allocation of fixed transmission cost to wheeling transactions by cooperative game theory this paper describes a methodology to allocate the cost of transmission network facilities to wheeling transactions in decentralized power systems the authors propose that the responsibility placed on transmission facilities involved in each transaction be according to the transmission usage pattern their proposal incorporates the mw mile method and considers economies of scale of transmission network facilities they also incorporate a nucleolus scheme in the cooperative game theory to deal with matters of conflict the applicability of their method is demonstrated in a numerical example

the livelihood impacts of cash transfers in sub saharan africa beneficiary perspectives from six countries summary cash transfers cts are a social protection mechanism to reduce the poorest households vulnerability to shocks and build human capital by smoothing consumption and sustaining expenditure on education and social welfare our study examines whether and how cts go beyond welfare objectives to promote livelihoods presenting a cross case analysis using original qualitative data on beneficiary perspectives from six african countries kenya ethiopia malawi lesotho zimbabwe and ghana we explore ct livelihood impacts within household economies and social networks paying attention to gender issues we find that a small but predictable flow of cash improves strategic livelihood choices and stimulates productive investments including through positive effects on beneficiary entry into risk sharing arrangements and networks for economic collaboration levels of household vulnerability and labor constraint nevertheless significantly mediate the ability of cts to consolidate livelihood outcomes the varying availability of economic opportunities plus effective program implementation also shape livelihood impact incorporating beneficiary perspectives brings to the fore the multi dimensionality of ct effects on experiences of poverty and deprivation including gender dynamics and intangibles such as dignity and respect they add powerful realism to the influence of the ct on both immediate survival and livelihood choices beyond this they confirm wider knowledge on productive impact and bring nuance to the conditions under which and mechanisms by which beneficiaries use cts to build productive capability and assets and to make strategic livelihood choices

an integrated framework for cost allocation in a multi owned transmission system this paper describes a methodology for allocating transmission costs among users of a centralized transmission service in the proposed approach the share of each participant is proportional to its impact on power system transmission investment requirements this allocation rule provides incentives for all participants to remain in the pool and ensures revenue reconciliation it is shown that under some simplifying assumptions the proposed scheme reduces to a modified mw mile rule thus providing some insight on that method s economic basis other issues such as credits for counterflows and distortions due to economies of scale are also addressed the methodology is illustrated in case studies with the brazilian power system

hearing the voices of the poor assigning poverty lines on the basis of local perceptions of poverty a quantitative analysis of qualitative data from participatory wealth ranking in rural south africa summary we applied a mixed methods approach to participatory wealth ranking pwr to identify the number of poor households in eight villages of rural south africa and describe how poor they are we generated a household wealth index on the basis of the ranking process and statements made on standard of living descriptions from pwr identified households as very poor poor but a bit better off or doing ok of 9 671 households 3 113 32 2 could be considered very poor or poor the paper presents a novel approach to wealth ranking that generates a rich appraisal of poverty

marginal pricing and supplement cost allocation in transmission open access the application of marginal costing to transmission pricing in open access schemes requires the collection of a supplement to finance the transmission systems the paper describes the application of marginal cost based pricing in the chilean power system and the difficulties faced in allocating the supplement among parties involved alternative methods for defining the allocation are formulated generalized generation and load distribution factors for cost allocation are formulated and implemented the methods are applied to allocate payments for transmission services provided by the transmission network and by a distribution company

payday loans and credit cards new liquidity and credit scoring puzzles using a unique dataset matched at the individual level from two administrative sources we examine household choices between liabilities and assess the informational content of prime and subprime credit scores in the consumer credit market first more specifically we assess consumers effectiveness at prioritizing use of their lowest cost credit option we find that most borrowers from one payday lender who also have a credit card from a major credit card issuer have substantial credit card liquidity on the days they take out their payday loans this is costly because payday loans have annualized interest rates of at least several hundred percent though perhaps partly explained by the fact that borrowers have experienced substantial declines in credit card liquidity in the year leading up to the payday loan second we show that fico scores and teletrack scores have independent information and are specialized for the types of lending where they are used teletrack scores have eight times the predictive power for payday loan default as fico scores we also show that prime lenders should value information about their borrowers subprime activity taking out a payday loan predicts nearly a doubling in the probability of serious credit card delinquency over the next year this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

borrowing high versus borrowing higher price dispersion and shopping behavior in the u s credit card market we document substantial cross individual dispersion in u s credit card borrowing costs even after controlling for borrower risk and card characteristics that remaining dispersion arises because cross lender pricing heterogeneity generates dispersion in annual percentage rate apr offers to borrowers and borrowers vary in shopping intensity our empirics match administrative data to self reported card shopping intensity and use instruments suggested by fair lending law to account for the endogeneity between aprs and search the results show that shoppers versus nonshoppers pay aprs as different as those paid by borrowers in the best versus worst credit score deciles we discuss implications for policy and practice

financial literacy and mortgage equity withdrawals abstract mortgage equity withdrawals mew are correlated with covariates consistent with a permanent income framework augmented for credit constraints we assess linkages between mew and financial literacy education using the health and retirement study hrs and panel study of income dynamics psid we find that the financially literate are 3 5 percentage points less likely to withdraw housing equity via non home equity loan mortgages using the hrs while college graduates are 5 percentage points less likely than those without a high school degree in the psid among those withdrawing housing equity in the psid college graduates extract significantly less equity and are less likely to have high levels of housing leverage after doing so

the effect of the affordable care act medicaid expansions on financial wellbeing we examine the effect of the medicaid expansions under the 2010 patient protection and affordable care act aca on consumer financial outcomes using data from a major credit reporting agency for a large national sample of adults we employ the synthetic control method to compare individuals living in states that expanded medicaid to those that did not we find that the medicaid expansions significantly reduced the number of unpaid bills and the amount of debt sent to third party collection agencies among those residing in zip codes with the highest share of low income uninsured individuals our estimates imply a reduction in collection balances of approximately 1 140 among those who gain medicaid coverage due to the aca our findings suggest that the aca medicaid expansions had important financial impacts beyond increasing health care use

do consumers need more protection from small dollar lenders historical evidence and a roadmap for future research we summarize the current debate surrounding four small dollar credit products pawn loans vehicle title loans payday loans and cash installment loans from finance companies we review the contributions of scholars that inform this debate we underscore that users of these products fit the description of those whom consumer credit models predict benefit from these products many studies find that on average consumer use of small dollar credit products is at worst innocuous there are however findings of heterogeneity in borrowers experiences the disagreements surrounding these credit products and the difficulty in crafting the proper policy response stems from this heterogeneity jel d18 g23

allocation of transmission fixed charges an overview the application of marginal cost in pricing the transmission services has shown not effective mainly due to revenue reconciliation problems to overcome this a set of other methods derived from the mw mile rule has been suggested to allocate transmission fixed costs this paper compares such methods known as embedded cost methods in a centralized transmission network environment although these methods actually share the total cost and are very simple they are usually rejected due to the lack of a good economic reasoning the economic issue and the impact on the system expansion planning of such allocation are addressed in this paper some examples with the brazilian transmission system illustrate the results derived from this analysis

a load flow based method for calculating embedded incremental and marginal cost of transmission capacity this paper describes the principles of a load flow based method for allocating the cost of transmission capacity the method estimates the usage of each transmission facility with cost defined on a per facility basis embedded incremental and marginal cost of transmission capacity are defined and compared to each other a discussion of other load flow based methods and their application to marginal cost is included

reaching the poor cash transfer program targeting in cameroon identifying and selecting poor households with efficient targeting methods is essential for effective poverty alleviation programs this paper assesses the ex post performance of two popular targeting mechanisms proxy means testing pmt and community based targeting cbt in a pilot cash transfer program in cameroon several indicators and metrics to measure each method s performance in terms of inclusion of poor households and exclusion of non poor households are employed results consistently show that cbt performs poorly in terms of selecting households with low per capita consumption when compared to pmt cbt appears to select households with low physical and human capital regardless of actual consumption level however cbt also shows more variability in the selection decision than pmt even when alternative poverty definitions are used as robustness tests the pmt method used in the pilot slightly outperforms other targeting methods hybrid alternative pmt and universal targeting with equal budget but errors remain high when selecting 35 of the population for program participation the results suggest caution is needed in employing cbt methods to select households with low per capita consumption in an environment where poverty levels are high and administrative capacities are limited cbt performance may be improved through more uniform and consistent guidance on program selection criteria and process including explicit criteria that enable cbt monitoring as well as a better integration between pmt and cbt

how do consumers avoid penalty fees evidence from credit cards using data from multiple card issuers we show that the most common penalty fee type incurred by credit card holders late payment fees declines sharply over the first few months of card life thi

assessing bankruptcy reform in a model with temptation and equilibrium default abstract a life cycle model with equilibrium default in which agents with and without temptation coexist is constructed to evaluate the 2005 bankruptcy law reform the calibrated model indicates that the 2005 reform reduces bankruptcies as seen in the data and improves welfare as lower default premia allows better consumption smoothing a counterfactual reform of changing income garnishment rate is also investigated interesting contrasting welfare effects between two types of agents emerge agents with temptation prefer a lower garnishment rate as tighter borrowing constraint prevents them from over borrowing while those without prefer better consumption smoothing enabled by a higher garnishment rate

improving inter transmission compensation in eu abstract this article is intended as a roadmap to the correction of the existing shortcomings in the eu power transmission tariff system especially in the existing mechanism of inter transmission system operator tso compensation itc the relevant literature is surveyed and the essence of the issue is formulated definitions preconditions assumptions and constraints for the problem are explained the paper outlines the most simple and straightforward approach for the improvement of inter transmission compensation in the continental european synchronous area the proposals are based on the old practice of socialization of the network costs retained in almost all european countries i e the principle of charging the customers at the exit equal treatment is given to internal users and cross border users a tso is reimbursed for both internal and cross border flows from the users conjoined to its network on an equal footing with the users extracting power from the peripheral nodes the existing inequity in individual payments for power transmission is overcome and the cross border subsidy element is avoided this approach should be tested modeled and evaluated with real data for the european union of networks some key parts of the article are written in a more popular style in order to be accessible to inexpert readers as well

a model of money and credit with application to the credit card debt puzzle many individuals simultaneously have significant credit card debt and money in the bank the credit card debt puzzle is given high interest rates on credit cards and low rates on bank accounts why not pay down the debt while economists have gone to elaborate lengths to explain this observation we argue it is a special case of the rate of return dominance puzzle from monetary economics we analyze the issue by extending standard monetary theory to incorporate consumer debt this seems interesting in its own right since developing models where money and credit coexist is a long standing challenge and it helps put into context recent discussions of consumer debt

long run incremental cost pricing based on unused capacity this paper proposes a novel approach for providing long run incremental cost lric pricing in network charges the proposed approach makes use of the unused capacity of an exiting network to reflect the cost of advancing or deferring future investment consequent upon the addition of generation or load at each study node on a distribution network compared with existing approaches to lric pricing the proposed approach produces forward looking charges that reflect both the extent of the network needed to service the generation or load and the degree to which that network is utilized the efficacy of the proposed lric approach has been validated by a comparison with the established investment cost related pricing icrp method used for deriving transmission charges in great brain gb this paper draws on work undertaken in projects for western power distribution and ofgem office of gas and electricity markets u k however the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors

competition as a savings incentive a field experiment at a homeless shelter abstract this paper describes a randomized field experiment testing the impact of a savings competition on the behavior of homeless individuals staying at a transitional shelter when monetary prizes were offered for achieving the highest saving rates within a particular month average savings increased by 80 a 30 increase in savings rate while income and attendance at case management meetings remained unchanged however repeating the competition in the following month had no effect because responsive savers selected out of the shelter after the first month in summary while a savings competition can increase savings in the short run its effect may be limited to the intensive margin and may diminish with repetition

economically adapted transmission systems in open access schemes application of genetic algorithms a dynamic transmission planning methodology using a genetic algorithm is formulated for the purpose of determining an economically adapted electric transmission system in a deregulated open access environment transmission investment sensitivity information linked to short term marginal income is used a computer program is developed and applied to obtain a long range adapted transmission grid for the chilean electrical system two open access pricing methodologies are evaluated in a spot price framework as applied to the adapted grid over the time horizon

the long term impact of transmission pricing transmission pricing has been one of the major issues on the ongoing debate about deregulation and privatization many papers have dealt with the static nature of the tariff using the incremental and the embedded cost approaches however few of them have focused on the dynamic aspects of the tariff and therefore on its impact on the long term expansion planning of both generation and transmission the main target of this paper is to address some interesting topics about the effect of the transmission pricing methods on system cost in this new environment where generation is treated as an open market and transmission as a monopoly some examples with the brazilian power system illustrate the main points shown in this paper

payday loan choices and consequences high cost consumer credit has proliferated in the past two decades raising regulatory scrutiny we match administrative data from a payday lender with nationally representative credit bureau files to examine the choices of payday loan applicants and assess whether payday loans help or harm borrowers we find consumers apply for payday loans when they have limited access to mainstream credit in addition the weakness of payday applicants credit histories is severe and longstanding based on regression discontinuity estimates we show that the effects of payday borrowing on credit scores and other measures of financial well being are close to zero we test the robustness of these null effects to many factors including features of the local market structure

the economic importance of financial literacy theory and evidence this paper undertakes an assessment of a rapidly growing body of economic research on financial literacy we start with an overview of theoretical research which casts financial knowledge as a form of investment in human capital endogenizing financial knowledge has important implications for welfare as well as policies intended to enhance levels of financial knowledge in the larger population next we draw on recent surveys to establish how much or how little people know and identify the least financially savvy population subgroups this is followed by an examination of the impact of financial literacy on economic decision making in the united states and elsewhere while the literature is still young conclusions may be drawn about the effects and consequences of financial illiteracy and what works to remedy these gaps a final section offers thoughts on what remains to be learned if researchers are to better inform theoretical and empirical models as well as public policy jel a20 d14 g11 i20 j26

allocation of fixed costs in distribution networks with distributed generation in this paper we propose a method for the allocation of fixed capital and nonvariable operation and maintenance costs at the medium voltage mv distribution level the method is derived from the philosophy behind the widely used mw mile methodology for transmission networks that bases fixed cost allocations on the extent of use that is derived from load flows we calculate the extent of use by multiplying the total consumption or generation at a busbar by the marginal current variations or power to current distribution factors pidfs that an increment of active and reactive power consumed or generated in the case of distributed generation at each busbar produces in each circuit these pidfs are analogous to power transfer distribution factors ptdfs unlike traditional tariff designs that average fixed costs on a per kwh basis across all customers the proposed method provides more cost reflective price signals and helps eliminate possible cross subsidies that deter profitable in the case of competition or cost effective in the case of a fully regulated industry deployment of dg by directly accounting for use and location in the allocation of fixed costs an application of this method for a rural radial distribution network is presented

electricity transmission tariffs for large scale wind power consumption in western gansu province china abstract large scale wind power transmission presents the power system with several challenges the determination of the transmission tariff and the cost sharing issue are potential obstacles which may influence the development of wind power this paper analyses the incremental cost to the power system for long distance transmission of wind power considers the fixed and variable properties of the incremental cost and the risk of fluctuations in the cost and establishes a comprehensive risk based pricing model for long distance transmission of large scale wind power electricity gansu province in china has abundant wind resources so we use the jiuquan wind power integration and the 800 kv gansu zhuzhou direct current dc power transmission as examples to test the validity of the model the conclusions are as follows the allowances for access grid connection cost should be separately estimated for the large scale wind power base and long distance transmission and the long distance transmission pricing of large scale wind power should apply a two part electricity transmission pricing system in order to eliminate the volatility risk inherent in each simple allocation method and the fixed and variable characteristics of the transmission cost the transmission price must include compensation for depreciation operation and maintenance costs and also a reasonable return on investment in order to offer an effective incentive and guidance mechanism for enterprises business development

marginal pricing of transmission services an analysis of cost recovery this paper presents an in depth analysis of network revenues computed with marginal pricing and in particular it investigates the reasons why marginal prices fail to recover the total incurred network costs in actual power systems the basic theoretical results are presented and the major causes of the mismatch between network costs and marginal revenues are identified and illustrated with numerical examples some tutorial and others of realistic size the regulatory implications of marginal network pricing in the context of competitive electricity markets are analyzed and suggestions are provided for the meaningful allocation of the costs of the network among its users

long run marginal cost pricing based on analytical method for revenue reconciliation incremental and marginal approaches are two different types of methods to price the use of networks the major difference between them is in the way they evaluate the costs imposed by network users the former calculates network charges through simulation and the latter derives charges with a sensitivity based analytical approach both charging models aim to send cost reflective economic signals to customers providing an economic climate for the cost effective development of networks in this paper a novel long run marginal cost lrmc pricing methodology based on analytical method is proposed to reflect the impacts on the long run costs imposed by a nodal injection through sensitivity analysis the sensitivity analysis consists of three partial differentiations 1 the sensitivity of circuit power flow with respect to nodal power increment 2 the sensitivity of the time to reinforce network with respect to changes in circuit power flows and 3 the sensitivity of present value of future reinforcement with respect to changes in time to reinforce two test systems are employed to illustrate the principles and implementation of the proposed method results from incremental and marginal approaches under different system conditions are compared and contrasted in terms of charges and tariffs the proposed method as demonstrated in the test systems can produce forward looking charges that reflect the extent of network utilization levels in addition to the distance that power must travel from points of generation to points of consumption furthermore the proposed method is able to provide further insights into factors influencing network charges

do liquidity constraints and interest rates matter for consumer behavior evidence from credit card data this paper utilizes a unique new dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how people respond to changes in credit supply the data consist of a panel of thousands of individual credit card accounts from several different card issuers with associated credit bureau data we estimate both marginal propensities to consume mpcs out of liquidity and interest rate elasticities we also evaluate the ability of different models of consumption to rationalize our results distinguishing the permanent income hypothesis pih liquidity constraints precautionary saving and behavioral models we find that increases in credit limits generate an immediate and significant rise in debt counter to the pih the average mpc out of liquidity ddebt dlimit ranges between 10 14 the mpc is much larger for people starting near their limits consistent with binding liquidity constraints however the mpc is significant even for people starting well below their limit we show this response is consistent with buffer stock models of precautionary saving nonetheless there are other results that conventional models cannot easily explain e g why so many people are borrowing on their credit cards and simultaneously holding low yielding assets unlike most other studies we also find strong effects from changes in account specific interest rates the long run elasticity of debt to the interest rate is approximately 1 3 less than half of this elasticity represents balance shifting across cards with most reflecting net changes in total borrowing the elasticity is larger for decreases in interest rates than for increases which can explain the widespread use of temporary promotional rates the elasticity is smaller for people starting near their credit limits again consistent with liquidity constraints

wheeling of power under deregulated environment of power system a bibilographical survey the power industry is moving rapidly from regulated conventional setup to a deregulated environment there is an urgent need to keep a track of international experiences and activities taking place in this emerging field this paper gives a bibliographical survey and general backgrounds of research and development in the field of power system wheeling under deregulated environment based on over 170 published articles wheeling in general and the establishment of wheeling rate in particular are subjects of extensive debate today this will be very much useful for all countries especially those developing countries which are moving toward the unbundling of electricity supply industry esi the collected literature have been divided into many section so that new researchers do not face any difficulty for obtaining literature particularly in the area of wheeling of power under deregulated environment

cost of wheeling methodologies the cost of wheeling and the methodology by which it is computed is a high priority problem throughout the power industry due to the growth in transmission facilities the cost differentials between utility companies and the dramatic growth in nonutility generation capacity this paper contains descriptions and summaries of computational procedures and data requirements of four embedded cost methodologies two long run incremental cost methods and the short run marginal cost method four methodologies are also presented for allocating the wheeling costs among a number of wheels when simultaneously present on a company s system as required for the standard long run incremental cost method

liquidity constraints and imperfect information in subprime lending ditions for precisely the population that is most likely to have a difficult time obtaining credit those with low incomes and poor credit histories these consumers who typically cannot qualify for regular bank loans comprise the so called subprime market because the company we study originates subprime loans its loan applications and transaction records provide an unusual win dow into the consumption and borrowing behavior of households that are rationed in primary credit markets moreover we track loan repayments allowing us to analyze the difficulties in lending to the subprime population we begin by documenting the importance of short term liquidity constraints for individuals in our sample we present two pieces of evidence both are based on purchasing behavior and indicate a high sensitivity to cash on hand first we document a dramatic degree of demand seasonality associated with tax rebates overall demand is almost 50 percent higher during tax rebate season than during other parts of the year this seasonal effect varies with household

enhanced long run incremental cost pricing considering the impact of network contingencies this paper improves the existing long run incremental cost lric pricing which forms the basis for one of the two common charging methodologies that are to be adopted by the u k s seven distribution network operators for charging customers connected at extra high voltage ehv distribution networks from april 2012 the original model is expected to respect network security while evaluating charges based on the extent of the use of the network which it achieves by reshaping components capacity with their contingency factors into maximum available capacity it then identifies the impact of a nodal injection on each component under normal conditions within the threshold of the maximum available capacity the problem with the lric is that it assumes that the impact from a nodal injection is the same under both normal and contingent states thus underestimating its impact under contingencies in this paper the original lric model is improved by considering the respective impacts from users under both normal and contingent conditions the improved model runs incremental contingency flow analysis to determine how they affect components flows under contingencies in order to illustrate the differences in the reinforcement horizons a comparison of the original and enhanced approaches is carried out on three basic distribution net works single branch parallel branch and meshed the new approach chooses the smaller horizons between those from normal and contingent situations to derive charges sensitivity analysis is introduced to reduce the calculation burden in determining components flow increments due to injections the improved approach is anally testified and compared with the original model on a three busbar system and a practical system

charging for network security based on long run incremental cost pricing pricing for the use of the networks is essential in the way that it should be able to reflect the costs benefits imposed on a network when connecting a new generator or demand and to provide forward looking message to influence the site and size of future network customers studies have been extensively carried out over the years to achieve this pricing goal few methodologies can directly link nodal generation demand increment to network long run marginal incremental costs even fewer consider network security in their pricing methodologies considering it is one of the most important cost drivers all networks are designed to be able to withstand credible contingencies but this comes at a significant cost to network development this paper proposes a new approach that can establish the direct link between nodal generation demand increment and changes in investment cost while ensuring network security the investment cost is reflected by the change in the spare capacity of a network asset from a nodal injection which is in turn translated into an investment horizon leading to the change in the present value of a future investment cost the security is reflected in the pricing through a full n 1 contingency analysis to define the maximum allowed power flow along each circuit from which the time horizon of future investment is determined this paper illustrates the implementation of the proposed pricing model for a system whose demand grows either at a uniform rate or at variable growth rates the benefits of introducing security into the long run pricing model are demonstrated on the ieee 14 busbar system and a practical 87 busbar distribution network

consumer default credit reporting and borrowing constraints why do negative credit events lead to long term borrowing constraints exploiting banking regulations in peru and utilizing currency movements we show that consumers who face a credit rating downgrade due to bad luck experience a three year reduction in financing consumers respond to the shock by paying down their most troubled loans but nonetheless end up more likely to exit the credit market for a set of borrowers who experience severe delinquency we find that the associated credit reporting downgrade itself accounts for 25 to 65 of their observed decline in borrowing at various horizons over the following several years

pricing transmission services in the context of industry deregulation the changing structure of the electricity supply industry and the emergence of independent power producers and independent customers is bringing transmission pricing into a new focus the costs of operating maintaining and expanding the transmission system that is pricing transmission services needs to be addressed this has to be done on an economically rational and technically meaningful basis and this paper suggests an approach which distinguishes between operating and embedded costs and develops separate methods in respect of each of these components capacity use as well as reliability benefits derived by different users are taken into account in the disbursement of charges for investment recovery new insights into the marginal pricing approach to the recovery of operating costs are also briefly mentioned

framework for assessing the economic efficiencies of long run network pricing models this paper presents a framework for assessing the economic efficiency of different long run network pricing models the aim is to provide a quantifiable efficiency measure that will inform regulators network operators and network users when an alternative pricing model is contemplated the efficiency measure is derived from the long term network development costs that flow from a dynamic interaction between network pricing and planning that is the response of network users to differing charging models the consequential network investment and new financial incentives that follow reinforcement of the network to illustrate the approach the framework has been used to assess the relative efficiency of three broad class of distribution pricing models in a study undertaken for the great britain gb s regulator for gas and electricity markets in england wales and scotland ofgem the study contemplated three pricing models that are used in practice the efficiency assessment in the ofgem study was conducted on a pseudo distribution reference network on the assumption that the results from the reference network could be scaled up to the national level then the assessment suggests that by moving from the present drm model to the more economic lric approach gb distribution network operators could save in the region of pound200 m over the next 20 years in their network investment costs this paper draws heavily on the project undertaken for ofgem but any views expressed are solely those of the authors

solving the revenue reconciliation problem of distribution network providers using long term marginal prices in this paper the authors describe an integrated methodology to compute long term marginal prices in distribution networks long term marginal prices are considered the most interesting and economically sound way of allocating network costs to users additionally they inherently deal with the revenue reconciliation problem as they generally do not require other large supplementary tariff terms the proposed methodology uses fuzzy sets to model uncertainties in load forecasts and considers several criteria to guide the identification of solutions at the end there is a final decision making step to select the most adequate expansion plan according to the preferences of the decision maker

the economic dispatch with consideration of transmission service charge for a generation company summary form only given as follows this paper presents a novel economic dispatch strategy for a generation company which owns several units with different fuel costs efficiency and locations and has a bilateral contract with several large customers the proposed strategy not only considers the generation cost but also takes into account the wheeling charge for the use of the transmission system a modified megawatt mile method is proposed to calculate the wheeling cost in this paper finally the calculation result of economic dispatch for a generation company with two units and their loads in a real power system is demonstrated

when and why usury should be prohibited usury ceilings seem indefensible their opponents insist these caps harm the consumers they are intended to help low ceilings are said to prevent the least advantaged agents from accessing legal credit and drive them into the black market where prices are higher and collection methods are harsher but in this paper i challenge these arguments and show that the benefits of interest rate limitations in the most expensive credit markets clearly outweigh the costs the test case is payday lending deregulated pricing in this market produces negative externalities that justify usury restrictions unless prices are capped the more solvent majority of borrowers is compelled to cross subsidize the least solvent debtors who have a high rate of default rationing the riskiest debtors out of this market by means of a moderate usury cap puts an end to this unfairness and produces fewer bad consequences than the advocates of deregulated pricing recognize i argue that only an extreme principle like maximizing the minimum could justify a free market in payday credit

involving communities in the targeting of cash transfer programs for vulnerable children opportunities and challenges we used baseline data collected in july september 2009 from a randomized controlled trial of a cash transfer program for vulnerable children in eastern zimbabwe to investigate the effectiveness coverage and efficiency of census and community based targeting methods for reaching vulnerable children focus group discussions and in depth interviews with beneficiaries and other stakeholders were used to explore community perspectives on targeting community members reported that their participation improved ownership and reduced conflict and jealousy however all the methods failed to target a large proportion of vulnerable children and there was poor agreement between the community and census based methods