low natural gas prices and the financial cost of ramp rate restrictions at hydroelectric dams abstract peaking hydroelectric dams that employ variable stop start reservoir releases can have adverse impacts on downstream river ecosystems efforts to mitigate these impacts have relied predominantly on the use of ramp rate restrictions which limit the magnitude of hour to hour changes in reservoir discharge ramp rate restrictions shift hydropower production towards less valuable off peak hours imposing a financial penalty on dam owners that is a function of the spread difference between peak and off peak electricity prices this study examines how low natural gas prices in the u s have reduced the cost of implementing ramp rate restrictions at dams by narrowing the peak off peak price spread significantly lower costs of ramp rate restrictions could open new opportunities for improving environmental flows at dams including the purchase of more natural streamflow patterns by downstream stakeholders a type of arrangement for which there is growing precedent we also explore the role that uncertainty in the cost of ramp rate restrictions could play in precluding downstream stakeholders from forming these types of agreements with dam owners results suggest that financial collar contracts could mostly eliminate inter annual variability in the net cost of restrictions and provide those purchasing more natural flows with greater certainty

on the economics of ramping rate restrictions at hydro power plants balancing profitability and environmental costs this paper examines the impact of ramping rate restrictions imposed on hydro operations to protect aquatic ecosystems a dynamic optimization model of the profit maximizing decisions of a hydro operator is solved for various restrictions on water flow using data for a representative hydro operation in ontario profits are negatively affected but for a range of restrictions the impact is not large ramping restrictions cause a redistribution of hydro production over a given day which can result in an increase in total hydro power produced this affects the need for power from other sources with consequent environmental impacts

getting the safe minimum standard to work in the real world a case study in moral pragmatism abstract there is growing endorsement of local stake holder conventions to resolve unusual environmental disputes the conventions are separate decision making bodies designed to by pass conventional institutions the hazards of a stake holder convention which is overly detached from conventional decision making leads to a discourse that never successfully confronts the value controversies which the stake holder convention is charged to resolve a case study uncovers obvious and robust strategic manipulations of stake holder conventions that intrude on value dialogue an appeal to the safe minimum standard rules of ciriacy wantrup updated to engage this question successfully corrects some of the more egregious stumbling blocks to good faith dialogue in local discourse the proposed constraints on the stake holder convention can be quite directive authoritative and bureaucratic yet the constraints are necessary to preserve good faith conduct within the dialogue

market share quotas abstract anecdotal evidence reveals that an import quota is not always filled when the quota is specified in terms of a market share limit instead of a quantity limit in a simple cournot duopoly we show that imposing a market share quota eliminates pure strategy equilibria instead a mixed strategy equilibrium occurs where the quota is not binding under one of the two equilibrium domestic strategies compared with a tariff that restrains the foreign market share to an equivalent level domestic output and social welfare may be higher under a market share quota

a dynamic theory of conjectural variations this paper explores the relationship between dynamic oligopolistic competition and static conjectural variations equilibria using an infinite horizon adjustment cost model the author demonstrates that any steady state closed loop subgame perfect equilibrium coincides with a conjectural variations equilibrium in the case of linear demand and quadratic costs the dynamic conjectures consistent with closed loop steady state equilibria are negative constant symmetric and vary continuously with the discount rate and the adjustment cost parameter in an interval between the static consistent conjectures and zero cournot copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

optimal provision of hydroelectric power under environmental and regulatory constraints hydroelectric power plants can quickly and inexpensively respond to changes in electricity demand however this operational flexibility can cause negative environmental im pacts and these environmental effects are miti gated through direct restrictions on hydropower operations rather than taxes or other market based mechanisms a dynamic model of hydro electric generation is used to derive hourly hydro electric generation and purchases of replacement power to meet contract demand in the presence of these operational restrictions the pattern of hydropower generation is shown to depend on differences between on peak and off peak spot electricity prices within the operational restric tions set by external regulatory mechanisms

government and the decentralization of r d abstract the purpose of this article is to show how costs and benefits of geographical decentralization of r d can be identified and compared the benefits for the region that receives r d activities are studied in section 2 they stem from the short run multiplier effect the amelioration of human capital and the possible modernization of the local industrial structure on the cost side examined in section 3 the observable impacts of the decentralization of r d concern the loss of returns to scale and urban economies of the production of the r d output it is shown in section 4 that the flows of costs and benefits must be discounted by the social cost of capital the main conclusion of this article is that the decentralization of r d in a large sparsely populated country entails social costs and this would weaken its competitive position in world commerce on the other hand the issue of decentralization is more crucial for small countries in terms of population and economic size than for large ones like the u s where critical masses of research efforts can be simultaneously attained in many fields and in many places

decentralizing hydro power production we analyse the production of electricity from n power stations in a dynamic model each power station s production of electricity is constrained by the quantity of water available to it supply constraint as well as limitations on reservoir capacity storage constraint we show that hydro power production can lead to two sources of welfare loss suboptimal management of water resources and the exercise of market power a monopolist minimizes the first source of inefficiency whereas decentralized production in a competitive environment minimizes the second the decision to introduce competition in hydropower production must account for these two opposite effects jel classification l11 q48 decentralisation de la production d hydroelectricite nous analysons la production d hydroelectricite par n centrales dans un modele dynamique la production de chaque centrale est contrainte par la quantite d eau disponible contrainte d approvisionnement et la capacite du reservoir contrainte de stockage nous demontrons que la production hydroelectrique peut donner lieu a deux types d inefficacite la gestion sous optimale des ressources hydrauliques et l exercice de pouvoir de marche l entreprise monopolistique minimise la premiere inefficacite alors que la production decentralisee dans un marche concurrentiel minimise la deuxieme la decision d introduire la concurrence dans la production d hydroelectricite doit tenir compte de ces deux effets opposes

trade restrictions as facilitating practices abstract the effect of quantitative restrictions in oligopolistic markets is shown to depend on whether imports are substitutes or complements for domestic products in the former case they have profound effects even when set at free trade levels because they impede the ability of the foreign firm to compete in the domestic market thereby acting to facilitate collusion and raise prices and profits for this reason tariffs and quotas are fundamentally non equivalent with substitute goods when goods are complements a voluntary export restriction ver at the free trade level has no effect and tariffs and quotas are equivalent

the non equivalence of tariffs and quantity restraints as rent shifting policies in a differentiated oligopoly with quantity as the strategic variable an optimal tariff can lead to a welfare gain when a quantity restraint is used instead this gain can be offset since the quota induces anticompetitive effects however alternative quantity restraints such as import quotas or voluntary export restraints whether specified in volume or ratio form will influence the strength of the anticompetitive effect in this paper the authors evaluate empirically the degree of nonequivalence between alternative trade instruments and the factors that likely influence it

an options pricing approach to ramping rate restrictions at hydro power plants this paper investigates the impact of ramping rate restrictions imposed on hydro operations to protect aquatic ecosystems the optimal ramping decision is specified as an optimal control problem which results in a hamilton jacobi bellman hjb equation electricity prices are modelled as a regime switching stochastic process the optimal control is determined by solving the hjb equation numerically using a fully implicit finite difference approach with semi lagrangian time stepping the paper focuses on the effect of ramping restrictions on a hydro plant s value and optimal operations and provides an analysis of which factors cause ramping restrictions to have a greater or lesser impact on profitability it is shown that hydro plant value is negatively affected by ramping restrictions but the extent of the impact depends on key parameters which determine the desirability of frequent changes in water release rates interestingly for the case considered value is not sensitive to ramping restrictions over a large range of restrictions the results point to the importance of accurately modelling electricity prices in gauging the trade offs involved in imposing restrictions on hydro operators which may hinder their ability to respond to volatile electricity prices and meet peak demands

anti dumping and countervailing duties under oligopoly abstract this paper constructs a conjectural variations model of international oligopoly in which the home country s optimal policy responses to the foreign government s subsidies and foreign firms dumping can be calculated some theoretical support is found for tariffs that countervail part of the foreign export subsidy the optimal fraction depends on the size of own and cross effects in demand and on the extent of market competition however no normative case is found for anti dumping duties

proximity effects and labour specialization transitions in mexico a spatial markov chain analysis this paper investigates the extent to which the manufacturing industries in mexico exert positive proximity effects on neighbouring states when transitioning to higher levels of labour specializati

the wider impacts of high technology employment evidence from u s cities abstract innovative high technology industries are commonly described as drivers of regional development tech workers earn high wages but they are also said to generate knock on effects throughout the local economies that host them spurring growth in jobs and wages in nontradable activities at the same time in iconic high tech agglomerations like the san francisco bay area the home of silicon valley the success of the tech industry creates tensions in part as living costs rise beyond the reach of many non tech workers across a large sample of u s cities this paper explores these issues systematically combining annual data on wages employment and prices from the quarterly census of employment and wages the department of housing and urban development and the consumer price index it estimates how growth in tradable tech employment affects the real living cost deflated wages of local workers in nontradable sectors results indicate that high technology employment has significant positive but modest effects on the real wages of workers in nontradable sectors these effects appear to be spread consistently across different kinds of nontradable activities in terms of substantive wider impacts tech appears benign though fairly ineffectual

tariffs and quotas under dynamic duopolistic competition abstract this paper analyzes tariffs and quotas in a differential game model of duopolistic competition for a homogeneous good equal import tariffs and quotas are compared with respect to resulting domestic prices the open loop and closed loop subgame perfect equilibria are derived the open loop game leads to domestic price equivalence however the closed loop game does not unless firms are myopic or the number of domestic firms becomes large thus we prove that the equivalence for static cournot competition does not carry over to the dynamic case

balancing environmental protection and energy production in the federal hydropower licensing process the u s federal energy regulatory commission ferc must balance environmental protection of riverine resources with the nation s growing demand for power production every time it issues a hydroelectric license this paper models the bureaucratic agency s decision making process in issuing these licenses data on nearly 500 hydro power licenses issued from 1983 to 2005 are utilized it is discovered that legislative and institutional constraints are by far the largest influences on ferc s regulatory decisions implying that if the current allocation of surface water in the united states is considered inefficient the most effective way to alter this allocation is by passing new legislation or by implementing institutional reform at ferc

on the equivalence of tariffs and quotas under duopoly abstract the purpose of this paper is to use a conjectural variation approach to examine the equivalence of tariffs and quotas set so as to result in the same equilibrium quantity of imports we have demonstrated that whether tariffs and quotas are equivalent depends crucially upon the particular value of the conjectural variations specifically in the case of equal import tariffs and quotas the equivalence holds only in the cournot case otherwise the domestic price is lower or higher under quotas depending upon whether competition is less or more competitive than cournot

science technology and regional economic development review and prospects abstract this paper reviews the literature on the location and regional effects of science and technology st these pools of mobile workers are most attracted to large urban areas in only some of these areas however does the spin off process result in the generation of new technology based firms the availability of local venture capital appears to be the principal influence on this variation government policy regarding science and technology has impacts on regions by contributing to the agglomeration of r d government policy also often fails to recognize that s t policy and industrial policy have regional effects that may be long term in nature and most detrimental to those regions whose economies are least competitive finally some priorities for future research on innovation in a regional setting are identified

technology transfer and public policy a review of research and theory abstract my purpose is to review synthesize and criticize the voluminous multidisciplinary literature on technology transfer to reduce the literature to manageable proportions i focus chiefly not exclusively on recent literature on domestic technology transfer from universities and government laboratories i begin by examining a set of fundamental conceptual issues especially the ways in which the analytical ambiguities surrounding technology transfer concepts affect research and theory my literature review follows and i emphasize technology transfer s impact and effectiveness i employ a contingent effectiveness model of technology transfer to organize the literature as the model s name implies it assumes that technology effectiveness can take a variety of forms in addition to examining the more traditional effectiveness criteria those rooted in market impacts the model considers a number of alternative effectiveness criteria including political effectiveness capacity building