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

a cointegration analysis of petroleum futures prices abstract this paper presents evidence concerning the number of common stochastic trends in a system of three petroleum futures prices crude oil heating oil and unleaded gasoline using daily data from 3 december 1984 to 30 april 1993 johansen s maximum likelihood approach for estimating long run relations in multivariate vector autoregressive models is used the results indicate the presence of only one common trend

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

are electricity prices affected by the us dollar to euro exchange rate the spanish case abstract the objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between spanish electricity spot prices and the us dollar euro usd euro exchange rate during the period 2005 2007 taking into account the study of the association between dollar and oil prices in order to better understand the evolution of the former over time the first finding in this study is that spanish electricity spots prices the usd euro exchange rate and oil prices are cointegrated therefore there is a long run equilibrium relationship between the three variables short run relationships have been detected between oil prices and spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate in the sense that spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate are affected by oil prices in the short run there is a transmission of volatility between usd euro exchange rate and oil prices to spanish electricity prices so although spanish electricity prices are not affected in level by the movements of usd euro exchange rate they are in volatility in this kind of scenario the conclusions confirm that for countries so dependent on external causes as spain one possible solution for guarantying the energy security would be the promotion of the renewable energies therefore we cannot ignore the impact in the internal expenses of the cost of installation and generation of green energies so there must be a balance between the increase in renewables and the reasonable market price of the electricity

causal modeling and inference for electricity markets abstract how does dynamic price information flow among northern european electricity spot prices and prices of major electricity generation fuel sources we use time series models combined with new advances in causal inference to answer these questions applying our methods to weekly nordic and german electricity prices and oil gas and coal prices with german wind power and nordic water reservoir levels as exogenous variables we estimate a causal model for the price dynamics both for contemporaneous and lagged relationships in contemporaneous time nordic and german electricity prices are interlinked through gas prices in the long run electricity prices and british gas prices adjust themselves to establish the equilibrium price level since oil coal continental gas and eur usd are found to be weakly exogenous

collusion via signalling in simultaneous ascending bid auctions with heterogeneous objects with and without complementarities collusive equilibria exist in simultaneous ascending bid auctions with multiple objects even with large complementarities in the buyers utility functions the bidders collude by dividing the objects among themselves while keeping the prices low in the most collusive equilibrium the complementarities are never realized the scope for collusion however narrows as the ratio between the number of bidders and the number of objects increases

testing for asymmetric pricing in the canadian retail gasoline market abstract this paper applies a threshold regression model to test for asymmetric pricing in the retail gasoline market in canada using weekly data for the period january 1990 to december 1996 we present results for 13 canadian cities for both premium and regular gasoline within the context of an error correction model we test for the presence of asymmetric price behaviour using average changes in crude prices as well as various lags for the change in crude as possible thresholds we are unable to find any evidence to support this view

dynamics of heating oil market prices in europe abstract this paper concerns the german and french heating oil market and attempts to establish long and short term relationships between german and french monthly heating oil prices in dollars the rotterdam spot price for the same product and the dm us and ff us exchange rates during the period from january 1987 to december 1997 to model the market over the period under consideration incorporating the gulf war we have used conventional unit root tests and sequential tests allowing structural changes long term relationships with shifts in regime detected by cointegration tests taking structural breaks into consideration are estimated the short term dynamics defined by a vector error correction vec mechanism is derived in a classic manner when in presence of a cointegrated var system the econometric results obtained are commented on from an economic point of view weak exogeneity tests are performed and the conditional vec model is deduced enabling measurement of the instantaneous impact of variations in weakly exogenous exchange rates on variations in heating oil prices in germany and france lastly a study is made of the asymmetric reaction of domestic prices to positive and negative variations in exchange rates and the rotterdam spot quotation

empirical studies of gasoline retailing a guide to the literature abstract this paper surveys the empirical literature on gasoline retailing which has been growing rapidly over the last three decades possibly in response to antitrust and regulatory concerns and increased availability of pricing data studies of both pricing and non price decision variables are considered in general it is found that crude oil prices are the primary driver of national price movements over time however market structure has been identified as playing a role in price dynamics equilibrium selection and price differentials across markets and stations the economic literature emphasizes the importance of heterogeneity across stations and coordination problems faced by retailers several directions for future work are suggested including the development of theory and demand estimation using high frequency station level data

rockets and feathers the asymmetric speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes abstract the paper develops a quadratic quantity adjustment model to test the hypothesis put forward in the recent monopolies and mergers commission report that the speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes is more rapid when costs rise than when they fall and that the adjustment path is more concentrated around the mean value on the upswing using data from 1982 to 1989 evidence of faster and more concentrated responses to cost increases were found

modeling and forecasting cointegrated relationships among heavy oil and product prices abstract in this paper we investigate heavy crude oil and product price dynamics we present a comparison among ten prices series of heavy crude oils and fourteen price series of petroleum products in two distinct areas europe and americas over the period 1994 2002 we provide a complete analysis of crude oil and product price dynamics using cointegration and error correction models ecm subsequently we use the ecm specification to predict crude oil prices over the horizon january 2002 june 2002 finally we compare the forecasting performance of ecm with a naive model in first differences which does not exploit any cointegrating relation

revenue decentralization and inflation a re evaluation abstract a problematic feature of the existing empirical literature on the relationship between revenue decentralization rd and inflation is the use of inaccurate measures for rd using a newly constructed measure for rd that accounts for over time changes in sub national tax autonomy this paper finds that rd leads to lower inflation

revenue decentralization and income distribution abstract due to varying local revenue collection capacities and interest group activities revenue decentralization rd may lead to increased inequality this paper provides empirical evidence however that if coupled with good governance rd could improve income distribution

further evidence on revenue decentralization and inflation abstract results from a panel regression study of 19 oecd member countries suggest that when the measure of revenue decentralization is limited to the revenues over which sub national governments have full autonomy its impact on inflation is not statistically significant

auctions and information acquisition sealed bid or dynamic formats the value of an asset is generally not known a priori and it requires costly investments to be discovered in such contexts with endogenous information acquisition which selling procedure generates more revenues we show that dynamic formats such as ascending price or multistage auctions perform better than their static counterpart this is because dynamic formats allow bidders to observe the number of competitors left throughout the selling procedure thus even if competition appears strong ex ante it may turn out to be weak along the dynamic format thereby making the option to acquire information valuable this very possibility also induces the bidders to stay longer in the auction just to learn about the state of competition both effects boost revenues and our analysis provides a rationale for using dynamic formats rather than sealed bid ones

retail price cycles and response asymmetry weekly retail gasoline prices in windsor ontario from 1989 to 1994 appear to respond faster to wholesale price increases than to decreases but exhibit a cyclic pattern inconsistent with a common explanation of response asymmetry i reconcile these observations through a model of price cycles prices on the downward portion of the cycle appear insensitive to costs compared with price increases supporting the theory that price decreases result from battles over market share this pattern resembles a faster response to cost increases than to decreases and the conclusion that asymmetry indicates a role for competition policy may be inappropriate jel classification l13 l71 cycles des prix de detail et reponse asymetrique les prix de detail hebdomadaires de la gazoline a windsor ont entre 1989 et 1994 semblent reagir plus vite aux accroissements qu aux chutes des prix de gros mais suivent un pattern cyclique qui ne semble pas consistant avec l explication traditionnelle en termes de reponse asymetrique l auteur reconcilie ces observations a l aide d un modele de cycle de prix les prix dans la portion descendante du cycle semblent insensibles aux variations de couts par comparaison avec les accroissements de prix ce qui supporte la theorie que les chutes de prix resultent de luttes pour les parts de marche le pattern ressemble a celui declenche par une reponse plus rapide aux augmentations qu aux chutes de couts et la conclusion qui voudrait qu on puisse attribuer le tout a l asymetrie des reponses et que donc une intervention de la politique de la concurrence s impose peut etre inappropriee

fiscal decentralization central bank independence and inflation abstract we develop earlier cross sectional studies of inflation rates by adding the degree of tax centralization as another explanatory variable this makes central bank independence perform appreciably better as an explanatory variable also we find that centralized countries have higher inflation

prices rise faster than they fall output prices tend to respond faster to input increases than to decreases this tendency is found in more than two of every three markets examined it is found as frequently in producer goods markets as in consumer goods markets in both kinds of markets the asymmetric response to cost shocks is substantial and durable on average the immediate response to a positive cost shock is at least twice the response to a negative shock and that difference is sustained for at least five to eight months unlike past studies which documented similar asymmetries in selected markets gasoline agricultural products etc this one uses large samples of diverse products 77 consumer and 165 producer goods accordingly the results suggest a gap in an essential part of economic theory as a start on filling this gap the study finds no asymmetry in the resonse of an individual decision maker a supermarket chain to its costs but it finds above average asymmetry where a cost shock is filtered through a fragmented w

market structure marketing method and price instability data for metals sold on commodity exchanges and at prices set by producers are used to test the relationship between the organization of markets and the behavior of prices on the production side the question is whether prices are more stable in concentrated industries and on the sales side the question is whether markets where buyers are consumers have more stable prices than those with consumers and speculators the recent increase in metal price instability is explained by changes in the market structure and organization variables foremost is increased reliance on commodity exchanges declines in concentration are of less importance

market integration among electricity markets and their major fuel source markets dynamic price information flows among u s electricity wholesale spot prices and the prices of the major electricity generation fuel sources natural gas uranium coal and crude oil are studied multivariate time series methods applied to weekly price data show that in contemporaneous time peak electricity prices move natural gas prices which in turn influence crude oil in the long run price is discovered in the fuel sources market except uranium as these prices are weakly exogenous in a reduced rank regression representation of these energy prices

the integration of major fuel source markets in china evidence from panel cointegration tests abstract the paper tests for energy price co movement in china over the new regime as part of a strategy to test for the existence of a national energy market panel cointegration test statistics suggest that not all energy commodities are spatially homogenous in prices and the processes of energy price cointegration are different over time and over groups of fuels the statistics demonstrate china s gradual spatially partial and idiosyncratic energy reform process coal and electricity price series have co moved since 2003 while the national panel cointegration test statistics suggest that gasoline and diesel price series have co moved since 1997 regional panel tests also show that there are apparently differences in the emergence of energy price co movement this suggests that regional energy markets have emerged in china one of the important lessons of the research is that an energy market has to some extent already emerged in china and as a consequence energy prices are much less distorted than previously if correct this fact is of major global significance both in terms of future environmental effects and future trade and investment negotiations as china is seen internationally as a market driven economy

oil and pump prices testing their asymmetric relationship in a robust way abstract the aim of this study is to provide a novel method to assess whether retail fuel prices respond asymmetrically to changes in the international crude oil prices to do so we consider the whole supply chain we use daily data and we depart from the current practice in the literature that focuses on prices rather we consider the mark ups of both the refineries and retailers hence we show that we first need to assess whether the refineries mark up responds asymmetrically to the international crude oil prices and subsequently whether the retailers mark up shows an asymmetric behaviour relatively to changes in the refined fuel prices focusing in greece as our case study our findings show that greek fuel retailers do not change their mark up behaviour based on changes of the refined fuel price by contrast the asymmetric behaviour is evident in the refineries mark up relatively to changes in the international crude oil prices which is then passed through to the retailers and consumers finally we provide evidence that weekly and monthly data mask any such asymmetric relationship thus we maintain that unless the appropriate data frequency fuel price transformations and the whole supply chain are considered misleading findings could be revealed

non bidding equilibrium in an ascending core selecting auction abstract this paper investigates the perfect bayesian equilibrium in an ascending price core selecting auction which is recently used in some countries spectrum license auctions we suppose that there are two identical items two small bidders and one large bidder the small bidders demand only one unit of the item whereas the large bidder wants both units package bidding ensures that the large bidder faces no exposure problem and behaves truthfully however one of the small bidders stops bidding at the beginning in the equilibrium although small bidders generally face the free rider problem and have incentives to underbid once a bidder is the only small one remaining he bids truthfully stopping early induces the remaining bidder to behave truthfully hence each small bidder wants to be the first to stop bidding the free rider problem is considerably mitigated when there are many small bidders

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

incentives in core selecting auctions with single minded bidders abstract this paper considers some package auctions with known single minded bidders a single minded bidder is interested in a unique bundle of goods and bids only for that bundle we examine each bidder s incentive in ausubel and milgrom s 2002 ascending proxy auction and every bidder optimal core selecting auction we provide a simple condition for each bidder to report his valuation truthfully which can be expressed in a single sentence any rival of my rivals is my rival the vickrey outcome lies in the core if and only if this condition holds for every bidder however it is rarely satisfied

relationships between oil price shocks and stock market an empirical analysis from china this paper investigates the interactive relationships between oil price shocks and chinese stock market using multivariate vector auto regression oil price shocks do not show statistically significant impact on the real stock returns of most chinese stock market indices except for manufacturing index and some oil companies some important oil price shocks depress oil company stock prices increase in oil volatility may increase the speculations in mining index and petrochemicals index which raise their stock returns both the world oil price shocks and china oil price shocks can explain much more than interest rates for manufacturing index

fiscal decentralization central bank independence and inflation a panel investigation we reinvestigate the relationship between revenue decentralization rd central bank independence cbi and inflation by modifying the paper by eco 72 2001 95 we show that in contrast to the earlier findings rd has a negative impact on inflation if accompanied by both cbi and local accountability in low inflation countries however rd has a negative impact on inflation even without these additional factors though cbi accentuates this effect

price uniformity and competition in a retail gasoline market abstract the purpose of this paper is to examine the price uniformity prediction of the competitive market model of retail gasoline pricing using station specific data on gasoline prices from vancouver bc the specified econometric model also generates results that describe the actual pricing pattern in the market and that permit an assessment of tacit collusion and imperfectly competitive non collusive competition as possible alternative explanations for the results contrary to the competitive model variables measuring brand effects spatial and product characteristics local market structure and time series variation do affect the probability that a station matches the market mode price

price matching and the domino effect in a retail gasoline market i introduction for many years there have been competition concerns regarding how retail gasoline prices are set in the united states and canada in several u s states including delaware maryland nevada and virginia such concerns gave rise to divorcement legislation under which refiners are not permitted to own or operate gas stations 1 concerns have also been raised in the united states regarding zone pricing a company that owns and operates gasoline stations might define price zones where prices for all its stations in the zone are the same it has been suggested that zone pricing is a form of price discrimination and thus is an indicator of market power it has also been argued that zone pricing can be used in an anticompetitive fashion to coordinate pricing and to deter entry through localized price cutting 2 in canada consumers have complained about the perceived uniformity of retail gas prices in some markets and the perception that retailers raise their prices at the same time consumers have also been troubled by the observation that retail gasoline prices in some markets rise faster than they fall 3 concerns have also been voiced regarding interjurisdictional differences in retail prices that do not appear to be cost based indicating to consumers that retail gasoline markets are not competitive 4 possibly in response to public concerns canada s gasoline industry has advanced a competitive theory of gasoline pricing to explain certain perceived features of gas pricing that lead to allegations of collusion or anticompetitive behavior under this theory it is assumed that gas is a homogeneous good consumers are willing to drive long distances to save small amounts of money on gas and prices are perfectly observable by consumers and nearby competitors based on these assumptions it is argued that intramarket prices tend to uniformity individual stations quickly match price changes by certain competitors and price changes pass through an entire market almost immediately in a domino fashion 5 while many complaints have been made regarding how retail gas prices are set and the gasoline industry has offered explanations there are almost no publicly available studies of how prices actually change in urban retail gasoline markets using complete station specific data on intraday price changes over a long period of time such data are simply not available for most urban markets and can only be collected through personal observation of prices or possibly via subpoena of retailers pricing records in the course of a formal investigation even here price data may not be complete yet without such data there exists no formal evidence that the stylized facts that the competitive theory attempts to explain are indeed facts and that pricing behavior is consistent with a theory of anti or procompetitive conduct the purpose of this article was to use gasoline station price data collected eight times per day for 103 d for 27 gas stations in guelph ontario to evaluate the accuracy of the received wisdom regarding gas prices and the implications advanced by the informal theory of competitive gas pricing while the informal competitive theory seems to have been accepted by governments in many instances some jurisdictions remain unconvinced for example the sense that consumers concerns regarding gasoline pricing were not being addressed led the house of legislative assembly of nova scotia to establish an all party committee to investigate gasoline pricing in that province in its report the committee made a number of strong recommendations such as retail divorcement or price regulation if divorcement is rejected a prohibition of petroleum product sales below acquisition cost and that refiners must charge the same rack price to all customers 6 these recommendations are clearly motivated by anxieties regarding possible anti competitive conduct which may or may not be supported by a detailed analysis of retail gasoline pricing data

risk management in the oil industry can information on long run equilibrium prices be utilized abstract we analyze co movements between the prices of crude oil and major refined products during the period 1992 1998 specifically we explore the existence of long run equilibrium price relationships and whether deviations from estimated equilibrium can be utilized for predictions of short term price changes and for risk management the econometric evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that crude and product prices are co integrated past deviations from long term equilibrium are significant in an error correction specification of short term product price changes the results represent valuable information for hedging particularly in integrated oil companies for which price risk is related to margin variations

have oil and gas prices got separated abstract this paper applies vector error correction models that show that oil and natural gas prices decoupled around 2009 before 2009 us and uk gas prices had a long term equilibrium with crude prices to which gas prices always reverted after exogenous shocks both us and uk gas prices adjusted to the crude oil price individually and departure from the equilibrium gas price on one continent resulted in a similar departure on the other after an exogenous shock the adjustment between us and uk gas prices took approximately 20 weeks on average and the convergence was mediated mainly by crude oil with a necessary condition that arbitrage across the atlantic was possible after 2009 however the uk gas price has remained integrated with oil price but the us gas price decoupled from crude oil price and the european gas price as the atlantic arbitrage has halted the oversupply from shale gas production has not been mitigated by north american export as there has been no liquefying and export capacity

the effect of central bank independence on inflation in developing countries abstract ismihan and ozkan ismihan m ozkan f g 2004 does central bank independence lower inflation economics letters 84 305 309 provide theoretical support for prior studies empirical findings of positive or no significant relationship between central bank independence cbi and average inflation performance the present paper argues that these findings are spurious because the studies use an econometric methodology that does not account for the measurement error in their proxies for cbi this paper employs an econometric methodology that does account for this measurement error and finds a strong negative relationship between cbi and inflation even though the sample is limited to developing countries

higher prices at canadian gas pumps international crude oil prices or local market concentration an empirical investigation there is little consensus on whether higher retail gasoline prices in canada are the result of international crude oil price fluctuations or local market power exercised by large vertically integrated firms i find that although both increasing local market concentration and higher average monthly wholesale prices are positively and significantly associated with higher retail prices wholesale prices are more important than local market concentration similarly crude oil prices are more important than the number of local wholesalers in determining wholesale prices these results suggest that movements in gasoline prices are largely the result of input price fluctuations rather than local market structure

quadratic core selecting payment rules for combinatorial auctions we report on the use of a quadratic programming technique in recent and upcoming spectrum auctions in europe specifically we compute a unique point in the core that minimizes the sum of squared deviations from a reference point for example from the vickrey clarke groves payments analyzing the karush kuhn tucker conditions we demonstrate that the resulting payments can be decomposed into a series of economically meaningful and equitable penalties furthermore we discuss the benefits of this combinatorial auction explore the use of alternative reserve pricing approaches in this context and indicate the results of several hundred computational runs using cats data

taxes cost and demand shifters as determinants in the regional gasoline price formation process evidence from spain abstract this paper examines the pass through of regional tax changes and spot price variations to regional gasoline prices in spain it also analyzes the impact of all major cost and demand shifters that contribute to regional gasoline price formation to address these research issues a reduced form price equation using monthly time series cross sectional tscs data from january 2004 through december 2008 is estimated strong and consistent evidence of full shifting of regional tax changes to regional gasoline prices is found gasoline spot price changes are more than proportionally passed through to retail prices in addition the empirical evidence shows on the one hand that regional gasoline price differences before taxes continue to be quite narrow and on the other hand that there is still a margin for larger gasoline price differences among regions this suggest that traditional practices from the monopoly era i e relatively uniform regional gasoline prices persist after the market has been liberalized which may have been facilitated by the strong and uniform presence of the major spanish based refining companies in the retail sector over the whole country

central bank independence and inflation good news and bad news abstract the bad news is that the findings of recent studies of central bank independence and inflation are very sensitive to outliers the good news is that evidence presented here reinforces the existing case for bank independence in high income economies

inflation and central bank independence a meta regression analysis using 59 studies we perform a meta regression analysis of studies examining the relationship between inflation and central bank independence cbi the studies considered are very different with respect to the cbi indicator used the sample of countries and time periods covered model specification estimators used and publication outlet we conclude that there is a significant publication bias however we also find a significant genuine effect of cbi on inflation differences between studies are not caused by differences in cbi indicators used

does central bank independence lower inflation this paper provides a potential explanation for the recent findings of no significant relationship between central bank independence cbi and lower inflation we argue that although cbi delivers lower inflation in the short term it may reduce the scope for productivity enhancing public investment and so harm future growth potential we also argue that the effects on growth make cbi less likely to achieve lower inflation in the long term

understanding the oil price exchange rate nexus for the fiji islands in this paper we examine the relationship between oil price and the fiji us exchange rate using daily data for the period 2000 2006 we use the generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch and exponential garch egarch models to estimate the impact of oil price on the nominal exchange rate we find that a rise in oil prices leads to an appreciation of the fijian dollar vis a vis the us dollar

capital market response to emission rights returns evidence from the european power sector prior studies on the distributional effects of the european union s emission trading scheme eu ets have so far only relied on supply and demand data empirical evidence from capital markets has been missing we address this gap and measure the ets s economic consequences using the expectations of investors towards the regulatory impact on firm value employing a multifactor model we show that returns on common stock of the largest affected industry power generation are positively correlated with rising prices for emission rights this implies that the market predicts that firms are not only able to pass on their share of the regulatory burden to customers but even achieve windfall profits by overcompensating for the costs

natural gas prices lng transport costs and the dynamics of lng imports according to the u s energy information administration lng is projected to become a much larger share of u s natural gas consumption rising from current levels of around 2 5 of total natural gas consumption to 12 4 by 2030 because natural gas and lng are substitutes natural gas prices are expected to be an important determinant of lng imports furthermore an increasing share of lng is traded under short term contracts with spot shipments being diverted to markets offering the highest returns netbacks relative natural gas prices as well as lng transportation costs are important determinants of lng netbacks this paper examines the empirical relationship between u s lng imports the henry hub price of natural gas relative to u k and asia gas prices and a proxy for lng transportation costs using monthly data from 1997 to 2007 granger causality tests error variance decomposition and impulse response analyses using a var model are employed to establish granger causality as well as the dynamics of natural gas prices and lng transportation innovations on lng imports

inflation and central bank independence revisited abstract king and ma economics letters 72 2001 95 claim that evidence which they report for a sample of 42 countries shows that central bank independence cbi and inflation are not significantly related the present paper argues that this putative failure of cbi to affect inflation is due to king and ma s use of an econometric methodology that does not account for the inaccuracy of their proxy for cbi employing an alternative econometric methodology that tackles the measurement error problem directly this paper finds a strong negative relationship between cbi and inflation

fiscal decentralization fiscal rules and fiscal discipline fiscal decentralization fd and fiscal rules fr are institutional mechanisms that are implemented by varying degrees in increasing number of countries this paper investigates empirically the effect of fr on the effectiveness of fd in achieving fiscal discipline panel evidence strongly supports that balanced budget and expenditure rules help fd to achieve this goal while debt rule has a direct disciplinary effect

retail gasoline price cycles across spatially dispersed gasoline stations abstract studies of volatility in retail gasoline prices have used either weekly averages of the prices at a small subset of stations in a city or daily observations on prices at a small number of stations this paper uses daily observations on station specific prices within a large canadian metropolitan area to address whether weekly average prices or prices for a small number of stations provide an accurate description of pricing in a market with volatility this paper considers whether researchers using restricted data can draw meaningful conclusions about the appropriate theoretical model and the policy response to allegations of anticompetitive behavior

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

oil and energy price volatility it is commonly believed that since the 1973 oil crisis oil and energy prices have been more volatile than other commodity prices this study examines monthly producer prices for thousands of products over the period january 1945 through august 2005 the results show that crude oil refined petroleum and natural gas prices are more volatile than prices for about 95 of products sold by domestic producers relative to crude commodities however crude oil prices are currently more volatile than about 65 of other products and oil price volatility first exceeded the median for crude commodities following the 1986 drop in oil prices

long term diversification paths and energy transitions in europe the concentration of the energy mixes of eight european countries is measured latecomers historically enjoyed lower levels of concentration in their energy mixes early comers followed an inverted u path of concentration latecomers a u path a time effect and size effect explains the different patterns small energy consuming countries will be able to do faster transitions

china s coal price disturbances observations explanations and implications for global energy economies since china decontrolled coal prices its coal price has risen steadily and been unusually volatile in 2011 in particular high coal prices and capped electricity prices in china discouraged coal fired power generation triggering widespread power shortages we suggest that these coal price disturbances could be symptomatic of a major change in pricing dynamics of global fossil fuel markets with increasing correspondence between coal and oil prices globally historically global coal prices have been more stable and lower than oil and natural gas prices on a per heat basis in recent years however coal prices have been increasingly volatile worldwide and have tracked other fossil fuel prices more closely meanwhile the recent development of unconventional gas has substantially decoupled us natural gas and oil prices technically low us natural gas prices with potential fuel switching could drive us domestic coal prices lower however this effect is unlikely to counteract the overall trend in increasing coal consumption globally china s market size and unique partially controlled energy system make its reform agenda a key force in the global economy policymakers in the us e u and elsewhere should monitor china s economic reform agenda to anticipate and respond to changes accompanying china s increasing importance in the global energy economy

electricity prices and fuel costs long run relations and short run dynamics the paper examines the long run relation and short run dynamics between electricity prices and three fossil fuel prices coal natural gas and crude oil using annual data for the u s for 1960 2007 the results suggest 1 a stable long run relation between real prices for electricity and coal 2 bi directional long run causality between coal and electricity prices 3 insignificant long run relations between electricity and crude oil and or natural gas prices and 4 no evidence of asymmetries in the adjustment of electricity prices to deviations from equilibrium a number of implications are addressed

time varying macroeconomic effects of energy price shocks a new measure for china abstract in this paper we examine the effects of world energy price shocks on china s macroeconomy over the past two decades we begin by showing that the use of oil prices as a proxy for more general energy price dynamics is not appropriate for the case of china having established this fact we propose a new energy price index which accurately reflects the structure of china s energy expenditure shares and intertemporal fluctuations in international energy prices we then employ a sufficiently rich set of time varying vars identified through a new set of agnostic sign restrictions to estimate the effects of energy price shocks on china s macroeconomy our main result is that positive energy price shocks generate statistically significant reductions in real gdp growth and increases in inflation interestingly both the sets of responses have consistently declined over the sample period next the interest rate responses are found to be consistently positive over the sample period given the aforementioned stagflation result this suggests that the pboc is more focused on inflation stabilization as compared to facilitating output growth all presented results are shown to be robust under both official national data and those developed by chang et al 2015 thus strengthening our conclusion that energy price shocks have significant time varying effects on china s macroeconomy

retail price asymmetries in local gasoline markets the experience of the salt lake city retail gasoline market during the 1989 to 1993 period suggests that there was asymmetric adjustment wholesale and retail price data unique to the salt lake market are used to test for the existence of three types of price asymmetry during this period with respect to the magnitude of the pass through of wholesale price changes evidence of price asymmetry during periods of average weekly wholesale price changes is found however during market shocks the evidence points in the direction of retail price symmetry evidence of asymmetry with respect to the timing and pattern of the retail price response is found for periods of both average and market shock changes since gasoline is purchased by the consumer in local markets conclusions reached by studies of market pricing behaviour that rely on national data may not be relevant for local policy decisions this appears to be the case for the salt lake city market

empirical investigation of retail fuel pricing the impact of spatial interaction competition and territorial factors abstract this paper explores the determinants of fuel prices by proposing an empirical framework that integrates three kinds of influencing factors spatial interaction competition and territorial factors for competition we define a general variable the presence of competing stations within a radius and two specific variables the presence of low cost stations and the presence of same brand stations we proceed with a step wise adjustment of the radius by gradually increasing it to evaluate the spatial scope of different competition effects using data on prices of fuel stations in rome italy we estimate spatial econometric models that provide evidence of spatial dependence in price between stations we also find that competition affects prices but the relevance of its impact depends on radius length finally the territorial factors remarkably influence prices if these factors are introduced in the model the magnitude of spatial parameters weakens allowing to accurately assess the intensity of spatial dependence

low revenue equilibria in simultaneous ascending bid auctions low revenue equilibria allow participants in an auction to obtain goods at prices lower than would prevail in a competitive market these outcomes are generated as perfect equilibria of ascending bid multiunit auctions we show that these equilibria are possible under mild conditions conditions that are likely to prevail in many situations where auction formats have recently been adopted we argue that these equilibria could explain the low revenues of some recent auctions and discuss potential remedies to eliminate low revenue equilibria

co integration of ice gas oil and crude oil futures abstract in this paper the relationship between gas oil and brent crude oil futures prices is investigated the analysis is based on daily price series for five different contract lengths traded on ice futures europe the price series and their first differences are tested for stationarity linear relationships between the pair wise gas oil and crude oil contracts are then tested for co integration a co integrated relationship is found for the 1 and 2 month contracts covering data from 1994 to 2009 and error correction models are established to estimate the relationships no co integrated relationships are found for the 3 6 and 12 month contracts covering the period 2002 2009 nor for the 1 and 2 month contracts for this period the futures prices for this period are collected from a volatile market including hurricane katrina the economic boom and the following financial crises which might explain these results thus in such volatile periods the spread between gas oil and crude oil is likely to deviate and it might take several years until it reverts to its equilibrium value for energy traders and hedgers this will imply that exposures to the crack spread should be treated with great care in such market environments

is the german retail gasoline market competitive a spatial temporal analysis using quantile regression we explore whether noncompetitive pricing prevails in germany s retail gasoline market by examining the influence of the crude oil price on the retail gasoline price focusing specifically on how this influence varies according to the brand and to the degree of competition in the vicinity of the station our analysis identifies several factors other than cost including the absence of nearby competitors and regional market concentration that play a statistically significant role in mediating the influence of the oil price on the retail gas price suggesting moderate price setting power among stations

do gasoline prices respond asymmetrically to crude oil price changes the authors test and confirm that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases than to decreases in crude oil prices among the possible sources of this asymmetry are production inventory adjustment lags and market power of some sellers by analyzing price transmission at different points in the distribution chain the authors attempt to shed light on these theories spot prices for generic gasoline show asymmetry in responding to crude oil price changes which may reflect inventory adjustment effects asymmetry also appears in the response of retail prices to wholesale price changes possibly indicating short run market power among retailers