reforming residential electricity tariff in china block tariffs pricing approach the chinese households that make up approximately a quarter of world households are facing a residential power tariff reform in which a rising block tariff structure will be implemented and this tariff mechanism is widely used around the world the basic principle of the structure is to assign a higher price for higher income consumers with low price elasticity of power demand to capture the non linear effects of price and income on elasticities we set up a translog demand model the empirical findings indicate that the higher income consumers are less sensitive than those with lower income to price changes we further put forward three proposals of chinese residential electricity tariffs compared to a flat tariff the reasonable block tariff structure generates more efficient allocation of cross subsidies better incentives for raising the efficiency of electricity usage and reducing emissions from power generation which also supports the living standards of low income households

trends in unemployment duration data a method of estimating the distribution of uninterrupted unemploymentspells from aggregate unemployment data is outlined the methodology does not i mpose constant individual hazard rates and allows for heterogeneity characteris tics of the distribution of unemployment spells are then considered including ha zard rates measures of inequality such as gini coefficients and the fraction o f total unemployment associated with s weeks of unemploy ment the relationship between these char acteristics and labor demand variables gnp and supply side variables transfer payments unemployment insurance is considered in or der to better understand the relative role of short and long run unemployment copyright 1986 by mit press

shirking and sorting in a political market with finite lived politicians this paper analyzes principal agent slack in the context of a political market composed of voters challengers and incumbents the introduction of a last period via finite livedness in combination with voters imperfect information about politicians preferences causes time varying shirking behavior on the part of politicians political markets eventually sort out those politicians with significantly deviant policy preferences potentially providing a solution to the last period problem and enabling politicians to make credible commitments in the extreme sorting can insure that it is not worthwhile for potential shirkers to run for office a systematic relationship between political shirking and number of terms in office may exist and depends on how quickly sorting takes place we show that evidence of little if any shirking is quite consistent with politicians having diverse and strongly held policy preferences in addition if sorting is a significant feature of political markets cross sectional studies will tend to oversample little and non shirking politicians compared to longitudinal studies reinterpretations of existing empirical work are also discussed

the welfare effects of different pricing schemes for electricity distribution in finland the main components of electricity prices can be divided into the wholesale price the price of network operations and taxes even if the wholesale price is determined efficiently total welfare can be significantly disturbed if network operations are priced inefficiently in this study we calculate network prices based on four alternative methods these are marginal cost pricing ramsey pricing fdc pricing and optimal two part tariffs the welfare effects on the prevailing pricing system are compared we show that potentially significant improvements in welfare can be achieved by using marginal cost prices or optimal two part tariffs also ramsey pricing indicates that prevailing prices are inefficient

the measurement of labor force dynamics with longitudinal data the labour market activity survey filter this article explores the measurement of labor force dynamics using longitudinal data focusing in particular on the canadian labour market activity survey lmas which represents a potential advance in longitudinal data collection because it measures aspects of dynamics not available in existing panel data such as the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we examine the implications of the lmas questionnaire structure the lmas filter for the study of labor market dynamics and undertake simulations to provide a quantitative assessment of the importance of this filter for labor force spells and transitions between labor force states

the duration of employment opportunities in u s manufacturing long duration employment opportunities are a necessary condition for workers to hold lifetime jobs this paper uses longitudinal data on individual u s manufacturing plants from 1963 1982 to estimate the age and completed spell distributions for employment positions the results indicate that of the employment opportunities in progress in the u s manufacturing sector in 1982 30 0 were at least 19 years old and 59 6 would have a completed length of at least 20 years high rates of turnover in employment positions coexist with a large number of long duration employment opportunities because the turnover tends to be concentrated within a subset of the producers copyright 1991 by mit press

the dynamics of job separation the case of federal employees summary in this paper we develop a model of workers quit decisions using panel data on a sample of us federal government employees we use maximum likelihood techniques to determine how much of the observed decline in quits with job tenure is a result of declining individual quit propensities state dependence rather than dynamic sample self selection heterogeneity the latter is found to be much more important than the former the effects of relative federal government wages and other variables on quits are also estimated the results are useful for analysing federal compensation policies

efficient labor contracts with employment risk this article analyzes efficient employment agreements where the demand for consumption insurance can be satisfied by noncontractual means we assume that workers can save and that consumption is determined by a strong form of the permanent income hypothesis under conditions of asymmetric information about exogenous shocks to labor demand we derive a unique compensation schedule that efficiently guides decisions by both workers and employers efficient employment outcomes are generated without a need for third party enforcement or monitoring and workers choose a consumption policy that leaves them indifferent among realizations of labor demand within this solution it is both costless and efficient for workers to delegate employment decisions to the firm within the context of the model we analyze implications for the equilibrium distribution of wages and for empirical studies of labor supply

access pricing and competition abstract in many industries electricity telecommunications railways the network can be described as a natural monopoly a central issue is how to combine the necessary regulation of the network with the organization of competition in activities which use the network as an input and are potentially competitive generation of electricity value added services road transportation in this paper we derive access pricing formulas in the framework of an optimal regulation under incomplete information first we study how access pricing formulas take into account the fixed costs of the network and the incentive constraints of the natural monopoly over the network second we examine the difficulties coming from the accounting impossibility to disentangle costs of the network and costs of the monopoly s competitive goods third the analysis is extended to the cases where governmental transfers are prohibited where the competitors have market power and where competitors are not regulated fourth the possibility some consumers bypass the network is taken into account finally the role of access pricing for inducing the best market structure is assessed the conclusion summarizes our results and suggests avenues of further research

unemployment behaviour evidence from the cps work experience survey this chapter is empirical and descriptive rather than theoretical it examines the cps unemployment experience data which gives the number of weeks of unemployment and the number of spells of unemployment experienced by a sample of people in a year this chapter focuses on both the entry rate or frequency probability of entering and the exit rate or duration probability of exiting of unemployment spells for it is on both the entry and exit rates that the level and distribution of unemployment depends the conclusion is that entry rates and differences in entry rates across people are of primary importance in explaining unemployment experience

optimal two part tariffs for inputs the case of imperfect competition abstract traditionally the analysis of optimal two part tariffs has assumed that the regulated firm is selling directly to final consumers in this paper the authors take account of the fact that many of the utility s customers are firms which use the utility s output as an input in their own production process and then sell to final consumers the downstream firms are assumed to be imperfectly competitive and the optimal two part tariff is affected by the need to correct for the consequent divergence between price and marginal cost in the downstream industry

an examination of wage behaviour in macroeconomic models with long term contracts are long term contracts equivalent to a series of shorter term contracts except for the informational sets available this paper argues that the wage equations in many macroeconomic models with labor contracts imply a positive answer to the above question an empirical examination of canadian contract wage data rejects the above hypothesis the paper argues that real economic conditions at the time contracts are signed have a greater impact on wage settlements than do conditions that are expected to exist in the future this alternative hypothesis is generally supported by the data

estimation of unemployment duration from grouped data a comparative study economists have often found it useful to look at the average length of an unemployment spell in evaluating labor market conditions and in considering the labor market experience of the unemployed usually this statistic has to be estimated from grouped observations on interrupted incomplete unemployment spells this paper is a comparative study of some nonparametric and parametric methods of estimating this quantity using australian department of social security data on unemployment benefit recipients

keeping time an analysis of errors in the measurement of unemployment duration this study uses longitudinal microdata from the current population survey to examine the consistency with which unemployment duration is reported an estimate of measurement error is proposed and analyzed a significant negative relationship is found between the initial month s unemployment duration and the reported change between surveys on average persons who begin spells of unemployment in the second month report durations greater than the actual time elapsed overall the average duration of unemployment in this sample may be overstated by at least two weeks a brief discussion of some implications for empirical labor market research concludes the article

price discrimination in australia s retail electricity markets an analysis of victoria southeast queensland when capital intensive monopoly industries are restructured and deregulated consumer prices commence a natural drift from regulated uniform average cost tariffs to competitive differential prices and this can raise problems for policymakers deep discounts are welcomed high standing offers are not but price discrimination is unremarkable in economics indeed in industries where fixed sunk costs represent a significant portion of total cost discriminatory pricing is usually welfare enhancing conversely theory predicts and empirical evidence confirms that regulatory efforts to cherry pick differential prices in asymmetric markets will damage consumer welfare in this article we analyse differential retail electricity offer prices in the australian states of victoria and queensland and contrast these with industry average total cost and the marginal cost of retail supply we find deregulated victoria displays high price dispersion with standing offer tariffs 10 above industry average total cost and marginal offers at break even prices i e 20 below average total cost in the semi regulated southeast queensland market where a regulated price cap exists there is lower dispersion but marginal offers include a 6 7 retail mark up efficient pricing requires the marginal unit produced to be priced at marginal cost and victoria meets this criteria but we identify an episode of inter consumer misallocation due to high standing offers we conclude policy initiatives designed to help firms shift vulnerable households from standing offer tariffs is desirable

business cycles and compositional variation in u s unemployment in this article we study u s unemployment dynamics using grouped unemployment data from the current population survey over the period 1968 1992 we estimate a model that traces variation in these unemployment data both over time and between demographic groups back to the underlying variation in the inflow and the outflow in turn we model the outflow as a transition process in which we allow the exit probabilities to depend on calendar time duration and demographic group we use the estimation results to provide a decomposition of aggregate u s unemployment dynamics in various incidence and duration components

ramsey prices in the italian electricity market abstract in this paper we derive optimal zonal prices in the italian day ahead electricity market using estimation of a complete system of hourly demand in 2010 2011 in italy the hourly equilibrium price for all buyers is computed as a uniform average of supply zonal prices resulting from market splitting due to line congestion we model ex ante individual bids expressed by heterogeneous consumers which are distinguished by geographical zones using empirical estimations we compute demand elasticity values and new zonal prices according to a ramsey optimal scheme this is a new approach in the wholesale electricity market literature as previous studies have discussed the relative merit of zonal prices considering only the issue of line congestion our results show that the optimal pricing scheme can improve welfare in the day ahead italian electricity market with respect to both the existing uniform price scheme and the proposal to charge the existing supply zonal prices to the demand side

union wage settlements during a disinflation this paper examines the role of union wage contracts in the persistence of inflation and the implication of these contracts for the problem of disinflation in the united states a quantitative model of overlapping con tracts explicitly oriented toward the major union sector is developed the model takes account of expectations of future wage price and employment conditions as in more aggregated models that have been used in macroeconomic research in addition the distribution of workers according to contract length as well as deferred wage increases and escalator clauses are explicitly used in the model the main aim of the model is to determine the constraints which these contracts impose on disinflation paths the model indicates that the maximum speed of disinflation is extremely slow in the early phases if a rise in unemployment is to be avoided but increases considerably before the new lower rate of inflation is reached the disinflation path is considerably slower than that observed after hyperinflation periods however the existence of a path of inflation reduction raises questions about whether the institution of union wage con tracts is really the direct cause of costly disinflations or whether their influence works indirectly by raising credibility problems about a monetary disinflation this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

employer size and labor turnover the role of pensions the well documented lower labor turnover in large firms than in smaller firms has been cited as evidence that large firms pay workers above their opportunity wage this study investigates whether t

regulatory preferences and two part tariffs the case of electricity the purpose of this paper is to develop and demonstrate a method for deriving and testing regulatory preferences within and across customer classes and to assess the impact of these preferences on price structures and regulatory effectiveness in the electric utility industry the method extends a technique described in both nelson and ross for uncovering interclass preferences in a uniform price framework 24 33 34 by employing a two part tariff framework the extension enables the derivation of both interclass and intraclass preferences intraclass preferences can be derived in a two part tariff framework because regulators can discriminate not only between customer classes as with uniform prices but also within a customer class two part tariffs are also introduced because actual price structures in the electric utility industry are better approximated by two part tariffs than by uniform prices models of optimal two part tariffs particularly those of schmalensee and sherman and visscher are extended to allow regulatory preferences to vary across and within heterogeneous customer classes 36 37 13 27 11 25 19 18 22 2 these variable preferences are incorporated into a weighted social surplus function which regulators are assumed to maximize given this model of regulatory behavior preference weights can be derived for the electric utility industry with information on the markups of both per unit prices over marginal costs of kwh output and fixed charges over the marginal costs of customer connection and on output and connection demand elasticities

internal labour markets causes and consequences the paper analyzes the causes and consequences of internal labor market rules that yield long tenure promotion from within seniority pensions and due process in dismissals about half the workforce are estimated to be in such markets competitive reasons for internal labor markets as a response to specific training and arms length relationships between workers and firms are surveyed these reasons are found to be consistent with the pattern of internal labor markets among non union firms however some internal labor markets e g among small unionized firms are probably a response to union pressure and government regulations in these circumstances low labor mobility could pose problems for policy copyright 1991 by oxford university press

an illfare approach to the measurement of unemployment based on an illfare approach a new index of unemployment is proposed which unlike the traditional measures takes into account the incidence of unemployment mean duration of unemployment and the disparity in the distribution of the burden of unemployment the proposed measure is most relevant for comparing levels of unemployment across regions or over a period of time an illustation with us data is presented

optimal departures from marginal cost pricing focuses on departures from marginal cost pricing optimal allocation or resources level of tax revenue that will be collected by the government theorems developed for resource allocation ebsco

reconstructing the pattern of american unemployment before the first world war this paper calculates the distribution of unemployment duration lengths and transition rates for massachusetts workers in the late nineteenth century using data on time spent out of work and assuming that the spell durations followed a weibull distribution i parameterize a model of the timing of transitions from unemployment to employment and vice versa i then simulate the employment experience of representative workers and construct distributionis of completed spell lengths the experience of most out of work workers in a year seems to have been in one rather long spell rather than in shorter multiple ones

cap prices or cap revenues the dilemma of electric utility networks abstract in this paper i analyse the behaviour of a monopoly electricity provider that serves three distinct markets under a price cap or revenue cap plan i make comparisons in terms of their effects on price setting energy conservation and social welfare in addition to contravening the ramsey pricing rule i find that under conditions of information asymmetry when demand becomes more elastic or marginal cost increases revenue cap price increases are larger relative to price cap regulation in this specific setting revenue cap price increases can encourage energy conservation but is less likely to do so when marginal cost is large in a market that is more elastic relative to others in contrast to a price cap plan these overall results show that revenue cap schemes are welfare reducing for public policy decision making purposes price cap regulation is more desirable especially in developing economies that often experience substantial inflationary pressures from global oil market developments but is less suitable than revenue cap regulation when electricity supply constraints and climate change are major policy concerns

time series representations of economic variables and alternative models of the labour market accepting the hypothesis that the time series facts of the aggregate labour market may be summarized by the linear autoregressive and moving average representations of wages prices unemployment and interest rates implies that a useful theory ought to lead to predictions about these representations following this approach this paper first catalogues many of the time series facts about the aggregate labour market and then compares them against alternative models of the labour market based on the intertemporal substitution and staggered contract hypotheses