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

analyzing the impact of futures trading on spot price volatility evidence from the spot electricity market in france and germany abstract this paper examines the impact of the introduction of electricity futures on the spot price volatility of the french powernext and german eex electricity markets as well as the degree of their price correlation over the period 2002 2011 our working hypotheses were tested based on a bivariate vecm garch model the results indicate that the introduction of futures contracts in the french electricity market as well as the launch of the joint futures market in these countries in 2009 has decreased spot price volatility however this effect was not as explicit for the german market due to data specificities other interesting results are the german market dominates and leads the long run price relationship the impact of cooling needs on demand is greater than the impact of heating needs there is a substantial systematic pattern of electricity prices and their respective volatilities during weekdays and holidays overall results are supportive of policy making at the european commission regarding electricity market integration

price dynamics among u s electricity spot markets combining recent advances in causal flows with time series analysis relationships among 11 u s spot market electricity prices are examined results suggest that the relationships among the markets vary by time frame in contemporaneous time the western markets are separated from the eastern markets and the electricity reliability council of texas at longer time frames these separations disappear even though electricity transmission between the regions is limited it appears the relationships among markets are not only a function of physical assets such as transmissions lines among markets but by similar and dissimilar institutional arrangements among the markets

volatility transmission and volatility impulse response functions in european electricity forward markets using daily data from march 2001 to june 2005 we estimate a var bekk model and find evidence of return and volatility spillovers between the german the dutch and the british forward electricity markets we apply hafner and herwartz 2006 journal of international money and finance 25 719 740 volatility impulse response function virf to quantify the impact of shock on expected conditional volatility we observe that a shock has a high positive impact only if its size is large compared to the current level of volatility the impact of shocks are usually not persistent which may be an indication of market efficiency finally we estimate the density of the virf at different forecast horizon these fitted distributions are asymmetric and show that extreme events are possible even if their probability is low these results have interesting implications for market participants whose risk management policy is based on option prices which themselves depend on the volatility level

cointegration analysis of spot electricity prices insights on transmission efficiency in the western us abstract the us energy policy act of 1992 promoted the development of spot markets for electric power by requiring utilities to open their transmission systems to wholesale power sales in this paper we specify and estimate a vector error correction model using peak and off peak electricity spot prices during 1994 1996 covering 11 regional markets in the western united states and test these prices for evidence of market integration the results show evidence of an efficient and stable wholesale power market

heterogeneous price dynamics in u s regional electricity markets abstract the u s electricity wholesale market is organized in several deregulated regional markets this paper compares price dynamics of electricity in the u s wholesale markets and shows that electricity prices from the west and east coasts have different regime dynamics our methodology suggests that electricity prices are better parameterized by four regimes with different levels of volatility additionally west and east coast markets differ in the time spent in each regime the extremely high volatility regime describes west coast prices during the california electricity crisis but east coast prices are also frequent in that regime we find evidence of synchronization of price dynamics in the mean reverting and highest volatility regimes i e prices from the east and west coasts tend to be in the same regimes at the same time

deregulation of the nordic power market and environmental policy abstract a common nordic power market will reduce total co 2 emissions in the nordic countries as compared to a situation of autarky and thus reduce the aggregate cost of complying to strict national co 2 emission targets a common market for co 2 emission permits may reduce the aggregate cost further but this cost reduction will be smaller the harsher the co 2 emission constraints are the economic gain of introducing a common nordic power market will be particularly large in the case of a swedish nuclear power phase out in this case the cost reduction of introducing a common market for co 2 emission permits will not be very large

the contagion channels of july august 2011 stock market crash a dag copula based approach abstract the objective of this paper is to empirically investigate whether there is a contagion phenomenon between the stock markets during the july august 2011 stock market crash when there is a market contagion we will identify the propagation channel through which the crash is transmitted hence after checking if there is financial contagion between the stock markets we will see if the transmission mechanism constraints of wealth outweighs that of the portfolio rebalancing an additional test covering the interdependence between the stock and bond markets during the crash helps us verify whether the transmission is due either to the cross market rebalancing channel or to the flight to quality phenomenon on the basis of the combination of the copula theory and the directed acyclic graph to study the structure of causal dependence between the stock market during the period that lies between 01 02 2010 and 28 11 2012 we show that the links between countries are different between the pre crash period and that of the crash more specifically the links that do not exist during normal times seem to have a major role during the crash period we interpret this result as an evidence of the existence of pure contagion on the one hand the tests show that the channel of the portfolio rebalancing was the major mechanism for the spread of the crash on the other hand the phenomenon of the cross market rebalancing existed only in germany whereas that of the flight to quality was in all the other studied stock markets

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

an econometric framework for evaluating the efficiency of a market for transmission congestion contracts abstract the goals of this paper are to 1 simulate the ex ante riskiness of purchasing a tcc and 2 evaluate the efficiency of the tcc market in new york state to determine if there is evidence of under pricing three var models are estimated using only market data available before the auction this model is then used to simulate the daily payouts of a tcc for the following summer a monte carlo procedure simulates the daily summer temperatures the levels of quantity demanded and prices over the summer months the main empirical result is that the market price paid for the most important tcc in terms of volume the hudson valley to new york city is higher than the mean of the simulated payouts even though the actual payout was higher than the market price the market prices for the other two tccs are lower than the means of the simulated payouts and as a result there is no consistent evidence of under pricing in this analysis of the market for six month tccs in the summer of 2006

long run relations in european electricity prices this paper analyses the interdependencies existing in wholesale electricity prices in six major european countries the results of a robust multivariate long run dynamic analysis reveal the presence of four highly integrated central european markets france germany the netherlands and austria the trend shared by these four electricity markets appears to be common also to gas prices but not to oil prices the existence of a common long term dynamics among electricity prices and between electricity prices and gas prices can be explained by the similarity of the market design across europe and by the same marginal generation technology since standard unit root and cointegration tests are not robust to the peculiar characteristics of electricity prices time series we also develop a battery of robust inference procedures that should assure the reliability of our results copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

bidding structure market efficiency and persistence in a multi time tariff setting the purpose of this study is to examine the fractal dynamics of day ahead electricity prices by using parametric and semi parametric approaches for each time zone in a multi time tariff setting in the framework of bidding strategies market efficiency and persistence of exogenous shocks we find that that electricity prices have long term correlation structure for the first and third time zones indicating that market participants bid hyperbolically and not at their marginal costs market is not weak form efficient at these hours and exogenous shocks to change the mean level of prices will have permanent effect and be effective on the other hand for the second time zone we find that price series does not exhibit long term memory this finding suggests the weak form efficiency of the market in these hours and that market participants bid at their marginal costs furthermore this indicates that exogenous shocks will have temporary effect on electricity prices in these hours these findings constitute an important foundation for policy makers and market participants to develop appropriate electricity price forecasting tools market monitoring indexes and to conduct ex ante impact assessment

the structure of interdependence in international stock markets abstract this study investigates the dynamic structure of nine major stock markets using an error correction model and directed acyclic graphs dag the dag representation provides a structure of causality among these markets in contemporaneous time building on this contemporaneous structure and the estimated error correction model innovation accounting techniques are applied the results show that the japanese market is among the most highly exogenous and the canadian and french markets among the least exogenous in our nine market study the us market is highly influenced by its own historical innovations but it is also influenced by market innovations from the uk switzerland hong kong france and germany the us market is the only market that has a consistently strong impact on price movements in other major stock markets in the longer run

merit order effects of renewable energy and price divergence in california s day ahead and real time electricity markets abstract we answer two policy questions 1 what are the estimated merit order effects of renewable energy in the california independent system operator s caiso s day ahead market dam and real time market rtm and 2 what causes the hourly dam and rtm prices to systematically diverge the first question is timely and relevant because if the merit order effect estimates are small california s renewable energy development is of limited help in cutting electricity consumers bills but also has a lesser adverse impact on the state s investment incentive for natural gas fired generation the second question is related to the efficient market hypothesis under which the hourly rtm and dam prices tend to converge using a sample of about 21 000 hourly observations of caiso market prices and their fundamental drivers during 12 12 2012 04 30 2015 we document statistically significant estimates p value 0 01 for the dam and rtm merit order effects this finding lends support to california s adopted procurement process to provide sufficient investment incentives for natural gas fired generation we document that the rtm dam price divergence partly depends on the casio s day ahead forecast errors for system loads and renewable energy this finding suggests that improving the performance of the caiso s day ahead forecasts can enhance trading efficiency in california s dam and rtm electricity markets

capital services in u s agriculture concepts comparisons and the treatment of interest rates this paper begins with a review of the methods and assumptions used to measure capital service flows two data series on capital inputs in u s agriculture are briefly described and compared we show that measures of capital services are sensitive to the treatment of interest rates notably the use of fixed versus variable market rates significantly affects measures of the quantity and productivity of agricultural capital in the united states we conclude that when calculating capital usage in u s agriculture the use of a fixed interest rate generates more plausible estimates than the use of an annual market rate

market price of risk implied by asian style electricity options and futures in this paper we propose a jump diffusion type model which recovers the main characteristics of electricity spot price dynamics in the nordic market including seasonality mean reversion and spiky behavior we show how the calibration of the market price of risk to actively traded futures contracts allows for efficient valuation of nord pool s asian style options written on the spot electricity price furthermore we study the evolution of the market price of risk and the risk premium over a three year time period and compare the obtained results with those reported in the literature

impacts of day ahead versus real time market prices on wholesale electricity demand in texas abstract the somewhat recent nodal market structure in texas impacts wholesale day ahead market dam and real time market rtm prices however comparative insights on consumer responses to both these prices have not received attention this paper attempts to fill this void by developing a system wide demand response model to better understand price elasticities under dam and rtm pricing these insights may also assist grid operators to develop improved short term forecasts of electricity demand using a large dataset from the electric reliability council of texas and a hierarchical bayesian population model we offer new insights on how dam and rtm pricing shapes demand for electricity and the related consequences for maintaining a reliable electricity market

agents come to bits towards a constructive comprehensive taxonomy of economic entities abstract mirowski mirowski p 2007 markets come to bits evolution computation and markomata in economic science journal of economic behavior and organization 63 209 242 argues for a constructive approach to economic modeling centered on markets as evolving computational entities this essay counters that a broader constructive approach to economic modeling can and should be taken the recent advent of powerful computer technologies supporting agent based modeling abm renders feasible the computational study of economies modeled as evolving systems of interacting agents in abm an agent refers broadly to bundled data and behavioral methods representing an entity constituting part of a computationally constructed world examples of possible agent referents include individuals social groupings institutions e g markets biological entities such as crops and physical entities such as transportation networks and weather consequently abm provides tremendous opportunities for economists and other social scientists to tailor the breadth and depth of the entities represented in their models to the application at hand a simple abm of a two sector decentralized market economy is used for concrete illustration

regime jumps in electricity prices many countries are liberalizing their energy markets participants in these markets are exposed to market risk due to the characteristics of electricity price dynamics electricity prices are known to be mean reverting very volatile and subject to frequent spikes models that describe the dynamics of electricity prices should incorporate these characteristics in order to capture the price spikes many researchers have introduced stochastic jump processes but we argue and show that this specification might lead to potential problems with specifying the true amount of mean reversion within the process in this paper we propose a regime switching model that models price spikes separated from normal mean reverting prices

integration and shock transmissions across european electricity forward markets abstract new results are presented relating to the integration of the french german british dutch and spanish power markets at day ahead week ahead one month ahead and two month ahead lead times overall there is evidence of market integration increasing over time despite an underlying inefficiency in each market with respect to the forward and spot price convergence the spatial analysis on a financial dimension is undertaken using causality tests cointegration and impulse response techniques for both price levels and volatilities in general we find less influence of the size and proximity of neighbouring markets than other studies more integration at baseload than peak and surprisingly less integration in forwards than spot prices

a dynamic network analysis of spot electricity prices in the australian national electricity market abstract this study applies dynamic network analysis to the power sector examining the relationship between regional spot electricity prices in the australian national electricity market nem in particular we employ principal component analysis and generate granger causality networks to examine the degree of interconnectedness of the nem in a time varying setting we find that the derived measures of interdependence can be related to actual market events such as price spikes unexpected high demand for electricity sudden increases in price volatility rebidding of dominant generators the temporary or permanent outage of major power stations and upgrades and limitations in transmission capacity in the analysed network we find that stronger dependence is exhibited by regional markets that are linked through interconnectors while the direction of granger causality can be related to interregional trade we further examine the usefulness of the derived measures for forecasting distributional characteristics of spot prices such as the maximum price volatility price spreads or upcoming periods of price spikes our results suggest that the derived network measures have predictive power albeit limited for the behaviour of spot electricity prices in the nem