evaluating the impacts of priority dispatch in the european electricity market this paper compares the impact of the nodal pricing and european market coupling organizations on different economic agents of the power system under two main wind policies under the priority dispatch policy transmission system operators tsos must accommodate all wind energy produced which thus has the priority over energy produced by conventional plants in the no priority dispatch policy tsos can decide not to inject all potential wind power in the grid in order to limit congestion problems the effects of these two wind policies are measured by developing simple stochastic programming models that consider cases with different wind penetration levels existing capacities and endogenous investments as well as assumptions on the eu ets our computational experiments show that when there is priority dispatch nodal pricing and market coupling evolve in a similar way as long as wind penetration is not too high in contrast a significant increase of wind penetration causes the collapse of the market coupling organization while nodal pricing continues to perform well on the other hand no priority dispatch removes most of the problems resulting from market coupling which still exhibits a slightly lower efficiency than nodal pricing these outcomes do not depend on the contextual assumptions fixed capacities vs investment eu ets vs non eu ets that characterize the several cases analyzed this suggested that our policy conclusions are robust furthermore our models overestimate the flexibility of conventional plants which means that these conclusions would likely be reinforced with a more detailed model

residual load renewable surplus generation and storage requirements in germany abstract i examine the effects of increasing amounts of fluctuating renewable energy on residual load which is defined as the difference between actual power demand and the feed in of non dispatchable and inflexible generators i draw on policy relevant scenarios for germany and make use of extensive sensitivity analyses whereas yearly renewable surplus energy is low in most scenarios analyzed peak surplus power can become very high decreasing thermal must run requirements and increasing biomass flexibility substantially reduce surpluses i use an optimization model to determine the storage capacities required for taking up renewable surpluses allowing curtailment of 1 of the yearly feed in of non dispatchable renewables would render storage investments largely obsolete until 2032 under the assumption of a flexible power system further restrictions of curtailment as well as lower system flexibility strongly increase storage requirements by 2050 at least 10 gw of storage are required for surplus integration of which a sizeable share is seasonal storage results suggest that policy makers should work toward avoiding surplus generation in particular by decreasing the must run of thermal generators concerns about surpluses should not be regarded as an obstacle to further renewable expansion the findings are also relevant for other countries that shift toward fluctuating renewables

impacts of wind and solar spatial diversification on its market value a case study of the chilean electricity market abstract renewable energy is expected to become the main electricity source in the world in the coming decades with solar and wind power taking a big share of the energy supply although there has been a remarkable advance on renewable energy technologies their integration is still difficult for regulators market designers and system operators due to the high variability and limited predictability of solar and wind resources measures can be adopted to ease their integration among them geographical diversification there is plenty of literature about the diversification of solar and wind resources and there is a common conclusion greater dispersion smooths out power production however literature on the effects of spatial diversification on the power system electricity prices and renewable energy market value is much scarcer this paper studies the effects of spatial diversification and questions whether integration policies are incentivizing the placement of renewable generators where they provide the highest value to the electricity system in chile using real data and a simplified dispatch model the analysis presented shows evidence of the effects of diversification on wind and solar market value in chile results suggest that spatial diversification has a strong positive effect on the market value of renewable energy especially in scenarios with active transmission and hydro storage constraints wind market value may vary up to us 10 mw h depending on the level of diversification and the spatial and temporal constraints of the system and given current storage capacity of hydro reservoirs the solar market value may increase us 5 mw h due to diversification if transmission capacity is enough even though these results must be observed with caution because they depend on the assumptions made there is an important effect of renewable spatial diversification that should be observed by regulators

flexible demand and supply as enablers of variable energy integration abstract this article analyses the impact of the interplay between the demand response wind penetration and hydropower in the nordic power market long term equilibrium model is developed in which the thermal power capacity adjusts to the zero profit level over varying real time pricing adoption rates and wind power shares the results show that an increased demand response decreases the amount of thermal power capacity and improves the utilization rate of thermal power and the value of wind power there is a decreasing marginal gain from an increasing demand response adoption with respect to the thermal utilization and wind value factor however the demand response itself does not lead to lower co2 emissions or reduced variation in hydropower generation

us europe differences in technology driven growth quantifying the role of education abstract european economic growth has been weak compared to the us since the 1980s in previous work krueger and kumar 2003 nber working paper no 9410 we argued that the european focus on specialized vocational education might have been effective during the 1960s and 1970s but resulted in a growth gap relative to the us during the subsequent information age when new technologies emerged more rapidly in this paper we extend our framework to assess the quantitative importance of education policy when compared to labor market rigidity and product market regulation other policy differences more commonly suggested to be responsible for us europe differences a decomposition exercise using a calibrated version of our model assigns a major role to education policy in explaining us europe growth differences

a geographically resolved method to estimate levelized power plant costs with environmental externalities in this analysis we developed and applied a geographically resolved method to calculate the levelized cost of electricity lcoe of new power plants on a county by county basis while including estimates of some environmental externalities we calculated the lcoe for each county of the contiguous united states for 12 power plant technologies the minimum lcoe option for each county varies based on local conditions capital and fuel costs environmental externalities and resource availability we considered ten scenarios that vary input assumptions we present the results in a map format to facilitate comparisons by fuel technology and location for our reference analysis which includes a cost of 62 tco2 for co2 emissions natural gas combined cycle wind and nuclear are most often the lowest lcoe option while the average cost increases when internalizing the environmental externalities carbon and air pollutants is small for some technologies the local cost differences are as high as 0 62 kwh for coal under our reference analysis these results display format and online tools could serve as an educational tool for stakeholders when considering which technologies might or might not be a good fit for a given locality subject to system integration considerations

capacity adequacy and revenue sufficiency in electricity markets with wind power we present a computationally efficient mixed integer program mip that determines optimal generator expansion decisions as well as periodic unit commitment and dispatch the model is applied to analyze the impact of increasing wind power capacity on the optimal generation mix and the profitability of thermal generators in a case study we find that increasing wind penetration reduces energy prices while the prices for operating reserves increase moreover scarcity pricing for operating reserves through reserve shortfall penalties significantly impacts the prices and profitability of thermal generators without scarcity pricing no thermal units are profitable however scarcity pricing can ensure profitability for peaking units at high wind penetration levels capacity payments can also ensure profitability but the payments required for baseload units to break even increase with the amount of wind power the results indicate that baseload units are most likely to experience revenue sufficiency problems when wind penetration increases and new baseload units are only developed when natural gas prices are high and wind penetration is low

uncertainty and the specificity of human capital this paper studies the choice between general and specific human capital a trade off arises because general human capital while less productive can easily be reallocated across firms accordingly the fraction of individuals with specific human capital depends on the amount of uncertainty in the economy our model implies that while economies with more specific human capital tend to be more productive they also tend to be more vulnerable to turbulence as such our theory sheds some light on the experience of japan where human capital is notoriously specific while japan benefited from this predominately specific labor force in tranquil times this specificity may also have been at the heart of its prolonged stagnation

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

when being in the minority pays off relationships among sellers and price setting in the champagne industry economic sociologists have studied how social relationships shape market prices by focusing mostly on vertical interactions between buyers and sellers in this article we examine instead the price consequences of horizontal relationships that arise from intergroup processes among sellers our setting is the market for champagne grapes using proprietary transaction level data we find that female grape growers a minority in the growers community charge systematically higher prices than do male grape growers we argue that the underlying mechanism for this unexpected pattern of results involves the relationships developed and maintained by minority members specifically in depth fieldwork reveals that female growers get together to compensate for their isolation from the majority this behavior enables them to overcome local constraints on the availability of price relevant information constraints that stem from prevailing norms of market behavior individualism and secrecy we discuss the implications

institutional investment patterns and corporate financial behavior in the united states and japan abstract this paper examines the agency problem between shareholders and debtholders of japanese and u s firms whereas u s institutional investors are restricted from doing so japanese financial institutions take large equity positions in firms to which they lend particularly in firms more susceptible to the agency problem debt ratios of u s firms are negatively related to the firm s potential to engage in risky suboptimal investments whereas japanese debt ratios show no such relation the evidence is consistent with the notion that the agency problem is mitigated to a greater degree in japan than in the u s

zombie lending and depressed restructuring in japan this paper explores the role that misdirected bank lending played in prolonging the japanese macroeconomic stagnation that began in the early 1990s the investigation focuses on the wide spread practice of japanese banks of continuing to lend to otherwise insolvent firms we docu ment the prevalence of this forbearance lending and show its distorting effects on healthy firms that were competing with the impaired firms the paper by hoshi 2000 was the first to call attention to this phenomenon and its ramifi

residential energy efficiency and distributed generation natural partners or competition abstract residential energy efficiency and distributed generation seem to be natural partners in our journey towards a more sustainable energy future a growing range of energy efficient consumer technologies and extraordinary declines in photovoltaics system prices has seen household electricity demand fall whilst a growing proportion of the remaining load is provided by household self generation australia is a particularly interesting example of these developments with around 15 of households now possessing a pv system while per capita household demand has also fallen markedly however existing retail electricity tariffs and regulatory arrangements can create mixed incentives for households contemplating both pv and energy efficiency options and for their network service providers this is certainly the case in australia with net metering arrangements that value self consumption of pv far more than pv exports to the grid there are also complex benefits for the electricity network created by these household energy resources that can be significant in this paper we use real household load and pv data from sydney households to model the potential implications of existing electricity tariff arrangements on the financial attractiveness of pv and energy efficiency we model these options separately and in combination for both households implementing these options and their network service providers our results highlight how inappropriate tariffs may well adversely impact on the value that the combination of energy efficiency and pv offers not only to households but also to their network service providers and suggest ways that such impacts might be ameliorated by acknowledging the benefits that these resources can offer to the electricity network

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

transitions in the german labor market structure and crisis abstract since the so called hartz iv reforms around 2005 and during the global crisis of 2008 2009 the german labor market featured mainly declining unemployment rates we develop a search and matching model with heterogeneous skills to explore the role of structural and cyclical policies for this performance calibrating unemployment benefits to approximate legislation before and after the reforms we find a large reduction in unemployment and its duration with the transition concluding after about three years during the crisis the extended use of short time labor subsidies that prevent jobs from being destroyed is likely to have prevented strong increases in unemployment

unemployment human capital depreciation and unemployment insurance policy summary this paper presents a structural estimation of a life cycle model with unemployment risk the model allows for human capital depreciation during unemployment it is estimated using german and us household level data the data suggest that the adverse impact of unemployment on individual productivity is important in both countries but quantitatively more relevant in germany moreover simulations show that the combination of skill depreciation with the generous unemployment insurance system that was in place in germany until recently is a key factor in explaining the differences in labour market performance between these countries copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

rationales for technology specific res support and their relevance for german policy in order to achieve cost effective res e deployment it is often argued that technology neutral support schemes for renewables are indispensable against this background res e support policies making widely use of technology differentiation in remuneration settings e g across the eu are frequently criticized from a theoretical point of view however in this paper we provide a systematic critique of the technology neutrality concept as a foundation for designing policy support schemes in the res e technology field specifically the main objective of the paper is to scrutinize the arguments for technology neutrality and discuss three conceptual arguments for why technology specific support schemes could in fact help minimize the societal costs of reaching future res e targets we also briefly address different political economy concerns which could constrain the choice of cost effective policy support schemes and that have to be taken into account for economic policy advice for empirical illustration of the key arguments we refer to the case of german res e policy making the central conclusion from this paper is that technology specific res e support schemes may generate significant economic benefits particularly if technology markets work imperfectly and in second best policy settings with additional non internalized market failures

future wind and solar power market values in germany evidence of spatial and technological dependencies abstract achieving ambitious climate targets entails an extensive utilisation of renewable energy sources however due to weather dependent fluctuations generation from variable renewable energy vre sources is characterised by significantly lower market values in comparison to conventional technologies reinforced by a decline in electricity prices this development poses interesting questions as to its drivers and to what extent market values of wind and solar power can be influenced by the design of electricity markets against this background a scenario based analysis is conducted to trace the future development of market values using endogenously derived electricity prices considering different regional and technological vre diversification strategies and investments into vre technologies on a myopic basis the results show a continued decline in market values with increasing regional discrepancies indicating a growing importance of interregional interdependencies for assessing the profitability of vre furthermore from a system point of view a more distributed allocation of onshore wind capacities to contend with declining market values does not always prove to stabilise market values by facilitating a more constant feed in pattern contrary to expectation finally replacing onshore with offshore wind energy appears to be beneficial as it can lead to an overall increase in the market values of offshore onshore as well as pv generation technologies compared to other mitigation strategies this result raise interesting questions about the systemic economic value of offshore wind despite its higher lcoe in the context of market integration of vre

optimal transition from coal to gas and renewable power under capacity constraints and adjustment costs this paper studies the optimal transition from existing coal power plants to gas and renewable power under a carbon budget it solves a model of polluting exhaustible resources with capacity constraints and adjustment costs to build coal gas and renewable power plants it finds that optimal investment in renewable energy may start before coal power has been phased out and even before investment in gas has started because doing so allows for smoothing investment over time and reduces adjustment costs gas plants may be used to reduce short term investment in renewable power and associated costs but must eventually be phased out to allow room for carbon free power one risk for myopic agents comparing gas and renewable investment is thus to overestimate the lifetime of gas plants e g when computing the levelized cost of electricity and be biased against renewable power these analytical results are quantified with numerical simulations of the european commission s 2050 energy roadmap

the impact of personality traits on talents performance throughout development phases empirical evidence from professional football this paper addresses a critical gap in talent management research i e the question of what determines high performance by highlighting the importance of personality traits for the performance of

labor market advantages of organizational status a study of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms prior research demonstrates product market advantages of organizational status but largely neglects factor market advantages we propose that status is advantageous in labor markets because individuals generally consider employer status a nonpecuniary employment benefit dyadic analyses of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms demonstrate two status based advantages in employee hiring and retention first high status firms are more likely than low status ones to hire an employee from a more profitable competitor second high status firms are most likely to lose an employee to a lower status competitor when the competitor is atypically more profitable we discuss implications of these findings for individual and organizational status attainment and for the stability of industry status hierarchies

reviewing electricity production cost assessments a thorough review of twelve recent studies of production costs from different power generating technologies was conducted and a wide range in cost estimates was found the reviewed studies show differences in their methodologies and assumptions making the stated cost figures not directly comparable and unsuitable to be generalized to represent the costs for entire technologies moreover current levelized costs of electricity methodologies focus only on the producer s costs while additional costs viewed from a consumer perspective and on external costs with impact on society should be included if these results are to be used for planning although this type of electricity production cost assessments can be useful the habit of generalizing electricity production cost figures for entire technologies is problematic cost escalations tend to occur rapidly with time the impact of economies of scale is significant costs are in many cases site specific and country specific circumstances affect production costs assumptions on the cost influencing factors such as discount rates fuel prices and heat credits fluctuate considerably and have a significant impact on production cost results electricity production costs assessments similar to the studies reviewed in this work disregard many important cost factors making them inadequate for decision and policy making and should only be used to provide rough ballpark estimates with respect to a given system boundary caution when using electricity production cost estimates are recommended and further studies investigating cost under different circumstances both for producers and society as a whole are called for also policy makers should be aware of the potentially widely different results coming from electricity production cost estimates under different assumptions

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

technological learning and labor market dynamics the search and matching model of the labor market fails to match two important business cycle facts i a high volatility of unemployment relative to that of labor productivity and ii a mild correlation between these two variables we address these shortcomings by focusing on the implementation process of technological innovation that is the empirical nding that new technologies are subject to a learning process we consider a novel source of business cycles namely uctuations in the ease or speed of technological learning and show that a search and matching model featuring such shocks can account for both facts moreover our model provides a new interpretation of news shocks discussed in the recent business cycle literature

climate policy and power producers the distribution of pain and gain abstract climate policies do not affect all power producers equally in this paper we evaluate the supply side distributional consequences of emissions reduction policies using a simple and novel partial equilibrium model where production takes place in technology specific sites in a quantitative application hydro wind and solar firms generate power combining capital and sites which differ in productivity in contrast the productivity levels of coal gas and nuclear technologies are constant across sites we parameterise the model to analyse the effects of stylised tax and subsidy schemes carbon pricing outperforms all other instruments and crucially leads to more equitable outcomes on the supply side technology specific and uniform subsidies to carbon free producers result in a greater welfare cost and their supply side distributional impacts depend on how they are financed power consumption taxes have exceptionally high welfare costs and should not be the instrument of choice to reduce emissions or to finance subsidies aiming to reduce emissions

networks as the pipes and prisms of the market1 this article draws an analytical distinction between two types of market uncertainty egocentric which refers to a focal actor s uncertainty regarding the best way to convert a set of inputs to an output desired by a potential exchange partner and altercentric which denotes the uncertainty confronted by a focal actor s exchange partners regarding the quality of the output that the focal actor brings to the market given this distinction the article considers how the value of structural holes and market status vary with these two types of uncertainty the article proposes that the value of structural holes increases with egocentric uncertainty but not with altercentric uncertainty in contrast the value of status increases with altercentric uncertainty but declines with egocentric uncertainty thus actors with networks rich in structural holes should sort into markets or market segments that are high in egocentric uncertainty high status actors should sort into markets that are low in egocentric

on representation of temporal variability in electricity capacity planning models abstract this paper systematically investigates how to represent intra annual temporal variability in models of optimum electricity capacity investment inappropriate aggregation of temporal resolution can introduce substantial error into model outputs and associated economic insight the mechanisms underlying the introduction of this error are shown how many representative periods are needed to fully capture the variability is then investigated for a sample dataset a scenario robust aggregation of hourly 8760 resolution is possible in the order of 10 representative hours when electricity demand is the only source of variability the inclusion of wind and solar supply variability increases the resolution of the robust aggregation to the order of 1000 a similar scale of expansion is shown for representative days and weeks these concepts can be applied to any such temporal dataset providing at the least a benchmark that any other aggregation method can aim to emulate how prior information about peak pricing hours can potentially reduce resolution further is also discussed

japan s financial crisis and economic stagnation the recent japanese economic experience has been dismal growth has collapsed deflation has taken hold and the financial system is in shambles we begin our story by documenting the macroeconomic troubles that appear to have triggered the collapse of japan s financial sector we argue however that the macroeconomic factors alone are not likely to explain the full extent of the problems in the japanese financial system we then turn to the sector specific factors that are facing the japanese banks insurance companies and government financial institutions which together constitute roughly three quarters of the financial system finally we provide estimates of the size of the losses that have been accumulated and review the steps necessary to resolve the problems promptly so that the losses stop growing the estimated losses from japan s financial system problems which presumably will be borne by taxpayers eventually are huge even our fairly conservative estimate suggests the full cost to the taxpayers is at least 20 percent of japan s gdp the sheer size of the cost along with the interaction among the related economic problems has made a decisive resolution of the problems politically difficult

european unemployment and turbulence revisited in a matching model we recalibrate den haan haefke and ramey s matching model to incorporate our preferred specie cation of turbulence as causing distinct dynamics of human capital after voluntary and involuntary job losses under our calibration with high unemployment benee ts an increase in turbulence increases the unemployment rate and the duration of unemployment while leaving the ine ow rate into unemployment roughly unchanged mirroring features of european data in the 1980s and 1990s the essential issue is that den haan haefke and ramey specify that in turbulent times workers experiencing layoffs and quits are both subject to instantaneous skill losses while we restrict instantaneous skill losses to laid off workers jel e24 j64

electricity market price and nuclear power plant shutdown evidence from california abstract japan s fukushima nuclear disaster triggered by the march 11 2011 earthquake has led to calls for shutting down existing nuclear plants to maintain resource adequacy for a grid s reliable operation one option is to expand conventional generation whose marginal unit is typically fueled by natural gas two timely and relevant questions thus arise for a deregulated wholesale electricity market 1 what is the likely price increase due to a nuclear plant shutdown and 2 what can be done to mitigate the price increase to answer these questions we perform a regression analysis of a large sample of hourly real time electricity market price data from the california independent system operator caiso for the 33 month sample period of april 2010 december 2012 our analysis indicates that the 2013 shutdown of the state s san onofre plant raised the caiso real time hourly market prices by 6 mwh to 9 mwh and that the price increases could have been offset by a combination of demand reduction increasing solar generation and increasing wind generation

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

monetary shocks in a model with skill loss unemployment shows persistent and long lasting responses to nominal and real shocks standard real business cycle models with search frictions but a homogeneous labor force are able to generate some volatility and persistence but not enough to match the empirical evidence moreover empirical studies emphasize the importance of the heterogeneity of the unemployment pool to fully understand unemployment dynamics in particular in most european countries the incidence of long term unemployment is large and well known one of the possible causes consequences of long term unemployment is the skill deterioration of the unemployment pool in this paper we introduce the skill loss mechanism and therefore a heterogeneous labor force in a new keynesian framework with search frictions calibrating the model for the spanish economy we show that while the skill loss mechanism helps to explain the magnitude of the response of unemployment to monetary shocks it does not improve the performance of the homogeneous worker model in terms of the persistence of the response especially for short and long term unemployment

cost comparisons for wind and thermal power generation abstract comparisons of generation costs between renewable and conventional generation technologies are a key input to energy policy discussions however there are many pitfalls around generation cost estimation even apparently reliable sources can quote widely differing figures this paper reviews methodologies and data sources to determine the main sources of uncertainty in the estimation of the costs of wind coal and natural gas generation based on illustrative cost calculations for the us denmark and india it finds that the cost elements most likely to confound generation cost calculations are fuel costs and particularly for renewable generation the cost of capital it explores the impact on calculated generation cost of alternative approaches to estimating these parameters the results should be of particular value to users of generation cost estimates who are concerned about the reliability of the information they have to work with

getting known by the company you keep publicizing the qualifications and former associations of skilled employees when product quality cannot be ascertained in advance of purchase producers must convince relevant audiences that they are worthy of consideration as quality players we propose that quality oriented producers will selectively publicize information about their skilled employees in anticipation of signaling benefits which include the accrual of visibility and the projection of quality based identities we validate our perspective on publicizing affiliation information by analyzing how a sample of australian wine producers publicized specific career information about their skilled employees i e their winemakers including the names of certain former employers of these individuals copyright 2009 oxford university press

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

estimating the mark up over marginal cost a panel analysis of japanese firms 1971 1994 abstract in this paper we propose a new method to estimate mark ups over marginal cost at the firm level this method is based on the identity between the short run elasticity of output to inputs the mark up rate and the factor shares we then apply this method to a panel of japanese firms in 21 industries over 24 years we have three main results first there is strong evidence of imperfect competition in this panel in which internationally competitive industries show low mark ups second the mark up rate differs considerably among firms and its distribution is skewed third the mark up rate over marginal cost shows strong procyclicality and its sensitivity is uniform within the industry

revisiting the techno economic analysis process for building mounted grid connected solar photovoltaic systems part two application part one in this two part paper identified monte carlo analysis as an improved approach over traditional deterministic techno economic methods for solar pv prosumers in deregulated markets in this

turbulence and unemployment in a job matching model according to ljungqvist and sargent 1998 high european unemployment since the 1980s can be explained by a rise in economic turbulence leading to greater numbers of unemployed workers with obsolete skills these workers refuse new jobs due to high unemployment benefits in this paper we reassess the turbulence unemployment relationship using a matching model with endogenous job destruction in our model higher turbulence reduces the incentives of employed workers to leave their jobs if turbulence has only a tiny effect on the skills of workers experiencing endogenous separation then the results of ljungqvist and sargent 1998 2004 are reversed and higher turbulence leads to a reduction in unemployment thus changes in turbulence cannot provide an explanation for european unemployment that reconciles the incentives of both unemployed and employed workers jel e24 j64

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

employment tenure and earnings profiles in japan and the united states comments the relationship between job tenure and annual earnings in japan has received considerable attention from social scientists examining employment contracts and the japanese compensation system in their widely cited article masanori hashimoto and john raisian 1985 using data for 1980 showed that japanese men have greater job tenure than comparable workers in the united states and that the earnings of japanese men rise more rapidly with increased tenure they found that an additional year of tenure increases earnings in both small and large firms in japan more than does an additional year of general market experience their results for the united states indicate that general market experience increases earnings more than an additional year of job tenure the 1970 s and 1980 s were a period of substantial change in japanese labor markets due to the rapid aging of the population and the restructuring of the economy following the oil crisis the present analysis extends the work of hashimoto and raisian by estimating earnings equations for japanese men for the years 1971 1976 1981 and 1986 specifically we wish to investigate whether hashimoto and raisian s findings have been stable over time or whether changes in the labor market have altered the importance of tenure relative to total labor market experience in the japanese labor market i changes in the labor market

the credibility of social climbing when does inter firm mobility not influence organizational status this paper examines when inter firm mobility influences organizational status whereas a low status firm can accumulate prestigious affiliations by hiring from a high status firm the status distance between these firms may influence whether the mobility event is perceived as credible if the mobility event lacks credibility meaning that market participants believe that the employee moved for a reason other than the new employer s quality then the hiring firm is less likely to improve its status position we also explore this effect s symmetry and find that a high status firm is less likely to experience status decline when the mobility event lacks credibility we assess these hypotheses in the context of the inter firm mobility of partners of the subsidiary offices of international law firms in hong kong from 1998 to 2008

the influence of spatial effects on wind power revenues under direct marketing rules abstract in many countries investments in renewable technologies have been accelerated by fixed feed in tariffs for electricity from renewable energy sources res while fixed tariffs accomplish this purpose they lack incentives to align the res production with price signals today the intermittency of most res increases the volatility of electricity prices and makes balancing supply and demand more complicated therefore support schemes for res have to be modified recently germany launched a scheme which gives wind power operators the monthly choice to either receive a fixed tariff or to risk a subsidized access to the wholesale electricity market this paper quantifies revenues of wind turbines under this new subsidy and analyzes whether when and where producers may profit we find that the position of the wind turbine within the country significantly influences revenues in terms of eur mwh the results are important for wind farm operators deciding whether electricity should be sold in the fixed feed in tariff or in the wholesale market however no location is persistently i e in every calendar month of the year above the average this limits the effect of the new subsidy scheme on investment locations and long term improvements in the aggregated wind feed in profile

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

the role of financial intermediaries in monetary policy transmission the recent financial crisis has stimulated theoretical and empirical research on the propagation mechanisms underlying business cycles in particular on the role of financial frictions many issues concerning the interactions between banking and monetary policy forced policy makers to redefine economic policies and motivated macroeconomists to focus on the implications of financial intermediation constraints for asset price fluctuations the behavior of non financial firms households governments and in turn for real macroeconomic performance this paper surveys research on the role of financial intermediaries and financial frictions in the transmission of monetary policy and discusses how to design both the new banking regulatory and supervisory structures and monetary policy in order to stabilize the economy it also serves as an introduction to this special issue

understanding european unemployment with matching and search island models abstract to understand european and american unemployment during the last 60 years we use a search island model and four matching models with workers who have heterogeneous skills and entitlements to government benefits when there is higher turbulence in the sense of worse skill transition probabilities for workers who suffer involuntary layoffs high government mandated unemployment insurance ui and employment protection ep in europe increase unemployment rates and durations but when there is lower turbulence high european ep suppresses unemployment rates despite high european ui four matching models differ in how they assign unemployed workers to matching functions that affects how strongly unemployment responds to increases in turbulence heterogeneity among unemployed workers highlights the central role of adverse labor market externalities in matching models and reveals that the cost of posting vacancies is the lynchpin of a matching model

demand pull instruments and the development of wind power in europe a counterfactual analysis renewable energy technologies are called to play a crucial role in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions since most of these technologies did not yet reach grid parity public policies have been implemented in order to foster their deployment the approach that has been privileged in europe is the demand pull approach that aims at creating a demand for these new technologies and at stimulating their diffusion this paper examines the effect of demand pull policies on the diffusion of onshore wind power technology in six european countries denmark france germany italy portugal and spain in a first step a micro founded model of diffusion is calibrated in order to replicate the observed diffusion of wind power in these six countries in a second step a counterfactual analysis is conducted by investigating several scenarios by taking into account the complex self sustained dynamics of diffusion and the learning spillovers that operate in the wind power sector we can derive several insights about demand pull policies first the impact of a demand pull policy on the diffusion of wind power is determined by the stage at which it comes to support it the effect seems to be stronger at the beginning of the diffusion second international spillovers do operate in the wind power sector these international spillovers however are not strong enough to foster the diffusion of wind power in a country having no demand pull support we can derive from these two statements that a strategy consisting in not implementing any demand pull policy with the expectation that international spillovers will reduce the cost of wind power and foster the diffusion of the technology that then shall become competitive is not a good option for a country targeting a high share of wind power in its energy mix

economic assessment of concentrated solar power technologies a review abstract this paper surveys economic assessments of concentrated solar power csp technologies and finds two dominant assessment methods a majority of studies reported in the literature are based on the levelized cost of electricity lcoe while a small subset of studies consider time varying meteorological and electricity market conditions several studies argue that lcoe undervalues dynamic flexibility provided by thermal energy storage and does not consider revenue opportunities provided by electricity markets at different time scales as a result some studies find that both lcoe and revenue can in fact be conflicting metrics for certain designs and market conditions this review finds strong variations in lcoe and revenue estimates in the literature as comparisons between csp and other generation technologies e g fossil wind and photovoltaic are dictated by the chosen economic metric it is imperative that policy and investment decisions should carefully consider time varying effects and flexibility finally research directions are proposed to increasing the fidelity of economic assessments and to mitigate discrepancies

unemployment compensation and high european unemployment a reassessment with new benefit indicators generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment the effects of benefit generosity on work incentives are more ambiguous in a broader behavioural framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment given income and know that unemployment has scarring effects in the future the micro evidence suggests modest effects of changes in generosity but there are reasons to doubt that the impacts on national unemployment rates are consequential the empirical case for the orthodox prediction comes from cross country regressions on the oecd s gross replacement rate grr but the published evidence is mixed and we find little support in the pattern of annual changes in the grr and the unemployment rate for oecd countries over the last three decades we take advantage of new and much improved net replacement indicators from the oecd which show little correlation with either the grrs or with unemployment and employment rates we conclude that the available evidence does not offer compelling support for the conventional view

levelized cost of storage introducing novel metrics the increasing share of variable renewable generation capacity leads to a growing interest in electricity storage technologies and a summarizing cost metric to analyze the economic viability of such electricity storage units for conventional generation technologies the levelized cost of electricity lcoe is a well known metric in the context of electricity storage however such lcoe like metrics are only limitedly applicable as the finite energy storage capacity can limit the charge and discharge scheduling decisions of the storage operator in addition the fuel i e charged electricity and generated electricity i e discharged electricity is one and the same commodity which provides the opportunity to use an adapted levelized cost metric this work analyzes three different levelized cost metrics and their application to electricity storage units used for electric energy arbitrage the strengths and shortcomings of these storage cost metrics are analyzed in order to determine how they can be applied correctly this analysis results in the following recommendations first it is recommended to use a levelized cost metric in combination with an analysis of a representative price profile upon which the storage operator will act this allows a more accurate estimation of the number of charging and discharging hours and the associated charging cost and discharging revenue given the energy storage capacity constraints of the storage unit second when a number of different representative price profiles hence with different charging costs is available it is recommended to use a cost metric which is independent of the charging cost as this single metric can be compared to each price profile thereby facilitating the interpretation of the results the results and conclusions from this work provide a framework on how to use levelized cost metrics in the context of electricity storage such metrics may help policy makers and investors in prioritizing energy storage investment decisions

the policy implications of the different interpretations of the cost effectiveness of renewable electricity support abstract the cost effectiveness of support for renewable electricity is a main criterion to assess the success of policy instruments together with effectiveness the costs of support are also a source of significant concern for governments all over the world however significant confusion exists in the literature on the cost effectiveness of public support for renewable electricity while some authors define the concept of cost effectiveness as that which complies with the equimarginality principle many others including documents from relevant organisations european commission international energy agency intergovernmental panel on climate change define it as the lowest costs of support generally equating it with the minimisation of consumer costs the aim of this paper is to clarify the differences between both approaches and their policy implications regarding the choice of instruments and design elements it is shown that they partly overlap and that their policy implications clearly differ leading to very different policy prescriptions while the former favours technology neutral instruments and design elements the minimisation of consumer costs approach favours instruments and design elements which adjust support levels to the costs of the technologies

levelised cost of energy a theoretical justification and critical assessment abstract although widely accepted as a measure of the comparative lifetime costs of electricity generation alternatives levelised cost of energy lcoe lacks a theoretical foundation in the academic literature and encompasses a number of areas where caution is important therefore this paper seeks to provide a theoretical foundation by comparing the metric with alternative cost of energy metrics and by undertaking a brief literature review to describe its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with other potential measures of unit cost of energy lcoe is found to be the preferred choice in large part because of its widespread adoption the weaknesses of the lcoe are found to centre on discount rate inflation effects and the sensitivity of results to uncertainty in future commodity costs these weaknesses are explored in the context of comparing combined cycle gas fired generation and offshore wind in the uk based on publicly available cost measures it is found that with variability of future fuel gas prices and a monte carlo approach to modelling lcoe the range of lcoe for ccgt is much broader in comparison to the lcoe of offshore wind it is urged that explicit account be taken of the areas of weakness in future use of lcoe

technological learning and labor market dynamics learning and labor market dynamics the search and matching model of the labor market fails to match two important business cycle facts i a high volatility of unemployment relative to labor productivity and ii a mild correlation between these two variables we address these shortcomings by focusing on technological learning by doing the notion that it takes workers time using a technology before reaching their full productive potential with it we consider a novel source of business cycles namely fluctuations in the speed of technological learning and show that a search and matching model featuring such shocks can account for both facts moreover our model provides a new interpretation of recently discussed news shocks

competition in japan japan registered a remarkable 6 5 percent rate of economic growth from 1955 to 1990 catching up with high income western countries in its level of economic development during the 1950s 1960s 1970s and into the 1980s japan s share of world exports rose dramatically from 2 9 percent in 1960 to 6 1 percent in 1970 8 2 percent in 1980 and a peak of 9 8 percent in 1985 porter takeuchi and sakakibara 2000 japanese firms were increasingly successful internationally in large visible industries such as automobiles semiconductors and consumer electronics the striking economic success of japan was widely attributed to a set of economic institutions and policies that encouraged collaboration and limited competition the japanese case then called into question many of the bedrock assumptions of competition thinking it seemed to show that there was a different path to economic prosperity this article begins by examining competition in japan and the supporting policies and institutions during the twentieth century many factors seem to suggest that competition in japan has been less intense but there is an awkward complication the empirical evidence about the intensity of competition in japanese industry does not support the conclusion the story clearly is more complicated we seek to reconcile the apparent differences between policy and institutional circumstances and the empirical evidence by examining the types of competition that prevail across japanese industries and the underlying causes japan indeed pursued an array of policies that limited competition but these policies were not applied throughout the economy in fact those industries in which competition

from fossil fuels to renewables the role of electricity storage abstract electricity storage represents a solution to curb carbon emissions by enabling more use of intermittent renewable energy our goal is to empirically analyze the determinants of innovation in electricity storage and its role in fostering technological innovations in renewable and conventional electricity generation using a global firm level data set of electricity patents from 1963 to 2011 we find that better electricity storage promotes innovation not only in renewable energy but also in conventional technologies specifically our estimates show that an additional storage patent increases the probability to apply for patents in renewable energy and efficiency improving fossil fuel technologies two years from now by 1 09 and 0 65 respectively this implies that improved electricity storage technologies can boost the energy efficiency of conventional fossil fuel fired power plants as well as increase the use of renewable electricity thus the ability of electricity storage to curb carbon emissions depends on the competitiveness of renewable energy against conventional electricity generation and conventional power generation mix as storage increases fossil fuel efficiency and reduces ramping costs

system friendly wind power how advanced wind turbine design can increase the economic value of electricity generated through wind power abstract previous studies find that the economic value of electricity usd mwh generated by wind power drops with increasing market share different measures can help mitigate the value drop including electricity storage flexible conventional plants expansion of transmission and demand response this study assesses another option a change in design of wind power plants advanced wind turbines that are higher and have a larger rotor compared to rated capacity lower specific rating generate electricity more constantly than classical turbines recent years have witnessed a significant shift towards such advanced technology our model based analysis for northwestern europe shows that such design can substantially increase the spot market value of generated electricity at a 30 penetration rate the value of 1 mwh of electricity generated from a fleet of advanced turbines is estimated to be 15 higher than the value of 1 mwh from classical turbines the additional value is large whether compared to wind generation costs to the value drop or to the effect of alternative measures such as electricity storage extensive sensitivity tests indicate that this finding is remarkably robust the increase in bulk power value is not the only advantage of advanced turbines additional benefits might accrue from reduced costs for power grids and balancing services to fully realize this potential power markets and support policies need to be appropriately designed and signal scarcity investors

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

isolating the symbolic implications of employee mobility price increases after hiring winemakers from prominent wineries when a firm hires a skilled employee from a prominent competitor an indirect affiliation between the two firms is created recent orga nizational research indicates that such affilia tions may influence the hiring firm s prices both substantively and symbolically e g joel m podolny 2001substantively product quality may be enhanced by the human capital the new employee transfers from their prior employer if so then the hiring firm s prices should increase symbolically because the prior employer was a prominent competitor the move signals to con sumers that the hiring firm s quality may be bet ter than previously believed accordingly prices should increase these substantive and symbolic effects are dif ficult to disentangle empirically consequently their independent effects are more theoretically advanced than empirically supported we leverage an idiosyncratic feature of wine markets to isolate the substance from symbol in the hiring of skilled winemakers because wines are aged before they are released evaluated and priced new winemakers start work as wines made by their predecessors enter the market assuming that winemakers exert little influence on the quality of wines that are already in the cellar an assumption we validate empirically then post hire pricing effects are primarily if not purely symbolic as such once we control for the propensity of wineries to hire new winemak ers we isolate signaling i e symbolic from human capital effects on wine prices following hiring events

the effect of individual uncertainty on the specificity of human capital empirical evidence from career developments in professional soccer this study looks at careers in professional soccer to investigate the determinants of human capital hc specificity inspired by labour market research we formulate three hypotheses on how uncertainty about the usefulness of individuals more productive specific skills affects their investment in more flexible general skills the empirical analysis is based on unique panel data on school grades soccer evaluations and sociodemographic characteristics of 90 elite players from the youth academy of a german bundesliga club we find that senior and long serving players who are comparably certain that their soccer specific capital will be sufficient to pursue a lucrative professional career invest less in general hc at school expected soccer performance in contrast has a counterintuitive positive effect our results expand knowledge on the factors influencing hc specificity from the macro to the subject level and highlight practical implications for institutions that train gifted individuals