long live the doge death as a term limit on venetian chief executives can an electorate use the projected life expectancy of a lifetime appointed chief executive to enforce binding informal term limits informal term limits based on the life expectancy of a chief executive candidate at election would enable an electorate to exercise discretion in adjusting tenure lengths to minimize expected turnover and tenure length costs while also providing a strictly binding term limit death we provide a detailed historical case study of venice from 1172 to 1797 when the ruling patricians utilized informal term limits on their chief executive the doge relying on the projected life expectancy of ducal candidates

term limits and pork barrel politics abstract we develop a dynamic model of democratic politics in which both potential office holders and the electorate have heterogeneous ideologies voters have incomplete information about candidate ideologies so they must use information from previous positions taken in office to make informed re election decisions we characterize the effects of term limits on the evolution over time of the ideological positions taken by office holders and derive the implications for voter choice and welfare contributions of our paper include we detail how pork provision by more senior incumbents interacts with term limits to affect electoral outcomes pork provision transfers of resources from districts with junior legislators to districts with more senior legislators induces voters to be more forgiving of extreme location by incumbents especially incumbents in small or poor districts pork provision can explain why re election probabilities in congress exceed those for governors term limits reduce voter welfare when all that matters are the ideological positions taken by the office holder term limits may be advantageous when senior incumbents can extract benefits for their constituencies at the expense of districts with more junior representatives large or rich districts especially value term limits when there is substantial pork provision we characterize the welfare of all voters not just the median voter

bi level game approaches for coordination of generation and transmission expansion planning within a market environment the main purpose of this paper is to develop methodologies for simultaneous generation and transmission expansion planning problem of power networks while investigating interactions between these two important sections in the proposed methodologies a transmission operator to operating under different incentives decides about investment in transmission network while anticipating the outcome of a purely competitive electricity market where several rival generation firms complete with each other to determine operating level of their generators amount of their sales and amount of their investment in generation capacity the proposed methodologies rely on bi level programming models whose upper level model represent the problem of investment in transmission by to and the lower level problems represent market outcomes obtained from clearing the market these bi level models are reduced to mixed integer linear and nonlinear programming using the duality theory and karush kuhn tucker kkt optimality conditions the results of the proposed models are analyzed and compared using two illustrative examples

why voters vote for incumbents but against incumbency a rational choice explanation in recent elections voters supported initiatives to limit the number of terms that their representatives may serve yet at the same time overwhelmingly re elected their incumbents we provide a theoretical explanation for this and other puzzles associated with voting on term limitations the pattern of voting on term limits can be explained by the desire to redistribute power from one party to another from one branch of government to another and from districts with long term incumbents to districts whose representatives have served only for a short time span we test these hypotheses by looking at voting patters on california proposition 140 and the vote on the 22nd amendment with generally positive results

optimal transmission planning under the mexican new electricity market abstract this paper addresses electricity transmission planning under the new industry and institutional structure of the mexican electricity market which has engaged in a deep reform process after decades of a state owned vertically integrated non competitive closed industry under this new structure characterized by a nodal pricing system and an independent system operator iso we analyze welfare optimal network expansion with two modeling strategies in a first model we propose the use of an incentive price cap mechanism to promote the expansion of mexican networks in a second model we study centrally planned grid expansion in mexico by an iso within a power flow model we carry out comparisons of these models which provide us with hints to evaluate the actual transmission planning process proposed by mexican authorities prodesen we obtain that the prodesen plan appears to be a convergent welfare optimal planning process

the economics of planning electricity transmission to accommodate renewables using two stage optimisation to evaluate flexibility and the cost of disregarding uncertainty abstract aggressive development of renewable electricity sources will require significant expansions in transmission infrastructure we present a stochastic two stage optimisation model that captures the multistage nature of transmission planning under uncertainty and use it to evaluate interregional grid reinforcements in great britain gb in our model a proactive transmission planner makes investment decisions in two time periods each time followed by a market response uncertainty is represented by economic technology and regulatory scenarios and first stage investments must be made before it is known which scenario will occur the model allows us to identify expected cost minimising first stage investments as well as estimate the value of information the cost of ignoring uncertainty and the value of flexibility our results show that ignoring risk in planning transmission for renewables has quantifiable economic consequences and that considering uncertainty can yield decisions that have lower expected costs than traditional deterministic planning methods in the gb case the value of information and cost of disregarding uncertainty in transmission planning were of the same order of magnitude approximately 100 m in present worth terms further the best plan under a risk neutral decision criterion can differ from the best under risk aversion finally a traditional sensitivity analysis based robustness analysis also yields different results than the stochastic model although the former s expected cost is not much higher

congressional voting on term limits between 1990 and 1995 twenty three states unilaterally imposedterm limits on their own delegations tocongress in 1995 the house ofrepresentatives defeated a constitutionalamendment that would have limited the termsfor all of congress only weeks later thesupreme court struck down the individualstate laws in 1997 the house againbrought the issue to a vote which alsofailed this paper models congressionalvoting on term limits with a simple gamewithin an interest group theory withlegislators as imperfect agents ofconstituents the game foremost predictsthat members from term limited states wouldbe more likely to support term limits inthe first vote but no more likely on thesecond vote the empirical section employsprobit multinomial logit and orderedprobit maximum likelihood estimations toconfirm the stated hypotheses among otherresults in particular both the joint andconditional probability of a yea on thefirst vote and a subsequent nay on thesecond vote is higher for members fromstates that had unilaterally self imposedterm limits the results are robust tomodel specification estimator andalternative sampling implications areproposed in the concluding comments

political competition and state government size do tighter elections produce looser budgets we test implications of politicalcompetition theory concerning government size usingdata from u s states we find that greaterpolitical competition in the race for governor actsas a check against bigger government evidence onthe effectiveness of legal limits on expendituresand or revenues growth is mixed the democraticparty is associated with bigger government but onlywhen party representation in both the governor shouse and the legislature is strong the flypapereffect of grants is found to be strong our resultshave implications for models of fiscal illusion

strategic institutional choice voters states and congressional term limits states choices on term limits are quantified as a multiple categorical variable capturing variation in the type of limits passed measures of relative political influence in congress explain much of this variation using 1992 data on the american states the model controls for unobserved heterogeneity due to voter access to direct democracy in some states at 2002 values for congressional tenure and federal spending the model predicts approximately eight to ten additional states would choose to limit their own members terms but cannot under a supreme court ruling we discuss implications for institutional federalism and the potential passage of similar political institutions across the states

market splitting in germany new evidence from a three stage numerical model of europe abstract with the sharp increase in redispatch measures seen during recent years the importance of an efficient congestion management has increased particularly in germany as the current market design with a single bidding area ignores the physical constraints of the transmission grid there is an ongoing discussion about introducing price zones against this background we develop a three stage approach to model redispatch and market splitting for germany while considering interactions with interconnected countries we identify an increasing spatial imbalance between generation and load and delays in grid extension as being the main drivers for the increase of modeled redispatch volumes from 2012 to 2020 we show that market splitting reduces imminent congestion although results are sensitive to the zonal delimitation and corresponding net transfer capacities the overall welfare effect is negligible but price differences between the bidding areas investigated i e one northern and southern price zone result in considerable distributional effects while consumers in northern germany would benefit producer rents and in particular the value of wind energy would decrease the opposite is true for southern germany we conclude that market splitting constitutes a solution to reduce redispatch measures as long as transmission grid expansion is further delayed

transmission and wind power investment this paper jointly considers wind power investment and transmission reinforcement the proposed model is a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints mpec that seeks to identify the optimal wind projects to be developed and the required network reinforcements under the transmission system operator perspective this mpec seeks to minimize consumer payments and is constrained by investment conditions and the equilibria of the market under different operating conditions an array of subsidies is considered to promote independent wind power investment an example and two case studies illustrate the characteristics of the proposed model

reconciling voters behavior with legislative term limits a puzzle exists over why voters continually re elect their congressional and state representatives although these same voters often support initiatives to limit the number of terms that their legislators may serve residents of california colorado and oklahoma voted in 1990 to limit the terms of their state legislators to tenures ranging from six to twelve years 1 in california these same voters however re elected 87 of 91 or 96 percent of all incumbent state representatives and senators whose terms they sought to limit 2 among re elected incumbents 67 or 77 percent had served as long as or longer than the maximum term prescribed under their state s term limit initiative voters defeated only two incumbents who would have been removed under the terms of california s tenure restrictions had they been in effect similar voter behavior characterized recent state elections in colorado and oklahoma 3 more generally these seemingly contradictory voter preferences also are apparent in public opinion polls at the federal level while 62 percent of voters immediately prior to the 1990 general elections indicated their intentions to reelect their congressman that same poll showed that only 24 percent said they approve of the way congress is handling its job gallup and newport 1990 pp 36 37 support for term limit initiatives and the low public esteem of legislators as a group both appear to be inconsistent with voters strong preferences for their own representative and the regular reelection of incumbents

optimal tenure of elected public officials constitutional limits on the tenure of elected chief executives are a prominent feature of many governments yet they have received little attention from economists working in the field of political behavior this paper develops an analysis of tenure limits and their incidence the analysis assumes that the limits substitute for more familiar electoral controls such as elections recalls and impeachment proceedings we assume that restrictions are imposed if they cause the constitutionally decisive voter to be better off on average this assumption although not a standard one applied to policy in general is fairly common in the literature on constitutional choice where the memberships of interest groups later to be formed are plausibly unknown at the time of the constitutional convention 1 the decision to restrict is undertaken in an environment of uncertainty and naturally it is not without its costs it is clear for instance that restriction substitutes inexperienced politicians for experienced ones moreover a tenure limit generates an incentive problem during the final term in office since no further electoral test remains 2 this lame duck

a welfare analysis of electricity transmission planning in germany we analyze the electricity transmission planning process in germany netzentwicklungsplan which separates transmission expansion decisions from generation dispatch we employ an economic modeling approach to analyze two different network planning settings in the first setting there is no trade off between transmission network development and generation dispatch as is currently the case in germany a second setting alternatively allows for such a trade off and thus represents a welfare superior way of transmission network planning applications with the two model variants are carried out for the german electricity system in 2035 the results illustrate overinvestment in transmission capacity and decreased welfare associated with the netzentwicklungsplan

term limitation in a dynamic model of partisan balance in november 1992 voters in fourteen states considered ballot propositions to adopt term limits for members of congress all fourteen propositions passed ten received more than 60 support bringing the total number of states with congressional term limits to fifteen much of the discussion of term limitation has focused on issues of representation the strength of parties and the functioning of congress after the adoption of limits benjamin and malbin 1992 will 1992 this paper explores an important but less discussed consequence of term limitation its impact on the partisan balance of legislatures we inquire how electoral dynamics incumbent advantage and voluntary retirement interact with a term limit to produce a new balance between parties in a two party legislature which party is favored by the introduction of term limits how does the length of the term limit matter are there conditions such that one party will be favored by any limit regardless of how restrictive

transmission and generation investment in electricity markets the effects of market splitting and network fee regimes abstract we propose an equilibrium model that allows to analyze the long run impact of the electricity market design on transmission line expansion by the regulator and investment in generation capacity by private firms in liberalized electricity markets the model incorporates investment decisions of the transmission system operator and private firms in expectation of an energy only market and cost based redispatch in different specifications we consider the cases of one vs multiple price zones market splitting and analyze different approaches to recover network cost in particular lump sum generation capacity based and energy based fees in order to compare the outcomes of our multilevel market model with a first best benchmark we also solve the corresponding integrated planner problem using two test networks we illustrate that energy only markets can lead to suboptimal locational decisions for generation capacity and thus imply excessive network expansion market splitting heals these problems only partially these results are valid for all considered types of network tariffs although investment slightly differs across those regimes

the welfare cost of factor taxation in a perfect foresight model this paper examines the marginal efficiency cost of various factor taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium model the au thor solves for the excess burden of anticipated and unanticipated t emporary and permanent tax policies using a range of estimates for taste and technology parameters he finds excess burdens larger than those indicated by previous studies that use static models these exc ess burdens are sensitive to parameter values and timing however th e rankings of alternative tax policies turn out to be insensitive to structural parameter values copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

do generation firms in restructured electricity markets have incentives to support social welfare improving transmission investments this paper examines the incentives that generation firms have in restructured electricity markets for supporting long term transmission investments in particular we study whether generation firms which arguably play a dominant role in the restructured electricity markets have the incentives to fund or support incremental social welfare improving transmission investments we examine this question in a two node network and explore how such incentives are affected by the ownership of financial transmission rights ftrs by generation firms in the analyzed two node network we show both i that the net exporter generation firm has the correct incentives to increase the transmission capacity incrementally up to a certain level and ii that although a policy that allocates ftrs to the net exporter generation firm can be desirable from a social point of view such a policy would dilute the net importer generation firm s incentives to support transmission expansion moreover if all ftrs were allocated or auctioned off to the net exporter generation firm then it is possible to increase both consumer surplus and social welfare while keeping the net exporter generation firm revenue neutral

robert m solow s neoclassical growth model an influential contribution to economics in 1956 robert solow s paper a contribution to the theory of economic growth 21 appeared in the quarterly jqurnal of economics the model this paper describes is a simple one it has a constant returns to scale aggregate production function with substitution between two inputs capital and labor the model is completed by assuming that a constant fraction of output is invested the discrete time version of the model is

transmission investment in the peruvian electricity market theory and applications abstract this research presents an application of the mechanism in hogan et al 2010 hrv to promote electricity transmission network expansion in the peruvian electricity transmission system known as sein sistema electrico interconectado nacional the hrv mechanism combines the merchant and regulatory approaches to promote investment into transmission grids this mechanism gives incentives for efficient investment in expansion of the network by rebalancing over time the fixed and variable charges of a two part tariff in the framework of a wholesale electricity market with locational pricing the expansion of the network is carried out through the sale of financial transmission rights ftrs for the congested lines the mechanism is applied for 103 nodes of the sein using detailed characteristics of generators nodes and transmission lines under laspeyres weights and linear cost of expansion of transmission capacity it is shown that prices converge to lower price levels as a result of increased transmission capacity

is consumption insufficiently sensitive to innovations in income deaton 1986 has noted that if income is a first order autoregressive process in first differences then a simple version of friedman s permanent income hypothesis spih implies that measured u s consumption is insufficiently sensitive to innovations in income this paper argues that this implication of the spih is a consequence of the fact that it ignores the role of the substitution effect in the consumption decision using a parametric version of the standard model of economic growth the paper shows that very small movements in interest rates are sufficient to induce an empirically plausible amount of consumption smoothing since an overall evaluation of the model s explanation for the observed smoothness of consumption requires examining its implications for other aspects of the data the paper also explores some of these

time series evidence on shirking in the u s house of representatives this paper presents time series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the u s house of representatives from 1975 to 1990 the empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time we find no evidence of economically significant last term effects on voting behavior nor are there important effects of legislative tenure on voting patterns the most significant deviations in voting behavior occur for congressmen who failed to win their reelection bid suggesting that sizable deviations from previous policy positions may result in swift retribution by constituents in the district