electric power sector reform liberalization models and electric power prices in developing countries an empirical analysis using international panel data this study aims to clarify whether the effects of electric power sector reforms should be different either across regions or between developing and developed countries an empirical model was analyzed to observe the impact of electric power prices on the selection of a liberalization model in the power sector this was achieved by the use of an ordered response fixed effect and a random effect model an instrument variable technique was also used to estimate the impact of the liberalization model on the electric power price this technique addressed the problems of simultaneity bias between the electric power price and the liberalization models selected these econometric models were designed using panel data from 78 countries in four regions developed countries asian developing countries the former soviet union and eastern europe and latin america for the period from 1985 to 2003 the research findings suggest that higher electricity prices are one of the driving forces for governments to adopt liberalization models however the development of liberalization models in the power sector does not necessarily reduce electricity prices in fact contrary to expectations there was a tendency for the price to rise in every market modeled

the effect of power distribution privatization on electricity prices in turkey has liberalization served the purpose various electricity reforms have been adopted by a number of countries within the last 2 decades turkey as one of those countries has restructured its electricity market and intensively privatized the distribution companies as one of the main targets of the liberalization efforts in the sector was announced to be reduced consumer prices it is a matter of interest to look at the related developments after privatizations hence this study attempts to explore the impact of power distribution privatization in turkey on the national end user electricity prices results of the analysis suggest that privatization of electricity distribution companies has not yielded the expected retail price declines within the first 4 years of the program whereas wholesale tariffs exhibit a reduction in the rate of 10 retail tariffs show an increase of 5 9 within the period in question besides the unstable patterns of the two tariffs imply that the market is not yet ready for the automatic pricing mechanism planned to be implemented based on a cost reflective methodology therefore results indicate that the factors behind the unsatisfactory outcomes of the program should be explored in order for the privatization efforts in the turkish electricity distribution market to serve the purpose

investment security of supply and sustainability in the aftermath of three decades of power sector reform the last three decades have witnessed many electricity industry reform processes in more than half of the countries in the world the reforms have aimed inter alia at encouraging private investments in electricity infrastructure enhancing security of electricity supply and making power industry operate in line with the requirements of the sustainable development using an original panel dataset from 55 developed and developing countries covering the period from 1975 to 2010 this study aims at finding out to what extent these objectives have been materialized so far econometric models are used to identify the effects of electricity market liberalization on these variables the research findings suggest that the progress toward the electricity market reform is associated with a decline in private investments in the electricity industries of developing countries higher levels of self sufficiency in electricity supply and lower co2 emissions from electricity generation

assessing the determinants of household electricity prices in the eu a system gmm panel data approach abstract a meaningful portion of the consumer basket of european households and companies is embodied by electricity as well as gas or refined petroleum products as energy products are essential inputs of nearly all final goods and services whichever change of energy prices has a direct impact of the general price level in this context the main purpose of this study is to assess the main drivers of household electricity prices in the european union eu throughout a period of deep sector transformation relying on eurostat data not only we analyze the long term progress of household electricity prices across the eu but also we provide empirical evidence on their determinants while confronting the results with the eu energy policy path for this purpose a firsthand approach is herein developed based on a dynamic model with panel data through gmm proposal method by blundell and bond 1998 4 with the windermeijer 2005 41 correction the data analysis provides grounds for a relation between the variable of household electricity prices with variables related to sector liberalization renewable energy sources which support the eu policy to boost liberalization this study offers evidence that the sector liberalization is accompanied by a decreasing trend in prices which is consistent with the european commission s objectives to liberalize

filling the poverty gap multiple transfer program participation ata from the 1979 income survey development program are used to describe multiple transfer program participation and its effect on the poverty rate and the poverty gap of 87 1 million u s families and unrelated individuals 40 percent received some government transfer in april 1979 further more than 80 percent of pretransfer poor families received some transfer the benefits received by the elderly succeeded in reducing their poverty rate from 68 to 10 percent and reducing their poverty gap by 96 percent in contrast government transfers reduced the poverty rate for single parent families from a pretransfer rate of 48 percent to a posttransfer rate of 30 percent an examination of target efficiency indicates that 82 percent of all income conditioned transfers go to the pretransfer poor

the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s fossil fired power plants an empirical analysis abstract this paper investigates the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s generation plants based on the third industrial census data and the first economic census data partial factor productivity pfp analysis indicates that the productivity improvements in labor and capital inputs associated with the reforms are approximately 26 and 45 respectively the effect of the reforms on fuel expense is weakly significant but there is evidence of significant productivity improvement in fuel usage further total factor productivity tfp analysis shows that the efficiency gain from the reforms is still significant when the substitution effect of labor and capital inputs are considered though the magnitude is much lower than that of the pfp analysis the effect of the reforms on technical efficiency becomes weakly significant when fuel expense is further included in tfp analysis but a significant positive effect is expected if fuel input is measured in physical quantity

broken dreams unmet expectations of investors in the philippine electricity restructuring and privatization abstract over the last three decades privatization and restructuring of electricity sectors has been a hot topic the expectation was that prices would fall due to increased competition and that generators would become more innovative and efficient however the enthusiasm for deregulation wavered after events such as the debacle in california the fall of enron and the setbacks of ontario in the philippines comprehensive legislation was passed in 2001 but the implementation has been rather slow and controversial this paper looked at the allegation of politicizing power rates and found a logical alternative to the perceived conspiracy angle based on market data it is highly probable that depressed market rates was a result of coping mechanisms of new players trying to adjust to the restructured industry

the marginals never vanished incumbency and competition in elections to the u s house of representatives 1952 82 the average vote margin enjoyed by incumbent candidates for the u s house of representatives increased sharply during the 1 960s despite this and contrary to assumptions common in the literature on recent congressional elections electoral data show that house incumbents are no safer now than they were in the 1950s the marginals properly defined have not vanished the swing ratio has diminished little if at all and competition for house seats held by incumbents has not declined vote margins increased without adding to incumbent security diminishing competition or dampening swings because the heterogeneity of interelection vote swings increased at the same time

impact of reform and privatization on consumers a case study of power sector reform in orissa india abstract orissa is the first state in india to have undergone reform in the power sector with the government withdrawing its control the model of this reform is known as the wb orissa model the goal of this paper is to examine the impact of this reform on consumers of electricity which has been measured using multiple regression models the variables represent the parameters that consumers are most interested in and the regression coefficients represent the weights of the corresponding variables the data were collected using a survey methodology the impact of reform was found to be mixed some groups of consumers saw benefits while others felt a negative impact a focus group study was conducted to identify the variables of interest to consumers of electricity the model was used to estimate consumer benefit and was validated using primary data and structural equation modeling the study revealed beneficial aspects of reform and areas with no benefits

changes in the vote margins for congressional candidates a specification of historical trends recent research on house elections has focused on the decline in congressional competition since the mid 1960s however this body of research suffers from three major problems 1 an imprecise specification of the nature of change in the degree of congressional competition 2 its exclusive reliance on a limited time frame which calls into question the generalizability and adequacy of its explanations and 3 its overemphasis on incumbency oriented explanations using a multiple interrupted time series mits analysis of trends in aggregate electoral data from 1824 to 1980 we find that current low levels of congressional competition are not historically unique but instead constitute a continuation of a long term trend established in the mid 1890s in addition and in contrast to the general thrust described in the literature there appears to be a post 1965 trend toward greater competition although the absolute level of competition is lower after the mid 1960s finally a disaggregation of electoral results by incumbency status suggests a growth in the incumbency advantage since the mid 1890s but that lower post 1965 levels of congressional competition are the result of a winners and not an incumbency advantage such findings cast doubt on the adequacy of explanations that focus on post 1965 incumbency oriented factors

win lose or withdraw a categorical analysis of career patterns in the house of representatives 1948 1978 the literature on incumbency advantage has focused on margin as an indicator for electoral security but while electoral margin is a goodex ante measure it is a poorex post measure of security further existing work has not integrated the choice of retirement with changes in the level of security to improve the specification and definition of marginality a multinomial logit model is proposed where the dependent variable is categorical account is therefore taken of all the ways a representative s term in office can end including reelection defeat retirement or pursuit of other office the sample includes all u s representatives elected for the first time between 1948 and 1978 the results indicate that 1 margin in the previous election is a significantex ante proxy for the probability of electoral defeat and 2 while the electoral safety of all incumbents in the house has been increased the increases are greater for members elected for the first time in the period since 1965

the impact of power market reforms on electricity price cost margins and cross subsidy levels a cross country panel data analysis abstract one of the main expectations from power market reform has been a reduction in both price cost margins and cross subsidy levels between industrial and residential consumers this paper focuses on this issue by looking at the impact of the electricity industry reforms on residential and industrial electricity price cost margins and their effect on cross subsidy levels between consumer groups using panel data for 63 developed and developing countries covering the period 1982 2009 empirical models are developed and analyzed the research findings suggest that there is no uniform pattern for the impact of reform process as a whole on price cost margins and cross subsidy levels each individual reform step has different impact on price cost margins and cross subsidy levels for each consumer and country group our findings imply that reform steps have different impacts in different countries which supports the idea reform prescription for a specific country cannot easily and successfully be transferred to another one so transferring the formal and economic structure of a successful power market in a developed country to developing countries is not a sufficient condition for good economic performance of the electricity industries in developing countries furthermore the study suggests that power consumption income level and country specific features constitute other important determinants of electricity price cost margins and cross subsidy levels

did residential electricity rates fall after retail competition a dynamic panel analysis abstract a key selling point for the restructuring of electricity markets was the promise of lower prices there is not much consensus in earlier studies on the effects of electricity deregulation in the u s particularly for residential customers part of the reason for not finding a consistent link with deregulation and lower prices was that the removal of transitional price caps led to higher prices in addition the timing of the removal of price caps coincided with rising fuel prices which were passed on to consumers in a competitive market using a dynamic panel model we analyze the effect of participation rates fuel costs market size a rate cap and switch to competition for 16 states and the district of columbia we find that an increase in participation rates price controls a larger market and high shares of hydro in electricity generation lower retail prices while increases in natural gas and coal prices increase rates we also find that retail competition makes the market more efficient by lowering the markup of retail prices over wholesale costs the effects of a competitive retail electricity market are mixed across states but generally appear to lower prices in states with high participation rates

incumbency effects in political campaigns in this paper we examine two effects of incumbency first an incumbent may have an advantage in creating a favorable image in the eyes of the voters second the incumbent may have to chose a position before the challenger this second aspect of incumbency is modelled as stackelberg leadership in the model two candidates run for election by choosing a position in an ideological spectrum voters care about candidates chosen positions as well as non policy attributes of candidates which we call charisma charismata are not known when candidates choose policy positions they are only revealed on election day so that winning is not usually a certain prospect candidates care about the probability of winning but they also dislike compromising their own ideals

the impact of regulatory quality and corruption on residential electricity prices in the context of electricity market reforms abstract the european electricity markets have been undergoing significant regulatory reforms since the introduction of the first liberalisation directive in 1996 theory predicts that liberalisation promotes cost efficient production and competition and hence leads to lower prices the goal of this paper is to assess the impact of regulatory quality and non compliance with the law on electricity prices in the context of electricity market reforms we address problems of endogeneity by using the blundell blond system gmm estimator and find that vertical integration and market concentration lower end user prices all else equal moreover improving regulatory quality and reducing corruption both have a negative impact on prices when holding other factors constant the intensity of the reforms has limited impact on electricity prices when these reforms are introduced in an institutional environment characterised by high levels of corruption and low quality regulation

declining electoral competitiveness in the house of representatives the differential impact of improved transportation technology this paper advances the hypothesis that improvements in the national transportation and communication infrastructure are responsible for the vanishing marginals or the increased electoral security of u s representatives we assume that margin and security are directly affected by the amount of time a legislator or a member of her staff devotes to direct contact with constituents in the home district formally we demonstrate that a decline in the time opportunity cost associated with travel to the district improves victory margins where we proxy improvement in transportation technology by using a distance variable across three different historical samples 1890 1928 and 1970 this proposition offers a potentially more fundamental explanation of declining electoral competition than existing explanations focusing on professionalism careerism redistricting and bureaucratic casework in fact the technology communication hypothesis may well encompass such explanations the model specified here offers at best a crude test of the hypothesis that technology and communication are the cause of the vanishing marginals a superior test would include the actual time required to travel to each district in each sample year because a closer but more inaccessible location would be less electorally favorable according to the logic underlying our model while distance is therefore an imperfect proxy we are encouraged by the results of the preliminary test the next step for future research is to identify which technological innovations have had the greatest impact in order to accomplish this a more complete model of the link between legislators and constituents must be established

deregulation vertical unbundling and the performance of china s large coal fired power plants article i nfo in 2003 china s integrated electricity utility the state power corporation spc was unbundled and dism antled into five generation groups and two grid companies in an effort to increase competition and improve ef ficiency in this paper we study the impact of this deregulation reform on the operational efficiency for a balanced panel of 34 large power plants for the period 1997 2010 we find that on average these power plants have converged to the technological frontier over the sample period controlling for substantial heterogeneity in the technical profile we also find that the unbundling reform has boosted productivity of china s large thermal power plants however the presumably differential impacts of the reform on the previously spc managed power plants and the independent power producers in our sample are insignificant

targeting transfers through restrictions on recipients our objective is to design transfer programs that maximize some social welfare function following the optimal income tax formulation we assume that a random process endows individuals with characteristics that influence welfare such as ability to earn income medical condition or unmonitorable income the goal is to maximize the utility of a randomly chosen individual other individualistic social welfare functions would lead to equivalent results if the random characteristics were observable a first best outcome could be achieved by making them the basis for lump sum transfers in practice however we can observe only indicators of these characteristics such as earnings medical expenditures or consumption patterns the challenge for policy is to design an efficient second best transfer program based on indicators in this paper we argue that 1 an optimal transfer program in general must sacrifice productive efficiency to target efficiency this is done by imposing restrictions on the choices made by intended beneficiaries 2 a program that incorporates restrictions such as means tested in kind transfers commodity specific taxes and subsidies and even ordeals i e the imposition of deadweight costs to qualify for a transfer will perform better than programs that rely solely on income taxes and cash transfers

electoral equilibria with restricted strategies we construct a spatial election model in which candidates inherit initial positions in the strategy space presumably from previous political activity and they are restricted to strategies close to their initial positions we establish sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium the equilibrium need not entail an expectation of a zero plurality for each candidate we then apply this model to a sequence of elections in which a series of opposition candidates challenge incumbents given certain regularity conditions the result will be an apparent incumbency advantage corresponding to that observed in recent congressional elections

a model of candidate location when one candidate has a valence advantage that under some fairly weak assumptions for all levels of the valence advantage the advantaged candidate chooses a more moderate position than the disadvantaged candidate empirical studies of congressional elections by fiorina 1973 and ansolabehere snyder and stewart 2001 support this result d owns 1957 seminal work presents a puzzle for scholars of u s elections why do candidates not converge to the median voter one of the best explanations is that the candidates themselves have ideological preferences as calvert 1985 and wittman 1977 1983 have shown when candidates have such preferences and they are sufficiently uncertain about the preferences of the median voter then they do not converge although they may moderate their positions from their ideal point the basic version of the calvert wittman model however does not account for another basic fact of u s elections often one of the candidates has an advantage due to a nonpolicy factor such as incumbency greater campaign funds better name recognition superior charisma superior intelligence and so on stokes has dubbed such factors valence factors and he has noted their importance in u s elections stokes 1963 1992 1 in this article i extend the basic calvert wittman model by giving one candidate a valence advantage over the other i show that if the valence characteristics of the candidates are approximately equal then when a candidate s valence advantage increases this causes her to move toward the

how inefficient are multiple in kind transfers the inefficiencies from multiple in kind transfers are smaller than one would guess from studying such programs singly though medicaid can give rise to average discounts as large as 60 percent the benefits from the programs are quite large relative to recipients incomes effective marginal tax rates under in kind transfers are appreciably lower than they would be if the programs gave cash poverty rates among recipients are markedly lowered if one counts the value of in kind transfers as income this effect is insensitive to whether one accounts for the discounting of in kind transfers by recipients

the environmental paradox in generation how south america is gradually becoming more dependent on thermal generation there has been an increasing focus on global warming emission of green house gases ghg and the problems this might create in this article we review the trend in sustainable and renewable electricity generation in south america where the generation portfolio increasingly depends on thermal generation in particular gas south america is a region that has relatively low emissions but the current development is not desirable in environmental terms we analyze the underlying reasons for this development which is related to security of supply deregulation and the cost of renewable energy we review and discuss the policies to promote renewables in the region we analyze the potential advantages and drawbacks of different types of market interventions such as direct subsidies that create potentially strong market distortions more sophisticated market interventions that might be less intrusive but not necessarily as effective as e g firm energy markets we also review market based solutions such as the clean market mechanism and its potential and the use of renewable electricity in non interconnected zones which might be one of the most economically attractive applications of renewables however without a stronger and more aggressive intervention from the governments in the region it is unlikely that the increase in thermal generation can be stopped

political pricing of electricity can it go with universal service provision abstract political parties in india are known to use electricity prices as a tool to secure a win in the democratic election process this article examines the setting of electricity prices from a political economy perspective citizens differ in their willingness to pay for electricity and the consumer surplus and electoral uncertainty seem to influence their choices while exercising their franchise to win political parties must receive a majority of votes and a party in power may try to achieve this by choosing to ignore a consumer group either by charging a price higher than their willingness to pay or by choosing to satisfy them by charging a lower price two theoretical models are proposed the first model computes the possible prices when common perfectly correlated electoral shocks are anticipated while the second model computes the possible prices for independent and identically distributed electoral shocks we test these models with available data on willingness to pay and electricity price for agricultural domestic and industrial consumers in an indian state by generating prices that would be charged to each of these types of consumers to maximize the chances of re election actual prices seem to confirm the second model more than the first

effective tax rates and guarantees in the afdc program 1967 1982 estimates of effective tax rates on earned and unearned income and estimates of effective guarantees in the afdc program by state are provided for the period 1967 1982 the results indicate that effective real guarantees fell every year from 1967 to 1981 but stabilized in 1982 effective tax rates on unearned income rose steadily from 1967 to 1981 and took a particularly large additional jump in 1982 effective tax rates on earned income fell after 1967 but then gradually rose throughout the 1970s until 1982 when they took a much larger jump thus guarantees fell and tax rates rose over the 1970s as tight budgets forced states to restrict benefits and in the early 1980s tax rates were pushed even higher by federal legislation

effects of regulatory reforms in the electricity supply industry on electricity prices in developing countries electric power sector reforms in the electricity supply industry have had an impact on industrial and household prices in developing countries in latin america the former soviet union and eastern europe using original panel data for 83 countries during the period from 1985 to 2002 we examine how each policy instrument of the reform measures influenced electricity prices for countries in the above regions we found that variables such as entry of independent power producers ipp unbundling of generation and transmission establishment of a regulatory agency and the introduction of a wholesale spot market have had a variety of impacts on electricity prices some of which were not always consistent with expected results the research findings suggest that neither unbundling nor introduction of a wholesale pool market on their own necessarily reduces the electric power price in fact contrary to expectations there was a tendency for the price to rise however coexistent with an independent regulator unbundling may work to reduce electricity prices privatization and the introduction of foreign ipp and retail competition lower electricity prices in some regions but not all

incumbency electoral safety and turnover in the house of representatives 1952 76 two hypotheses have received a great deal of attention from students of congressional elections first many analysts have concluded that an increase in the electoral value attached to incumbency accounts for the rise in incumbents victory margins observed since the mid sixties second many scholars have attributed the decline in electoral turnover to the percentage increase in victory margins analyzing the electoral histories of 13 house cohorts 1952 76 this study reexamines these two hypotheses within theframework of a quasi experimental design the results presented here in contrast to those of previous studies cast doubt on the increased incumbency effect moreover little relationship is found between an increase in electoral safety as reflected by increased victory margins and a decline in electoral turnover

a 100 year review of electricity policy in ireland 1916 2015 abstract over the past century ireland s electricity sector has undergone a significant transformation this paper documents the nation s struggle to build an electricity system to improve security of electricity supply through portfolio diversification and to promote indigenous energy sources this was a challenge for an electrically isolated island with little natural resources the paper also identifies the ineffective policy decisions that left ireland exposed to the 1970s energy crises the crises did however provide a clear impetus for focusing irish energy policy going forward the successful deployment and integration of large scale wind power was due to strong national and supranational policy decisions in 2015 ireland had the third highest wind energy share of national electricity demand 22 8 of all iea wind member countries the paper also traces ireland s transition through market reform regional fragmentation and looks onwards to the eu internal market for electricity in essence this paper provides a holistic view of the implications of various policy decisions on the electricity sector along with the stresses of external factors on the electricity market and should be useful for policy makers elsewhere faced with similar decisions

distributional impacts of climate change mitigation in indian electricity the influence of governance abstract studies that examine the distributional impacts of climate change mitigation policies often neglect the influence of institutions that implement these policies this study examines the short term consumption side distributional impacts of expanding low carbon electric supply in the state of maharashtra india with a focus on the influence of regulatory discretion in pricing households welfare impacts from economy wide electricity price shocks are simulated against a baseline that is calibrated to actual household economic and electricity service conditions including actual electricity budgets block tier prices and supply rationing industrial price impacts are propagated to households using a leontief input output analysis regulatory pricing decisions are evaluated based on social welfare metrics for economic efficiency and income inequality the analysis reveals new linkages between climate change mitigation electricity policy and income distribution low income households can be shielded from mitigation impacts without losses in aggregate welfare to the extent that regulators can recover mitigation costs through industrial price increases regulators flexibility to distribute costs across households is constrained by industrial customers migration off the grid reduced supply interruptions to the rural poor from the resulting demand contraction are a potential co benefit of mitigation distributional impacts therefore depend on other electricity policies that are driven by the political economy of the sector

estimating incumbency advantage without bias in this paper we prove theoretically and demonstrate empirically that all existing measures of incumbency advantage in the congressional elections literature are biased or inconsistent we then provide an unbiased estimator based on a very simple linear regression model we apply this new method to congressional elections since 1900 providing the first evidence of a positive incumbency advantage in the first half of the century incumbency advantage is the most frequently studied factor in the last 15 years of congressional elections research discovery of the increase in incum bency advantage has sparked controversy over its origins historical pattern cur rent magnitude and electoral democratic and policy consequences even the most basic descriptive information about incumbency advantage is flawed be cause every previous measure based on aggregate data in this literature is plagued by selection bias inconsistencies and inefficiencies we prove this result and also propose a new unbiased and statistically efficient measure that is very easy to calculate congressional elections from 1900 to the present fit our theoretical model our empirical reanalyses do not challenge the existing scholarly consen sus that incumbency advantage is much larger than it once was however we do challenge the prevailing belief that incumbency advantage was nonexistent and the evidence that it was negative in house elections during the first half of this century alford and brady 1988 we show instead that the average advantage of incumbency in these elections was about two percentage points in section 1 of this paper we define incumbency advantage and section 2 gives an intuitive sense of the problems identifying it even in ideal electoral sys tems section 3 formally proves that sophomore surge and retirement slump are biased estimates of incumbency advantage and section 4 briefly reveals the flaws

economic voting and the symbolic politics argument a reinterpretation and synthesis economic voting is generally regarded as a straightforward political demand for the amelioration of economic grievances this assumption about motives underlies the implicit theories of politicians and the imputations of interests to voters in aggregate time series models several recent articles have argued that voting is not self interested but a manifestation of symbolic preferences at the level of the collectivity this article places the dispute between personal and collective decision referents into the broader perspective of a multi stage model of information processing and decision making personal and collective decision referents are shown to define the poles of a continuum and several hypotheses are derived to predict the relative weights assigned to each in the voter s calculus the model is used in analyses of both the public s evaluations of incumbent economic management and economic voting in different electoral arenas by varying issue publics designed to maximize comparability with aggregate studies this research includes both objective and subjective measures of economic conditions and indexes changes in personal conditions over time from panel data