on strategic community development this paper examines strategic behavior of developers who through offering different congested public good packages and revenue fiscal schemes compete for residents who are differentiated by income there is an endogenous determination of numbers and sizes of communities developers have an incentive to strongly differentiate their public good offerings in terms of pricing strategies developers exhibit sharply contrasting behaviors in low income communities housing consumption is subsidized once lots are priced in high income communities housing consumption is generally taxed

snobbery racism or mutual distaste what promotes and hinders cooperation in local public good provision a political jurisdiction may decide to cooperate in public schooling provision with its neighbors or remain independent the determinants of the consolidation decision are compared for the richer and the poorer and for the whiter and the less white jurisdiction in each potential consolidation pair property values and scale economies matter most however poorer jurisdictions prefer merging with richer ones that are less white than themselves whiter jurisdictions prefer to consolidate with less white ones of similar income less white jurisdictions are more open to consolidation with whiter ones if their incomes differ in either direction traditional club theory predictions are not supported

the implications of competition among jurisdictions does tiebout need politics the paper investigates whether compensation among local jurisdiction is by itself sufficient to ensure efficient provision of local public goods jurisdictions have fixed boundaries and each has an entrenched government with the power to tax and supply the public good residents can move costlessly among jurisdictions it is shown that competition among numerous jurisdictions is not sificient to guarantee public sector efficiency though residents can vote with their feet land is immobile hence governments can unsurp some land rents for their own ends increasing the number of jurisdictions limits but cannot completely eliminate the ability to exercise discretionary governmental power

local matching of flexible load in smart grids abstract today s power systems are experiencing a transition from primarily fossil fuel based generation toward greater shares of renewable energy sources it becomes increasingly costly to manage the resulting uncertainty and variability in power system operations solely through flexible generation assets incorporating demand side flexibility through appropriately designed incentive structures can add an additional lever to balance demand and supply based on a supply model using empirical wind generation data and a discrete model of flexible demand with temporal constraints we design and evaluate a local online market mechanism for matching flexible load and uncertain supply under this mechanism truthful reporting of flexibility is a dominant strategy for consumers reducing payments and increasing the likelihood of allocation suppliers during periods of scarce supply benefit from elevated critical value payments as a result of flexibility induced competition on the demand side we find that for a wide range of the key parameters supply capacity flexibility level the cost of ensuring incentive compatibility in a smart grid market relative to the welfare optimal matching is relatively small this suggests that local matching of demand and supply can be organized in a decentral manner in the presence of a sufficiently flexible demand side extending the stylized demand model to include complementary demand structures we demonstrate that decentral matching induces only minor efficiency losses if demand is sufficiently flexible furthermore by accounting for physical grid limitations we show that flexibility and grid capacity exhibit complementary characteristics

the decision to regionalize in the provision of education an application of the tiebout model abstract in the standard tiebout equilibrium consumers sort themselves into an array of communities which cater to the specific preferences of their residents for public services given congestibility of these services the efficient size of a community minimizes the average cost of provision in reality communities provide several services each with a different optimal scale a common response to this situation is for communities to jointly provide some services while retaining local control over others this paper theoretically examines the conditions under which joint provision of education or regionalization will occur in a tiebout framework a case study is used to illustrate the results of the model

the influence of distributed generation penetration levels on energy markets planning of national energy policies brings new dilemmas with the introduction of distributed generators dg economic theory suggests that a perfectly competitive market would lead to efficient pricing in the absence of competition regulators play a fundamental role in attracting reasonably priced finance in order to maintain refurbish and increase the infrastructure and provide services at a reasonable cost energy market price equilibrium is mainly dependent on suppliers generators energy sources and demand represented by conventional utility grid users its behavior is similar to that of other commodities as generation becomes less centralized with the increasing economic viability of renewable energy sources new suppliers are being connected to the grid such evolution means the transition from a monopolistic market to a broader and more open environment with an increasing number of competitors we make use of variational inequalities to model a hypothetical dg market in different scenarios from monopoly to oligopoly to open market such an approach enables different equilibrium outcomes due to different dg penetration levels based on these findings we argue that energy policies for such markets must be developed according to each specific stage of the grid s lifecycle we show how energy policies and market regulations may affect such a transition which may be catastrophic if not managed properly and which is dependent on the energy mix

non renewable and intermittent renewable energy sources friends and foes abstract this paper studies the links between non renewable and intermittent renewable energy sources in the production of electricity using u s state level data from 1998 to 2015 we find that the relationship between the price of natural gas and investments in solar and wind capacity is non linear and can be represented by an inverted u shape hence for relatively low natural gas prices the two modes of production are substitutes after a price threshold is reached the two are complementary a theoretical explanation argues that this stylized fact is the result of a trade off between two characteristics of these modes of production the high degree of flexibility of electricity production using natural gas as an input and the low marginal cost of renewable energy sources

scenario reduction for futures market trading in electricity markets to make informed decisions in futures markets of electric energy stochastic programming models are commonly used such models treat stochastic processes via a set of scenarios which are plausible realizations throughout the decision making horizon of the stochastic processes the number of scenarios needed to accurately represent the uncertainty involved is generally large which may render the associated stochastic programming problem intractable hence scenario reduction techniques are needed to trim down the number of scenarios while keeping most of the stochastic information embedded in such scenarios this paper proposes a novel scenario reduction procedure that advantageously compares with existing ones for electricity market problems tackled via two stage stochastic programming

examining the relationship between municipal consolidation and cost reduction an instrumental variable approach abstractthis study explores the cost reduction effects of local government consolidation using data from japanese municipalities we use municipal panel data from japan for the years 2000 2005 and 2010 a data set including numerous consolidation cases reverse causality between consolidation decisions and size of municipal expenditure is a concern in the voluntary consolidation of local governments an instrumental variable iv methodology is employed to deal with possible endogeneity associated with consolidation decisions the main finding is that municipal current expenditure per capita increases immediately after consolidation but then gradually declines because consolidation seems to increase per capita expenditure in the absence of the effect of this long term declining trend incorporating this trend into estimation is crucial in cost efficiency analysis of consolidation it is also shown that conventional panel data regressions yield biased consolidation effects suggesting the superiority o

contract durations in the electricity market causal impact of 15 min trading on the epex spot market abstract the european power exchange epex introduced two new products in 2011 and 2014 which reduce the delivery duration of electricity from 1 h to 15 min intervals these changes to the market design aim to better reflect the intermittent power generation from renewable energy sources however little is known about trading in shorter intervals and its impact on the existing market as a remedy our evaluation first shows that the market has quickly adopted the new 15 min contracts second we estimate a bayesian structural time series which measures a causal decrease of electricity prices depending on the model specification our results indicate that the reduction can be as high as 28 for existing hourly contracts subsequent to the introduction of 15 min trading third the use of 15 min contracts coincides with intermittent power generation as it incentivizes renewable energy providers to offer additional electricity altogether our findings suggest that 15 min trading is used to balance the intra hour volatility of renewable energy sources consequently this presents a blueprint for policy makers who can attain similar price reductions and larger feed ins from renewable energy sources without direct costs in all countries with high shares of renewable energy sources

municipal preferences for state imposed amalgamations an empirical study based on the swedish municipal reform of 1952 this paper concerns municipal preferences for state imposed municipal amalgamations focusing on factors that may explain municipal acceptance of or objection to a state imposed amalgamation deci

the sensitivity of consumption to transitory income estimates from panel data on households we investigate the stochastic relation between income and consumption specifically consumption of food within a panel of about 2 000 households our major findings are 1 consumption responds much more strongly to permanent than to transitory movements of income 2 the response to transitory income is nonetheless clearly positive 3 a simple test independent of our model of consumption rejects a central implication of the pure life cycle permanent income hypothesis the observed covariation of income and consumption is compatible with pure life cycle permanent income behavior on the part of80 percent of families and simple proportionality of consumption and income among the remaining 20 percent as a general matter our findings support the view that families respond differently to different sources of income variations in particular temporary income tax policies have smaller effects on consumption than do other more permanent changes in income of the same magnitude this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

incentives to promote solar thermal energy in spain abstract the growth in the use of renewable energies in spain has been remarkable among these energies is solar thermal energy however there are barriers which impede citizens from deciding to install the technologies that use this type of energy in their homes over recent years various measures have been adopted to enhance and promote the use of solar thermal energy these measures have been developed at all administrative levels central regional and local one of the most used measures has been the adoption of legislative regulations that force the use of this type of energy in construction another alternative route is promotion by means of incentives in three aspects tax incentives non refundable grants and favourable lines of finance however the measures applied have been found to be insufficient and alternative stimuli are needed

aggregator controlled ev charging in pay as bid reserve markets with strict delivery constraints electric vehicles evs similar to other types of flexible loads can be controlled to provide additional flexibility to power system operators which is needed to transition from primarily fossil fuel based electricity generation to more renewable generation existing electricity markets already provide economic incentives to offer flexibility so called aggregators in charge of controlling ev charging could take advantage of these incentives however random driving behavior and area specific market rules complicate the market participation of ev aggregators in energy and reserve markets the goal of this paper is to investigate the design and performance of a system that would enable ev aggregators to participate in wholesale electricity markets we consider a certain type of market environment which includes an intraday energy market and pay as bid reserve markets that require exact reserve delivery and have long operating intervals we therefore propose a novel approach for concurrent market participation that can deal with these constraints even when faced with highly uncertain reserve activation and ev behavior

evaluating the impacts of real time pricing on the usage of wind generation one of the impediments to large scale use of wind generation within power systems is its nondispatchability and variable and uncertain real time availability operating constraints on conventional generators such as minimum generation points forbidden zones and ramping limits as well as system constraints such as power flow limits and ancillary service requirements may force a system operator to curtail wind generation in order to ensure feasibility furthermore the pattern of wind availability and electricity demand may not allow wind generation to be fully utilized in all hours one solution to these issues which could reduce these inflexibilities is the use of real time pricing rtp tariffs which can both smooth out the diurnal load pattern in order to reduce the impact of binding unit operating and system constraints on wind utilization and allow demand to increase in response to the availability of costless wind generation we use and analyze a detailed unit commitment model of the texas power system with different estimates of demand elasticities to demonstrate the potential increases in wind generation from implementing rtp

demand response with locational dynamic pricing to support the integration of renewables abstract electricity production from centralised and decentralised renewable energy resources in europe is gaining significance resulting in operational challenges in the electricity system although these challenges add to the locational and time dependency of the underlying cost of operating the system this variability in time and location is not reflected in residential tariff schemes consequently residential users are not incentivised to react to varying system conditions and to help the integration of renewable energy resources therefore this paper provides a theoretical framework for designing a locational dynamic pricing scheme this can be used to assess existing tariff structures for consumption and injection and can serve as a theoretical background for developing new tariff schemes starting from the underlying costs this paper shows that the potential for locational dynamic pricing depends on the locational and time dependency of its cost drivers when converting costs into tariffs the tariff design should be determined this includes the advance notice of sending tariffs to users and the length of price blocks and price patterns this tariff design should find a balance between tariff principles related to costs practicality and social acceptability on the one hand and the resulting demand response incentive on the other

portfolio and contract design for demand response resources abstract electricity generation from renewable energy sources has seen significant growth in recent years to improve grid integration of these volatile energy resources demand side flexibility can be operationalized through intelligent scheduling of flexible electrical loads prior research has mainly focused on determining dispatch schedules for exogenously given portfolios of flexible electricity demand we expand on this literature by considering both contracting and dispatch of flexible loads to this end we formulate a demand aggregator s problem of designing and dispatching a portfolio of supply volatile renewable and conventional generators and demand inflexible base shiftable and curtailable load assets as a stochastic program to account for different contracting regimes we consider three market scenarios 1 a liquid flexibility market where the energy retailer is a price taker 2 an opaque market where non strategic customers will accept any individually rational contract offer and 3 a bi level model with strategic customers optimally self selecting into available contracts in the last case we also explore the effect of price discrimination versus uniform pricing we evaluate these models using empirical load and generation data contrary to conventional wisdom we find that flexibility contracting is not monotone increasing in renewable generation capacities our research also suggests that curtailable load is a closer substitute to supply flexibility than shiftable load finally we find that contracting of curtailing flexibility will be harder to implement if the aggregator has limited market power

financial deregulation and household saving the last decade has seen widespread domestic financial deregulation in the industrial world particularly in the united states united kingdom and the nordic countries resulting in an increase in competition both between banks and saving institutions thrifts or building societies as they moved into each others services and within each sector this opened up new financial options particularly for households the sector that was probably most affected by government regulation for example there was a significant increase in equity withdrawals from personal housing wealth in both the united kingdom and united states over the ig8os 2 this period also saw a significant change in household consumption behaviour the most dramatic illustration being the fall in the household saving ratio in those countries where the process of deregulation has gone furthest this paper reports the results from estimating a model of household saving using regional data for the united kingdom with a particular emphasis on the interaction between household saving and financial deregulation the estimates are used to calculate the relative importance of different factors in the fall in personal saving over the i98os i conclude that deregulation lowered the equilibrium level of saving over the i98os probably 2 percentage points per annum as well as making saving significantly more dependent on changes in wealth income and real interest rates there have been a number of earlier empirical studies looking at the interaction between financial deregulation and household behaviour manchester and poterba i 989 miles i 992 and koskela et al i 992 present empirical evidence on the interaction between deregulation the housing market and saving in the united states united kingdom and finland respectively others have estimated saving functions which include variables representing the effects of financial deregulation or have considered the impact of financial deregulation on liquidity constraints in consumption 3 the

market impacts of energy storage in a transmission constrained power system environmental concerns have motivated governments in the european union and elsewhere to set ambitious targets for generation from renewable energy re technologies and to offer subsidies for their adoption along with priority grid access however because re technologies like solar and wind power are intermittent their penetration places greater strain on existing conventional power plants that need to ramp up more often in turn energy storage technologies e g pumped hydro storage or compressed air storage are proposed to offset the intermittency of re technologies and to facilitate their integration into the grid we assess the economic and environmental consequences of storage via a complementarity model of a stylized western european power system with market power representation of the transmission grid and uncertainty in re output although storage helps to reduce congestion and ramping costs it may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions from conventional power plants in a perfectly competitive setting conversely strategic use of storage by producers renders it less effective at curbing both congestion and ramping costs while having no net overall impact on emissions

determinants of private savings behaviour in turkey this study investigates the effects on private saving rates of a number of policy and non policy variables the analysis covers the period 1968 1994 the empirical private saving model for turkey is estimated the findings support the hypothesis that private saving rates have strong inertia the evidence indicates that government saving does not tend to crowd out private savings and the ricardian equivalence does not hold strictly income level has a positive impact on private saving rate and growth rate of income is not statistically significant from a policy point of view financial depth and development measures in turkey suggest that countries with deeper financial systems tend to have higher private saving rates private credit and real interest rates try to capture the severity of the borrowing constraints and the degree of financial repression for turkey moreover the negative impact of life expectancy rate lends support to the life cycle hypothesis the precautionary motive for saving is suppor

economic influences on the structure of local government in u s metropolitan areas abstract there is a large degree of variation in the number of general purpose local governments and school districts per square mile and per person among united states metropolitan areas using data from 1982 this paper provides an empirical test of whether economic factors especially variation in demand for local government services partly account for these differences the empirical findings show that after controlling for political historic and institutional factors variations in the characteristics that affect demand for local government services do influence the number of local governments this result is consistent with the hypothesis first put forth by tiebout

impact of electricity pricing policies on renewable energy investments and carbon emissions we investigate the impact of pricing policies i e flat pricing versus peak pricing on the investment levels of a utility firm in two competing energy sources renewable and conventional with a focus on the renewable investment level we consider generation patterns and intermittency of solar and wind energy in relation to the electricity demand throughout a day industry experts generally promote peak pricing policy as it smoothens the demand and reduces inefficiencies in the supply system we find that the same pricing policy may lead to distinct outcomes for different renewable energy sources due to their generation patterns specifically flat pricing leads to a higher investment level for solar energy and it can lead to still more investments in wind energy if a considerable amount of wind energy is generated throughout the day we validate these results by using electricity generation and demand data of the state of texas we also show that flat pricing can lead to substantially lower carbon e

on the efficient market diffusion of intermittent renewable energies abstract capacity costs of renewable energies have been decreasing dramatically and are expected to fall further making them more competitive with fossils building on an analytically tractable peak load pricing model we analyze how intermittency of renewable energies affects the market diffusion that results from these lower costs in particular once renewables have become competitive by attaining the same levelized cost of electricity lcoe as fossils the marginal increase in efficient capacities due to a further cost reduction varies substantially initially it is small then it rises but it falls again once renewable capacities are large enough to satisfy the whole electricity demand at times of high availability if external costs of fossils are internalized by a pigouvian tax then perfect competition leads to efficient investments in renewable and fossil capacities even though we assume that only a subgroup of consumers can adapt their demand to price fluctuations that are caused by the intermittency of renewables moreover fossils receive a capacity payment through the market for their reliability in serving demand of non reactive consumers maximum electricity prices rise with the share of renewables if regulators impose a price cap this initially raises investments in renewables but the effect may reverse if the share of renewables is large

electoral vulnerability and size of local governments evidence from voting on municipal mergers abstract we analyze how anticipated changes in the electoral vulnerability of municipal councilors affect their voting behavior over municipal mergers the electoral vulnerability changes due to a merger because it changes the composition of political competitors and the number of available seats in the next election we use this variation for identification and find that the smaller the increase in the electoral vulnerability of a councilor the more likely he is to vote for the merger the documented effect is not driven by the behavioral response of the voters or by party line considerations the councilors desire to avoid personal electoral competition may lead to sub optimally small municipalities from the local citizens point of view

the standard error of regressions statistical significance as used in economics has weak theoretical justification in particular it merges statistical and substantive significance the 182 papers using regression analysis in the american economic review in the 1980s were tested against 19 criteria for the accepted use of statistical significance most some three quarters of the papers did poorly likewise textbooks in econometrics do not distinguish statistical and economic significance statistical significance should not be the focus of empirical economics

a spatial merger estimator with an application to school district consolidation abstract this paper develops a spatial merger estimator to explain political integration generally and then applies this method to a wave of school district mergers in the state of iowa during the 1990s our estimator is rooted in the economics of matching and thus accounts for three important features of typical merger protocol two sided decision making multiple potential partners and spatial interdependence rather than simply explaining when a particular region is likely to experience a wave of political integration our method allows us to explore the factors driving which specific subregional mergers take place this allows us to explore how those districts that merge choose with which of their neighbors to do so our results highlight the importance of state financial incentives for consolidation economies of scale diseconomies of scale and a variety of heterogeneity measures in this particular application we also demonstrate the power of our estimator relative to existing estimators to detect a statistically significant role for heterogeneity factors while our application is limited to school district consolidation our method can be adapted to include the salient features of many spatial integration problems

efficient and competitive rationing abstract the contracts that interest us here are called priority service contracts the salient feature of such contracts is that they specify each customer s priority in obtaining service that is they specify the tank order in which a customer is served out of the available supply until all customers are served or supply is exhausted such contracts essentially establish queues for customers in section 1 the author provides some background about priority service section 2 formulates a basic model and offer several illustrations also describes two main examples that motivate the theoretical development section 3 derives some key results that show how the prices of priority service contracts are designed to induce customers to self select efficient service orders in section 4 the author discusses various ways that state enterprises can organize markets that implement priority service efficiently in section 5 we study the operation of competitive markets for priority service section 6 concludes with some summary remarks two themes are emphasized one is that a state enterprise can promote substantial efficiency gains by substituting priority service for absent spot markets the other is that oligopolistic firms may have insufficient incentives to offer efficient product diversity consequently allocative efficiency depends on entry of numerous firms even so dispersal of supplies among many firms can prevent productive efficiency when there are advantages from pooling supplies

personal and corporate saving in south africa low domestic saving rates in south africa may perpetuate a low growth trap the decline in government saving a major reason for the overall decline in saving is now being reversed however personal saving rates have fallen since 1993 and corporate rates since 199s and both may decline further with lower real interest rates it is important to understand both personal and corporate saving behavior in order to formulate policies to raise the domestic saving rate in line with the needs of economic growth this article summarizes previous work on the household sector emphasizing the role of financial liberalization assets and income expectations and explains sectoral links and policy implications further it analyzes south africa s corporate saving rate in detail models are developed both for the share of profits in national income including the roles of the terms of trade tax effects and the price to unit labor cost ratio and for the share of corporate saving in profits which is found to depend on inflation the real interest rate dividend taxation and financial liberalization corporate saving is remarkably under researched given its importance in many economies this research thus puts the saving and growth concerns of kaldor into a modern empirical context

optimization based bidding strategies in the deregulated market with the deregulation of electric power systems market participants are facing an important task of bidding energy to an independent system operator iso this paper presents a model and a method for optimization based bidding and self scheduling where a utility bids part of its energy and self schedules the rest as in new england the model considers iso bid selections and uncertain bidding information of other market participants with appropriately simplified bidding and iso models closed form iso solutions are first obtained these solutions are then plugged into the utility s bidding and self scheduling model which is solved by using lagrangian relaxation testing results show that the method effectively solves the problem with reasonable amount of cpu time

externalities vs internalities a model of political integration abstract decentralized government leads to inter regional externalities whereas an integrated jurisdiction solves the externality problem centralized government entails other costs in particular a neglect for minority interests the paper models formally the trade off between these two forces in determining the optimum as well as the equilibrium design of jurisdictions both the relative size of regions and the distribution of tastes are shown to be important parameters of the problem

the value of forecasts quantifying the economic gains of accurate quarter hourly electricity price forecasts abstract we propose a multivariate elastic net regression forecast model for german quarter hourly electricity spot markets while the literature is diverse on day ahead prediction approaches both the intraday continuous and intraday call auction prices have not been studied intensively with a clear focus on predictive power besides electricity price forecasting we check for the impact of early day ahead da exaa prices on intraday forecasts another novelty of this paper is the complementary discussion of economic benefits a precise estimation is worthless if it cannot be utilized we elaborate possible trading decisions based upon our forecasting scheme and analyze their monetary effects we find that even simple electricity trading strategies can lead to substantial economic impact if combined with a decent forecasting technique

economic valuation of reserves in power systems with high penetration of wind power this paper proposes a methodology to determine the required level of spinning and nonspinning reserves in a power system with a high penetration of wind power the computation of the required reserve levels and their costs is achieved through a stochastic programming market clearing model spanning a daily time horizon this model considers the network constraints and takes into account the cost of both the load shedding and the wind spillage the methodology proposed is illustrated using an example and a realistic case study some conclusions are finally drawn

endogeneity in semiparametric binary response models this paper develops and implements semiparametric methods for estimating binary response binary choice models with continuous endogenous regressors it extends existing results on semiparametric estimation in single index binary response models to the case of endogenous regressors it develops a control function approach to account for endogeneity in triangular and fully simulataneous binary response models the proposed estimation method is applied to estimate the income effect in a labor market participation problem using a large micro data set from the british fes the semiparametric estimator is found to perform well detecting a significant attenuation bias the proposed estimator is contrasted to the corresponding probit and linear probability specifications jel c14 c25 c35 j22

are targeted wage subsidies harmful evidence from a wage voucher experiment this paper presents the results of a controlled experiment designed to test the effectiveness of a targeted wage subsidy program such programs are intended to increase the employment of target group workers by offering employers reimbursement for part of those workers wages in the dayton ohio experiment however job seekers given experimental vouchers identifying them to employers as eligible for a generous wage subsidy were significantly less likely to find employment than were job seekers without vouchers the author speculates that the vouchers had a stigmatizing effect and provided a screening device with which employers discriminated against economically disadvantaged workers

the production characteristics of local public education a multiple product and input analysis since the seminal work of baumol panzer and willig 1 economists have become increasingly interested in incorporating the multifaceted nature of real world production functions into their empirical analyses multiproducts multiple inputs and the relaxation of the long run equilibrium condition are some prime examples of major innovations in production modeling an excellent example of this innovative literature is the study by cowing and holtmann 7 that focuses on the short run production characteristics associated with the hospital services industry specifically cowing and holtmann find evidence contrary to long run equilibrium and that economies of scope are at least as important as economies of scale in the production of hospital services moreover several empirical studies relating to the production characteristics of other goods and services such as higher education 6 crime prevention 9 electric utilities 15 and airlines 5 have provided ample evidence that these pertinent factors matter from both an econometric and a policy perspective the literature concerning the production characteristics of primary and secondary education however has lagged behind in terms of incorporating more realism into the analysis typically studies concerned with primary and secondary education production 2 3 13 14 maintain that schools operate at a long run equilibrium position and produce a single output with a single input i e teachers thus assuming away factors which these other industry studies have found to be significant in fact jimenez 12 is the only study to date on local primary and secondary education production that is based on less restrictive assumptions several limitations are associated with his research however each of these limitations reduce the generality of his findings concerning the production characteristics of primary and secondary education first jimenez employs a small sample to obtain estimates of various production characteristics bringing into question the overall

large scale integration of deferrable demand and renewable energy sources we present a stochastic unit commitment model for assessing the impacts of the large scale integration of renewable energy sources and deferrable demand in power systems in terms of reserve requirements we analyze three demand response paradigms for assessing the benefits of demand flexibility the centralized co optimization of generation and demand by the system operator demand bids and the coupling of renewable resources with deferrable loads we motivate coupling as an alternative for overcoming the drawbacks of the two alternative demand response options and we present a dynamic programming algorithm for coordinating deferrable demand with renewable supply we present simulation results for a model of the western electricity coordinating council

multilevel demand subscription pricing for electric power abstract this paper investigates a general demand subscription pricing policy for electric power service ie a menu of service contracts for assigning different interruption probabilities and prices to different load levels this interruptibility feature is combined with a nonlinear energy price schedule to encourage load flattening we derive a customer value model and a weighted sum objective function for the supplier and consumers for selecting optimal price structures of this type the general form of the optimal price policy is derived and discussed and the implementation methodology is outlined an illustrative example is solved in detail

monetary policy macro stability and growth there is greater appreciation now amongst economists of the negative effect of uncertainty on investment growth and equality especially when credit constraints are widespread this implies an important linkage between the transparency and predictability of the policy environment and growth and equality the paper begins with a literature survey on the inflation and inflation volatility link the uncertainty and investment link and the inflation volatility and growth link this framework is used to examine the experience of south africa s new monetary policy regime inflation targeting it in achieving greater macrostability south africa is an interesting case study being one of the more advanced of the emerging markets with its deep and sophisticated financial system and yet with around 35 percent unemployment and a legacy of developmental problems from the apartheid era the authors demonstrate using evidence from three sources of micro data that the new monetary regime is more credible transparent and predictable they examine the performance of monetary policy and argue it has not resulted in real interest rate levels that are a hindrance to growth they explore the better response under it to big external shocks like exchange rate depreciation as compared with the monetary regime prior to it the paradox is examined of success in achieving macro stability where greater household acquisition of debt and increased demand is both inflationary and limits saving hence constraining corporate investment the paper concludes with lessons from south africa s recent successful monetary policy experience for other emerging market countries and for less developed countries central banks e g in africa

the estimation of wage gains and welfare gains in self selection models the authors modify the basic self sele ction model for the effects ofeducation training unions and other activities on wages by including heterogeneity of rewards to the activity i e diffe rences across individuals in the rate of return to the activity the authors sho w that such heterogeneity creates a new form of selectionbias they provide tes ts for its presence and draw out its implications for the wage and welfare gains to the activity an empirical application provides strong support for such hete rogeneityin one particular training program copyright 1987 by mit press

real options approach to renewable energy investments in mongolia developing nations are seeking alternative energy for electricity and one attractive alternative is renewable energy this research analyzes changing investment environment for renewable energy with real options approach and explores its potential in developing economies through studying the case of mongolia under coal price uncertainty to evaluate comparative attractiveness of either continuing to use coal based infrastructures or switching to renewable energy we formulate social revenue functions for the two environments assuming that renewable energy has lower external costs and coal prices follow geometric brownian motion gbm or geometric mean reverting gmr processes we find the optimal trigger coal prices for switching technologies with some scenarios in electricity price and externality characterize when renewable energy investments become attractive in contrast to conventional wisdom we identify some situations where the value of having more decision opportunities does not exceed that of a now or never decision for switching technologies and welfare losses are incurred the optimal trigger prices are higher in gbm than in gmr and our result raises the possible risks for waiting to switch energy to avoid welfare losses in mongolia the government should increase electricity prices or switch to renewable energy earlier especially when people pay more for the removal of externalities

education choices in mexico using a structural model and a randomized experiment to evaluate progresa in this paper we evaluate the effect of a large welfare program in rural mexico for such a purpose we use an evaluation sample that includes a number of villages where the program was not implemented for evaluation purposes we estimate a structural model of education choices and argue that without such a framework it is impossible to evaluate the effect of the program and especially possible changes to its structure we also argue that the randomized component of the data allows us to identify a more flexible model that is better suited to evaluate the program we find that the program has a positive effect on the enrollment of children especially after primary school we also find that an approximately revenue neutral change in the program that would increase the grant for secondary school children while eliminating for the primary school children would have a substantially larger effect on enrollment of the latter while having minor effects on the former

markets and pricing for interruptible electric power a market is proposed for interruptible or callable forward contracts for electric power in which the consumer grants the power supplier the right to interrupt a given unit of load in return for a price discount the callable forward contracts are traded continuously until the time of use this allows recourse for those customers with uncertain demand while risk averse consumers can minimize their price risk by purchasing early callable forward contracts are simple in form and can be directly incorporated into the utility s economic dispatch procedure

stochastic security constrained unit commitment this paper presents a stochastic model for the long term solution of security constrained unit commitment scuc the proposed approach could be used by vertically integrated utilities as well as the isos in electricity markets in this model random disturbances such as outages of generation units and transmission lines as well as load forecasting inaccuracies are modeled as scenario trees using the monte carlo simulation method for dual optimization coupling constraints among scenarios are relaxed and the optimization problem is decomposed into deterministic long term scuc subproblems for each deterministic long term scuc resource constraints represent fuel and emission constraints in the case of vertically integrated utilities and energy constraints in the case of electricity markets lagrangian relaxation is used to decompose subproblems with long term scuc into tractable short term mip based scuc subproblems without resource constraints accordingly penalty prices lagrangian multipliers are signals to coordinate the master problem and small scale subproblems computational requirements for solving scenario based optimization models depend on the number of scenarios in which the objective is to minimize the weighted average generation cost over the entire scenario tree in large scale applications the scenario reduction method is introduced for enhancing a tradeoff between calculation speed and accuracy of long term scuc solution numerical simulations indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for solving the stochastic security constrained unit commitment

short term electricity trading for system balancing an empirical analysis of the role of intraday trading in balancing germany s electricity system abstract previous studies have noted that unexpectedly germany s dramatic expansion of wind and solar energy coincided with a reduction of short term balancing reserves this observation has been dubbed the german balancing paradox this paper provides further and updated evidence since 2011 wind and solar energy have nearly doubled while both reserve requirements and reserve use have declined by 50 the paper quantitatively explores one reason for reduced balancing needs increased and improved short term wholesale electricity trading on the intraday market trading is now commonly done around the clock and based on quarter hour rather than full hour contracts the shift to quarter hourly products alone explains a decrease in balancing energy by 17 there is also strong evidence that market parties respond efficiently to imbalance charges suggesting that incentive based approaches to electricity balancing work

the progressive inefficiency of replacing renewable obligation certificates with contracts for differences in the uk electricity market abstract this paper looks at the emerging risk return profile for new renewable assets as a conventional wholesale electricity market progressively decarbonises using a detailed fundamental model of price formation risks under increasing replacement of fossil fuel facilities with onshore and offshore wind we show that the risk return profile becomes less attractive over time and may therefore need sustained and possibly increasing policy support furthermore we show that green certificate trading may become progressively more attractive as a supplementary support to wholesale prices compared to fixed feed in tariffs this is because the increasingly negative correlation between renewable output and wholesale prices reduces its revenue risk compared to fixed feed in tariffs if other factors remain constant and thereby improves conventional financial performance risk metrics in particular this suggests that the recent energy policy change in britain to move away from green certificates and into contracts for differences may have been ill founded

priority service pricing investment and market organization tingent forward delivery contracts offered by a seller each customer s selection of one contract from the menu determines the customer s service order or priority in each contingency the seller rations supplies by serving customers in order of their selected priorities until the supply is exhausted or all customers are served various forms of priority service are widely

a capacity investment model of wind power with uncertain supply price under high penetration rate abstract with the rapid development of renewable energy the proportion of wind power in power supply has grown significantly also it influences the power price fluctuation since the marginal cost of wind power is almost zero the growth of wind power s penetration rate has led to a crowding out effect and challenged traditional power generation technology substantially reducing the power price in the market in perfect competition market the real time balance between supply and demand of power is regulated by the real time power price fluctuation so this paper models the intermittence of wind power as uncertain supply and develops a capacity investment model under the uncertainties of both supply and demand we introduce priority dispatch elasticity to describe the crowding out effect and take the power price to be endogenous in order to model the situation of high penetration rate we compare the optimal wind power capacity decision under the strategy of priority grid connection and abandoned power management our results show that optimal capacity investment is inversely related to priority dispatch elasticity under both strategies however the profit from power generation is always higher when adopting the abandoned power management strategy

economic analysis of transmission expansion planning with price responsive demand and quadratic losses by successive lp the growth of demand response programs and renewable generation is changing the economics of transmission planners and regulators require tools to address the implications of possible technology policy and economic developments for the optimal configuration of transmission grids we propose a model for economic evaluation and optimization of inter regional transmission expansion as well as the optimal response of generators investments to locational incentives that accounts for kirchhoff s laws and three important nonlinearities the first is consumer response to energy prices modeled using elastic demand functions the second is resistance losses the third is the product of line susceptance and flows in the linearized dc load flow model we develop a practical method combining successive linear programming with gauss seidel iteration to co optimize ac and dc transmission and generation capacities in a linearized dc network while considering hundreds of hourly realizations of renewable supply and load we test our approach for a european electricity market model including 33 countries the examples indicate that demand response can be a valuable resource that can significantly affect the economics location and amounts of transmission and generation investments further representing losses and kirchhoff s laws is also important in transmission policy analyses

multi product pricing for electric power abstract this paper describes methods for determining the prices for a discrete set of interrelated products offered by a single supplier each product has a fixed marginal rate per unit the demand for each product depends upon the price levels of all the products and the supplier s cost function depends upon the demands for all the products for specific demand function forms methods are described for determining the prices that maximize a weighted sum of net revenue and consumer surplus

semiparametric estimation of the intercept of a sample selection model this paper provides a consistent and asymptotically normal estimator for the intercept of a semiparametrically estimated sample selection model the estimator uses a decreasingly small fraction of all observations as the sample size goes to infinity as in heckman 1990 in the semiparametrics literature estimation of the intercept has typically been subsumed in the nonparametric sample selection bias correction term the estimation of the intercept however is important from an economic perspective for instance it permits one to determine the wage gap between unionized and nonunionized workers decompose the wage differential between different socioeconomic groups e g male female and black white and evaluate the net benefits of a social programme

the impact of renewables on electricity prices in germany an estimation based on historic spot prices in the years 2011 2013 abstract germany s public opinion and media usually attribute increasing electricity prices to the high share of renewables in the german power system but average electricity prices at the european energy exchange dropped during the last years due to an excess of renewable energy this study uses historic market data in order to quantify the effect of renewables on prices historic demand and supply curves from 2011 to 2013 have been used to reconstruct electricity prices under the assumption that no wind and pv would be available the analysis reveals an astonishingly high increase of market prices up to 5 29 ct kwh due to a lack of non renewable power capacities in 2013 the available conventional capacity would not have been able to cover the demand during 269 hours the estimated maximum deficit of 5 6 gw is in good agreement to data published by the german grid operators the discussion of the origin of this deficit leads to the conclusion that the current situation has not been caused by renewables the liberalization of the european energy market established investment risks that hindered required investment a long time before the renewables boomed

decentralized multi period economic dispatch for real time flexible demand management emerging smart grid enabling technologies will allow an unprecedented degree of observability and control at all levels in a power system combined with flexible demand and storage they could allow procuring energy at minimum cost and environmental impact that however presupposes real time coordination of demand of individual households and industries down at the distribution level with generation at the transmission level this is closely related with the balancing market economic dispatch ed problem which currently does not take into account distribution network constraints and flexible demand characteristics still assuming a suitably modified form of that problem was available due to both computational and communications requirements its centralized solution in its full detail would not be tractable while there is currently a wealth of literature dealing with distributed optimization applications in power systems it typically focuses on smaller parts of the overall energy management problem e g transmission area synchronization or electric vehicles management often without considering its full scale or establishing any association with energy market mechanisms the target of this paper is twofold 1 identify a flexible demand and distribution network inclusive formulation for ed and 2 propose a solution method

qualitative forecast evaluation a comparison of two performance measures agricultural producers and marketers often have access to several sets of forecasts on the same series decision makers must be able to evaluate the relative accuracy of the forecasts the ability to evaluate whether a series will move up or down is important for series related to futures options other asset prices and situations where processes can be modified according to changing economic conditions a measure of qualitative forecast accuracy from naik and leuthold is compared to a probability based measure developed by henriksson and merton the henriksson merton measure is shown to provide additional and more accurate information concerning a model s qualitative forecasting ability

strategic bidding in an energy brokerage this focus of this paper is to present a framework in which strategies may developed for the individual participants in an energy brokerage such a framework is expected to be important with the increasing interest in electricity market structures such as the energy brokerage that deregulation has produced to illustrate the process of strategic bidding a simple suboptimal bidding strategy is presented with the aid of a numerical example the bidding strategy must be suboptimal because of the amount of unknown information about the other bidders further tuning of this strategy will be required before application to realistic scenarios

how market design shapes the spatial distribution of power plant curtailment costs abstract when multiple power plants are curtailed at the same time and in the same region electricity system costs rise if transmission lines are congested these costs might be amplified and spatially more concentrated because there are less spatial spill overs we study how such costs and their distribution depend on the market design nodal pricing or uniform pricing we extend the literature on curtailment by considering space and market design and the literature on market design by considering curtailment we expose a dc load flow model for germany to severe correlated curtailment scenarios we find that additional costs are moderate for the simulated week curtailment of 9 3 non renewable capacity reduces welfare by 2 7 uniform pricing with nodal pricing welfare loss can be reduced by 1 5 distributional differences are multiple times larger for nodal pricing producer surplus rises more and costs are spatially more concentrated at the curtailed power plants consumer surplus becomes lower the difference is unlikely to justify changes of the current market design if also wind or photovoltaic feed in is unavailable economic impacts can decrease or increase but remain in the same order of magnitude the spatial electricity system structure matters more than the volume of curtailment

politics vs economics evidence from municipal annexation abstract this paper investigates economic and political factors in suburban annexation decision in large u s cities this paper employs a median voter model which suggests a natural latent variable estimation strategy bivariate logit and normal procedures incorporating information about state laws governing annexation are run on census tract level data estimated parameters are used to evaluate the effects of economic and political variables results show cities desire to expropriate suburban tax base did not motivate annexation although cities were sensitive to other economic factors the desire to offset political and racial effects of urban migration had a consistent and positive effect on annexation

measuring the financial impact of demand response for electricity retailers abstract due to the integration of intermittent resources of power generation such as wind and solar the amount of supplied electricity will exhibit unprecedented fluctuations electricity retailers can partially meet the challenge of matching demand and volatile supply by shifting power demand according to the fluctuating supply side the necessary technology infrastructure such as advanced metering infrastructures for this so called demand response dr has advanced however little is known about the economic dimension and further effort is strongly needed to realistically quantify the financial impact to succeed in this goal we derive an optimization problem that minimizes procurement costs of an electricity retailer in order to control demand response usage the evaluation with historic data shows that cost volatility can be reduced by 7 74 peak costs drop by 14 35 and expenditures of retailers can be significantly decreased by 3 52

nonparametric estimation of sample selection models sample selection models provide an important way of accounting for economic decisions that combine discrete and continuous choices and of correcting for nonrandom sampling nonparametric estimators for these models are developed in this paper these can be used for estimating shapes and important economic quantities as in standard nonparametnc regression endogeneity of regressors of interest is allowed for series estimators for these models are developed which are useful for imposing additivity restnctions that arise from selection corrections convergence rates and asymptotic normality results are derived an application to returns to schooling among australian young females is given

stochastic modelling of renewable energy sources from operators point of view a survey abstract high penetration of renewable energy sources especially weather dependent sources has increased the power systems uncertainties for any analysis in power systems such as planning and operation it is essential to confront the stochastic nature of these sources in order to get much more precise results since operators need proper strategies and methods to decline negative effects of the stochastic behaviour of renewable power generators such as total operation cost growth this paper provides a review of different state of the art approaches from the operator s viewpoint for handling the stochastic behaviour of renewable sources hence in this paper three different strategies are categorized for stochastic analysis of these sources the first strategy is mathematical modelling including stochastic dependency and independency multi dimensional dependence forecast and scenarios afterwards demand side management which is one of the other approaches for dealing with these uncertainties is investigated and different demand response programs and some methods to model them are presented finally the effect of different electricity market schemes and relevant optimization methods to mitigate the variations of renewable energy sources are discussed the study demonstrates that an operator should choose one or a combination of these three approaches based on its requirements

efficient pricing and investment in electricity markets with intermittent resources facing growing technological and environmental challenges the electricity industry needs effective pricing mechanism to promote efficient risk management and investment decisions in a restructured electricity market with competitive wholesale prices and traditionally regulated retail rates however there are technical and institutional barriers that prevent dynamic pricing with price responsive demand in regions with limited energy storage capacity intermittent renewable resources present special challenges this could adversely affect the effectiveness of public policies causing inefficient investments in energy technologies in this paper we present an updated economic model of pricing and investment in restructured electricity market and use the model in a simulation study for an initial assessment of renewable energy strategy and alternative pricing mechanisms a key objective of the study is to shed light on the policy issues so that effective decisions can be made to improve efficiency

electricity time of use tariff with consumer behavior consideration abstract this paper investigates an electricity time of use tou tariff problem with the consideration of consumer behavior under the tou tariff we consider two periods the peak and base periods a two level model is established to solve the tou tariff problem in the upper level the producer determines the tou tariff with the consideration of consumer behavior in the lower level the consumers respond to the tou tariff through shifting some electricity consumption in the peak period to the base period using the traditional flat rate fr tariff as a baseline we verify the conditions under which the producer has incentives to adopt the tou tariff with the adoption of a general consumer transfer cost we solve for the optimal tou tariff under different situations our results demonstrate that proper adoption of the tou tariff can create a win win situation for both the producer and the consumers the producer can increase its profit and the consumers can save their electricity cost we further evaluate the effectiveness of the tou tariff in terms of the peak demand reduction using a quadratic transfer cost we obtain some managerial insights into the tou tariff problem and illustrate that the tou tariff is always beneficial to the producer and the consumers under the quadratic transfer cost

the pre programme earnings dip and the determinants of participation in a social programme implications for simple programme evaluation strategies the key to estimating the impact of a programme is constructing the counterfactual outcome representing what would have happened in its absence this problem becomes more complicated when agents such as individuals firms or local governments self select into the programme rather than being exogenously assigned to it this paper uses data from a major social experiment to identify what would have happened to the earnings of self selected participants in a job training programme had they not participated in it we investigate the implications of these earnings patterns for the validity of widely used before after and difference in differences estimators

making the most out of programme evaluations and social experiments accounting for heterogeneity in programme impacts the conventional approach to social programme evaluation focuses on estimating mean impacts of programmes yet many interesting questions regarding the political economy of programmes the distribution of programme benefits and the option values conferred on programme participants require knowledge of the distribution of impacts or features of it this paper presents evidence that heterogeneity in response to programmes is empirically important and that classical probability inequalities are not very informative in producing estimates or bounds on the distribution of programme impacts we explore two methods for supplementing the information in these inequalities based on assumptions about participant decision making processes and about the strength in dependence between outcomes in the participation and non participation states dependence is produced as a consequence of rational choice by participants we test for stochastic rationality among programme participants and present and implement methods for estimating the option values of social programmes

trading behaviour on the continuous intraday market elbas intraday markets for electricity allow for trading of energy until shortly before the period of delivery this offers market participants a possibility to reduce their expected imbalances and to of

evaluation of swedish youth labor market programs this paper evaluates two swedish active labour market programmes for youth namely youth practice and labour market training a non parametric matching approach is applied to estimate the average p

alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied social experiments natural experiments matching methods and instrumental variables in each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number of key parameters of interest these key parameters include the average treatment effect the treatment on the treated and the local average treatment effect some issues of implementation and interpretation are discussed drawing on the labour market programme evaluation literature

identifying barriers to large scale integration of variable renewable electricity into the electricity market a literature review of market design abstract for reaching the 2 c climate target the robust growth of electricity generation from variable renewable energy sources vre in the power sector is expected to continue accommodation of the power system to the variable uncertain and locational dependent outputs of vre causes integration costs integrating vre into a well functioning electricity market can minimize integration costs and drive investments in vre and complementary flexible resources however the electricity market in the european union eu as currently designed seems incapable to deliver this end this paper aims to provide a comprehensive literature review of barriers to the large scale market integration of vre in the eu electricity market design based on the set up of the eu electricity market a framework was developed to incorporate the most pertinent market integration barriers and resulting market inefficiencies this paper concludes that an overhaul is needed for the current eu electricity market to address all barriers identified firstly a discrete auction intraday market a marginal pricing balancing market a two price imbalance settlement and a nodal pricing locational marginal pricing mechanism seem more promising in limiting integration costs secondly to support business cases of vre and complementary flexible resources in the electricity market a level playing field should be established and the price cap should be lifted up to the value of lost load voll meanwhile to fit vre s market participation a higher time resolution of trading products and later gate closure time in different submarkets would be required lastly feed in support schemes currently widely used for vre investments might be inconsistent with market integration as they increase integration costs and lock vre investments in a subsidy dependent pathway to avoid such lock in further investigation of alternative capacity based support schemes is recommended

optimal and equilibrium membership in clubs in the presence of spillovers abstract this paper treats a partial equilibrium club economy in which clubs impose positive or negative externalities on one another both spillovers in congestable good and crowding are studied it is shown that an increase the relative strength of the first type of spillover may result in either an increase or decrease in the optimal club size and public good levels spillovers in crowding on the other hand have a definite effect on the optimal membership and production of public good these optimal outcomes are then compared to nash equilibrium club size and public good provision when clubs are established by profit maximizing entrepreneurs instead of a social planner

econometric analysis of 15 minute intraday electricity prices abstract the trading activity in the german intraday electricity market has increased significantly over the last years this is partially due to an increasing share of renewable energy wind and photovoltaic which requires power generators to balance out the forecasting errors in their production we investigate the bidding behaviour in the intraday market by looking at both last prices and continuous bidding in the context of a reduced form econometric analysis a unique data set of 15 minute intraday prices and intraday updated forecasts of wind and photovoltaic has been employed price bids are explained by prior information on renewables forecasts and demand supply market specific exogenous variables we show that intraday prices adjust asymmetrically to both forecasting errors in renewables and to the volume of trades dependent on the threshold variable demand quote which reflects the expected demand covered by the planned traditional capacity in the day ahead market the location of the threshold can be used by market participants to adjust their bids accordingly given the latest updates in the wind and photovoltaic forecasting errors and the forecasts of the control area balances

the environmental consequences of decentralizing the decision to decentralize abstract environmental statutes that initiate devolution frequently contain provisions that allow tiers of government to control the final assignment of policymaking authority these provisions may allow one tier of government to propose a re assignment of authority and may give other tiers of government the power to veto the proposed transfer of authority using data from the devolution of the resource conservation and recovery act in california we empirically model a dual selection process in which a lower tier government i e a city may assume policymaking authority from an upper tier government i e a county but only if the upper tier entity chooses not to veto the petition using simulation methods we compare the consequences of this policy with those of two alternative devolution policies each devolution policy results in the setting of different levels of public goods across tiers of government each policy also produces markedly different levels of compliance with state environmental standards

do benefits from dynamic tariffing rise welfare effects of real time retail pricing under carbon taxation and variable renewable electricity supply we analyze the gross welfare gains from real time retail pricing in electricity markets where carbon taxation induces investment in variable renewable technologies applying a stylized numerical electricity market model we find a u shaped association between carbon taxation and gross welfare gains the benefits of introducing real time pricing can accordingly be relatively low at relatively high carbon taxes and vice versa the non monotonous change in welfare gains can be explained by corresponding changes in the inefficiency arising from under consumption during low price periods rather than by changes in wholesale price volatility our results may cast doubt on the efficiency of ongoing roll outs of advanced meters in many electricity markets since net benefits might only materialize at relatively high carbon tax levels and renewable supply shares

financial deregulation and consumption in the united kingdom the last decade has seen widespread deregulation of domestic financial markets in the united kingdom this paper uses regional data to investigate the connection between consumption and financial deregulation it is concluded that deregulation has led to a significant increase in the forward looking nature of aggregate consumption copyright 1993 by mit press

assessing the effectiveness of saving incentives concluding that iras and 401 k s do increase saving this text provides a fresh cost benefit approach for analyzing the success of savings incentives it compares the new savings to the government tax revenue lost through contributions to iras and 401 k s

transition pathways for a uk low carbon electricity future abstract achieving long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions such as the uk s legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 80 by 2050 will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands involving radical substitution to low carbon supply technologies and improvements in end use energy efficiency this paper describes the development and high level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a uk low carbon electricity system explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach the pathways use an action space concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors which are influenced by the competing governance framings or logics that different actors pursue the paper sets out three core transition pathways market rules central co ordination and thousand flowers in which market government and civil society logics respectively dominate it summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways and the roles of actors in bringing these about this leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways and of the challenges for individuals businesses social movements and policy makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them

tiebout revisited redrawing jurisdictional boundaries abstract central city households who subsidize local public sector goods through local property taxes have an incentive to flee from the city or to change the jurisdiction s boundary we focus on the latter case a neighborhood s attempt to deannex from a central city and subsequently annex to a suburb the difficult theoretical problem is to explain why a large percentage of central city voters supported the deannexation proposal most apparently becoming worse off if the issue was approved while no explanation is consistent with fully rational voters it appears that high property value owning voters supported the attempt in hope of being part of the next wave of deannexers

supporting the externality of intermittency in policies for renewable energy abstract we analyse the joint problem of supporting renewables and resource adequacy in a liberalised electricity market and present a detailed model based comparison of two alternative policies we undertake this in the context of the british market we show how ceteris paribus the progressive replacement of coal with wind imposes extra costs of reserve and evaluate alternative way to meet this whether through capacity payments funded by customers or a reliability requirement on wind generators with capital cost or energy feed in subsidies we consider the reality of market concentration and the extent to which pragmatic regulation could allow prices to rise above marginal cost to reduce the extent of direct subsidies and complex market designs we also evaluate the implied cost of carbon reduction in a progressive replacement of coal with wind when the security is maintained by extra peaking gas we find that support through capital allowances rather than the energy market is more efficient

evaluation of market rules using a multi agent system method the california energy crisis in 2000 2001 showed what could happen to an electricity market if it did not go through a comprehensive and rigorous testing before its implementation due to the complexity of the market structure strategic interaction between the participants and the underlying physics it is difficult to fully evaluate the implications of potential changes to market rules this paper presents a flexible and integrative method to assess market designs through agent based modeling realistic simulation scenarios are constructed for evaluation of the proposed pjm like market power mitigation rules of the california electricity market simulation results show that in the absence of market power mitigation generation company genco agents facilitated by q learning are able to exploit the market flaws and make significantly higher profits relative to the competitive benchmark the incorporation of pjm like local market power mitigation rules is shown to be effective in suppressing the exercise of market power