transmission network cost allocation based on circuit theory and the aumann shapley method this paper presents a new method to allocate the costs of the transmission system among generators and loads the allocation is calculated for each branch of the transmission system to identify and quantify the individual responsibility of generators and loads a two step method based on the perfect coupling of the circuit theory with the aumann shapley method is proposed here first to determine the participation of the generators in the costs of the transmission network the generators are modeled as current injections and the loads as impedances second to determine the participation of the loads in the cost of the transmission network the loads are modeled as current sources and the generators as impedances the aumann shapley method and the circuit theory are used to calculate the participation of each real and imaginary current component in the allocation of the costs of the transmission system game by considering them as independent agents the properties of the aumann shapley method ensure equitable allocation and recovery of the total costs numerical results are presented and discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method

transmission cost allocation by cooperative games and coalition formation the allocation of costs of a transmission system to its users is still a pending problem in many electric sector market regulations this paper contributes with a new allocation method among the electric market participants both cooperation and competition are defined as the leading principles to fair solutions and efficient cost allocation the method is based mainly on the responsibility of the agents in the physical and economic use of the network their rational behavior the formation of coalitions and cooperative game theory resolution mechanisms the designed method is applicable to existing networks or to their expansion simulations are made with sample networks results conclude that adequate solutions are possible in a decentralized environment with open access to networks comparisons with traditional allocation systems are shown and cooperative game solutions compare better in economic and physical terms

umbrella branding with imperfect observability and moral hazard abstract in a framework of repeated purchase experience goods with seller s moral hazard and imperfect monitoring umbrella branding may improve the terms of the implicit contract between seller and buyers whereby the seller invests in quality and buyers pay a high price in some cases umbrella branding leads to a softer punishment of product failure which increases the seller s value in other cases umbrella branding leads to a harsher punishment of product failure which allows for a reputational equilibrium that would otherwise be impossible on the negative side under umbrella branding one bad signal may kill two revenue streams not one combining costs and benefits i determine the set of parameter values such that umbrella branding is an optimal strategy

optimal alliance strategies among retailers under energy deviation settlement mechanism in china s forward electricity market an energy deviation settlement eds mechanism has been proposed to settle the deviation between consumption and energy contracts in china s forward electricity market due to high eds costs of electricity retailers a deviation mutual insurance dmi mechanism is put forward representing an option for electricity retailers to reduce the deviation through contract transfer given this background an optimal alliance strategy is proposed to maximize the utility of different types of individual electricity retailers the alliance income model considers the eds cost reduction and the cooperation cost analyzed based on transaction cost theory tct an improved income allocation method which considers distribution indexes selected by game theory and resource dependence theory rdt is proposed to ensure the comprehensive and reasonable allocation of alliance income considering the expected income and financial risk an evaluation model using conditional value at risk cvar as the financial risk assessment indicator is presented to measure the stability of alliances simulations based on data from a provincial electricity market in china illustrate that the eds costs of retailers can be reduced by selecting appropriate partners for alliance in addition the proposed alliance income allocation method is more reasonable and more targeted than the cooperative game based methods

is carbon lock in blocking investments in the hydrogen economy a survey of actors strategies the difficulty of introducing hydrogen and fuel cells in the market stems from the fact that they are not an evolutionary innovation such as biofuels or hybrid cars instead they create a disruption in technological utilization the domination of oil technologies sets a socio economical context favoring actors involved in the current paradigm and gives less opportunity to alternative fuels to develop and challenge the status quo if this hypothesis is correct then companies interested in the hydrogen economy would not become active because of an unstable context or contradictory interests concerning the replacement of the present system a review of actions and announcements of main actors shows that technology readiness and the absence of infrastructure are the major justifications to delay investments some measures are discussed which could be deployed in order to reduce uncertainties such as regulation of carbon emissions from cars technological subvention and partnerships for infrastructure implementation

costs of maintaining a cartel the costs of operating a cartel are determined by the effort spent on policing member firms and errors in detection of cheaters an output review is modeled that may be used with tr igger pricing in the presence of a wiener process to describe distur bances in demand the cartel uses trigger pricing first and then swit ches to an output review costs generated by cartel maintenance affec t social welfare and provide a foundation for analyzing the impact of a cartel on society copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

a classification of factors influencing participation in collusive tendering agreements the morality of tendering practices is an issue of economic and social significance especially when large government contracts are involved criticisms are mostly concentrated around collusive tendering illegal agreements between tenderers that result in seemingly competitive bids price fixing or market distribution schemes that circumvent the spirit of free competition and defraud clients although collusion has been identified as an endemic malaise of tendering its behavioural and moral dimensions have not been systematically studied before the paper addresses this knowledge gap and describes part of an exploratory empirical investigation of the decision making patterns utilised by estimators in australia slargest construction organisations

theories of cartel stability and the joint executive committee this article reexamines the experience of the joint executive committee an 1880s railroad cartel to assess the applicability of the green and porter 1984 and rotemberg and saloner 1986 theories of price wars after discussing necessary modifications to the theories i estimate a number of dynamic models to explore the causes of price wars the cyclical nature of pricing and the possibility that secret price cuts may have been given the estimates provide some support for the predictions of the first theory

loss allocation in energy transmission networks abstract in this paper we study a cost allocation problem that is inherent to most energy networks the allocation of losses in particular we study how to allocate gas losses between haulers in gas transmission networks we discuss four allocation rules two of them have already been in place in real networks and two others that are defined for the first time in this paper we then present a comparative analysis of the different rules by studying their behavior with respect to a set of principles set forth by the european union this analysis also includes axiomatic characterizations of two of the rules finally as an illustration we apply them to the spanish gas transmission network

an options approach to investment in a hydrogen infrastructure this paper discusses the investments needed for the introduction of hydrogen as a transport fuel using option theory we develop a model to calculate the value and optimal timing of a first commercial rollout of hydrogen vehicles in a larger area taking japan as a specific example we find that the project is best viewed as an out of the money call option with a small but positive option value we estimate this value at approximately 1 5 billion euros without tax advantages an important finding is that the moment of investment is first and foremost determined by the maturing of the technology by contrast the investment timing is not as much affected by deployment strategy as is frequently thought in particular whether or not the hydrogen retail infrastructure is introduced smoothly does not sensitively influence the investment timing fairly independent of parameter assumptions the project value at the moment of deployment is negative for the retailer and positive for the car manufacturer this implies the need for a negotiated partnership finally we assess various forms of government support e g subsidies or tax cuts looking at the effectiveness of this support spending in relation to the advancement of hydrogen deployment we find again because investment timing is primarily determined by technology maturation that tax incentives are relatively ineffective we are lead to believe that government subsidy for technology development is a more effective means to achieve earlier investment as faster production cost reductions for hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles lead to accelerated investment

allocation of transmission losses to bilateral contracts in a competitive environment under open access market driven transactions have become the new independent decision variables defining the behavior of the power system understanding the impact of bilateral transactions on system losses is important to be able to allocate a loss component to each individual transaction and improve economic efficiency the theory presented here is based on the argument that it is always possible to compute the exact loss allocation corresponding to an infinitesimal bilateral transaction this leads to a set of governing differential equations whose solution yields the loss allocation for contracts of any size several examples illustrate the properties of both the proposed allocation equations and other methods the dependence of the proposed solution on the path of integration and a number of implementation issues

the power of the purse and its implications for bureaucratic policy making a dilemma of the power of the purse is thatcutting an agency s budget may make a desired policyinfeasible i examine the implications of thisdilemma with a repeated game in which a bureau choosesunobservable policies after a legislature sets itsbudget the bureau is work averse and has its ownpolicy preferences and therefore may cheat but thelegislature may perform an audit to recover slack funds a main result is that if the legislaturedesires a higher policy level than the agency then itfaces a trade off between good but wasteful policiesand bad but efficient ones

pricing strategies in supergames with capacity constraints some evidence from the u s portland cement industry abstract theory demonstrates that demand variations can have nonmonotonic effects on pricing in supergames with capacity constraints furthermore this nonmonotonic relationship can be a function of capacity utilization rates time series data from 25 regional cement markets are used to examine this results empirically no statistically significant relationship is found between demand variations pricing and excess capacity

cartel stability in an exhaustible resource model a simple oligopolistic common pool exhaustible resource game is considered by analysing punishment strategies including optimal punishments it is possible to determine which cartel agreements are implementable in a non cooperative play of the game joint profit maximizing allocations are sustainable for sufficiently low discounting but in general it is shown that no folk theorem exists for this model in particular for sufficiently high elasticities of demand it is shown that optimal punishments are not sufficiently severe to enforce most stationary symmetric extraction paths thus confirming the hypothesis that sufficient market power is needed for a cartel to be stable a simple common property exhaustible resource model in a discrete time infinite horizon framework will be considered by looking at punishments levelled against firms that deviate from an implicitly agreed extraction path it is possible to examine the extent to which different allocations can be supported as non cooperative equilibria we shall pay particular attention to the question of whether punishments can be severe enough to sustain implicit agreements that maximize joint profits and to the idea pindyck 1979 that cartel stability depends crucially upon market power this non cooperative approach to the question of cartel stability has been used by porter 1983 in a repeated oligopoly model with imperfect information see also green and porter 1984 while we assume perfect observability here the model is compli cated by the existence of a state variable in the form of the resource stock moreover we shall apply the idea of optimal punishments in this dynamic model abreu et al 1986 1990 have looked at general properties of the equilibrium set in the green porter model what we find is that by considering a more general strategy space than that conventionally studied cooperative extraction rates are sustainable in equilibrium for low enough discount rates in contrast to the over extraction results often obtained moreover in this model the predictions concerning the range of possible sustainable equilibria as the discount rate approaches zero are sharp while the cooperative solution belongs to the set of equilibria for low discount rates constant symmetric extraction paths below the maximum possible rate fail to be sustainable in the limit if the elasticity of demand is sufficiently high thus for low discount rates only extraction rates close to the cooperative rate are sustainable together with disagreement equilibria which involve very high extraction rates these results are in sharp contrast to those obtained from repeated games where in the limit the range of equilibria is very large the difference is explained by the existence of a state variable in the form of a declining stock of the resource these results are also in contrast to what can happen in our model when the demand elasticity is lower all constant symmetric extraction paths may be sustainable for low enough

optimal cartel trigger price strategies abstract a dynamical model of industry equilibrium is described in which a cartel deters deviations from collusive output levels by threatening to produce at cournot quantities for a period of fixed duration whenever the market price falls below some trigger price in this model firms can observe only their own production level and a common market price the market demand curve is assumed to have a stochastic component so that an unexpectedly low price may signal either deviations from collusive output levels or a downward demand shock

the cyclical behavior of strategic inventories this paper presents a model in which inventories are used by a duopoly to deter deviations from an implicitly collusive arrangement higher inventories allow firms to punish cheaters more strongly and can thus help to maintain collusion we show that when demand is high the incentive to deviate increases so that increases in inventories may be optimal for the duopoly this rationalizes the observed positive correlation between inventories and sales in our empirical section we show that as our model predicts this correlation is more important in concentrated industries we also provide several examples where inventories have been a factor in cartel behavior

recent advances in oligopoly theory from a game theory perspective abstract this paper surveys the contribution that recent developments in game theory have made to the understanding of oligopoly theory it is argued that conventional models suffer from the problem that there are a number of solution concepts offered with little guidance as to which should be selected and this is related to the static nature of the models employed one important development in game theory has been the analysis of repeated games and when applied to oligopoly theory this suggests that outcomes may be more cooperative than conventional theory suggests related to this is the requirement that firms employ credible threats to punish cheating from cooperative outcomes and the paper examines the extent to which imperfect information may restrict the scope of firms to employ such punishments one way in which firms may seek to make threats credible is through strategic investments for example in production capacity and the paper explores how competition over price or output is integrated with competition over instruments for strategic investment

the folk theorem with imperfect public information the authors study repeated games in which players observe a public outcome that imperfectly signals the actions played they provide conditions guaranteeing that any feasible individually rational payoff vector of the stage game can arise as a perfect equilibrium of the repeated game with sufficiently little discounting the central condition requires that there exist action profiles with the property that for any two players no two deviations one by either player give rise to the same probability distribution over public outcomes the results apply to principal agent partnership oligopoly and mechanism design models and to one shot games with transferable utilities copyright 1994 by the econometric society

transmission loss allocation a comparison of different practical algorithms a pool operated electricity market based on hourly auctions usually neglects network constraints and network losses while applying its market clearing mechanism this mechanism determines the accepted and nonaccepted energy bids as well as the hourly market clearing prices as a result ex post procedures are needed to resolve network congestions and to allocate transmission losses to generators and demands this paper focuses on transmission loss allocation procedures and provides a detailed comparison of four alternative algorithms 1 pro rata pr 2 marginal allocation 3 unsubsidized marginal allocation and 4 proportional sharing a case study based on the ieee rts is provided different load scenarios covering a whole year are analyzed finally conclusions and recommendations are stated

an aumann shapley approach to allocate transmission service cost among network users in electricity markets this work presents a new methodology for the allocation of transmission service cost among network users in energy markets the proposed method is based on an optimization game theoretic framework aumann shapley that retains the desirable properties of other existing methodologies such as the average participations factors apf and long run marginal costs lrmc the approach is shown to be computationally feasible and presents desirable characteristics in terms of economic coherence and isonomy computational results are presented for the brazilian power system and compared with those obtained by three other methodologies lrmc apf and the current method adopted in brazil

applying real options analysis to assess cleaner energy development strategies abstract the energy industry accounts for the largest portion of co 2 emissions is facing the issue of compliance with the national clean energy policy the methodology for evaluating the energy mix policy is crucial because of the characteristics of lead time embedded with the power generation facilities investment and the uncertainty of future electricity demand in this paper a modified binomial model based on sequential compound options which may account for the lead time and uncertainty as a whole is established and a numerical example on evaluating the optional strategies and the strategic value of the cleaner energy policy is also presented it is found that the optimal decision at some nodes in the binomial tree is path dependent which is different from the standard sequential compound option model with lead time or time lag concept the proposed modified binomial sequential compound real options model can be generalized and extensively applied to solve the general decision problems that deal with the long lead time of many government policies as well as capital intensive investments

equilibria in a stochastic resource management game under imperfect information abstract the paper considers equilibrium solutions in a stochastic resource management game the countries choose frequently between cooperative and noncooperative retaliation modes of play the choices between cooperative and noncooperative subgames are based on imperfect estimates of the fishing efforts fleet sizes of the co harvesting country during the previous period if either of the countries concludes that the fishing activity of the co harvesting country has been too intensive during the previous period i e the estimated fishing effort exceeds a trigger value then either a noncooperative retaliation period follows or cooperation is continued after a noncooperative period the countries begin to cooperate once again it is shown that equilibria in which cooperative and noncooperative periods alternate can occur in dynamic games different types of equilibria for the game exist the countries may be able to sustain efficient cooperation all the time they may oscillate between cooperation and noncooperation or they may fail to cooperate at all conditions under which an equilibrium coincides with a pareto optimal solution are studied

transmission loss allocation through complex power flow tracing this paper presents a new method for transmission loss allocation the method is based on tracing the complex power flow through the network and determining the share of each load on the flow and losses through each line transmission losses are taken into consideration during power flow tracing unbundling line losses is carried out using an equation which has a physical basis and considers the coupling between active and reactive power flows as well as the cross effects of active and reactive power on active and reactive losses a tracing algorithm which can be considered direct to a good extent as there is no need for exhaustive search to determine the flow paths as these are determined in a systematic way during the course of tracing results of application of the proposed method are also presented

a novel policy for lmp calculation in distribution networks based on loss and emission reduction allocation using nucleolus theory this paper proposes a new policy to calculate the locational marginal price lmp in the distribution networks containing distributed generation dg the proposed policy is based on remunerating the dg units to reduce the loss and emission of the network lmp at each dg bus is calculated according to the contribution of the dg to the reduced amount of loss and emission an iterative algorithm which is based on the nucleolus theory is proposed to allocate the loss and emission reduction the proposed algorithm will provide a robust state estimation tool for distribution companies discos in the next step of operation the state estimation tool provides the decision maker with the ability to exert its control over private dg units when the loss and emission are minimized also the proposed pricing policy requires decision maker to simply apply its best response strategy to the lmp based on the priority of loss emission and disco s extra benefit the proposed methodology is applied to two realistic distribution networks and efficiency and accuracy of the method are verified

complex losses allocation to generators and loads based on circuit theory and aumann shapley method this paper presents a new method to allocate active and reactive losses simultaneously to generators and loads the allocation is calculated for each transmission branch identifying and quantifying the buses responsibilities in losses this is a two step process in the first step generators are modeled as current injections and loads as constant admittances in order to determine generator participations in losses in the second step loads are modeled as current sources and generators as constant admittances in order to determine load participations in losses the aumann shapley and circuit theories are used to calculate the participation of each real and imaginary current component considering them as independent players in the complex losses allocation game the properties of the aumann shapley method ensure equitable allocation and recovery of the total active and reactive losses counter flow cross subsidy and negative allocation issues are discussed numerical results are presented and discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method

transmission loss unbundling and allocation under pool electricity markets this paper presents a methodology based on the circuit theories for unbundling and allocation of transmission losses among the participants of a pool based electricity market starting from a known operation point and using the basic network equations without additional assumptions an expression of the branch losses based on nodal current injections is derived since the power flow equations and circuit theories are satisfied the methodology turns explicit in a natural way separating the losses at each system branch and assigning the responsibility to the respective market participants it means that the loss allocation of each branch which is produced by each generator and consumer is obtained extensions and strategies considering unsubsidized and predefined proportion based loss allocation as well as issues related with the allocation fairness and transparency are also included comparisons with previous methods and validation tests of the proposed method are reported by using the ieee reliability test system

collusion as public monitoring becomes noisy experimental evidence this paper uses laboratory experiments to test the implications of the theory of repeated games on equilibrium payoffs and estimate strategies in an infinitely repeated prisoners dilemma game with imperfect public monitoring we find that subjects payoffs i decrease as noise increases and ii are lower than the theoretical maximum for low noise but exceed it for high noise under the assumption that the subjects strategy uses thresholds on the public signal for transition between cooperation and punishment states we find that the best fitting strategy simply compares the most recent public signal against a single threshold

market and welfare effects of the u s livestock mandatory reporting act author affiliation kenneth njoroge department of accounting the fuqua school of business duke university box 90120 durham nc 27708 0120 usa kn14 duke eduamalia yiannaka department of agricultural economics 314d filley hall university of nebraska lincoln lincoln ne 68583 0922 usa yiannaka unl edukonstantinos giannakas department of agricultural economics 216 filley hall university of nebraska lincoln lincoln ne 68583 0922 usa kgiannakas unl eduazzeddine m azzam department of agricultural economics 103b filley hall university of nebraska lincoln lincoln ne 68583 0922 usa aazzam1 unl edu corresponding author acknowledgment senior authorship is shared authors names appear in reverse seniority order 1 introductionthe livestock mandatory reporting act the act was enacted in 2001 to provide market participants with information on all cash and noncash transactions reported by packers to the agricultural marketing service ams on a daily basis the information is aggregated under specific confidentiality guidelines1 to preserve the anonymity of the source2 and published in the mandatory livestock and meat market news reports reports 3 ams is responsible for setting the confidentiality guidelines as well as for enforcing the act as stated in the act federal register 2000 the reports intend to provide information that can be readily understood by producers packers and other market participants improve the price and supply reporting services of the department of agriculture and encourage competition in the marketplace for livestock and livestock products the rationale is that as more animals have been purchased under marketing arrangements neither the arrangements nor the final purchase prices are publicly disclosed 4about two years after the act went into effect schroeder grunwald and ward 2002 reviewed the early literature on livestock mandatory reporting lmr a consensus appeared to be forming that while lmr could be beneficial by reducing uncertainty and increasing competition in cattle markets revealing too much information about rival pricing could facilitate collusion and reduce competition among packers schroeder grunwald and ward 2002 p 11 the uncertainty reducing effect of lmr was deduced from two experimental studies by anderson et al 1998 and bastian koontz and menkhaus 2001 in the first experiment price and quantity information in the fed cattle market simulated through the fed cattle market simulator fcms 5 was varied and market outcomes were observed uncertainty measured by price dispersion was found to increase with the amount and type of information withheld in the second experiment also using the fcms market participants were provided with price and quantity information on cattle sold through the spot markets as well as through forward contracts the authors observed a substantial reduction in the variance of forward contract prices the effect of the forward market information on the variance of spot prices was negative but not statistically significant maintaining the hypothesis that mandatory reporting reduces uncertainty through the provision of more information azzam 2003 studied the effects of the reduction in uncertainty on the structure conduct and performance of livestock markets azzam s theoretical findings suggest that in a setting where cattle feeders and packers are risk averse and packers hold consistent conjectures increased transparency due to mandatory reporting promotes competition and results in higher livestock prices however since increased transparency can make it easier for packers to collude wachenheim and devuyst 2001 azzam s assumption of consistent conjectures is restrictive because it rules out the possibility of collusion njoroge 2003 provides a formal model of collusion that is in line with the arguments in wachenheim and devuyst 2001

optimal cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring abstract there exist optimal symmetric equilibria in the green porter model 4 8 having an elementary intertemporal structure such an equilibrium is described entirely by two subsets of price space and two quantities the only production levels used by firms in any contingency the central technique employed in the analysis is the reduction of the repeated game to a family of static games

cartel enforcement with uncertainty about costs what cartel agreements are possible when firms have private information about production costs in order for a cartel agreement to work it must take into account the incentives for firms to misrepresent their cost information and it must provide sufficient reward so that no firm wishes to defect for private cost uncertainty we characterize the set of cartel agreements with side payments that can be supported as bayesian nash equilibria we show that if defection results in either cournot or bertrand competition the incentive problems in large cartels are severe enough to prevent the cartel from achieving the monopoly outcome in contrast with common cost uncertainty the incentive problems become less severe in large cartels allowing perfect collusion

cartel pricing dynamics in the presence of an antitrust authority cartel pricing is characterized when firms are concerned about creating suspicions that a cartel has formed balancing concerns about maintaining the stability of the cartel with those of avoiding detection the cartel may either i gradually raise price to its steady state level or ii gradually raise price and then have it decline to its steady state level antitrust laws may have a perverse effect as they make cartel stability easier and thus allow for higher cartel prices

endogenous technological change in climate change modelling this article investigates the impact on optimal co2 abatement and carbon tax levels of introducing endogenous technological change in a macroeconomic model of climate change we analyse technological change as a function of cumulative capacity as incorporated recently in energy systems models our calculations confirm that including endogenous innovation implies earlier emission reduction to meet atmospheric carbon concentration constraints however the effect is stronger than suggested in the literature moreover the development of non fossil energy technologies constitutes the most important opportunity for emission reductions optimal carbon tax levels reducing fossil energy use are lower than usually advocated

the timing of sales this paper presents a model of intertemporal price discrimination a fixed number of sellers produce a homogeneous good consumers with different preferences enter the market in each period and leave when they make a purchase the sellers typically vary their prices over time charging a high price in most periods but occasionally cutting the price to sell to a large group of customers with a low reservation price in some equilibria all stores lower their price at the same time and to the same level

a weakly conditioned imputation of an impedance branch dissipation power in a sinusoidal steady state circuit how much of an impedance branch dissipation power should be assigned to each source the answer is the basis of electricity transmission pricing such as the pricing of line loss and line security due to thermal limit however it is difficult to obtain a unique and common consent answer because of the nonlinearity of power expression this paper presents two weakly conditioned imputation formulas respectively for dissipation active and reactive power to answer the question first a detailed form of shapley value formula and three weak conditions are proposed on this basis the two imputation formulas are then derived and proved mathematically the imputation formulas are explicitly in terms of source currents voltages thus analytic and easy to compute they possess eight mathematical and economic features that lay a good foundation for electricity transmission pricing the two imputation formulas are also extended to actual power systems where trades are conducted in mwh mvarh instead of amperes volts numerical examples illustrate their computing process and features

reply on comment to small firms and the merger mania research on performance differences between small and large firms is booming it emerges relatively separated from the mainstream industrial organization literature inspired by levy s comment on an earlier paper we try to bridge the gap between the two areas especially we screen non cooperative game theoretical models for predictions on performance differences most of them forecast higher profits for larger firms but there exist also some models which predict the opposite for very specific circumstances

a novel nucleolus based loss allocation method in bilateral electricity markets the situation of current research on power losses allocation in bilateral electricity markets is presented based on cooperative game theory a novel nucleolus theory based method for power losses allocation under the bilateral transactions model is put forward and compared in detail with the shapley value based allocation method the impacts of different market players on network power losses are taken into account with the new method network power losses can be allocated to each transaction reasonably the allocation results would not be affected by the sequence that each transaction is formed and be active the method answers for the open equal and impartial principles of electricity market and can be easily understood and accepted by market players numerical tests validated the equity and validity of the method

the dynamics of a stable cartel the railroad express 1851 1913 i introduction the economic literature contains ample theoretical justification for the possibility of stable cartels for example osborne 1976 and porter 1983a but little in the way of empirical evidence about how stable cartels actually behave there is of course good reason for this shortcoming few stable cartels have ever existed cartel members find it too attractive to violate agreements in order to capture market share in eckbo s 1976 study of fifty one formal cartels the median lifetime of a cartel was only five years the mean was hardly better at 6 6 1 in general the dearth of stable cartels creates a problem for application of cartel theory 2 this paper however examines the exception to the rule what was probably the most successful cartel in u s business history the railroad express cartel the express cartel persisted for more than half a century by one reckoning from 1851 to 1913 during that time the five firms of the cartel agreed on prices territory and governance procedures and maintained a relatively stable environment within the industry moreover all five firms earned profits in virtually every year of the cartel s existence even during periods when the economy as a whole slipped into depression 3 periods of stress were present in the cartel but they tended to be short lived and contracts while subject to revision and dispute were never wholly abandoned aspects of the success of this cartel can be illuminated by various models in the industrial organization literature including some that explicitly treat cartel stability yet most of the literature on stability is deficient in that it typically examines only one kind of strategic interaction as this case shows long run success involves many strategies and other factors including the institutional framework the structure of costs the nature of internal transactions and the character of the technology the cartel s stability also was a dynamic process in which the organization acted continually to maintain conditions favorable to survival this paper will focus on two key elements in the success of the express cartel elements that would seem necessary for long run stability in any cartel 1 proficiency at deterring or at least limiting entry from outside and 2 ability to prevent defection among the members in fact deterrence and control are linked in the case of the express and the linkage was crucial to this industry s success the key feature was the creation and management of a joint distribution network this network it will be shown was the source both of the cartel s market power and of its internal stability after a brief historical overview the paper will examine the effects of the cartel s distribution system how it promoted a stable cartel ii overview the origin and history of the express cartel the railroad express industry controlled the parcel post service in the united states from 1839 until 1913 during that time the express provided the only established way of transmitting a parcel in the united states the industry also obtained economies of scope by combining parcel service with financial courier operations the express offered direct delivery of consignments and promised a full warranty on the contents in its first decade local express firms sprang up along key rail and steamship routes once established many express franchises were contested by new entrants at this time fixed costs were small encouraging entry efforts but incumbents often fought newcomers with price wars that drove out the entrant led to the bankruptcy of the incumbent or resulted in a merger 4 by 1850 two large regional firms the adams and american express companies had developed despite their histories of price warfare against potential competitors the two firms decided against conflict and in 1851 signed their first cartel agreement

collusion among asymmetric firms the case of different discount factors abstract this study investigates collusive behavior among asymmetric firms for this purpose we develop a selection criterion for deriving a unique collusive outcome and apply it to the case when firms have different discount factors our analysis reveals that for collusion to be self enforcing it is unnecessary that all firms have sufficiently high discount factors but rather only that firms on average have a sufficiently long run view the optimal collusive outcome entails a strict ordering of output quotas in which firms with relatively low discount factors receive a disproportionate share of market demand as found in the case of a common discount factor a fall in a firm s discount factor reduces the likelihood of successful collusion this effect reduces firm profits on the other hand in the event that firms can collude a lowering of a firm s discount factor increases its output quota so that its profits rise

subjective games and equilibria applying the concepts of nash bayesian and correlated equilibria to the analysis of strategic interaction requires that players possess objective knowledge of the game and opponents strategies such knowledge is often not available the proposed notions of subjective games and of subjective nash and correlated equilibria replace essential but unavailable objective knowledge by subjective assessments when playing a subjective game repeatedly subjective optimizers converge to a subjective equilibrium we apply this approach to some well known examples including single and multi person multi arm bandit games and repeated cournot oligopoly games journal of economic literature classification numbers c73 and c83

on the partition of transmission losses among generators due to the introduction of competition in the electrical power industry determining the percentage of transmission grid losses that should be attributed to each generator has become important usually this is accomplished by determining the percentage of each transmission branch losses that should be attributed to each generator using the aumann shapley theory this letter identifies the fairest way to share the nonseparable portion of losses amongst the generators the obtained result validates some approximations assumed in recent papers and contributes to strengthening circuit theory based methods

a novel policy for locational marginal price calculation in distribution systems based on loss reduction allocation using game theory in this paper a novel locational marginal price lmp policy for distribution system with significant penetration of distribution generation dg in competitive electricity market is presented this new lmp method is based on remunerating dg units for their participation in reduced amount of energy losses in distribution systems brought about by participation of all dg units in supplying demand also this method is combined with an iterative solution this approach provides an efficient tool for distribution companies discos to estimate the state of the system in the next step which other existing approaches of lmp fail to provide this system state estimation finally in order to expand lmp method and provide effective prediction method for discos to estimate the day ahead state of the system ann tool is employed to predict the market price and demand for the next 24 h this lmp prediction is a powerful operational tool for disco to exert its control over private dg units however prediction methods contain error therefore uncertainty modeling is implemented for modeling the effect of error in prediction on the lmp calculation for the next day

is there a free rider problem in lobbying endogenous tariffs trigger strategies and the number of firms there are two reasons we expect moreconcentrated industries to have advantages over less concentrated industries in playing the lobbying game one is that in a noncooperative setting as the number firms rises we expect the free rider problem to become worse this is the finding of rodrik 1986 the second is that we expect that the ability to maintain a cooperative outcome deteriorates as the number of firms in the industry rises the classic reference is mancur olson 1965 also see russell hardin 1982 and todd sandler 1992 among others in contrast with the second intuition this paper shows that there is no general presumption that maintaining cooperation becomes more difficult as the number of firms in the industry rises the ability of an industry to overcome the free rider problem is analyzed in a re peated tariff lobbying game where cooperation may be maintained through the use of a simple trigger strategy 2 the difficulty of maintaining cooperation is measured by the critical value of the discount parameter all values above this critical value are consistent with cooperation and all values below the critical value imply that cheating will prevent maintenance of the cooperative outcome there is no presumption that this critical value rises with the number of firms a separate but related question involves asymptotic results standard intuition suggests that as industry structure approaches perfect competition it becomes impossible to maintain cooperation in the context of this paper this intuition corresponds to the critical value of the discount factor converging to i as the number of firms increases to infinity in the general case it is shown that the critical value of the discount parameter converges to a value less than 1 in the limit as the number of firms becomes arbitrarily large if the actual discount parameter lies above this value then cooperation may be maintained even with an infinite number of firms though the framework here is quite simple it provides results which contrast sharply to our standard intuition about how industry structure affects the ability to maintain cooperation there are two ways to interpret the results of this paper one is to assert that standard intuition is wrong and that there is in fact no presumption that maintaining cooperation becomes more difficult as the number

a physical flow based approach to allocating transmission losses in a transaction framework a physical flow based approach to allocating transmission losses in a multiple transaction system is presented the allocation scheme is developed using a framework in which the transactions are explicitly represented the proposed scheme is based on expressing losses explicitly in terms of all the transactions in the system an important property of the allocation scheme is its effective capability to deal with counter flows that result in the presence of specific transactions extensive numerical testing indicates that the allocation scheme produces loss allocations that are appropriate and that behave in a physically reasonable manner test results on several systems are presented

indeterminacy in credit economies abstract we characterize the equilibrium set of a two good pure credit economy with limited commitment under both pairwise and centralized meetings we show that the set of equilibria derived under not too tight solvency constraints alvarez and jermann 2000 commonly used in the literature is of measure zero in the whole set of perfect bayesian equilibria there exist a continuum of stationary equilibria a continuum of endogenous credit cycles of any periodicity and a continuum of sunspot equilibria irrespective of the assumed trading mechanism equilibria featuring too tight solvency constraints can generate growing credit limits over time periodic credit shutdowns and heterogeneous debt limits across ex ante identical borrowers moreover we provide examples of credit cycles that dominate from a social welfare point of view all equilibria with not too tight solvency constraints

cournot outcome and optimal collusion an example abstract we give an example of a repeated cournot oligopoly game with price uncertainty in which the optimal collusion is the cournot outcome thus there is no advantage from dynamic collusion the example is quite robust with respect to probability specifications and the number of firms

transmission loss allocation i single energy market this paper presents a new methodology for allocating transmission losses to the participants of a single energy market the proposed approach is based on the incremental transmission loss concept and is implemented through two models basic and extended in the basic model the total system losses are estimated through the linear dc load flow equations while the extended model uses the exact ac formulation the concept of center of losses is used a fictitious bus in the system network where all transactions are compensated for transmission losses both models provide a sharing of transmission losses among generators and loads based on a predefined proportion for instance 50 50 for each participant class some important aspects related with the allocation fairness and transparency are illustrated by numerical applications with the ieee reliability test system the extension of this methodology to interconnected energy markets is treated in a companion paper

the use of real options approach in energy sector investments abstract energy shortage global warming and climate change led to an increase in the use of alternative sources of energy with renewable energy sources res playing a fundamental role in this new energetic paradigm however the investment costs often constitute a major barrier to their spread use moreover the overall benefits of renewable energy technologies are often not well understood and consequently they are often evaluated to be not as cost effective as traditional technologies from the moment that the energy sector started a deregulation process with a high level of competitiveness and associated increased market uncertainty traditional project evaluation techniques alone became insufficient to properly deal with these additional risk and uncertainty factors the diffusion of the renewable energy technologies is also affected by this feature the way investors evaluate their investments call now for the use of more sophisticated evaluation techniques real options approach can deal with these issues and as so began to be considered and applied for the energy sector decision aid this approach it is now extensively widespread in evaluating investment projects in the energy sector a large set of applications in almost all fields of energy decision making from electricity generation technologies appraisal to policy evaluation is available in the literature however the use of this technique in the field of res is still limited and worth to be analysed this paper addresses this issue a review of the current state of the art in the application of real options approach to investments in non renewable energy sources and res is presented giving perspectives for further research in this field

at will relationships how an option to walk away affects cooperation and efficiency abstract we theoretically and experimentally examine the effects from adding a simple empirically relevant action to a repeated partnership the option to walk away manipulating both the value of the outside option and its relative distribution among the partners we examine the behavior of human subjects in a repeated prisoners dilemma in particular we examine the degree of cooperation and the form of punishments used our findings indicate that cooperation rates are broadly unaffected by the value of the common outside option but that the selection of supporting punishments in relationship defections or walking away are dictated by individual rationality in contrast to the symmetric results when outside options for partners are asymmetric we find stark selection effects over cooperation with the potential for very high and very low efficiency dependent on the precise division rule

cartel stability and product differentiation abstract this paper employs a supergame theoretic model of collusion to analyze the effects of different levels of product differentiation on cartel stability in contrast to earlier work the ability of the parties to reach an agreement is assumed here the focus is on how greater product homogeneity increases both the gain to cheating on a collusive agreement and the magnitude of the punishments that follow a defection the total effect on the likelihood a cartel is stable is therefore unclear two particular differentiated products models are then used to demonstrate that contrary to the conventional view greater homogeneity can reduce cartel stability