exploring the core factors and its dynamic effects on oil price an application on path analysis and bvar tvp model abstract as the uncertainty of oil price increases impacts of the influential factors on oil price vary over time it is of great importance to explore the core factors and its time varying influence on oil price in view of this based on the path analysis model this paper obtains the core factors builds an oil price system var model which uses demand supply price and inventory as endogenous variables and china s net imports as well as dollar index as exogenous variables then we set up a bvar tvp time varying parameter model to analyze dynamic impacts of core factors on oil price the results show that 1 oil prices became more sensitive to oil supply changes and the influence delays became shorter 2 the impact of oil inventories on oil prices with a time lag of two quarters but has a downward trend 3 the impact of oil consumption on oil prices with a time lag of two quarters and this effect is increasingly greater 4 the us dollar index is always the important factor of oil price and its control power increases gradually and the financial crisis occurred in 2008 further strengthens the influence of us dollar

outside enterpreneurial capital this article investigates factors that affect rejection rates in applications for outside finance among different types of investors banks venture capital funds leasing firms factoring firms trade customers and suppliers partners and working shareholders private individuals and other sources taking into account the non randomness in a firm s decision to seek outside finance the data support the traditional pecking order theory further the data indicate that firms seeking capital are typically able to secure their requisite financing from at least one of the different available sources however external finance is often not available in the form that a firm would like this article engages with four interrelated empirical questions first what are the characteristics of privately held entrepreneurial firms that seek external outside finance and what drives the request for capital from the different potential sources of external finance banks venture capitalists private individuals leasing factoring suppliers customers partners working shareholders among other sources second what are the factors that lead to rejection or acceptance of requests for external finance given this non randomness in the types of firms that seek external finance in the spirit of heckman 1976 1979 third as various forms of financing are far from being perfect substitutes are there differences in the ability of firms to obtain capital from the different available sources fourth can firms obtain all of their desired capital from the different available sources even if it is not in the form they would like it is widely recognised that the decision to seek external finance and the type of financing sought is related to information asymmetries faced by investors regarding the entrepreneurial firm s quality see for example jensen and meckling 1976 1 where

the path of price changes in vertical integration the paper examines the path of final good price changes when a monopoly supplier of an intermediate good vertically integrates into a competitive constant returns final good industry i show that the price rises while the monopolist is taking over the downstream industry and then falls after downstream monopolization is complete the relationship of these results to the existing literature on full forward integration is established

the unstudied barriers to widespread renewable energy deployment fossil fuel price responses abstract renewable energy policy focuses on supporting the deployment of renewable power generators so as to reduce their costs through scale economies and technological learning it is expected that once cost parity with fossil fuel generation is achieved a transition towards renewable power should continue without the need for further renewable energy subsidies however this reasoning implicitly assumes that the cost of fossil fuel power generation does not respond to the large scale penetration of renewable power in this paper we build a standard economic framework to test the validity of this assumption particularly in the case of coal and gas fired power generation we find that it is likely that the cost of fossil fuel power generation will respond to the large scale penetration of renewables thus making the renewable energy transition slower or more costly than anticipated more analysis is needed in order to be able to quantify this effect the occurrence of which should be considered in the renewable energy discourse

cascading contingent protection and vertical market structure abstract cascading contingent protection may occur when protection of an upstream industry transfers injury to the downstream industry and increases the likelihood that this industry asks and receives protection this paper examines cascading protection within a sequential petitioning model where the upstream industry acts as leader the analysis identifies market structure and the vertical linkage between the upstream and the downstream industry as important determinants of the occurrence of cascading protection it is shown that the circumstances which make cascading protection more likely to occur also make it more likely that this protection has serious negative welfare consequences

oil development operating cost estimates 1955 1985 abstract few if any published oil production cost estimates can be verified as to method and basic data using us drilling costs and some assumptions explained in the text this paper estimates development operating costs in 41 oil producing nations from 1955 to 1985 from publicly available data on drilling estimation methods are described in detail so that anyone with access to better information on any item can substitute it to arrive at a better estimate

the effects and incentive of vertical mergers an analysis from the view of om abstract we investigate the effects and incentive of vertical mergers in a supply chain with three types of firms i e suppliers manufacturers and integrated firms integrated firms can sell both intermediate and final goods while suppliers and manufacturers can sell only intermediate or final goods respectively whether selling intermediate goods to other manufacturers is introduced as the integrated firms endogenous decisions we find that a vertical merger always decreases the price of final products both the production quantity and the profits of each unintegrated manufacturer and integrated firm and most of the time leads to a drop in the total profit of the supply chain while it always results in a rise in the quantity of final products and social welfare second we find that market foreclosure only happens when competition among integrated firms is weak and vertical mergers occur only when competition among unintegrated manufacturers is weak finally we provide a theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of merger waves with the aid of our model

the future of uk final user energy demand anticipation of final user energy demand is central to suppliers and policy makers plans recent developments in dynamic econometrics such as the cointegration approach have enabled energy modellers to study long run relationships between demand and its determinants principally economic activity and real prices the purpose of this paper is to present the seecem output elasticity estimates and forecasts using the cointegration approach as well as the methodology and analysis underlying them as economic activity is expected to grow in all but the iron and steel sector the long run relationships indicate that most sectors will increase overall fuel use up to the year 2000 despite weak but potentially volatile world oil prices and given stable environmental policies average real oil prices should remain broadly constant except in the transport sector economic activity elasticities and increased competition in supply industries imply that natural gas and electricity are likely to take an increasing share of final user requirements at the expense of petroleum products and coal this gradual and continued shift towards cleaner fuels is likely to ameliorate adverse environmental consequences resulting from the overall growth in final user fuel demand

the empirical role of the exchange rate on the crude oil price formation this paper adopts a novel empirical approach to the crude oil price formation for the purpose of understanding the price reactions of opec member countries to changes in the exchange rate of the us dollar against other major currencies and prices of other members the results are broadly consistent with the view of the absence of a unified opec determined price in the international crude market literature in addition the results also highlight a cross regional dimension of the crude oil market

vertical integration scale distortions partial integration and the direction of price change two new features are introduced in a standard model of forward vertical integration by an intermediate good monopolist into a contestable downstream industry first u shaped average costs replace constant returns in the downstream industry second the effect of subjecting the monopolist to the pressure of upstream entry is explored it is found that monopoly pricing of the intermediate good can distort the scale as well as the input proportions of the downstream firms either distortion leads to integration but here integration may be partial rather than full prices rise with partial integration when there is no upstream entry but prices fall when upstream entry is free

irresponsible lending with a better informed lender we present a simple model of personal finance in which an incumbent lender has an information advantage vis a vis both potential competitors and households in order to extract more consumer surplus a lender with sufficient market power may engage in irresponsible lending approving credit even if this is knowingly against a household s best interest unless rival lenders are equally well informed competition may reduce welfare this holds in particular if less informed rivals can free ride on the incumbent s superior screening ability this article proposes a new framework for analysing household or consumer lending using its past experience with borrowers in the same local area or borrowers facing similar economic conditions a sophisticated lender may often have a better estimate of a household s default probability than the household itself i derive the conditions where such information asymmetry can lead to irresponsible or too aggressive lending in which case credit is approved even though this is knowingly against a household s best interest admittedly the more standard approach is to assume that borrowers represent the better informed party while we do not want to dismiss the importance of borrower adverse selection the presumption that sophisticated and experienced lenders can estimate the default probability better than individual borrowers may be particularly suitable if borrowers are households individual households may not have statistically accurate information about the likelihood of say losing their job in an economic downturn or of incurring large medical bills in the future both of which may cause them to default on a loan on the other hand we do not presume that households own estimates are biased on average i borrow the assumption of informed lending from inderst and m ller 2006 where a lender is better informed about the expected cash flow from a newly financed project my current analysis is tailored instead towards household finance and my focus is on whether too aggressive lending can occur in equilibrium this focus is motivated by the particular attention that policy makers have given to this issue for instance in the uk various reports and taskforces on consumer lending practices and more generally on the surge of household debt have brought up

estimating and forecasting the real prices of crude oil a data rich model using a dynamic model averaging dma approach given that oil price fluctuations have been of great interest for macroeconomics in the recent years due to its important implications for future inflation economic growth and policy making the aim of this paper is to estimate and forecast west texas intermediate wti crude oil prices using a large monthly dataset that covers the period from march 1983 to december 2011 to achieve this aim forecasting with factor models offers a usual approach that utilizes large datasets however a forecasting model which simply includes all factors in state space equation and does not allow for time varying may be not suitable with a highly volatile market such as oil market to overcome these limitations an approach that accounts both for parameter and model uncertainty is employed in particular this study uses the dynamic model averaging dma approach suggested by koop and korobilis 2012 the key element of the dma approach is that it allows both for model and parameter to vary at each point of time by doing so the dma is robust to structural breaks empirical findings show that dma approach outperforms any other alternative model used in the forecasting exercise results also show that there is model but not parameter variation in this oil price forecasting exercise finally the findings suggest that the dma approach provides a better proxy of expected spot prices than future prices

the determination of oil prices 1945 1995 the paper provides a theoretical framework to explain the determination of international oil prices based upon the interaction of supply and demand curves the analysis of components of the framework identifies important characteristics of the global market for crude oil the paper applies the framework to the oil market from 1945 in particular it incorporates key changes in the market to enhance understanding of how the market has been and is working finally the framework is used to explain why oil prices have become more volatile and what issues and questions arise from current oil market behaviour

too much investment a problem of asymmetric information this paper shows that under plausible assumptions the inability of lenders to discover all of the relevant characteristics of borrowers results in investment in excess of the socially efficient level raising the rate of interest above the free market level will restore optimality this conflicts with generally held views and is contrasted with the stiglitz weiss model it is shown that the assumptions which yield overinvestment support debt as the equilibrium method of finance however under the stiglitz weiss assumptions used to derive an underinvestment result equity is shown to be the equilibrium method of finance

aggregate production planning for process industries under oligopolistic competition abstract we consider a competitive version of the traditional aggregate production planning model with capacity constraints in the general case multiple products are produced by a few competing producers oligopoly with limited capacities production quantities prices and consequently profits depend on production and allocation decisions of each producer in addition there is competition for the raw material whose supplies are limited and where prices reflect these limitations such situations have recently occurred in several process industry settings including petro refining petrochemicals basic chemicals cement fertilizers pharmaceuticals rubber paper food processing and metals we use a successive bertrand cournot framework to address this problem and to determine optimal production quantities prices and profits at the producers and at the raw material supplier our analysis allows a new way to understand and evaluate the marginal value of additional capacity when there is competition for the market and raw materials

oil prices the start of an era abstract the paper argues that the international oil market has recently experienced fundamental changes which could well result in a significant discontinuity leading to much lower prices and consequent instability the paper develops an analytical framework to explain how oil prices are determined it then considers the future prospects for the various factors and driving forces which will influence future price it outlines in what way the oil market environment has altered and then considers two consequences of this new environment the volatility of oil prices and their absolute level

vertical integration variable proportions and successive oligopolies this paper investigates the problem of how the effect of vertical integration upon the final product price is related to the production and or market structures some ambiguous results of the previous models are shown to involve the compound effect of vertical an d horizontal merger this model considers purely vertical integration and shows that the lerner index of monopoly remains unaffected before and after merger vertical integration is shown accordingly to yield an unambiguous decrease in the final product price an increase in consumer welfare implications for antitrust laws are also discussed copyright 1988 by blackwell publishing ltd

captive supplies market conduct and the open market price in this paper i examine the anatomy of the price captive supplies relationship to ascertain if some of the interpretations offered in the empirical literature are defensible gardner s one product two input model is extended to consider a partially integrated oligopsonistic industry the main result is that although the empirical relationship between captive supplies and the price received by independent producers is negative it may or may not be attributed to noncompetitive conduct hence for an econometric model to detect what type of conduct the relationship reflects more structural detail is needed than what so far has been provided in the literature

vertical structure and nash equilibrium a note a frequently cited proposition in industrial organization is that vertical integration of bilateral monopolists improves economic efficiency in the case of fixed proportions production the traditional argument shows that rivalrous firms implementing a stackelberg solution charge a higher price for the final good than they would if they were vertically integrated this paper shows that if rivalrous firms make pricing decisions simultaneously and reach a nash equilibrium instead of the usual stackelberg solution the price of the final good still exceeds that under vertical integration thus the social advantage of cooperation between bilateral monopolists continues to hold under new behavioral assumptions copyright 1991 by blackwell publishing ltd

equilibrium structures in vertical oligopoly abstract the central purpose of this paper is to examine vertical integration as an equilibrium phenomenon we model it as integration between cournot oligopolists in both the upstream and the downstream stages we consider the issue of private profitability versus collective profitability and show that under several situations the equilibrium outcomes may result in a prisoner s dilemma the analysis is extended to consider equilibrium outcomes in a dynamic setting where we find no integration to be a relatively common outcome

consumer credit under asymmetric information the wrong types apply abstract we present a simple asymmetric information model of the consumer credit with perfectly competitive banks and many borrowers who wish to advance the purchase of an indivisible good we show a credit rationing equilibrium is possible unlike business lending models it is not just the volume of lending that is wrong but also who gets loans a policy that targets the interest rate can increase social efficiency but not achieve the first best

competition in multiechelon assembly supply chains in this paper we study competition in multiechelon supply chains with an assembly structure firms in the supply chain are grouped into homogenous sectors nodes that contain identical firms with identical production capabilities that all produce exactly one undifferentiated product that may itself be a kit of components each sector may use several inputs to produce its product and these inputs are supplied by different sectors the production process within any sector is taken to be pure assembly in fixed proportions the number of firms in each sector is known the demand curve for the final product is assumed to be linear as are production costs in all sectors competition is modeled via a coordinated successive cournot model in which firms choose production quantities for their downstream market so as to maximize profits given prices for all inputs and all complementary products production quantities for sectors supplying the same successor are coordinated through pricing mechanisms so that complementary products are produced in the right proportions under these assumptions equilibrium prices for any multiechelon assembly network are characterized by a system of linear equations we derive closed form expressions for equilibrium quantities and prices in any two stage system i e a system with multiple input sectors and a single assembly sector we show that any assembly structure can be converted to an equivalent larger structure in which no more than two components are assembled at any node finally large structures can be solved either by direct solution of the characteristic linear equations or through an iterative reduction compression to smaller structures

an appropriate mechanism of fuels pricing for sustainable development abstract in this work the authors after a brief outlook concerning the markets of main energy commodities propose an alternative mechanism for fuel pricing consisted with a sustainable development technological change and technological pluralism costs and environmental issues are the benchmarks of the discussion developed the two mechanisms here proposed for fuel pricing try to encompass all these aspects stressing the scarcity concern not only under a merely based resource point of view but emphasizing also the technological variable as the first one to take into consideration in fact technology the mean by which resources are transformed into usable services energy forms is strictly linked to its limits above all productivity efficiency and environmental effects and cannot be any more considered only following the classical principles of the lowest cost of utilization without evaluating the other aspects related to the goals of sustainable development widely shared at the international level furthermore taking into consideration that some estimates of petroleum life expectancy calculate about 40 50 yr of consumption at current rates of demand a new mechanism to consider the right value of this resource and consequently all energy commodities is necessary without any pretension of exhaustion of the topic this work seems to be in line with this perspective trying to apply all these principles to price fuels

competition and structure in serial supply chains with deterministic demand supply chains often consist of several tiers with different numbers of firms competing at each tier a major determinant of the structure of supply chains is the cost structure associated with the underlying manufacturing process in this paper we examine the impact of fixed and variable costs on the structure and competitiveness of supply chains with a serial structure and price sensitive linear deterministic demand the entry stage is modeled as a simultaneous game where the players take the outcomes of the subsequent post entry cournot competition into account in making their entry decisions we derive expressions for prices and production quantities as functions of the number of entrants at each tier of a multitier chain we characterize viability and stability of supply chain structures and show using lattice arguments that there is always an equilibrium structure in pure strategies in the entry game finally we examine the effects of vertical integration in the two tier case altogether the paper provides a framework for comparing a variety of supply chain structures and for studying how they are affected by cost structures and by the number of entrants throughout the chain

rent shifting export subsidies with an imported intermediate product abstract this paper examines the implications of foreign or domestic imperfect competition in intermediate goods supply for strategic trade policy assuming cournot competition an export subsidy aimed at shifting rents from foreign to domestic final good producers may also shift rents to foreign suppliers weakening the incentive for the subsidy however the incentive for a subsidy tends to increase if the intermediate good industry is purely domestic or if the industry is purely foreign but the subsidy reduces the price of the imported input alternative rent shifting policies a production subsidy and an import tariff applied to the input are also considered

on the economics of purpa auctions it is shown that under certain conditions purpa auctions theoretically lead to efficient contracts between utilities and producers of electricity in contrast to normal auctions bidders compete with potentially non linear revenue functions and with non price attributes in practice there are tremendous difficulties in the evaluation of bids which result from the long duration of contracts and from the necessity to evaluate risks and non price attributes