quality information dynamic pricing of new experience goods in this paper we study the impact of consumer generated quality information e g consumer reviews on a firm s dynamic pricing strategy in the presence of strategic consumers such information is useful not only to the consumers that have not yet purchased the product but also to the firm the informativeness of the consumer generated quality information depends however on the volume of consumers who share their opinions and thus depends on the initial sales volume hence via its initial price the firm not only influences its revenue but also controls the quality information flow over time the firm may either enhance or dampen the quality information flow via increasing or decreasing initial sales the corresponding pricing strategy to steer the quality information flow is not always intuitive compared to the case without consumer generated quality information the firm may reduce the initial sales and lower the initial price interestingly the firm may get strictly worse off due to the consu

a review of innovation research in tourism abstract over the past two decades there has been increasing focus on the topic of innovation in tourism this article reviews the research contributions various categories of innovation product process managerial marketing and institutional are addressed important determinants of innovation are acknowledged including the role of entrepreneurship technology push and the existence of territorial industry clusters representation of knowledge is also identified as a critical factor for both the occurrence and nature of innovations the review reveals that there is still only limited systematic and comparable empirical evidence of the level of innovative activities and their impacts and wider implications for destinations and national economies an agenda for future research is emerging suggesting that there is quest for both formal quantification and for qualitative studies of the foundations processes implications and policies of innovation in tourism

natural gas corridors between the eu and its main suppliers simulation results with the dynamic gastale model abstract growth in gas demand poses a challenge for european energy consumers and other gas importing countries in terms of an increasing dependency on gas imports and consequently also supply security this paper focuses on interactions among demand supply and investments in natural gas corridors namely pipeline transport lng and storage facilities affecting the european natural gas market over the period 2005 2030 a number of policy scenarios including a business as usual bau scenario are formulated to study the impact of demand uncertainty and delays in investment on the gas transport infrastructure required in the long run in europe the analyses indicate that substantial investments in gas transport corridors are needed to accommodate imports and seasonal demand variations analysis of scenarios of supply interruption in the form of suddenly reduced import capacity for particular pipeline routes indicates that portions of europe could experience price increases of up to 100 in the case of a year long interruption to accommodate import needs and to mitigate possible disruptions pipeline connections running from east to west need to be given special priority

cartelization in gas markets studying the potential for a gas opec natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels using the world gas model a large scale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation this paper analyzes possible future gas cartels and their effects on gas markets in a number of regions across the world in addition scenarios related to lower transport costs and decreased unconventional gas supply in the united states are considered

multiplicity of equilibria in conjectural variations models of natural gas markets abstract spatial partial equilibrium models incorporating conjectural variations are widely used to analyze the development of oligopolistic multi agent markets such as international energy and raw material markets although this model type can produce multiple equilibria under commonly used assumptions to the best of our knowledge the consequences for the interpretation of the model results have not yet been explored in detail to this end we derive a linear complementarity model for the gas market and discuss under which assumptions on the model structure a component of the solution is unique in particular we find that the gas flow between a trader and a consumer is unique whenever the trader is modeled to exert market power in the consumer s market we demonstrate our findings by computing the extreme points of the polyhedral solution space and show that erroneous conclusions could be drawn whenever only one arbitrary point in the solution space is picked for interpretation furthermore we discuss whether economically meaningful parameter value changes exist which would enforce uniqueness in all components of the solution

market diffusion with two sided learning we analyze the diffusion of a new product of uncertain value in a duopolistic market both sides of the market buyers and sellers learn the true value of the new product from experiments with it buyers have heterogeneous preferences over the products and sellers compete in prices the pricing policies and market shares in the unique markov perfect equilibrium are obtained explicitly the dynamics of the equilibrium market shares display excessive sales of the new product relative to the social optimum in early stages and too low sales later on the diffusion path of a successful product is s shaped

multi period pricing in the presence of competition and social influence abstract this paper examines single and dynamic pricing policies of two competing firms over two periods in the presence of social influence assuming two firms adopt the same pricing policy we find that under either pricing policy firm profits always decrease with the degree of social influence firms prefer dynamic pricing policy when social influence is either relatively weak or sufficiently strong for firms under dynamic pricing policy to set zero prices in the first period otherwise single pricing policy is more preferable the conclusions are similar when the market size varies over periods except that dynamic pricing policy is always more profitable if the market size in period 2 is sufficiently large we have further compared the two pricing policies with posted pricing policy the results show that dynamic pricing policy dominates when social influence is relatively weak while posted pricing policy dominates when social influence is sufficiently strong because of the synergy between social influence and the reference price effect finally when each firm freely chooses either single or dynamic pricing policy we find that if the degree of social influence is relatively small two asymmetric equilibria exist where two firms adopt different pricing policies if the degree of social influence is very large however the unique equilibrium is both firms adopting dynamic pricing policy these findings provide important implications for firms to make more informed pricing decisions in an increasingly competitive environment with strong social influence

cuba in transition tourism industry perceptions of entrepreneurial change abstract the cuban government is working to create a climate conducive to a strong and sustainable private sector as state employment declines many residents are exploring the potential of tourism cuban entrepreneurs are interested in expanding beyond packaged mass tourism to develop more creative tourism products however the success of cuban entrepreneurs is dependent on a number of conditions external to the entrepreneur known as the entrepreneurial climate ec building on previous entrepreneurship research this study utilizes interviews of a small group of tourism stakeholders in cuba to address the research question what are the perceptions of tourism stakeholders of both barriers to and factors encouraging private enterprise it concludes with recommendations for planning and policy based on these perceptions that may cultivate entrepreneurial tourism development in cuba including improved internet access development of both wholesaling and financing systems business education and legalization of additional tourism professions recommendations from the informants also align with recent initiatives in other centrally governed nations e g china singapore and bolivia that have introduced private enterprise to their economies recently these initiatives could serve as models for cuba moving forward

ecotourism and indigenous micro enterprise formation in northern australia opportunities and constraints abstract indigenous australians suffer considerable social and economic disadvantage the challenge for indigenous communities and policy makers is to discover or create opportunities that will provide sustainable development tourism is seen as one sector that could possibly provide such opportunities indigenous tourism enterprises are in most situations likely to be micro businesses micro businesses indigenous and non indigenous have relatively high failure rates so it is important to undertake substantial planning to avoid failure this paper presents the results of a planning process undertaken by an indigenous clan planning to operate their own ecotourism micro enterprise within ngukurr an indigenous community in northern australia the study highlights the fact tourism does provide potential for economic development because indigenous enterprises often have some competitive advantages in addition the study highlights the fact that communities often do not have the capacity to undertake all the tasks necessary to establish and operate a commercially successful ecotourism enterprise partnerships with other stakeholders within the region can help overcome this constraint finally it is noted that the cdep scheme has the potential to satisfy the need for funds that cannot be satisfied through normal channels

supporting innovation for tourism development through multi stakeholder approaches experiences from africa innovation and entrepreneurship provide essential value to the advancement and quality of the international tourism industry for less economically developed countries ledcs tourism innovation is an opportunity to differentiate the tourism product making it more competitive and increasing socio economic gains at grassroots level counteracting foreign currency leakages from the destination the paper argues that for small indigenous businesses in ledc destinations to flourish a supportive environment promoting innovation and entrepreneurship is required the paper emphasises the importance of multi stakeholder collaboration by drawing on two distinct african case studies a trade association in the gambia and a training programme building entrepreneurial capacity in a university in tanzania both of which have helped provide supportive environments for indigenous entrepreneurship and innovation the gambian case study is based on a collaborative marketing approach the tanzanian case study on the triple helix model both demonstrate the importance of institutional support in stimulating networking transfer of knowledge and best practice in ledc destinations

equilibria in an asymmetric duopoly facing a security constraint abstract we consider an asymmetric duopoly producing a homogeneous commodity and facing a competitive demand our model incorporates two asymmetries the first one is relative to the performance indices indeed we assume that one of the player maximizes its profit and the second one being eager to earn hard currencies maximizes its revenue the second asymmetry involves a security or diversification constraint which states that the second player is not allowed to sell more than a certain proportion of the quantity sold by its rival this game is an abstraction of the european natural gas market during the eighties cournot and stackelberg equilibria are characterized and compared an assessment of the impact on consumers and producers of the security constraint is also made

optimizing short term natural gas supply portfolio for electric utility companies natural gas fired power plants ngfpp are important electricity generation resources in the united states optimizing the natural gas supply portfolio especially the short term portfolio is critical for the day to day operations and the financial performance of ngfpps traditionally such optimization problems are solved using cost minimization based frameworks however such frameworks are facing challenges due to the lack of consideration of associated financial risks in the current deregulated electricity markets which the electric utility companies eucs who own and operate ngfpps now bear this paper presents a utility maximization based framework to optimize the short term natural gas supply portfolio for the euc it considers the financial risks associated with the portfolio and incorporates the risk preferences of the eucs as decision maker dm in the portfolio optimization process an application of the proposed framework is provided and its results show that the proposed framework is more desirable in terms of risk cost trade off optimization

robust strategies for natural gas procurement abstract in order to serve their customers natural gas local distribution companies ldcs can select from a variety of financial and non financial contracts the present paper is concerned with the choice of an appropriate portfolio of natural gas purchases that would allow a ldc to satisfy its demand with a minimum tradeoff between cost and risk while taking into account risk associated with modeling error we propose two types of strategies for natural gas procurement dynamic strategies model the procurement problem as a mean risk stochastic program with various risk measures naive strategies hedge a fixed fraction of winter demand the hedge is allocated equally between storage futures and options we propose a simulation framework to evaluate the proposed strategies and show that i when the appropriate model for spot prices and its derivatives is used dynamic strategies provide cheaper gas with low risk compared to naive strategies ii in the presence of a modeling error dynamic strategies are unable to control the variance of the procurement cost though they provide cheaper cost on average based on these results we define robust strategies as convex combinations of dynamic and naive strategies the weight of each strategy represents the fraction of demand to be satisfied following this strategy a mean variance problem is then solved to obtain optimal weights and construct an efficient frontier of robust strategies that take advantage of the diversification effect

on convergence of the pies algorithm for computing equilibria equilibria in market models with continuous market supply functions can be obtained by computing fixed points with an activity analysis representation of production fixed point algorithms would converge slowly further since the market model here is of a partial equilibrium nature the market demand function may not exhibit the integratability condition precluding the formulation of the market equilibrium problem as an economic surplus maximization problem we examine an iterative algorithm the pies method for locating equilibria in markets whose production is described by optimization over a finite set of activities and whose econometric demand function does not possess the integrability property convergence properties of the algorithm along with existence and uniqueness of market equilibrium are summarized

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

purchasing pricing and quick response in the presence of strategic consumers we consider a retailer that sells a product with uncertain demand over a finite selling season the retailer sets an initial stocking quantity and at some predetermined point in the season optimally marks down remaining inventory we modify this classic setting by introducing three types of consumers myopic consumers who always purchase at the initial full price bargain hunting consumers who purchase only if the discounted price is sufficiently low and strategic consumers who strategically choose when to make their purchase a strategic consumer chooses between a purchase at the initial full price and a later purchase at an uncertain markdown price in equilibrium strategic consumers and the retailer make optimal decisions given their rational expectations regarding future prices availability of inventory and the behavior of other consumers we find that the retailer stocks less takes smaller price discounts and earns lower profit if strategic consumers are present than if there are no strategic consumers we find that a retailer should generally avoid committing to a price path over the season assuming such commitment is feasible committing to a markdown price or to not mark down at all is often too costly inventory may remain unsold even in the presence of strategic consumers the better approach is to be cautious with the initial quantity and then mark down optimally furthermore we discuss the value of quick response the ability to procure additional inventory after obtaining updated demand information albeit at a higher unit cost than the initial order we find that the value of quick response to a retailer is generally much greater in the presence of strategic consumers than without them on average 67 more valuable and as much as 558 more valuable in our sample in other words although it is well established in the literature that quick response provides value by allowing better matching of supply with demand it provides more value often substantially more value by allowing a retailer to control the negative consequences of strategic consumer behavior