economic analysis of coal price electricity price adjustment in china based on the cge model in recent years coal price has risen rapidly which has also brought a sharp increase in the expenditures of thermal power plants in china meantime the power production price and power retail price have not been adjusted accordingly and a large number of thermal power plants have incurred losses the power industry is a key industry in the national economy as such a thorough analysis and evaluation of the economic influence of the electricity price should be conducted before electricity price adjustment is carried out this paper analyses the influence of coal price adjustment on the electric power industry and the influence of electricity price adjustment on the macroeconomy in china based on computable general equilibrium models the conclusions are as follows 1 a coal price increase causes a rise in the cost of the electric power industry but the influence gradually descends with increase in coal price and 2 an electricity price increase has an adverse influence on the total output gross domestic product gdp and the consumer price index cpi electricity price increases have a contractionary effect on economic development and consequently electricity price policy making must consequently consider all factors to minimize their adverse influence

petrol prices oil price rises and oil price falls some evidence for the uk since 1972 this paper examines the relationship between retail petrol prices excise duties and crude oil prices in the uk over the period 1973 1988 the existence of a stable relationship between the petrol price level of excise duty and spot oil price is confirmed through use of the cointegration approach although the speed of reaction of petrol prices to changes in the crude price depends on whether crude prices are rising or falling any asymmetry in the pricing response is virtually absent after an adjustment period of only four months

optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model with public capital in this paper a real business cycle model with optimal tax rates government borrowing and productive public capital is analysed a specification that allows for multiple stochastic shocks to technology and preferences can reproduce some key features describing the cyclical behaviour of postwar u s fiscal policy the optimally chosen policy variables fluctuate substantially over the business cycle but they do not operate like automatic stabilizers jel classification e62 e32 politiquefiscale optimale dans un modee de cycle d affaires avec capital public ce m6moire analyse un modele de cycle d affaires r6el avec taux d imposition optimaux emprunts gouvernementaux et capital public productif une sp6cification de ce modele qui enregiste plusieurs chocs stochastiques affectant technologie et pr6f6rences peut reproduire quelquesunes des caract6ristiques d6crivant le comportement cyclique de la politique fiscale d apres guerre des etats unis les variables correspondant a la politique optimale choisie fluctuent substantiellement au cours du cycle mais n operent pas comme des stabilisateurs automatiques

are electricity prices affected by the us dollar to euro exchange rate the spanish case abstract the objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between spanish electricity spot prices and the us dollar euro usd euro exchange rate during the period 2005 2007 taking into account the study of the association between dollar and oil prices in order to better understand the evolution of the former over time the first finding in this study is that spanish electricity spots prices the usd euro exchange rate and oil prices are cointegrated therefore there is a long run equilibrium relationship between the three variables short run relationships have been detected between oil prices and spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate in the sense that spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate are affected by oil prices in the short run there is a transmission of volatility between usd euro exchange rate and oil prices to spanish electricity prices so although spanish electricity prices are not affected in level by the movements of usd euro exchange rate they are in volatility in this kind of scenario the conclusions confirm that for countries so dependent on external causes as spain one possible solution for guarantying the energy security would be the promotion of the renewable energies therefore we cannot ignore the impact in the internal expenses of the cost of installation and generation of green energies so there must be a balance between the increase in renewables and the reasonable market price of the electricity

modeling climate feedbacks to electricity demand the case of china this paper is an empirical investigation of the effects of climate on the use of electricity by consumers and producers in urban and rural areas within china it takes advantage of an unusual combination of temporal and regional data sets in order to estimate temperature as well as price and income elasticities of electricity demand the estimated positive temperature electric power feedback implies a continually increasing use of energy to produce electric power which in china is primarily based on coal in the absence of countervailing measures this will contribute to increased emissions increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and increases in greenhouse warming

does market based electricity price affect china s energy efficiency abstract china is in a critical period of market oriented reform and energy transition as a crucial means to regulate supply and demand under the market oriented mechanism the electricity price can promote the development of energy efficiency by optimizing resource allocation with the gradual increase in electricity consumption the influence of its price on energy consumption is also gradually enhanced therefore this paper evaluated the process of electricity price marketization and conducted a spatial temporal comparative analysis of the effect of electricity price on energy efficiency by controlling economic policy and other price factors the results show that 1 the marketization degree of china s electricity price has improved with steady steps 2 market oriented electricity price has a stable positive correlation with energy efficiency in both the short and long term 3 marketization improves the promotion effect of electricity price on energy efficiency and the influence of electricity price is more significant in the eastern region with a high degree of marketization and the subsequent stage 4 the impact of market oriented electricity price on energy efficiency is asymmetric the impulse response under positive and negative shock is opposite and under the positive shock the response time is longer and the degree is greater

testing for asymmetric pricing in the canadian retail gasoline market abstract this paper applies a threshold regression model to test for asymmetric pricing in the retail gasoline market in canada using weekly data for the period january 1990 to december 1996 we present results for 13 canadian cities for both premium and regular gasoline within the context of an error correction model we test for the presence of asymmetric price behaviour using average changes in crude prices as well as various lags for the change in crude as possible thresholds we are unable to find any evidence to support this view

optimal taxation in models of endogenous growth we study the problem of optimal taxation in three infinite horizon representative agent endogenous growth models the first model is a convex model in which physical and human capital are perfectly symmetric our second model incorporates elastic labor supply through a lucas style technology analysis of these two models points out the danger of assuming that government expenditures are exogenous in our third model we include government expenditures as a productive input in capital formation showing that the limiting tax rate on capital is no longer zero in numerical simulations we find similar effects on growth and welfare in all three models

optimal taxes without commitment abstract in the problem of optimal taxation in an economy with labor and capital the optimal solution when the government can commit to a sequence of tax rates entails that the tax on capital tends to zero in the limit with all the tax burden on labor it is well known however that this solution is time inconsistent so if the commitment power is not perfect this second best tax plan will not be sustainable we model explicitly the trade off between the cost of revising the tax plan and the benefit of the revision as a result when commitment is not possible both the limit tax rate and the steady state capital are different from their levels in the second best solution limit taxes on capital may be strictly positive but it may also be the case that the only sustainable plan has subsidies to capital the subsidies induce an overaccumulation of capital which becomes a commitment device against revisions of the tax plan journal of economic literature classification numbers h21 c73

electoral uncertainty fiscal policy and macroeconomic fluctuations abstract in this paper we study the link between elections fiscal policy and aggregate fluctuations the setup is a stylized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model incorporating both technology and political re election shocks the latter are incorporated via a two party model with elections the main theoretical prediction is that forward looking incumbents with uncertain prospects of re election find it optimal to follow relatively shortsighted fiscal policies and that this hurts capital accumulation our econometric estimation using u s data finds a statistically significant link between electoral uncertainty and policy instruments and in turn macroeconomic outcomes

rockets and feathers the asymmetric speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes abstract the paper develops a quadratic quantity adjustment model to test the hypothesis put forward in the recent monopolies and mergers commission report that the speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes is more rapid when costs rise than when they fall and that the adjustment path is more concentrated around the mean value on the upswing using data from 1982 to 1989 evidence of faster and more concentrated responses to cost increases were found

market segmentation and wind curtailment an empirical analysis abstract china s wind power has experienced explosive growth and reshaped the overall energy mix since 2009 however increasing investment in the wind power industry has been accompanied by persistent and serious wind curtailment since 2010 leading to significant efficiency loss this paper argues that the interprovincial market segmentation which is driven by political motivations is a key factor contributing to wind curtailment we first construct an interprovincial electricity market segmentation index this is then used as an independent variable to explain the variation in wind curtailment rates a panel dataset of 28 provinces during the 2009 2016 period is used for empirical analysis the results clearly show that market barriers positively contribute to wind power curtailment specifically a 10 decrease in the market segmentation index will lead to a 4 3 5 3 decrease in wind power curtailment

tax disturbances and real economic activity in the postwar united states abstract this paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of cyclical fluctuations in marginal tax rates it finds that systematically including tax variables in a standard real business cycle model substantially improves the model s ability to reproduce basic facts about postwar u s business cycle fluctuations in particular modeling fluctuations in personal and corporate income tax rates increases the model s predicted relative variability of hours and decreases its predicted correlation between hours and average productivity fluctuations in tax rates produce large substitution effects that alter the leisure labor supply decision

by force of demand explaining cyclical fluctuations of international trade and government spending abstract this paper explores the role of demand shocks as an alternative to productivity shocks in driving both domestic and international business cycles within the international real business cycle irbc framework in addition to those well documented domestic business cycle fluctuations e g the volatility and cyclicality of output consumption investment labor hours and labor productivity and international business cycle properties e g the countercyclical net export and the comovement puzzle this paper focuses on two additional stylized facts in the industrialized countries the procyclical trade openness the gdp fraction of trade volume and the countercyclical government size the gdp fraction of government spending using a parsimonious dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model we show that the model s predictions under productivity shocks are not consistent with these facts instead a demand shock driven model replicates the above facts while matching other domestic and international business cycle properties an estimated version of the model confirms the quantitatively important impacts of demand shocks

marginal income tax rates in the united states a non parametric approach abstract the objective of this paper is to estimate both the u s federal marginal income tax rate and the state and local marginal income tax rates we use the non parametric regression method and data on income and tax extracted from u s individual tax model files for the period 1985 1995 the flexibility of the non parametric approach and the information at the individual level enable us to construct a more reliable time series of the average federal marginal income tax rates and that of the average state and local marginal income tax rates our results suggest that the average federal marginal income tax rate varies from 18 2 to 21 8 and the average state and local marginal income tax rate varies from 4 7 to 5 6 we also find that the state and local income tax accounts for roughly 18 of the total income taxes paid during 1985 1995 moreover our analysis shows that stephenson journal of monetary economics 41 1998 pp 389 409 provides the most consistent tax rate series for use in applications that require estimates of tax rates for years prior to 1985

optimal government spending with labor market frictions abstract we study optimal government spending in a business cycle model with labor income taxes and unemployment due to hiring costs labor market frictions raise the optimal steady state ratio of government spending to private consumption the labor tax rate is higher since profits are taxed that arise from employed workers which save hirings costs for calibrated examples the quantitative effect of labor market frictions on optimal fiscal policy is small in the short run optimal policy involves a strongly procyclical reaction of the tax rate to technology and preference shocks while the ratio of public to private spending is close to flat this ratio is however markedly countercyclical if taxes are constrained to be constant over the cycle

sticky prices inventories and market power in wholesale gasoline markets a model with costly adjustment of production and costly inventories implies that wholesale gasoline prices will respond with a lag to crude oil cost shocks unlike explanations that rely upon menu costs imperfect information or long term buyer seller relationships this model predicts that futures prices for gasoline will adjust incompletely to crude oil price shocks that occur close to the expiration date of the futures contract we test and confirm this implication examining wholesale price responses in 188 gasoline markets we also find that firms with market power adjust prices more slowly than do competitive firms consistent with the model

a normative analysis of public capital a normative analysis of short term public capital investment is carried out using cost benefit analysis this cost benefit approach explicitly incorporates the durability of capital into the computation and thus include an aspect of public capital omitted from previous studies which focus on productivity estimation methods used else where have been improved by properly handling several concerns that have been raised in addition this behavioural model yields many structural equations suitable for estimation which results in highly efficient parameter estimates although a small elasticity is found for public capital the benefit is greater than the cost

optimal state contingent capital taxation when is there an indeterminacy abstract several recent papers on dynamically optimal taxation have derived indeterminacy results regarding state contingent capital taxation in stochastic equilibrium models with state contingent government debt i show that these results rely crucially on the assumption that there is a single aggregate decision about private capital investment in a model with many technologies and many capital goods the need to preserve individual investment incentives imposes as many constraints on government policy as they are intertemporal investment decisions the structure of capital tax rates and the structure of government debt are both restricted in many dimensions

how do urban households in china respond to increasing block pricing in electricity evidence from a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach abstract china is the largest electricity consumption country after it has passed the united states in 2011 residential electricity consumption in china grew by 381 35 12 85 per annum between 2000 and 2013 in order to deal with rapid growth in residential electricity consumption an increasing block pricing policy was introduced for residential electricity consumers in china on july 1st 2012 using difference in differences models with a fuzzy regression discontinuity design we estimate a causal effect of price on electricity consumption for urban households during the introduction of increasing block pricing policy in guangdong province of china we find that consumers do not respond to a smaller approximately 8 increase in marginal price however consumers do respond to a larger increase in marginal price an approximately 40 increase in marginal price induces an approximately 35 decrease in electricity use 284 kw h per month our results suggest that although the increasing block pricing could affect the behavior of households with higher electricity use there is only a limit potential to overall energy conservation

redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model abstract we investigate the redistributive potential of capital taxation in an intertemporal maximizing model of capital formation first even unanticipated redistributive capital taxation is severely limited in its effectiveness since it depresses wages second under any convergent redistributive tax policy which maximizes a paretian social objective the capital income tax will converge to zero independent of the factor supply elasticities these results are independent of workers holdings of capital

indivisible labor lotteries and equilibrium abstract this paper considers an economy where labor is indivisible and agents are identical although the discontinuity in labor supply at the individual level disappears as a result of aggregation it is shown that indivisible labor has strong consequences for the aggregate bahavior of the economy it is also shown that optimal allocations involve lotteries over employment and consumption

price rigidity in the downstream petroleum industry in new zealand where does it happen this paper examines the pricing behaviour of the downstream petroleum product market in new zealand using multivariate error correction models the unique feature of these models is the use of actual weekly wholesale and retail prices of diesel and unleaded petrol to measure the relative rigidity of domestic prices the results suggest that price adjustments in domestic markets in response to price changes in world crude oil markets and refined product markets are very weak domestic wholesale prices appear to be the key variable in determining retail prices lack of competition in the wholesale sector is found to be the main reason for weak price adjustments

electricity consumption and economic growth in china cointegration and co feature analysis abstract this paper applies the cointegration theory to examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp gross demostic product for china during 1978 2004 our estimation results indicate that real gdp and electricity consumption for china are cointegrated and there is only unidirectional granger causality running from electricity consumption to real gdp but not the vice versa then hodrick prescott hp filter is applied to decompose the trend and fluctuation component of the gdp and electricity consumption series the estimation results indicate that there is cointegration between not only the trend components but also the cyclical components of the two series which implies that the granger causality is probably related with the business cycle the estimation results are of policy implication to the development of electric sector in china

effective tax rates in macroeconomics cross country estimates of tax rates on factor incomes and consumption abstract this paper proposes a method for computing tax rates using national accounts and revenue statistics using this method we construct time series of tax rates for large industrial countries the method identifies the revenue raised by different taxes at the general government level and defines aggregate measures of the corresponding tax bases this method yields estimates of effective tax rates on factor incomes and consumption consistent with the tax distortions faced by a representative agent in a general equilibrium framework these tax rates compare favorably with existing estimates of marginal tax rates and highlight important international differences in tax policy

decomposition of electricity demand in china s industrial sector in the past five years china s demand for electricity has accelerated far beyond what central planners had forecasted leading to supply constraints and costly brownouts throughout the country this paper presents analysis of the effect of changes in the industrial sector on electricity demand an important economic sector contributing to these above patterns as it consumes nearly 70 of the electricity generated in china using decomposition analysis it is found that both increased industrial activity and fuel shifts helped increase industrial sector electricity demand between 1998 and 2002 the period of focus in this study but significant increases in energy efficiency countered this

on grid electricity tariffs in china development reform and prospects abstract with the introduction of market oriented measures in china s power sector in the mid 1980s electricity sale prices to the grid companies on grid electricity tariffs became the focus of the energy industry thus affecting all related stakeholders including fuel suppliers power generators and end use consumers a number of changes have gradually been undertaken in terms of electricity tariff settings and their implementation to address specific requirements of the expansion of the power industry at each stage of its development on grid electricity tariffs had been used as a key lever to attract investment in power generation at an early stage of reform and then to encourage competition in the power industry in response to the rising concerns about environmental protection and the promotion of clean energy utilisation tariffs have progressively been developed for renewable electricity generation which has contributed to massive expansion of the renewable power industry in china this paper reviews key milestones of the development of on grid electricity tariffs in china examines the tariff setting mechanisms of coal fired power plants and renewable power generation analyses the factors associated with the adjustments of the tariff levels and discusses the options for further reform and more effective electricity pricing

an imbalanced development of coal and electricity industries in china china s coal and electricity industries have a strong reliance on each other however because of excessive invasion of government it is difficult for these two industries to form a stable reasonable and transaction cost saving relationships but long run disputes and quarrels this paper discusses the pricing policies and transaction relationship between these two industries from the historical perspective it begins with the discussion of coal coal market has become competitive since 1980 due to the system of dual track approach but coal sold to electricity was still tightly controlled by government guided pricing then the paper examines electricity investment and tariff reform unlike coal entry to electricity generation sector was gradually relaxed but generation and retailing tariffs are still strictly regulated as energy demand and prices soared after 2002 coal and electricity enterprises are all unsatisfied with the rule of price setting of coal sold to electricity industry this paper concludes that the deliberate low coal price policy does protect electricity industry from fuel cost fluctuation but harm coal industry allocative and productive efficiency are difficult to achieve in the long run

asymmetric adjustment of commercial bank interest rates evidence from malaysia and singapore abstract this paper examines the rigidity of commercial bank interest rates using evidence from singapore and malaysia an asymmetric error correction technique is used to test whether mean adjustment lags are different when retail rates are above or below their equilibrium levels it is concluded in both countries that the mean adjustment lag is shorter when the deposit rate is above its equilibrium than when it is below its equilibrium using the framework of hannan and berger 1991 this finding implies that the hypothesis of collusion cannot be rejected

public investment in infrastructure in a simple growth model abstract in this paper we examine the implications for capital accumulation when infrastructure enters as an external input into private production functions in our model infrastructure is nonexclusive but may exhibit varying degrees of nonrivalry revenues from uniform taxes on capital and labor income are used to finance public investment in infrastructure we show that the optimal tax rate is independent of the degree of nonrivalry when production exhibits constant returns to augmentable factors the equilibrium displays constant growth for most parameters the growth rate depends on the population size under decreasing returns the optimal trajectory exhibits monotonic convergence to a steady state level

time consistent control in non linear models abstract the paper shows how to use optimal control to compute optimal time consistent markovian government policies in nonlinear dynamic general equilibrium models it extends cohen and michel s 1988 results for the linear quadratic case the method involves replacing private agents costate variables with flexible functions of current state variables in the government s maximization problem the functions hold in equilibrium to an arbitrarily close approximation they can be found numerically by perturbation or projection methods a stochastic model of optimal public spending illustrates the technique

the macroeconomic effects of distortionary taxation abstract prescott 1986 estimates that technology shocks account for 75 of the fluctuations in the postwar u s economy this paper reestimates the contribution of technological change for a standard business cycle model that includes a public sector and fiscal disturbances i find that a significant fraction of the variance of aggregate consumption investment output capital stock and hours of work can be explained by disturbances in labor and capital tax rates and government consumption i also use the model to quantify the welfare costs of capital and labor taxation for both the time series and welfare calculations maximum likelihood estimates of taste technology and policy parameters are used

output growth the real wage and employment fluctuations this paper is an attempt to contribute to the integration of business cycle analysis with long term growth a real business cycle model with endogenous growth is developed and estimated with u s data in the present framework wage movements do not have to be transitory to generate fluctuations in labor effort the reduced form is a constrained bivariate output hours or real wage hours vector autoregressive process the bivariate setup provides a useful framework for analyzing the persistence of output fluctuations given that the theory implies that hours of work contain information about future output movement copyright 1991 by american economic association

labor market frictions indeterminacy and interest rate rules this paper studies the emergence of indeterminate equilibria in a standard new keynesian model characterized by labor market frictions under a policy rule that reacts strictly to inflation given labor market frictions monetary policy may not be able to prevent aggregate fluctuations from being driven solely by self fulfilling expectations this is not though a result that holds under all circumstances a monetary policy that reacts to some average measures of inflation or to the output gap may guarantee determinacy in the economy

market driven coal prices and state administered electricity prices in china this paper analyzes how the chinese government adjusts electricity prices for both industrial and residential users in response to changes in coal prices using an asymmetric error correction model our results show that there is a long term relation between the coal price and electricity prices but the relationship is weak especially for residential pricing in the short run we find electricity prices are adjusting faster upwards than downwards price adjustment towards long run equilibrium is faster for residential users upwards than downwards on the other hand we find no evidence of asymmetric equilibrium adjustment in the electricity price for industrial use the weak long term relationship reflects the rigidity in electricity pricing and government s reluctance to subject end users to fluctuations of raw materials cost shifts

stochastic depreciation and the business cycle the authors study a version of the neoclassical growth model in which shocks to both aggregate productivity and the depreciation of capital generate fluctuations around the steady state growth path depreciation shocks induce an inverse comovement between average labor productivity and hours worked when the model is calibrated to u s data it generates a correlation between productivity and hours which is significantly closer to the observed value than that of standard real business cycle models furthermore the addition of depreciation shocks does not cause a deterioration of the predictions of the model concerning other comovements copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

realistic cross country consumption correlations in a two country equilibrium business cycle model abstract a well known feature of one good multi agent arrow debreu economies with edentical additively separable homothetic preferences is that the consumptions of all agents are perfectly correlated such economies are widely used in interpreting business cycles but seem to be inconsistent with observed cross country correlations of aggregate consumption this paper provides an example of a two country real business cycle model in which preferences are not separable between consumption and labor supply the model has a simple closed form solution closed form solution and allows for fluctuations in labor supply in equilibrium moreover it generates correlations between national consumption rates which are close to some of those observed in historical data jel f41

is there an asymmetry in the response of diesel and petrol prices to crude oil price changes evidence from new zealand this paper examines how pre tax petrol and diesel prices in new zealand respond to changes in crude oil prices using an asymmetric error correction model our results show that oil companies adjust diesel prices upwards faster than they adjust them downwards and the difference is statistically significant however we find no statistical evidence for an asymmetry in the adjustment of petrol prices even though the magnitude of estimated coefficients suggests a faster response to rising prices as diesel pricing is not as competitive as petrol pricing calls for further government actions and monitoring of the oil market may be justified our findings also have important implications for the conduct of monetary policy as the pass through of crude oil price changes can affect cost push inflation

optimal fiscal policy public capital and the productivity slowdown abstract this paper develops a quantitative theoretical model for the optimal provision of public capital we show that the ratio of public to private capital in the us economy since 1925 evolves in a manner that is broadly consistent with an optimal transition path derived from a simple growth model the model is used to quantify the conditions under which an increase in the stock of public capital is desirable and to investigate the degree to which nonoptimal fiscal policies can account for the us productivity slowdown

is public expenditure productive abstract this paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government spending variables the empirical results indicate that i the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending ii military capital bears little relation to productivity and iii a core infrastructure of streets highways airports mass transit sewers water systems etc has most explanatory power for productivity the paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the productivity slowdown of the last fifteen years

has fiscal policy helped stabilize the postwar u s economy abstract in this paper i consider whether postwar fiscal policy has helped stabilize the u s economy i do this by adding to the stochastic growth model fiscal policy feedback rules estimated from postwar data these rules allow fiscal policies to respond to current and lagged output and labor hours i use the estimated policy rules to see if postwar fiscal policy reduces output volatility and or lengthens expansions and shortens recessions i find that fiscal policy in general provides little stability on either count i also find that the endogenous feedback links by themselves can provide some stabilization

fiscal policy in general equilibrium this paper studies four classic fiscal policy experiments within a quantitatively restricted neoclassical model the authors main findings are as follows 1 permanent changes in government purchases can lead to short run and long run output multipliers that exceed one 2 permanent changes in government purchases induce larger effects than temporary changes 3 the financing decision is quantitatively more important than the resource cost of changes in government purchases and 4 public investment has dramatic effects on private output and investment these findings stem from important dynamic interactions of capital and labor absent in earlier equilibrium analyses of fiscal policy copyright 1993 by american economic association

electricity demand and basic needs empirical evidence from china s households an increasing block tariff ibt has been implemented nationwide in the residential sector in china since 2012 however knowledge about ibt design is still limited particularly how to determine the electricity volume for the first block of an ibt scheme assuming the first block should be set based on some measure of electricity poverty we attempt to model household electricity demand such that the range of basic needs can be established we show that in chinese households there exists a threshold for electricity consumption with respect to income which could be considered a measure of electricity poverty and the threshold differs between rural and urban areas for rural urban families electricity consumption at the level of 7th 5th income decile households can be considered the threshold for basic needs or a measure of electricity poverty since household electricity demand in rural urban areas does not respond to income changes until after 7th 5th income decile accordingly the first ibt block for some provinces e g beijing appears to have been set at a level that is too high over time however given continued rapid growth the ibt will begin to better reflect actual basic needs

analysis of thermal coal pricing and the coal price distortion in china from the perspective of market forces abstract the price of thermal coal has always been the focus of the debate between coal mining industry and electric power industry the thermal coal price is always lower than other same quality coal and this phenomenon of thermal coal price distortion has been existing in china for a long time the distortion coal price can not reflect the external cost and the resource scarcity of coal which could result in environment deteriorating and inefficient resource allocation this paper studied the phenomenon of thermal coal price distortion through economic theoretical modeling and empirical cointegration analysis from the perspective of market forces the results show that thermal coal price is determined by electricity price the prediction elasticity of a electricity enterprise price elasticity of demand of electricity the input prediction elasticity of a electricity enterprise and the price elasticity of supply of thermal coal the main reason of coal price distortion is the unbalance market force of coal industry and thermal coal generation industry the distortion rate of coal price is positively related to the market force of electric power industry and negatively related to the industrial concentration of coal industry

monetary transmission via the administered interest rates channel abstract this paper examines the dynamics of administered interest rate changes in response to changes in the benchmark money market rate in singapore our results show that the administered rates adjustment speed differs across both financial institutions and financial products the financial institutions administered lending and deposit rates moreover are more rigid when they are below their equilibrium level than when they are above our finding hence implies that the speed of monetary transmission is not uniform across all sectors of the economy and that a tightening monetary policy takes a longer time to impact the economy than an expansionary monetary policy

the power industry reform in china 2015 policies evaluations and solutions abstract more than a decade ago in china s electric power industry the investment for generation side and power grids was inadequate and the gap between power supply and demand kept enlarging in order to relief the problems above power industry reform has been carried out in 2002 under the guidance of no 5 document by the central government the reform in 2002 has made a series of achievements including the enhancement of operation efficiency of power industry and the fulfillment of power demand all over the country during the past decade as the rapid development of the society and economy the external environment of china s power industry has changed greatly however the pricing and planning mechanism of china s power industry still operates following the requirements of no 5 document this has led to a number of problems including twisted pricing mechanism irrational power system planning inefficient utilization of renewable energy and so on these problems have not only hindered the development of power industry in china for quite a long time but also brought negative influence on the business operation of upstream and downstream industries therefore chinese government has issued no 9 document in 2015 and launched a new round of power industry reform policies were carried out to form new pricing mechanism new policies about renewable energy generation and power system planning process to solve the problems mentioned above this paper has reviewed the history of reform in 2002 and summarized the existing problems of china s power industry besides the main policies of no 9 document were deeply analyzed and their significance as well as backwards were illustrated at last solutions were proposed accordingly and these solutions have considerable theoretical and practical significance to china s electric power industry reform in the future

electricity prices and fuel costs long run relations and short run dynamics the paper examines the long run relation and short run dynamics between electricity prices and three fossil fuel prices coal natural gas and crude oil using annual data for the u s for 1960 2007 the results suggest 1 a stable long run relation between real prices for electricity and coal 2 bi directional long run causality between coal and electricity prices 3 insignificant long run relations between electricity and crude oil and or natural gas prices and 4 no evidence of asymmetries in the adjustment of electricity prices to deviations from equilibrium a number of implications are addressed

a simple time series test of endogenous vs exogenous growth models an application to the united states this paper presents evidence supporting endogenous growth models that emphasize public structural capital the authors apply a simple test of endogenous vs exogenous growth models in exogenous growth economies temporary innovations to policy variables lead only to temporary changes in gnp levels while in endogenous growth economies the innovations can lead to permanent changes in gnp levels of the seven u s policy variables they examine only non military equipment capital and non military structural capital have a statistically and economically significant effect upon long run gnp levels further estimation suggests that the non military equipment capital result is not robust and that several disaggregate components of structural capital contribute significantly copyright 1996 by mit press

residential electricity pricing in china the context of price based demand response abstract as a secondary energy electricity is an important channel between original energy and energy consumers electricity price is a critical factor for the interests of all involvers in the electric power market it also plays an important role for the sustainable development of energy and environment smart grid is a new conception proposed in recent years to improve the intelligent level and increase the efficiency of electric power system operation smart grid combines and integrates information technology communication technology and intelligent control technology with tradition power system to achieve the many objectives of smart grid demand response dr as an effective technique of demand side management dsm refers to the changes in electricity consumption behavior of users in response to the dynamic price or incentive rewards price based demand response pbdr is one of the two major dr programs in this paper we first introduce the pricing theories in economics the pricing of electricity and the development of electricity pricing in china then we present a detailed discussion on the pbdr strategies in the dsm of smart grid also the research status of pbdr is reviewed finally it gives a summary of the whole paper in the last section

how does coal price drive up inflation reexamining the relationship between coal price and general price level in china abstract due to the coal dominated energy structure china is currently facing significant economic uncertainties brought forward by instability of coal price by separating the asymmetric effects that how upward and downward coal price changes pass through to the economy this paper reexamines the relationship between coal price and general price level in china the asymmetric effects are investigated via vector autoregression models granger causality tests and impulse response function analyses using the monthly time series data from jun 98 to sep 14 results show negative coal price change presents more significant impact on inflation than positive one the inflation responses very abruptly to coal price shock in the short run but the impact regresses rapidly along time accumulatively a 1 increase of coal price will push cpi and ppi up by 0 04 and 0 12 while a 1 decrease of coal price will pull them down by 0 08 and 0 17 respectively the linkage among coal price change ppi and cpi is demonstrated as the main transmission channel of price shock the inflationary effect is strong in the initial stage but will be weakened in the later stage since the pass through effect from ppi to cpi is tiny which confirms ppi is more responsive than cpi to coal price change for policy implications how to avoid extreme volatility in general price level is a major concern of recent agendas such as reforming energy market and building green fiscal system

retail price asymmetries in local gasoline markets the experience of the salt lake city retail gasoline market during the 1989 to 1993 period suggests that there was asymmetric adjustment wholesale and retail price data unique to the salt lake market are used to test for the existence of three types of price asymmetry during this period with respect to the magnitude of the pass through of wholesale price changes evidence of price asymmetry during periods of average weekly wholesale price changes is found however during market shocks the evidence points in the direction of retail price symmetry evidence of asymmetry with respect to the timing and pattern of the retail price response is found for periods of both average and market shock changes since gasoline is purchased by the consumer in local markets conclusions reached by studies of market pricing behaviour that rely on national data may not be relevant for local policy decisions this appears to be the case for the salt lake city market

optimal tax rules in a dynamic stochastic economy with capital abstract this paper investigates optimal taxation in a disaggregated neoclassical growth model optimal tax rules for a government which must finance an exogenous stochastic stream of spending are investigated many locally optimal rules are found and two principles which provide useful guidance into interpreting them are described these principles state that high steady state investment and small investment volatility are desired a persistent income tax policy suggested by judd 1989 is found to be among the best policies although some policies with complicated dynamic implications have similar welfare levels because of its simplicity the persistent income tax rule is recommended

optimal tax debt and expenditure policies in a growing economy abstract this paper employs an endogenous growth model to analyze the role of a consumption tax in enhancing growth and welfare provided government expenditure impacts directly on the decisions of private agents two fiscal instruments are necessary to replicate the first best optimum the tradeoff between consumption and income taxes to achieve this outcome is discussed and shown to depend upon the degree of congestion associated with the public good and the level of government expenditure relative to its social optimum in general the analysis suggests a potentially important role for a consumption tax as part of an overall optimal fiscal package

solving for optimal simple rules in rational expectations models this paper presents algorithms that solve for optimal simple monetary policy rules in rational expectations models with precommitment and discretion the algorithms are applied to the models in fuhrer j money credit banking 29 1997 214 clarida et al j econ lit 37 1999 1661 and rudebusch econ j 112 2002 402 to examine the efficiency properties of operational policy rules we show that optimized taylor type rules preform well in these models but that aside from the fuhrer moore model this result is sensitive to whether the central bank can respond to current period shocks taylor type rules that are operational in the sense that they do not respond to current period information are found to be highly inefficient in the rudebusch model and in the clarida et al 1999 model

regulatory effects on electricity prices in hong kong abstract in hong kong electricity is supplied by two investor owned utilities china light and power company limited clp and the hongkong electric company limited hec these two utilities operate under a special regulatory arrangement known as the scheme of control which was proposed by the industry in 1964 the objective of this paper is to evaluate whether the scheme of control has fulfilled its original intention of protecting both the producer s right to serve and the consumer s right to be served our empirical results have indicated that the first scheme of control 1964 1978 had a greater effect on reducing electricity prices than the second one 1979 1992

to react or not technology shocks fiscal policy and welfare in the eu 3 this paper develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model to examine the quantitative macroeconomic implications of counter cyclical fiscal policy for france germany and the uk the model incorporates real wage rigidity and consumption habits as the particular market failures justifying policy intervention we subject the model to productivity shocks and allow policy instruments to react to the output gap and the debt to output ratio a welfare analysis reveals that the most effective instrument target combination is to use public consumption to stabilize the output gap moreover welfare gains from counter cyclical fiscal policy are much stronger in the presence of wage rigidities compared with consumption habits finally since active policy and automatic stabilizers are substitutes it is possible that relatively undistorted economies may be in need of countercyclical fiscal action due to inadequate automatic stabilizers

do gasoline prices respond asymmetrically to crude oil price changes the authors test and confirm that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases than to decreases in crude oil prices among the possible sources of this asymmetry are production inventory adjustment lags and market power of some sellers by analyzing price transmission at different points in the distribution chain the authors attempt to shed light on these theories spot prices for generic gasoline show asymmetry in responding to crude oil price changes which may reflect inventory adjustment effects asymmetry also appears in the response of retail prices to wholesale price changes possibly indicating short run market power among retailers