measuring the influence of canadian carbon stabilization programs on natural gas exports to the united states via a bottom up intertemporal spatial price equilibrium model abstract in this paper we present the results of a study of the impact of canadian carbon stabilization programs on exports of natural gas to the united states this work was based on a study conducted for the us environmental protection agency the gas systems analysis model gsam developed by icf consulting for the us department of energy was used to gauge the overall impact of the stabilization programs on the north american natural gas market gsam is an intertemporal spatial price equilibrium spe type model of the north american natural gas system salient features of this model include characterization of over 17 000 gas production reservoirs with explicit reservoir level geologic and economic information used to build up the supply side of the market on the demand side four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power generation are characterized in the model lastly both above and below ground storage facilities as well as a comprehensive pipeline network are used with the supply and demand side characterizations to arrive at estimates of market equilibrium prices and quantities and flows

supply storage and service reliability decisions by gas distribution utilities a chance constrained approach this paper explores the trade offs among purchases storage and service reliability decisions faced by natural gas distribution utilities the short term demand for natural gas fluctuates because of the weather to encourage load leveling the pipeline transmission companies that supply the utilities use a demand contract that charges utilities based on their peak day needs and often charge for a minimum daily purchase requirement whether that purchase is made or not the policy variables available to the utility include increasing its storage capacity and providing interruptible service to some customers thereby lowering reliability of service there are also technological constraints on the maximum storage gas flows to explore these trade offs a chance constrained cost minimization problem is formulated two decision rules for gas purchases and storage operation are examined in these rules an initial decision is made at the beginning of each month about either the level of purchases or the level of

a large scale linear complementarity model of the north american natural gas market abstract the north american natural gas market has seen significant changes recently due to deregulation and restructuring for example third party marketers can contract for transportation and purchase of gas to sell to end users while the intent was a more competitive market the potential for market power exists we analyze this market using a linear complementarity equilibrium model including producers storage and peak gas operators third party marketers and four end use sectors the marketers are depicted as nash cournot players determining supply to meet end use consumption all other players are in perfect competition results based on national petroleum council scenarios are presented

strategic eurasian natural gas market model for energy security and policy analysis formulation and application to south stream abstract the mathematical formulation of a strategic eurasian natural gas market model is presented the model represents horizontal oligopolistic relationships among producers bilateral market power between producer russia and transit ukraine countries detailed transport constraints and operation decisions over a 20 year time horizon to demonstrate the model s capabilities a financial and market analysis of the proposed south stream gas pipeline from russia via the black sea to south europe is summarized insights obtained include the following first expectations of high demand growth in europe and or transit risks do not justify the construction of the south stream pipeline because under all demand and ukraine transit interruption scenarios the net benefits to the south stream participants are negative the npv ranges from 1 9 billion bn to 7 4 bn second ukraine s perception of high transit market power vis a vis russia may trigger the construction of the otherwise unprofitable south stream project thus under ukraine s high transit market power scenario the npv of south stream ranges between 2 4 bn and 24 5 bn third we find that the south stream investment increases the efficiency of the european gas market under the following conditions i when gas demand in europe grows 2 per year up to 2030 ii when ukraine poses high transit market power or iii under a combination of severe transit risks through ukraine and low demand scenarios in europe it should be noted that the value of south stream to both its project sponsors and the market as a whole is much higher when ukraine exercises transit market power than under the high demand scenario therefore whether ukraine is likely to wield market power is crucial to the success of the south stream project because that is the only scenario in which the project yields both a positive expected npv to its sponsors and the highest value to the market as a whole

the effects of changes of the job offer arrival rate on the duration of unemployment generally it is acknowledged that changing the job offer arrival rate has two opposite effects on unemployment duration for a basic job search model sufficient conditions on the wage offer distribution have been derived ensuring that one of the effects dominates however these are not satisfied for the popular families of wage offer distributions here i show that the conditions can be weakened at virtually no cost the set of distributions satisfying the new conditions is considerably larger than the set previously established in particular it includes all wage offer distribution families that are popular in structural empirical research

a marginal cost pricing model for gas distribution utilities we develop a natural gas distribution utility pricing model that includes optimization of supply mix and capacity expansion financial analysis of revenue requirements and design of either average cost or marginal cost based rates and apply it using data from the east ohio gas company the results clearly point to the superiority of marginal cost over average cost pricing policies in terms of lesser capital requirements better capacity utilization and higher end use economic efficiency

lowering saudi arabia s fuel consumption and energy system costs without increasing end consumer prices using a multi sector equilibrium model of the saudi energy system that handles administered prices in a mixed complementarity formulation we present results from a set of policy scenarios that lower oil consumption in the country some of these scenarios are the solutions to mathematical programs subject to equilibrium constraints mpecs that maximize the net economic gain for the saudi economy the policies examined have the potential to generate economic gains exceeding 23 billion usd in 2011 or about 4 of saudi arabia s gdp this economic gain comes mainly from inter sectoral fuel pricing policies that incent shifting the mix in technologies that generate electricity and produce water from energy intensive technologies to more efficient ones we show that when complemented by credits for investments in solar and nuclear power generation capacities a modest increase in the transfer prices of fuels among sectors is sufficient to produce economic gains close to those achieved by deregulating transfer prices the approach we develop here is an alternative to the classic recommendation of deregulating inter sectoral fuel prices in situations where the conditions for successful liberalized markets do not exist it is a template for introducing the notions of incentivizing behavior using prices into countries that rely more on administrative procedures than markets leading to a deeper understanding of how markets can lead to economic gain

job search and unemployment duration implications for the spatial mismatch hypothesis abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between unemployment duration and the spatial distribution of employment it builds on the spatial mismatch literature by analyzing the role of access in a job search framework a unique measure of access is created using municipal level employment growth and a matrix of commuting times for the pittsburgh metropolitan area individuals with more access to employment are found to have shorter unemployment spells the effect of access on unemployment duration is found to be sensitive to the specification of access

is there a threat effect of labour market programmes a study of almp in the danish ui system this article focuses on unemployed individuals reaction to compulsory labour market programmes prior to participation in denmark after having received ui benefits for a given period of time continued benefits are made conditional on participation in a labour market programme i estimate individuals reaction to compulsory programmes using legislative changes in the duration of benefits period as identification i find that compulsory programmes do indeed motivate individuals to find employment prior to participation the effect is large and is even comparable in size to the effect of benefits exhaustion found in studies of american ui systems

an evaluation of alternative scenarios for the gazprom monopoly of russian gas exports in june 2006 russian federal law legalized the exclusive right of gazprom to export natural gas to europe and thus thwarted efforts by the european union to bring competition to the russian gas industry an understanding of the motivation of the russian government to support this export monopoly is important if europe wishes to reduce its dependence on gazprom the principal aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of this important question our analysis employs a theoretical model and several numerical simulations of an alternative organization used for gas exports where independent gas producers in russia are permitted to export gas to europe we evaluate the effects of this alternative organization on consumer surplus industry profits and russian welfare the results demonstrate that while export by independent producers reduces gazprom s export profits it may also increase the total domestic and export profits earned by the russian gas industry however the results also suggest that russian gas consumers will not benefit if independent gas producers are able to supply both the domestic and international markets

unemployment insurance and male unemployment duration in canada a model of unemployment duration is estimated with weekly micro data on canadian men entitlement provisions in the unemployment insurance program and demand conditions are found to have a significant effect on the probability of leaving unemployment the probability of a worker leaving unemployment declines with the duration of unemployment holding unemployment insurance entitlement constant when entitlement is allowed to vary the probability of leaving first falls and then generally rises with unemployment duration these results are robust with respect to allowing for person specific unobserved heterogeneity and alternative specifications of duration dependence

the national energy modeling system a large scale energy economic equilibrium model the national energy modeling system nems is a large scale mathematical model that computes equilibrium fuel prices and quantities in the u s energy sector and is currently in use at the u s department of energy doe at present to generate these equilibrium values nems iteratively solves a sequence of linear programs and nonlinear equations this is a nonlinear gauss seidel approach to arrive at estimates of market equilibrium fuel prices and quantities in this paper we present existence and uniqueness results for nems type models based on a nonlinear complementarity variational inequality problem format also we document mathematically for the first time how the inputs and the outputs for each nems module link together

unemployment insurance recall expectations and unemployment outcomes this paper empirically examines the importance of explicitly accounting for the layoff rehire process in the analysis of unemployment outcomes in the united states we find that the spells of individuals who initially expect to be recalled account for much more of the unemployment of unemployment insurance ui recipients than do spells actually ending in recall our results indicate that the recall and new job escape rates from unemployment have quite different time patterns and are often affected in opposite ways by explanatory variables we also find that the probability of leaving unemployment both through recalls and new job finding increases greatly around the time that ui benefits lapse over the past fifteen years many studies have empirically analyzed the determinants of individual unemployment spell durations in the united states much of this literature has used a job search framework in which the unemployed are viewed as permanently displaced workers who are unattached to jobs the possibility of recall to a former job a process not requiring search has been omitted from explicit consideration in the majority of these studies 2 an explicit treatment of the layoff rehire process is necessary for a proper understanding of the determinants of unemployment durations and of the impacts of unemployment policies in the united states for at least three reasons first temporary layoffs in which workers are often rehired by their original employers are a quantitatively quite important feature of the u s labor market 3 second expectations concerning the likelihood of recall are likely to affect the responses of employers and unemployed workers to labor market interventions such as reemployment bonuses and subsidies

a mixed complementarity based equilibrium model of natural gas markets we present a new multiseasonal multiyear natural gas market equilibrium model based on the concept of a competitive equilibrium involving the market participants producers storage reservoir operators peak gas operators pipeline operators marketers and consumers the first three classes are depicted as price takers consistent with perfect competition the pipeline operations are described with regulated tariffs but also involve congestion pricing as a mechanism to allocate scarce pipeline capacity the marketers are price takers in all markets except in sales to consumers in which they compete as nash cournot players finally consumers are described by demand curves for each of the four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power we show that the equilibrium model is an instance of a mixed nonlinear complementarity problem ncp and provide sufficient detail not generally seen in previous complementarity models of natural gas the ncp formulation is derived from considering the karush kuhn tucker optimality conditions of the optimization problems faced by these participants under mild conditions we show that this ncp has a solution and under additional reasonable conditions we show that the market prices are unique we also validate the model on a representative sample network with nine market participants and three seasons using four scenarios

risk aversion in imperfect natural gas markets abstract this paper presents a natural gas market equilibrium model that considers uncertainty in shale gas reserve exploration risk aversion is modeled using a risk measure known as the average value at risk also referred to as the conditional value at risk in the context of the european natural gas market we show how risk aversion affects investment behavior of a polish and a ukrainian natural gas supplier as expected increased risk aversion leads generally to lower investment and a larger share of investments in the form of lower risk alternatives i e conventional resources however in our market setting where multiple risk averse agents each maximize their own profits we do observe some counter intuitive non monotonic results it is noteworthy that in a competitive market risk aversion leads to significantly lower reserve exploration which may be interpreted as a credible threat by a large dominating supplier such as russia a threat to flood natural gas markets could deter importing countries from extending their own reserve bases

a complementarity model for the european natural gas market abstract in this paper we present a detailed and comprehensive complementarity model for computing market equilibrium values in the european natural gas system market players include producers and their marketing arms which we call traders pipeline and storage operators marketers lng liquefiers regasifiers tankers and three end use consumption sectors the economic behavior of producers traders pipeline and storage operators liquefiers and regasifiers is modeled via optimization problems whose karush kuhn tucker kkt optimality conditions in combination with market clearing conditions form the complementarity system the lng tankers marketers and consumption sectors are modeled implicitly via appropriate cost functions aggregate demand curves and ex post calculations respectively the model is run on several case studies that highlight its capabilities including a simulation of a disruption of russian supplies via ukraine

cooperation among liquefied natural gas suppliers is rationalization the sole objective this paper examines the development of cooperative strategies between countries exporting liquefied natural gas lng and members of the gas exporting countries forum gecf this economic study focuses specifically on an often raised scenario the emergence of a cooperative approach designed with the sole aim of logistic rationalization and which would not have any effect on lng prices we first assess the annual gains that may result from this market power free cooperative approach using a simple static transportation model the numerical results obtained suggest that in the absence of a gain redistribution policy this cooperative strategy will probably not be adopted because cooperation would not be a rational move for some exporters the problem of gain sharing is then formulated using cooperative game theory concepts several gain sharing methods have been studied including the shapley value and various nucleolus inspired concepts our results suggest that the choice of a redistribution policy appears relatively restricted out of the methods studied only one per capita nucleolus satisfies two key requirements core belonging and monotonicity in the aggregate lastly we look at how cooperation may give rise to a coordination cost and try to determine the maximum amount of this cost in view of the low level of this amount and the relative complexity of the sharing method implemented we consider that the credibility of a logistic cooperation scenario exempt from market power should be reappraised

an assessment of optimal gas pricing in russia a cge approach domestic gas prices in russia are administratively regulated and they are substantially lower than export netback prices the administrative price regulation operates as an implicit subsidy on domestic gas consumption the russian government aims to liberalise domestic wholesale gas prices in the long term while the export netback parity is defined as a political objective it seems not to be a necessary target anymore the export netback parity is not economically rational for russia because the average export netback price of gas is higher than the marginal cost due to gazprom s market power in export gas markets an optimal domestic gas price is still not well defined this paper addresses this question by employing a comparative static single country multi sector computable generation equilibrium model cge the administrative regulation of domestic gas prices is explicitly modelled the main findings are as follows an increase in the domestic gas price provides economic efficiency gains the more elastic the export and domestic demand for gas the larger the welfare gains the optimal domestic gas price should be approximately 55 of the export netback price increasing the domestic gas price provides additional government revenues which can be used to reduce distortionary taxes on sectoral effects the structure of the russian economy shifts from energy toward non energy intensive sectors in response to an increase in the domestic gas price there is an increase in the export supply of gas furthermore an increase in the domestic gas price leads to a reduction in total co2 emissions

can lng increase competitiveness in the natural gas market the article develops an oligopoly model to analyze the potential role of lng in the liberalization of gas market the assumptions of the model and its results are then discussed using the forecasts of gas demand and production for the next two or three decades

network access and market power abstract we use cooperative game theory to study the impact of the liberalization of eu natural gas markets on the balance of power between local champions customers and outside producers such as russian gazprom we calibrate a model of the eurasian gas network and distinguish between two steps of the reform first the opening of access to transit pipes and second the opening of access to distribution systems hence customers using the shapley value as a power index we find a modest and rather heterogeneous impact from the first step the impact of the second step is much larger and yields a clear pattern all local champions lose while all customers and all outside players gain as one third of the losses of champions within eu leaks to players abroad current reforms might enhance the dominance of already powerful outside producers when network power is assessed with the nucleolus in contrast full liberalization of access to customers does not benefit outside producers at all

a fundamental analysis on the implementation and development of virtual natural gas hubs abstract the ongoing gas market liberalization in europe has brought up a new competitive environment in which shippers i e companies that are responsible for conveying gas from producers to consumers must adapt their behavior to the changing conditions the development of gas virtual hubs increases market interactions among shippers but the oligopolistic market structure may give room for strategic behavior the market is in addition segmented by type of costumer each shipper maximizes its profit by supplying gas to households businesses and industries conventional costumers participating in the electricity market trading in the global lng spot market and interacting with the rest of shippers in a virtual hub during the hub implementation and development the following questions arise how do shippers behave at the different levels of hub maturity and to what extent does the implementation of virtual hubs in entry exit systems diminish the barriers to entry of new market players provides more flexibility and fosters competition with this aim the decision making process of the different shippers is simulated under different market structures representing four stages of the market liberalization process at different levels of hub maturity first the proto liberalization case includes the global lng spot market which is represented as a perfectly competitive market the electricity market which is represented as an oligopoly and the conventional demand which is assumed to be captive i e monopolized second a hub is implemented which provides transparency and reduces information costs by revealing the gas price third switching rates are expected to grow as consumers have access to a transparent gas price hence the conventional demand is no longer considered as captive fourth wholesale procurement and retail activities are unbundled and a wholesale market is established where the retailers presumably buy gas from the shippers thereby wholesale and retail activities acquire importance and market transactions i e liquidity increase from the simulation and the analysis of the different market equilibria the following conclusions emerge first with the introduction of the virtual hub the marginal cost of all shippers reaches a unique value i e the transparent gas hub price second the aggregated profit of the shippers is increasing even when anticompetitive behavior is not explicitly represented due to the flexibility gained by shippers with the hub accordingly and third the hub is a necessary but not sufficient condition to increase competition the entry of new players is critical and discouraging market regulations or the anticompetitive behavior of a highly concentrated market may not facilitate it

energy supply security and geopolitics a european perspective the security of energy supply to the eu is examined in the context of two storylines markets and institutions exemplifies an economically and politically integrated multilateral world with effective institutions and markets regions and empires involves a world broken up in rival political and economic blocks competing for resources and markets via political economic and military power it is shown that these storylines have a significant impact on the development of the energy market on the way in which energy supply may be secured and on the effect and applicability of the several types of instruments available the current eu is geared towards enlargement and a deepening of economic integration based on the tenets of the post 1945 multilateral world system the present world tends towards regions and empires and suggests that the eu may have to reorient its energy security policy energy policy must become an integral part of eu external trade and foreign relations and security policy the eu should develop its own strategy actively investing in dialogues with producer countries in the persian gulf and africa and with russia sustainable prosperity and governance in these regions will support eu energy security

betrayal aversion evidence from brazil china oman switzerland turkey and the united states comment in a series of binary choice problems we investigate how a chooser s risk taking changes when others share in their personal risk either equally or unequally we find that when the safe option yields inequality the risky option is taken significantly more often on the other hand the inequality resulting from the risky choice does not affect risk taking we also find that choosers tend to be less risk averse in a one person context compared to when the risk also affects the payoff of another c72 d81 z13

a stochastic version of a stackelberg nash cournot equilibrium model we consider a stochastic version of the stackelberg nash cournot model proposed by murphy et al 1983 ln the first stage the leader chooses and announces his production level taking into account the reaction of the followers the decision of the leader is taken when market demand is uncertain in the second stage the followers knowing the leader s output react to this level according to the cournot assumption at this stage demand is known we study the extension of the murphy et al model and give a numerical illustration of this model using the european gas market

the benefits of integrating european electricity markets this paper builds on and extends work under contract ener b1 491 1 2012 published as newbery et al 2013

examining market power in the european natural gas market in this paper we develop a mixed complementarity equilibrium model for the european natural gas market this model has producers as cournot players with conjectured supply functions relative to their rivals as such these producers can withhold production to increase downstream prices for greater profits the other players are taken to be perfectly competitive and are combined with extensive pipeline seasonal and other data reflecting the current state of the market four market scenarios are run to analyze the extent of market power by these producers as well as the importance of pipeline and storage capacity

what about coal interactions between climate policies and the global steam coal market until 2030 because of economic growth and a strong increase in global energy demand the demand for fossil fuels and therefore also greenhouse gas emissions are increasing although climate policy should lead to the opposite effect the coal market is of special relevance as coal is available in many countries and often the first choice to meet energy demand in this paper we assess possible interactions between climate policies and the global steam coal market possible market adjustments between demand regions through market effects are investigated with a numerical model of the global steam coal market the coalmod world model this equilibrium model computes future trade flows infrastructure investments and prices until 2030 we investigate three specific designs of climate policy a unilateral european climate policy an indonesian export limiting policy and a fast roll out of carbon capture and storage ccs in the broader context of climate policy and market constraints we find that market adjustment effects in the coal market can have significant positive and negative impacts on the effectiveness of climate policies

social risk and the dimensionality of intentions previous research has documented a behavioral distinction between social risk or risk caused by human factors and natural risk in particular people tend to demand a premium on the probability of a favorable outcome in order to expose themselves to a social source of risk rather than a natural source of risk several explanations for what drives this social risk premium have been offered most prominently i an aversion to a counterparty s potentially malign intentions and ii a more general aversion to ceding control to someone with conflicting interests we propose that a fundamental determinant of the social risk premium may relate to a counterparty s capacity to engage in intentional action we employ a between subjects experimental design in which we manipulate subjects capacity for intentional action our design allows us to identify the component of the social risk premium related to an aversion to betrayal independent of any aversion to ceding control furthermore our results show that in

modeling strategic investment decisions in spatial markets abstract markets for natural resources and commodities are often oligopolistic in these markets production capacities are key for strategic interaction between the oligopolists we analyze how different market structures influence oligopolistic capacity investments and thereby affect supply prices and rents in spatial natural resource markets using mathematical programming models the models comprise an investment stage and a supply stage in which players compete in quantities we compare three models a perfect competition and two cournot models in which the product is either traded through long term contracts or on spot markets in the supply stage tractability and practicality of the approach are demonstrated in an application to the international metallurgical coal market results may vary substantially between the different models the metallurgical coal market has recently made progress in moving away from long term contracts and more towards spot market based trade based on our results we conclude that this regime switch is likely to raise consumer rents but lower producer rents while the effect on total welfare is negligible

assessing market structures in resource markets an empirical analysis of the market for metallurgical coal using various equilibrium models abstract the prevalent market structures found in many resource markets consist of high concentration on the supply side and low demand elasticity market results are therefore frequently assumed to be an outcome of strategic interaction between producers common models to investigate the market outcomes and underlying market structures are games representing competitive markets strategic cournot competition and stackelberg structures that take into account a dominant player acting first followed by one or more players we add to the literature by expanding the application of mathematical models and applying an equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints epec which is used to model multi leader follower games to a spatial market using our model we investigate the prevalent market setting in the international market for metallurgical coal between 2008 and 2010 whose market characteristics provide arguments for a wide variety of market structures using different statistical measures to compare model results with actual market outcomes we find that two previously neglected settings perform best first a setting in which the four largest metallurgical coal exporting firms compete against each other as stackelberg leaders while the remainders act as cournot followers second a setting with bhpb acting as sole stackelberg leader

strategic behaviour in international metallurgical coal markets abstract this paper analyses whether prices and trade flows in the international market for metallurgical coals were subject to non competitive conduct in the period 2008 to 2010 to do so i develop mathematical programming models a stackelberg model two varieties of a cournot model and a perfect competition model for computing spatial equilibria in international resource markets results are analysed with various statistical measures to assess prediction accuracy of the models the results show that real market equilibria cannot be reproduced with a competitive model however real market outcomes can be accurately simulated with the non competitive models suggesting that market equilibria in the international metallurgical coal trade were subject to strategic behaviour of coal exporters

economies of scale and scope in expansion of the u s natural gas pipeline network abstract i analyze cost capacity mileage and technical data for 254 u s natural gas pipeline projects over the period 1997 2012 although project costs exhibit economies of scale over the capacity margin and economies of scope over the spatial margin network expansion costs may not exhibit cost economies overall that is proportional increases in both transmission capacity and length in miles may result in a proportional or even greater than proportional increase in expansion costs moreover large projects high capacity pipelines spanning long distances likely require installation of compression horsepower which has direct cost effects my results suggest such projects exhibit significant diseconomies in cost structure as a result pipeline tariffs based on cost of service pricing likely present a disincentive for prospective pipeline customers to commit to long term contracts which are necessary for the pipeline to acquire regulatory permission to build particularly for large long distance expansion projects the implication is that cost of service pricing may inhibit network expansion exacerbating congestion issues

natural gas corridors between the eu and its main suppliers simulation results with the dynamic gastale model abstract growth in gas demand poses a challenge for european energy consumers and other gas importing countries in terms of an increasing dependency on gas imports and consequently also supply security this paper focuses on interactions among demand supply and investments in natural gas corridors namely pipeline transport lng and storage facilities affecting the european natural gas market over the period 2005 2030 a number of policy scenarios including a business as usual bau scenario are formulated to study the impact of demand uncertainty and delays in investment on the gas transport infrastructure required in the long run in europe the analyses indicate that substantial investments in gas transport corridors are needed to accommodate imports and seasonal demand variations analysis of scenarios of supply interruption in the form of suddenly reduced import capacity for particular pipeline routes indicates that portions of europe could experience price increases of up to 100 in the case of a year long interruption to accommodate import needs and to mitigate possible disruptions pipeline connections running from east to west need to be given special priority

cartelization in gas markets studying the potential for a gas opec natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels using the world gas model a large scale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation this paper analyzes possible future gas cartels and their effects on gas markets in a number of regions across the world in addition scenarios related to lower transport costs and decreased unconventional gas supply in the united states are considered

a strategic model of european gas supply gasmod abstract this paper presents a model of the european natural gas supply gasmod which is structured as a two stage game of successive natural gas exports to europe upstream market and wholesale trade within europe downstream market and which explicitly includes infrastructure capacities we compare three possible market scenarios cournot competition in both markets perfect competition in both markets and perfect competition in the downstream with cournot competition in the upstream market eu liberalization we find that cournot competition in both markets is the most accurate representation of today s european natural gas market where suppliers at both stages generate a mark up at the expense of the final customer double marginalization our results yield a diversified supply portfolio with newly emerging lng exporters gaining market shares enforcing competition in the european downstream market would lead to lower prices and higher quantities by avoiding the welfare reducing effects of double marginalization binding infrastructure capacity restrictions strongly influence the results and we identify bottlenecks mainly for intra european trade relations whereas transport capacity in the upstream market is globally sufficient in the cournot scenario

time varying effects of recall expectation a reemployment bonus and job counseling on unemployment durations a simple search model that includes the possibility of recall provides predictions as to the changing effects of recall expectations a bonus offer and job counseling on new job finding rates over time using data from the new jersey unemployment insurance reemployment demonstration project njuirdp i find evidence for an initial positive effect of the bonus offer which diminishes over time new job finding rates are found to be negatively affected by higher initial recall expectations this effect also diminishes over time and evidence suggests that job counseling is successful in speeding up this process

betrayal aversion versus principled trustfulness how to explain risk avoidance and risky choices in trust games abstract are decisions in a trust game more or less sensitive to changes in risk than decisions in a purely financial non social decision making task participants in a binary trust game they could either keep 5 for sure or give it to a trustee with the chance of getting 10 back were informed that their chance of interacting with a trustworthy person was either 46 percent or 80 percent and then were asked to decide whether to trust that other person in addition participants made a decision in a lottery i e whether to gamble 5 to win 10 with the same probabilities in the 46 percent condition participants were significantly more willing to choose the risky option in the trust game than in the lottery overall the difference in probability of receiving money back had a significantly higher impact on the lottery decision than on the decision to trust possible interpretations of the present study and its relation to previous findings are discussed

expectations of unemployment insurance and unemployment duration over the years there have been frequent changes in unemployment insurance ui benefits such changes could influence spells in progress as well as future spells if individuals anticipate changes they are likely to adjust their behavior the effect of changes in benefits on unemployment duration therefore will be difficult to predict accurately without accounting for individual expectations this article investigates the extent to which individuals anticipate changes in ui entitlement the results suggest that individuals have significant although not perfect foresight about changes in ui provisions assuming perfect foresight might represent actual expectations more closely than assuming no foresight

a simulation approach for analysis of short term security of natural gas supply in colombia abstract achieving security of gas supply implies diversifying gas sources while having enough supply transportation and storage capacity to meet demand peaks and supply interruptions devising a strategy for securing gas supply is not straightforward because gas supply depends on complex interactions of production demand and infrastructure and it is exposed to economic regulatory political environmental and technical risks to address this complexity we propose a simulation approach that replicates the structure of the gas supply chain including transportation constraints and demand fluctuations we build and calibrate a computer model for the colombian gas sector and run the model to assess the impact of expanding transportation capacity and increasing market flexibility on the security of supply our analysis focuses on the operation and planned and proposed expansions of the transportation infrastructure because adequate regulation and development of this infrastructure can contribute to increase the security of supply in the gas sector we find that proposed import facilities specifically lng import terminals at buenaventura increase system s security under the current market structure

equilibria in an asymmetric duopoly facing a security constraint abstract we consider an asymmetric duopoly producing a homogeneous commodity and facing a competitive demand our model incorporates two asymmetries the first one is relative to the performance indices indeed we assume that one of the player maximizes its profit and the second one being eager to earn hard currencies maximizes its revenue the second asymmetry involves a security or diversification constraint which states that the second player is not allowed to sell more than a certain proportion of the quantity sold by its rival this game is an abstraction of the european natural gas market during the eighties cournot and stackelberg equilibria are characterized and compared an assessment of the impact on consumers and producers of the security constraint is also made

unemployment insurance and unemployment spells this paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment durations the paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse higher unemployment insurance benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment however the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse individual data are used with accurate information of spell durations and the level and length of benefits the semiparametric estimation techniques used in the paper yield more plausible estimates than conventional approaches and provide useful diagnostics copyright 1990 by the econometric society

asian premium or north atlantic discount does geographical diversification in oil trade always impose costs abstract we develop a global oil trade model gotm to examine the ability of large crude oil exporters or importers to influence inter regional price differentials by allocating their sales or purchases respectively among different crude oil consuming or producing regions the model is based on the trade offs among freight costs qualities of the crude oils traded and the technical configurations of refineries that process the crude oil our reference case based on 2012 data minimizes the sum of freight costs and the costs of processing sub optimal grades of crude oil at a refinery we model a large middle east exporter allocating its supply regionally as the leader in a stackelberg game where all other producers and importers are price takers on the competitive fringe we then examine the ability of a coalition of importers in asia to make countervailing strategic purchases rather than act as a price taker we find that large sellers can increase their revenues while diversifying their customer base by allocating volumes to more distant markets if by doing so they capture locational rents from more proximate buyers large buyers are unable to reduce their costs compared to the competitive market outcome by adopting countervailing purchase strategies but have the potential to disrupt the rent seeking of large sellers

on convergence of the pies algorithm for computing equilibria equilibria in market models with continuous market supply functions can be obtained by computing fixed points with an activity analysis representation of production fixed point algorithms would converge slowly further since the market model here is of a partial equilibrium nature the market demand function may not exhibit the integratability condition precluding the formulation of the market equilibrium problem as an economic surplus maximization problem we examine an iterative algorithm the pies method for locating equilibria in markets whose production is described by optimization over a finite set of activities and whose econometric demand function does not possess the integrability property convergence properties of the algorithm along with existence and uniqueness of market equilibrium are summarized

two markets and a weak link abstract we characterise the relationship between two network based oligopoly markets when local players share the interconnection s ownership to that purpose we analyse the case of the bacton uk zeebrugge belgium natural gas pipeline using vector auto regressive representation techniques we conclude that there is a threshold of capacity deployment after which the two local markets split as a result the relationship between local price differentials and capacity utilisation is increasing and convex we also show that the local prices dynamic structure is characterised by convergence features

european ability to cope with a gas crisis comparison between 2009 and 2014 abstract regulation eu no 994 2010 concerning measures to safeguard security of gas supply was adopted following the 2009 commercial dispute between ukraine and russia which yield to a gas disruption since then new infrastructure and cooperation measures have being implemented in order to reinforce the european gas system to better cope with gas shortages joint research centre has developed gemflow a country based model of the european gas network to simulate gas disruptions of different duration and to estimate the survival time and gas non served per country in this paper an analysis and comparison of the improvements carried out in the european gas system between 2009 and 2014 is presented and gemflow model is used to evaluate the progress being made to strengthen the security of gas supply at european level

central asian gas in eurasian power game abstract following the dissolution of the soviet union various gas pipeline projects have been proposed to diversify transit routes and export markets of the landlocked central asian states to evaluate the pipeline project s impact on the players bargaining power i apply the cooperate game theory to a quantitative model of the eurasian gas trade and quantify the bargaining power structure via the shapley value due to ample production capacities in central asia i observe little strategic interaction between the west and china thus demand competition with china is not necessarily a disadvantage for the west and the turkmenistan china pipeline does not affect the impact of the westbound projects aiming europe and turkey for turkmenistan i e the main supplier in the region a link via the caspian sea to turkey is the most beneficial westbound option although the projects carrying gas from azerbaijan and turkmenistan to europe enjoy the european commission s political support they yield marginal benefits to the european consumers thanks to its transit position turkey collects a large share of the benefits in the east west gas trade