how accurate are forecasts of costs of energy a methodological contribution forecasts of the cost of energy are typically presented as point estimates however forecasts are seldom accurate which makes it important to understand the uncertainty around these point estimates the scale of the differences between forecasts and outturns i e contemporary estimates of costs may have important implications for government decisions on the appropriate form and level of support modelling energy scenarios or industry investment appraisal this paper proposes a methodology to assess the accuracy of cost forecasts we apply this to levelised costs of energy for different generation technologies due to the availability of comparable forecasts and contemporary estimates however the same methodology could be applied to the components of levelised costs such as capital costs the estimated forecast errors capture the accuracy of previous forecasts and can provide objective bounds to the range around current forecasts for such costs the results from applying this method are illustrated using publicly available data for on and off shore wind nuclear and ccgt technologies revealing the possible scale of forecast errors for these technologies

using local labor market data to re examine the employment effects of the minimum wage using quarterly census data for 1996 2000 the author evaluates how minimum wages affected teenage employment at the county level an analysis that includes all counties yields small and statistically insignificant effects consistent with previous research using state panels however in counties where the minimum wage was likely binding above the market clearing wage for teens the negative impact on employment was considerably larger the effect was strongest in small counties was restricted to transitory jobs and new hires and apparently was not experienced by young adults ages 19 22 the small employment effects found in much of the literature the author argues at least partly reflect the estimates inclusion of local labor markets where the minimum wage is not binding by averaging the effects across all areas with no disaggregation based on where the minimum wage is binding and where it is not these studies overlook important regional variation

security of electricity supply at the generation level problem analysis abstract since the very beginning of the restructuring process back in 1982 in chile the ability of an electricity market to provide the system with the required level of security of supply has been put into question the mistrust on the ability of the market left to its own devices to provide sufficient generation availability when needed is more and more leading to the implementation of additional regulatory mechanisms this matter is undoubtedly gaining importance and it has taken a key role in the energy regulators agendas in this paper we revisit this discussion under the light of thirty years of electricity market experience we analyze the different reasons why although ideally the market is supposed to provide itself an adequate security of supply at the generation level this result is still far from being achieved in practice

minimum wages and retirement the authors study the effect of the minimum wage on the employment outcomes and social security claiming of older us workers from 1983 to 2016 the probability of work at or near the minimum wage i

credible research designs for minimum wage studies a response to neumark salas and wascher the authors assess the critique by neumark salas and wascher 2014 of minimum wage studies that found small effects on teen employment data from 1979 to 2014 contradict nsw the authors show th

economics of pooling small local electricity prosumers lcoe self consumption abstract the arrival of small scale decentralized energy installations coincides with the emergence of so called prosumers entities households that are producer and consumer of energy in one this research focuses on an electricity prosumer model in the context of the uk market levelized cost of electricity lcoe for photovoltaic pv and wind energy will be modeled for six uk sites additionally self consumption levels for two different load profiles and technologies will be estimated per site the simulations are modeled with homer software and multiple inputs will be varied including natural resource equipment cost maintenance cost equipment life expectancy cost of capital project life and load profiles the modeled self consumption levels show significant differences and varied between 31 and 72 depending on load profile itself and re technologies mixes modeled the pooling of prosumers implied by lower load profile volatility proved to be beneficial to self consumption levels in the modeled scenarios up to 17 6 lcoe showed significant ranges depending on the input parameters and their combination 10 55 p kw h for pv and 2 19 p kw h for wind the combination of these factors is decisive for the final lcoe and the negative effects of less benign factors can be compensated by other parameters when compared to current electricity retail prices of around 15 p kw h around 97 of wind sites and around 4 of pv scenarios implied lcoe reached grid parity the self consumption levels and lcoe analysis indicate the viability of electricity prosumer models

investment risks in power generation a comparison of fossil fuel and renewable energy dominated markets abstract due to their high capital intensity weather dependent renewable energies res such as solar and wind face considerable investment risks in power markets in addition their uncertain production volumes also affect the investment risks of other plant types through the impact on power prices and residual demand increasing res shares thus potentially increase overall investment risks in power markets which many analysts consider to be a potential problem against this background this paper compares investment risks of different technologies in markets with increasing shares of variable res it further analyses how generation mixes are affected by these investment risks if the risks are evaluated on a stand alone basis or in a plant portfolio context of a private firm for this purpose a stylized investment and dispatch model is used to conduct monte carlo simulations from which risk measures are derived the results show that capital intensive res face the highest stand alone risks since their profits are most affected by the power price risk however the results further indicate that the stand alone risks of variable res decrease with their share in the market because of a negative correlation of output and price risk in addition res have a risk benefit in firm plant portfolios in terms of constituting a hedge against losses of fossil fuel plants this positive portfolio effect however rapidly decreases and becomes negative with increasing res shares in the market

the impact of tether grants on bitcoin abstract in recent years tether issuances or grants have increased significantly which correlated broadly with a significant rise in bitcoin valuation this paper examines the impact of cryptocurrency issuances on subsequent cryptocurrency returns it is argued that as tether is the undisputed stable coin the minting of new tether acts similarly to monetary expansion in cryptocurrency markets inflating the prices of bitcoin we construct a var model and show contrary to investor expectations tether issuances do not impact subsequent bitcoin returns however they do impact traded volumes we also document an increase in tether trading following a subsequent decrease in bitcoin returns

revenue prospects of photovoltaic in germany influence opportunities by variation of the plant orientation abstract the fixed feed in tariff under the renewable energy sources act in germany particularly encourages photovoltaic systems with the highest possible annual yield regardless of their temporal generation profile consequently a large part of the installed photovoltaic systems in germany have a southern orientation this paper examines how the optional german market premium scheme incentivizes the installation of photovoltaic systems with a more demand oriented electricity production for this purpose the measure energy yield elasticity of market value was developed and calculated by using historical market data the results show that some of the plant orientations that are deviating from the southern reference could have led to an increase in the market value in the last few years however these would not have been high enough to more than compensate for the financial losses that were formed as a result of the annual energy yield declines the merit order effect could change this situation in the future

the european renewable energy target for 2030 an impact assessment of the electricity sector abstract the european union set binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases ghg and the share of renewable energy re in final energy consumption by 2020 the european council agreed to continue with this strategy through to 2030 by setting a re target of 27 in addition to a ghg reduction target of 40 we provide a detailed sectoral impact assessment by analyzing the implications for the electricity sector in terms of economic costs and the regional distribution of investments and shares of electricity generated from renewable energy sources res e according to the impact analysis by the european commission the 27 re target corresponds to a res e share of 49 our model based sensitivity analysis on underlying technological and institutional assumptions shows that the cost effective res e share varies between 43 and 56 secondly we quantify the economic costs of these variants and those which would be incurred with higher shares the long term additional costs for higher res e shares would be less than 1 of total system costs the third aspect relates to the regional distribution of eu wide efforts for upscaling renewables we point out that delivering high res e shares in a cost effective manner involves considerably different efforts by the member states

micro and macro elasticities in a life cycle model with taxes we build a life cycle model of labor supply that incorporates changes along both the intensive and extensive margin and use it to assess the consequences of changes in tax and transfer policies on equilibrium hours of work we find that changes in taxes have large aggregate effects on hours of work moreover we find that there is no inconsistency between this result and the empirical finding of small labor elasticities for prime age workers in our model micro and macro elasticities are effectively unrelated our model is also consistent with other cross country patterns

energy consumption financial development and economic growth in india new evidence from a nonlinear and asymmetric analysis this paper investigates the asymmetric relationship between energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating financial development capital and labour into a production function covering the indian economy from 1960q1 2015q4 the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach is applied to examine the asymmetric cointegration between the variables an asymmetric causality test is also employed to examine the causal association between the considered variables the results indicate cointegration between the variables in the presence of asymmetries the asymmetric causality results show that only negative shocks in energy consumption have impacts on economic growth in the same vein only negative shocks in financial development have impacts on economic growth by contrast symmetrically capital formation causes economic growth finally over the study period a neutral effect exists between the labour force and economic growth in india the implications of these results for growth policies in india are also discussed

can we improve the perceived quality of economic forecasts a number of topics are discussed concerning how economic forecasts can be improved in quality or at least in presentation these include the following using 50 uncertainty intervals rather than 95 noting that even though forecasters use many different techniques they are all occasionally incorrect in the same direction that there is a tendency to underestimate changes that some expectations and recently available data are used insufficiently lagged forecasts errors can help compensate for structural breaks series that are more forecastable could be emphasized and that present methods of evaluating forecasts do not capture the useful properties of some methods compared to alternatives

minimum wage effects on labor market outcomes under search matching and endogenous contact rates building upon a continuous time model of search with nash bargaining in a stationary environment we analyze the effect of changes in minimum wages on labor market outcomes and welfare although minimum wage increases may or may not lead to increases in unemployment in our model they can be welfare improving to labor market participants on both the supply and demand sides of the labor market we discuss identification of the model using current population survey data on accepted wages and unemployment durations and show that by incorporating a limited amount of information from the demand side of the market it is possible to obtain credible and precise estimates of all primitive parameters we show that the optimal minimum wage in 1996 depends critically on whether or not contact rates can be considered to be exogenous and we note that the limited variation in minimum wages makes testing this assumption problematic

quantifying the long term economic benefits of european electricity system integration abstract this paper aims to quantify the long term economic benefits that arise from an increasing integration of the pan european electricity system by means of comparing model based decarbonization scenarios developed with the model limes eu it explicitly accounts for the interplay between transmission infrastructure and renewable generation capacity expansion we confirm earlier findings that on aggregate pan european transmission capacity expansion constitutes a no regret option for integrating increasing shares of variable renewables it leads to positive social returns on investment in all mitigation scenarios under analysis however the reduction in total discounted system costs stemming from transmission capacity expansion is modest in magnitude over the period 2010 2050 it reaches a maximum of 3 5 for a case with massive expansion compared to one in which the status quo remains in technical terms this means that the optimum is rather flat and taking into account regional and local benefits and distributional aspects could alter the evaluation of the economic benefits a crucial finding is that the configuration of pan european transmission infrastructure and the importance of specific country connections i e a southern versus a northern solution hinges on the relative development of specific investment costs for solar and wind technologies over the next decades

a review of uncertainties in technology experience curves abstract the use of log linear experience curves or learning curves relating reductions in the unit cost of technologies to their cumulative production or installed capacity has become a common method of representing endogenous technical change in energy economic models used for policy analysis yet there are significant uncertainties in such formulations whose impact on key model results have been insufficiently examined or considered this paper reviews the major types of uncertainty in log linear experience curves and their effect on projected rates of cost reduction uncertainties are found not only in the learning rate parameter of a log linear model but also in the functional form that determines the shape of an experience curve evidence for alternative forms such as an s shaped curve is reviewed along with case studies that demonstrate the uncertainties associated with cost increases during early commercialization of a technology a phenomena that is widely recognized but rarely quantified or incorporated in learning models additional factors discussed include the effects of learning discontinuities institutional forgetting and the influence of social economic and political factors we then review other models of causality which aim to improve modelers ability to explain and predict the influence of other underlying processes that contribute to technology cost reductions in addition to learning ignoring other types of underlying mechanisms can create a false sense of precision and overestimate the true contribution of learning currently however uncertainties in such multi factor models remain large due to the difficulties of estimating key parameters such as private sector r d investments and extending models of a specific technology to a broader suite of technologies and cost projections pending the development and validation of more robust models of technological change we suggest ways to significantly improve the characterization and reporting of current learning model uncertainties and their impacts on the results of energy economic models to help reduce the potential for drawing inappropriate or erroneous policy conclusions

economic and technical challenges of flexible operations under large scale variable renewable deployment abstract fundamental characteristics of solar and wind power have generated controversy about their economic competitiveness and appropriate techniques for assessing their value this research presents an approach to quantify the economic value of variable renewable capacity and demonstrates its dependence on renewable deployment levels regional resource endowments fleet flexibility and trade assumptions it assesses economic and technical impacts of large scale renewable penetration by linking two models representing electric sector investments and detailed operations model results for california and texas suggest that operational constraints and costs of dispatchable generators e g minimum load levels ramping limits startup costs can impact renewable integration costs but the temporal and spatial variability of solar and wind are larger determinants of their value restrictions on transmission and regional coordination in capacity planning and dispatch decrease the economic value of variable renewable energy highlighting the potential roles of market design and trade energy storage is shown to be a valuable balancing asset at higher solar and wind penetration levels but potential revenues diminish with increased storage deployment

wage differentials employer size and unemployment the unique equilibrium solution to a game in which a continuum of individual employers choose permanent wage offers and a continuum of workers search by sequentially sampling from the set of offers is characterized wage dispersion is a robust outcome provided that workers search while employed as well as when unemployed the unique nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of wage offers is constructed for three cases 1 identical workers and employers 2 identical employers and an atomless distribution of worker supply prices and 3 identical workers and an atomless distribution of job productivities copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

getting handcuffs on an octopus theoretical work on minimum wage policy emphasizes labor market dynamics but the resulting implications for worker mobility remain largely untested the authors show that in the teenage labor market higher minimum wage standards reduce worker flows and increase job stability furthermore they find that the employment effects of a relatively higher minimum wage vary considerably across markets with different levels of turnover and labor market tightness results help to explain the small effects of minimum wage standards on employment commonly found in the aggregate data and are consistent with labor market models that involve search frictions

the minimum wage from a two sided perspective this paper sheds new light on the effects of the minimum wage on employment from a two sided theoretical perspective in which firms job offer and workers job acceptance decisions are disentangled minimum wages reduce job offer incentives and increase job acceptance incentives we show that sufficiently low minimum wages may do no harm to employment since their job offer disincentives are countervailed by their job acceptance incentives

price delay and market frictions in cryptocurrency markets abstract we study the efficiency of cryptocurrencies by measuring the price s reaction time to unexpected relevant information we find the average price delay to significantly decrease during the last three years for the cross section of 75 cryptocurrencies we find delays to be highly correlated with liquidity

return and volatility spillovers among cryptocurrencies abstract this paper measures interdependencies among 18 major cryptocurrencies and shows that i bitcoin is the dominant contributor of return and volatility spillovers among all the sampled cryptocurrencies ii return and volatility spillovers have risen steadily over time iii there are spikes in spillovers during major news events regarding cryptocurrencies these findings suggest growing interdependence among cryptocurrencies and by extension a higher degree of contagion risk it may be the case that cryptocurrencies are becoming more integrated albeit this makes for interesting future empirical testing in addition the time varying nature of spillovers reveals a certain dimension of uncertainty regarding the future of these digital currencies

industry dynamics and the minimum wage a putty clay approach we document two new findings about the industry level response to minimum wage hikes first restaurant exit and entry both rise following a hike second there is no change in employment among continuing restaurants we develop a model of industry dynamics based on putty clay technology that is consistent with these findings in the model continuing restaurants cannot change employment and thus industry level adjustment occurs gradually through exit of labor intensive restaurants and entry of capital intensive restaurants interestingly the putty clay model matches the small estimated short run disemployment effect of the minimum wage found in other studies but produces a larger long run disemployment effect

impact of renewables on electricity markets do support schemes matter abstract rising renewable shares influence electricity markets in several ways among others average market prices are reduced and price volatility increases therefore the missing money problem in energy only electricity markets is more likely to occur in systems with high renewable shares nevertheless renewables are supported in many countries due to their expected benefits the kind of support instrument can however influence the degree to which renewables influence the market while fixed feed in tariffs lead to higher market impacts more market oriented support schemes such as market premiums quota systems and capacity based payments decrease the extent to which markets are affected this paper analyzes the market impacts of different support schemes for this purpose a new module is added to an existing bottom up simulation model of the electricity market in addition different degrees of flexibility in the electricity system are considered a case study for germany is used to derive policy recommendations regarding the choice of support scheme

on the economics of electrical storage for variable renewable energy sources abstract the use of renewable energy sources is a major strategy to mitigate climate change yet sinn 2017 argues that excessive electrical storage requirements limit the further expansion of variable wind and solar energy we question and alter strong implicit assumptions of sinn s approach and find that storage needs are considerably lower up to two orders of magnitude first we move away from corner solutions by allowing for combinations of storage and renewable curtailment second we specify a parsimonious optimization model that explicitly considers an economic efficiency perspective we conclude that electrical storage is unlikely to limit the transition to renewable energy

volatility and return jumps in bitcoin abstract in this article we are interested in understanding the dynamics of bitcoin daily returns and volatility cryptocurrencies have very high unconditional volatility and are subject to sudden massive price swings we start with a standard log normal stochastic volatility model then explore two formulations which incorporate discontinuous jumps to volatility and returns jumps to volatility are permanent while jumps to mean returns have contemporaneous effects only results point to two high volatility periods the first from late 2013 to early 2014 likely associated to the mt gox incident the second covers the year of 2017 peaking on december likely driven by increased popular attention jumps to mean returns are specially relevant to capture large price variations mostly negative associated with formative events in cryptocurrency markets such as hacks and unsuccessful fork attempts

the effect of minimum wages on employment a factor model approach this paper resolves issues in the minimum wage employment debate by using factor model econometric methods to address concerns related to unobserved heterogeneity recent work has shown that the negative effects of minimum wages on employment found using traditional methods are sensitive to the inclusion of controls for regional heterogeneity and selection of states that experience minimum wage hikes leaving the two sides of the debate in disagreement about the appropriate approach factor model methods are an ideal solution for this disagreement as they allow for the presence of multiple unobserved common factors which can be correlated with the regressors these methods provide a more exible way of addressing concerns related to unobserved heterogeneity and are robust to critiques from either side of the debate the factor model estimators produce minimum wage employment elasticities that are much smaller than the traditional ols results and are not statistically different from zero these results hold for many specications and two datasets that have been used in the minimum wage employment literature a simulation shows that unobserved common factors can explain the different estimates seen across methodologies in the literature

on the economics of renewable energy sources abstract with the global expansion of renewable energy re technologies the provision of optimal re policy packages becomes an important task we review pivotal aspects regarding the economics of renewables that are relevant to the design of an optimal re policy many of which are to date unresolved we do so from three interrelated perspectives that a meaningful public policy framework for inquiry must take into account first we explore different social objectives justifying the deployment of re technologies and review model based estimates of the economic potential of re technologies i e their socially optimal deployment level second we address pivotal market failures that arise in the course of implementing the economic potential of re sources in decentralized markets third we discuss multiple policy instruments curing these market failures our framework reveals the requirements for an assessment of the relevant options for real world decision makers in the field of re policies this review makes it clear that there are remaining white areas on the knowledge map concerning consistent and socially optimal re policies

efficient modeling and forecasting of electricity spot prices abstract the increasing importance of renewable energy especially solar and wind power has led to new forces in the formation of electricity prices hence this paper introduces an econometric model for the hourly time series of electricity prices of the european power exchange epex which incorporates specific features like renewable energy the model consists of several sophisticated and established approaches and can be regarded as a periodic var tarch with wind power solar power and load as influences on the time series it is able to map the distinct and well known features of electricity prices in germany an efficient iteratively reweighted lasso approach is used for the estimation moreover it is shown that several existing models are outperformed by the procedure developed in this paper

liquidity uncertainty and bitcoin s market microstructure abstract this paper provides a novel measure of liquidity uncertainty for bitcoin using bid ask spread data from bitfinex one of the largest and most liquid bitcoin exchanges this measure can be used to analyze liquidity developments in bitcoin exchanges or to gauge the immediacy associated with buying or selling bitcoin it then proceeds to identify what aspects of bitcoin s market microstructure can explain the time series behavior of this liquidity uncertainty the estimation results are based on a markov regime switching model that captures episodes of high and low liquidity uncertainty for bitcoin over the period from october 2013 to march 2018

liquidity and market efficiency in cryptocurrencies we examine the liquidity of 456 different cryptocurrencies and show that return predictability diminishes in cryptocurrencies with high market liquidity we show that whilst bitcoin returns are showing signs of efficiency numerous cryptocurrencies still exhibit signs of autocorrelation and non independence our findings also show a strong relationship between the hurst exponent and liquidity on a cross sectional basis therefore we conclude that liquidity plays a significant role in market efficiency and return predictability of new cryptocurrencies

the inefficiency of bitcoin bitcoin has received much attention in the media and by investors in recent years although there remains scepticism and a lack of understanding of this cryptocurrency we add to the literature on bitcoin by studying the market efficiency of bitcoin through a battery of robust tests evidence reveals that returns are significantly inefficient over our full sample but when we split our sample into two subsample periods we find that some tests indicate that bitcoin is efficient in the latter period therefore we conclude that bitcoin in an inefficient market but may be in the process of moving towards an efficient market

systemic value of electricity sources what we can learn from the brazilian experience abstract the competitiveness of electricity sources is traditionally estimated by levelized cost of electricity lcoe compared to the average electricity price however the introduction of variable renewable energy sources vres in power systems has evidenced that time location and availability are essential to set the marginal value of electricity sources overcoming the narrow view of costs for a broad value approach the literature recognizes that the source comparison must consider the expected marginal value of each alternative which evolves over time due to sources penetration and system development changing static and dynamic integration costs the paper presents the brazilian experience as forerunner case study for the literature on systemic value as the country has established a pioneering benefit cost index bci to compare different sources in centralized expansion auctions which contracted 100 gw of installed capacity the bci analysis is based on hydro predominance recognizing only static integration costs backward looking approach nevertheless the brazilian system is evolving towards higher short term variability due to the loss of regularization of hydro reservoirs limitations to hydropower expansion and vres penetration the expansion and operation of the power system are not sensitive to ongoing changes neglecting dynamic integration costs which must be incorporated in a forward looking perspective

buffering volatility a study on the limits of germany s energy revolution squaring hourly demand and wind solar production data for germany and a number of neighbouring countries with the results of the eu s estorage project this paper studies the limits of germany s energy revolution in view of the volatility of wind and solar power in addition to pumped storage it considers double structure buffering demand management norwegian hydro dam buffering and international diversification via grid expansion if germany operated in autarchy and tried to handle the volatility of wind solar production without using stores while replacing all nuclear and fossil fuel in power production on average 61 and at the margin 94 of wind solar production would have to be wasted given the current level of other renewables to avoid any waste the wind solar market share in an autarchic solution must not be expanded to more than 30 by using norway s hydro plants the share could be expanded to 36 if norway were to build all the pumped storage plants the estorage study deems feasible germany s wind solar market share could be expanded by another 24 percentage points to about 60 which corresponds to 48 of the combined german and norwegian markets additionally expanding the market to switzerland austria and denmark and building the maximal number of pumped stores would increase the combined wind solar market share for all five countries to nearly 50 c 2017 the author s published by elsevier b v

minimum wage effects on employment substitution and the teenage labor supply evidence from personnel data using personnel data from a large us retail firm i examine the firm s response to the 1996 federal minimum wage increase compulsory increases in average wages had negative but statistically insignificant effects on overall employment however increases in the relative wages of teenagers led to significant increases in the relative employment of teenagers especially younger and more affluent teenagers further analysis suggests a pattern consistent with noncompetitive models where the legislation affected mainly the wages of teenagers and so was only moderately binding it led both to higher teenage labor market participation and to higher absolute employment of teenagers

cost estimates for nuclear power in the uk abstract current uk government support for nuclear power has in part been informed by cost estimates that suggest that electricity from new nuclear power stations will be competitive with alternative low carbon generation options the evidence and analysis presented in this paper suggests that the capital cost estimates for nuclear power that are being used to inform these projections rely on costs escalating over the pre construction and construction phase of the new build programme at a level significantly below those that have been experienced by past us and european programmes this paper applies observed construction time and cost escalation rates to the published estimates of capital costs for new nuclear plant in the uk and calculates the potential impact on levelised cost per unit of electricity produced the results suggest that levelised cost may turn out to be significantly higher than expected which in turn has important implications for policy both in general terms of the potential costs to consumers and more specifically for negotiations around the level of policy support and contractual arrangements offered to individual projects through the proposed contract for difference strike price

wholesale marginal prices in competitive generation markets wholesale marginal electricity prices are being used in several actual competitive generation markets worldwide both to remunerate generators and to charge consumption these prices must account not only for energy but also for guarantee of supply in the long and the short term this paper a provides a sound conceptual and quantitative foundation for wholesale pricing based on generation services where any existing restrictions in operation or planning in real power markets are accounted for b clearly establishes the relationship between short term marginal costs long term marginal costs and optimal wholesale electricity prices and c identifies the reasons for mismatches in cost recovery with marginal generation prices the theoretical results are verified with a detailed realistic power system model

an alternative model of metcalfe s law for valuing bitcoin abstract this short paper presents a new model of the market capitalization of bitcoin that builds upon a standard model based upon metcalfe s law the model incorporates the logistic diffusion of the innovation which could be extended to capture population and economic factors this model appears to have some improved efficacy over the standard model using this model some areas for future research are briefly discussed

the private and public economics of renewable electricity generation generating electricity from renewable sources is more expensive than conventional approaches but reduces pollution externalities analyzing the tradeoff is much more challenging than often presumed because the value of electricity is extremely dependent on the time and location at which it is produced which is not very controllable with some renewables such as wind and solar likewise the pollution benefits from renewable generation depend on what type of generation it displaces which also depends on time and location without incorporating these factors cost benefit analyses of alternatives are likely to be misleading other common arguments for subsidizing renewable power green jobs energy security and driving down fossil energy prices are unlikely to substantially alter the analysis the role of intellectual property spillovers is a strong argument for subsidizing energy science research but less persuasive as an enhancement to the value of installing current renewable energy technologies

causes of the eu ets price drop recession cdm renewable policies or a bit of everything new evidence the price of eu allowances euas in the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets fell from almost 30 tco2 in mid 2008 to less than 5 tco2 in mid 2013 the sharp and persistent price decline has sparked intense debates both in academia and among policy makers about the decisive allowance price drivers in this paper we examine whether and to what extent the eua price drop can be justified by three commonly identified explanatory factors the economic recession renewable policies and the use of international credits capitalizing on marginal abatement cost theory and a broadly extended data set we find that only variations in economic activity and the growth of wind and solar electricity production are robustly explaining eua price dynamics contrary to simulation based analyses our results point to moderate interaction effects between the overlapping eu ets and renewable policies the bottom line however is that 90 of the variations of eua price changes remains unexplained by the abatement related fundamentals together our findings do not support the widely held view that negative demand shocks are the main cause of the weak carbon price signal in view of the new evidence we evaluate the eu ets reform options which are currently discussed

announcement effects in the cryptocurrency market cryptocurrencies have gained popularity as new economic investment assets globally in recent years this study examines market reactions to major news events associated with cryptocurrencies abnor

economic development as self discovery in the presence of uncertainty about what a country can be good at producing there can be great social value to discovering costs of domestic activities because such discoveries can be easily imitated we develop a general equilibrium framework for a small open economy to clarify the analytical and normative issues we highlight two failures of the laissez faire outcome there is too little investment and entrepreneurship ex ante and too much production diversification ex post optimal policy consists of counteracting these distortions to encourage investments in the modern sector ex ante but to rationalize production ex post we provide some informal evidence on the building blocks of our model

on the inefficiency of bitcoin abstract urquhart 2016 investigated the market efficiency of bitcoin by means of five different tests on bitcoin returns it was concluded that the bitcoin returns do not satisfy the efficient market hypothesis we show here that a simple power transformation of the bitcoin returns do satisfy the hypothesis through the use of eight different tests the transformation used does not lead to any loss of information

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

towards a common renewable future the system gmm approach to assess the convergence in renewable energy consumption of eu countries abstract this paper investigates whether the contribution of renewable energy sources to primary energy consumption is characterized by a convergence process across core european union eu countries over the period from 1990 to 2014 the system generalized method of moments gmm methodology is employed for 5 year span panel data of 14 eu members the findings indicate strong evidence for both the absolute unconditional and conditional convergence of renewables share in primary energy consumption across eu 14 countries moreover the control variables namely co2 emissions per gdp fdi inward stock and electricity prices contribute to the speed of convergence hence the implicit rate of conditional convergence is higher than that of absolute convergence the empirical evidence suggests that the energy mixes of core eu members have a tendency to become similar in the long run as the shares of res in primary energy consumption converge to the average level nonetheless it does not necessarily imply that this average would be 20 target which is to be achieved by 2020 according to eu directive 2009 28 ec

are conventional energy megaprojects competitive suboptimal decisions related to cost overruns in brazil abstract cost minimization is arguably the most important criterion governing decisions about energy sector infrastructure construction usually a winning project is picked among similar alternatives based on lowest levelized cost of energy because ceteris paribus economies of scale drive down the unit cost of energy delivered as such megaprojects here defined as costing more than a benchmark us 1 billion are perceived as more competitive than smaller scale options however megaprojects are prone to construction cost overruns and delays that if included ex ante may change the optimality of decision for a given project we hypothesize that optimistic assumptions on techno economic performance of megaprojects favor their inclusion in the solution of integrated assessment models iams preventing higher shares of non hydro renewables energy efficiency and other low carbon options to test this hypothesis we ran the coppe msb energy system cost optimization model for infrastructure expansion we estimate a factor named z factor for zillions to determine cost differences both within brazil and vis a vis international parity and adjust the model s parameters for capex and construction times of projects qualifying as megaprojects results show decreased coal and increased wind power generation and a reduction in the number of new refineries leading to higher imports of diesel and gasoline

variable renewable energy technologies in the turkish electricity market quantile regression analysis of the merit order effect abstract the share of variable renewable energy sources in power supply has increased significantly in many countries however this increase has also created problems in electricity markets while the average day ahead market price has declined in several markets the merit order effect the remuneration mechanisms in some countries have to be revised due to the surge in financial costs yet further research is needed to understand the implications of the merit order effect for remuneration mechanisms thoroughly accordingly this study aims to contribute to the literature through employing a quantile regression model to analyze the merit order effect and discuss its implications for the remuneration mechanism in turkish electricity market model results show significant negative merit order effect for both wind and run of river hydro technologies however this effect varies with respect to demand price level and technology moreover the contribution of these technologies to the total welfare in the turkish electricity market does not favor fixed price payments in conclusion it is recommended that the remuneration mechanism is revised to include the temporal value of variable renewable energy sources and electricity market design should reflect the locational value of variable renewable energy sources in turkey

the market value of variable renewables the effect of solar wind power variability on their relative price this paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the market value of variable renewable energy vre the inherent variability of wind speeds and solar radiation affects the price that vre generators receive on the market market value during windy and sunny times the additional electricity supply reduces the prices because the drop is larger with more installed capacity the market value of vre falls with higher penetration rate this study aims to develop a better understanding on how the market value with penetration and how policies and prices affect the market value quantitative evidence is derived from a review of published studies regression analysis of market data and the calibrated model of the european electricity market emma we find the value of wind power to fall from 110 of the average power price to 50 80 as wind penetration increases from zero to 30 of total electricity consumption for solar power similarly low value levels are reached already at 15 penetration hence competitive large scale renewable deployment will be more difficult to accomplish than as many anticipate

on intermittent renewable generation the stability of australia s national electricity market abstract energy only markets have an inherently unstable equilibrium even under ideal conditions because participants are unable to optimise voll events the addition of intermittent renewable generation is thought to make conditions harder in this article optimal voll events in an islanded nem region is modelled by substituting high price caps for boiteux capacity charges then analysing the impact of adding progressively more variable renewable energy vre up to 35 market share spot market conditions prove stable and tractable provided thermal plant exit and adjust perfectly but vre asset allocation is important absent highly elastic demand or ultra low cost storage solar pv market share has economic limits because the technology rapidly cannibalises itself furthermore as vre rises in imperfectly interconnected regions a tipping point appears to exist where hedge markets enter an unstable zone through shortages of asset backed firm intra regional swaps and caps government initiated cfds for vre need to be designed carefully to ensure any instability is not exacerbated by extracting contracts from an already shortening hedge market

cost effectiveness of renewable electricity policies we analyze policies to promote renewable sources of electricity a portfolio standard rps raises electricity prices and primarily reduces gas fired generation a knee of the cost curve exists between 15 and 20 goals for 2020 in our central case and higher natural gas prices lower the cost of greater reliance on renewables a renewable energy production tax credit lowers electricity price at the expense of taxpayers which limits its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions and it is less cost effective at increasing renewables than a portfolio standard neither policy is as cost effective as a cap and trade policy for achieving carbon emission reductions

specifications of social welfare in economic studies of climate policy overview of criteria and related policy insights an important assumption in economic studies of climate policy is the social welfare function this paper shows that applying distinct decision or social welfare criteria can result in different optimal policies of climate control notably if climate change impacts are uncertain first decision criteria in current climate economic studies are reviewed next the most important alternatives are discussed including their mathematical formalization and incorporation in economy climate models most of these alternative criteria suggest more stringent climate policies to be optimal than the standard discounted utilitarianism approach however several important welfare criteria have not or hardly seen any application in the economic analysis of climate policy we conclude that there is clear need for systematic research on this theme for which the current review provides a solid basis

renewable electricity generation in germany a meta analysis of mitigation scenarios german energy policy targets envision a share of electricity from renewable energy sources res e of at least 80 in 2050 how can the transformation of the german electricity sector be achieved and at what costs this paper addresses these questions by means of a meta analysis of 10 recent model based mitigation scenarios for germany it turns out that the scenarios exploit the three basic strategic options of increasing the share of res e domestic res e generation electricity demand reductions and res e imports to substantially different extents domestic res e generation increases in all scenarios particularly from onshore and offshore wind scenarios that rely heavily on reducing electricity demand require a relatively low expansion of domestic res e generation despite detailed technical analyses insights on the costs of the transformation remain limited a discussion of underlying scenario assumptions reveals that it is unclear whether i res e and system integration technology development will be as cost competitive as postulated ii implicitly assumed institutional requirements will be realized and iii relevant actors in the transformation process will be incentivized accordingly therefore future research should pursue a thorough assessment of strategic options for transforming the german electricity system that consistently integrates technologies institutions and actors

real option valuation in renewable energy literature research focus trends and design abstract in light of intensive development of the renewable energy re sector a growing number of academic papers address the complexity of re investment planning and valuation to take account of the high risk profile and irreversibility of re investments researchers have resorted to sophisticated real options ro approaches that enable flexibility to be incorporated into project design in the face of an uncertain environment the variety of different frameworks and models adopted as well as a lack of aggregated analysis of the field suggest a need for a critical review of ro methodology and design in re assessment this study describes the research focus trends and design found in contemporary academic literature devoted to re valuation with a ro approach particular attention is given to ro in project and policy design the results give a comprehensive picture of existing research on the topic thus providing researchers with a solid foundation for further study and indications of directions for future development furthermore the findings provide policymakers and project planners with valuable insights into key aspects of re project and policy design

revisiting the minimum wage employment debate throwing out the baby with the bathwater we revisit the minimum wage employment debate which is as old as the department of labor in particular we assess new studies claiming that the standard panel data approach used in much of the new minimum wage research is flawed because it fails to account for spatial heterogeneity these new studies use research designs intended to control for this heterogeneity and conclude that minimum wages in the united states have not reduced employment we explore the ability of these research designs to isolate reliable identifying information and test the untested assumptions in this new research about the construction of better control groups our evidence points to serious problems with these research designs we conclude that the evidence still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others and that policymakers need to bear this tradeoff in mind when making decisions about increasing the minimum wage

cryptocurrencies and momentum abstract retrieving a set of 143 cryptocurrencies for a sample spanning 2014 2018 we investigate the popular momentum strategy implemented in the cryptocurrency market contrary to earlier studies our findings do not indicate any evidence of significant momentum payoffs supporting the view that the cryptocurrency market is far more efficient than suggested in earlier studies

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

minimum wage shocks employment flows and labor market frictions we provide the first estimates of the effects of minimum wages on employment flows in the u s labor market identifying the impact using policy discontinuities at state borders we find that minimum wages have a sizable negative effect on employment flows but not stocks separations and accessions fall among affected workers we interpret our findings using a job ladder model in which minimum wage increases can reduce job to job transitions we find that a standard calibration of the model generates predicted relative magnitudes of the employment stock and flow elasticities that are very close to our reduced form estimates

comparing the costs of intermittent and dispatchable electricity generating technologies economic evaluations of alternative electric generating technologies typically rely on comparisons between their expected life cycle production costs per unit of electricity supplied the standard life cycle cost metric utilized is the levelized cost per mwh supplied this paper demonstrates that this metric is inappropriate for comparing intermittent generating technologies like wind and solar with dispatchable generating technologies like nuclear gas combined cycle and coal levelized cost comparisons are a misleading metric for comparing intermittent and dispatchable generating technologies because they fail to take into account differences in the production profiles of intermittent and dispatchable generating technologies and the associated large variations in the market value of the electricity they supply levelized cost comparisons overvalue intermittent generating technologies compared to dispatchable base load generating technologies they also overvalue wind generating technologies compared to solar generating technologies integrating differences in production profiles the associated variations in the market value of the electricity supplied and life cycle costs associated with different generating technologies is necessary to provide meaningful comparisons between them this market based framework also has implications for the appropriate design of procurement auctions created to implement renewable energy procurement mandates the efficient structure of production tax credits for renewable energy and the evaluation of the additional costs of integrating intermittent generation into electric power networks

time series properties of the renewable energy diffusion process implications for energy policy design and assessment confronted by increasingly tight budgets and a broad range of alternative options policy makers need empirical methods to evaluate the effectiveness of policies aimed at supporting the diffusion of renewable energy sources res rigorous empirical studies of renewable energy policy effectiveness have typically relied on panel data models to identify the most effective mechanisms a common characteristic of some of these studies which has important econometric implications is that they assume that the contribution of res to total electricity generation will be stationary around a mean this paper reviews such assumptions and rigorously tests the time series properties of the contribution of res in the energy mix for the presence of a unit root to that end we use both individual and panel unit root tests to determine whether the series exhibit non stationary behavior at the country level as well as for the panel as a whole the analysis applied to a panel of 19 oecd countries over the period 1990 2012 provides strong evidence that the time series of the renewable share of electricity output are not stationary in 17 of the 19 countries examined this finding has important implications for energy policy assessment and energy policy making which are discussed in the paper