the european court of justice national governments and legal integration in the european union we develop a game theoretic model of the conditions under which the european court of justice can be expected to take adverse judgments against european union member governments and when the governments are likely to abide by these decisions the model generates three hypotheses first the greater the clarity of eu case law precedent the lesser the likelihood that the court will tailor its decisions to the anticipated reactions of member governments second the greater the domestic costs of an ecj ruling to a litigant government the lesser the likelihood that the litigant government will abide by it and hence the lesser the likelihood that the court will make such a ruling third the greater the activism of the ecj and the larger the number of member governments adversely affected by it the greater the likelihood that responses by litigant governments will move from individual noncompliance to coordinated retaliation through new legislation or treaty revisions these hypotheses are tested against three broad lines of case law central to ecj jurisprudence bans on agricultural imports application of principles of equal treatment of the sexes to occupational pensions and state liability for violation of eu law the empirical analysis supports our view that though influenced by legal precedent the ecj also takes into account the anticipated reactions of member governments

forecasting hourly electricity prices using armax garch models an application to miso hubs abstract the recent deregulation of the electricity industry and reliance on competitive wholesale markets has generated significant volatility in wholesale electricity prices given the importance of short term price forecasts in this new environment this paper estimates and evaluates the forecasting performance of four armax garch models for five miso pricing hubs cinergy first energy illinois michigan and minnesota using hourly data from june 1 2006 to october 6 2007 our empirical results reveal three important patterns a electricity price volatility is regional and the optimum volatility model depends in part on the hub location the forecast horizon and regulated versus unregulated status of the market b the aparch model performs well in hubs in deregulated states and c volatility dynamics in regulated states are better captured by a simple garch model and thus are less complex

answering the skeptics yes standard volatility models do provide accurate forecasts a voluminous literature has emerged for modeling the temporal dependencies in financial market volatility using arch and stochastic volatility models while most of these studies have documented highly significant in sample parameter estimates and pronounced intertemporal volatility persistence traditional ex post forecast evaluation criteria suggest that the models provide seemingly poor volatility forecasts contrary to this contention we show that volatility models produce strikingly accurate interdaily forecasts for the latent volatility factor that would be of interest in most financial applications new methods for improved ex post interdaily volatility measurements based on high frequency intradaily data are also discussed

policy rivalry among industrial states what can we learn from models of strategic trade policy the economic theory of international trade has changed dramatically over the last decade by admitting into its mainstream a body of literature that focuses on the implications of monopolistic and oligopolistic elements in international markets by applying the tools of the new industrial organization in an international context two new classes of models have emerged models of intra industry trade and models of strategic trade policy the policy implications of models of strategic trade policy were quite disturbing for the economics profession since these models demonstrated that the classical harmony between national and cosmopolitan welfare maximization does not exist if one assumes opportunities for strategic manipulation of oligopolistic international industries this article reviews two prominent models of strategic trade policy the brander spencer model and the krugman model and relates them to more familiar earlier concepts such as stackelberg s asymmetrical duopoly solution and the venerable infant industry argument for government intervention the primary purpose of this article however is to provide a synopsis of the large literature addressing the question of whether models of strategic trade policy can give guidance for government policy

less filling tastes great the realist neoliberal debate this essay examines and reformulates the realist neoliberal debate focusing initially on the issue of the attribution of goals to states we argue that not only are goals merely the epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes but a re description of strategic environments that is although an attribution of goals may contribute to our characterization of outcomes a discussion of them is not central to the development of a theory that explains and predicts the outbreak of conflict and the patterns of cooperation instead we argue that the realist neoliberal debate should be recast so that our central research agenda is the development of substantively specific models that allow us to ascertain how the equilibrium to a game in which states structure international affairs influences the types of issue specific subgames states play how countries coordinate to equilibria of different types how we can characterize the coordination problems associated with different equilibria how states can enhance the attractiveness of an equilibrium and how states can signal commitments to the strategies that are part of that equilibrium

cournot equilibrium considering unit outages and fuel cost uncertainty the cournot model is a common and reasonable approximation to representing strategic competition in electricity markets this paper proposes a nash cournot model in which unit outages and fuel cost volatility are both accounted for the nash equilibrium quantity of each firm is obtained by maximizing its expected profit given the distribution of fuel costs and the availability of generating units the cournot equilibrium problem is formulated as a linear complementarity problem we give a numerical example to show how the price equilibrium quantities and firms profits are affected when outages and fuel cost volatility are ignored

forecasting electricity prices and their volatilities using unobserved components abstract the liberalization of electricity markets more than ten years ago in the vast majority of developed countries has introduced the need of modelling and forecasting electricity prices and volatilities both in the short and long term thus there is a need of providing methodology that is able to deal with the most important features of electricity price series which are well known for presenting not only structure in conditional mean but also time varying conditional variances in this work we propose a new model which allows to extract conditionally heteroskedastic common factors from the vector of electricity prices these common factors are jointly estimated as well as their relationship with the original vector of series and the dynamics affecting both their conditional mean and variance the estimation of the model is carried out under the state space formulation the new model proposed is applied to extract seasonal common dynamic factors as well as common volatility factors for electricity prices and the estimation results are used to forecast electricity prices and their volatilities in the spanish zone of the iberian market several simplified alternative models are also considered as benchmarks to illustrate that the proposed approach is superior to all of them in terms of explanatory and predictive power

the price of redemption sin penance and marginal deterrence abstract the threat of loss of the afterlife as punishment for sin is a fundamental tenet of nearly all religious traditions most religions also contain a notion of redemption or forgiveness of sin but they differ as to whether or not redemption requires atonement or penance the possibility of redemption allows sinners to be rehabilitated but in so doing potentially undermines the incentive for them to refrain from sin in the first place we show that a properly calibrated form of penance as the price of redemption can both deter people from committing early sins and provide an incentive for those who have previously sinned to refrain from committing further sins in other words it achieves marginal deterrence such a system requires strong belief in the afterlife when belief is moderate we show that a regime of free redemption may be optimal we conclude by examining the implications of the analysis for after death redemption the catholic church s practice of selling redemption indulgences and the protestant doctrine of predestination which was in part a reaction to the church s commodification of redemption

power politics and international trade r recent literature attributes the relative scarcity of open international markets to the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade we argue that the prisoner s dilemma representation does not reflect the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in an anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly doing so leads us to two conclusions 1 free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances and 2 alliances are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions if they are embedded in bipolar systems than in multipolar systems using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 we test these hypotheses the results of the analysis make it clear that alliances do have a direct statistically significant and large impact on bilateral trade flows and that this relationship is stronger in bipolar rather than in multipolar systems in the early 1970s students of international relations began what would become a long and heated debate about the political correlates of open international markets recently however an important element of consensus has begun to emerge most contributors to this debate now seem to agree that the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade explains the relative dearth of open international markets here we argue that what has become the standard prisoner s dilemma representation neglects the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in the anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly in order to do so we construct and analyze a simple game theoretic model the results of this analysis demonstrate that tariff games between allies differ systematically from those played between actual or potential adversaries these differences imply that free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances however our analysis also suggests that the evolutionary prospects of alliances vary those that are the products of bipolar systems are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions than are their multipolar counterparts less credible exit threats and clearer responsibilities for alliance stability explain the advantage of a bipolar system we test this argument using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 the empirical analysis supports our argument it demonstrates that alliances have a direct statistically significant and large effect upon bilateral trade moreover it shows that on average alliances have a much stronger effect on trade in a bipolar than in a multipolar world 2

the gains debate framing state choice the theoretical bifurcation of international relations theory into neo realist and neo liberal camps has resulted in a gains debate that says little about an empirical world in which states exhibit both relative and absolute gains pursuit this article deploys prospect theory in an attempt to move beyond the gains debate the intent here is synthetic by bringing the predictions of both perspectives under a single theoretical umbrella we can model a broader set of state behavior the thesis developed demonstrates that states in a gains frame pursue absolute gains and are risk averse while states in a losses frame pursue relative gains and are risk acceptant this hypothesis is assessed against the behavior of the european community in the formation of the montreal protocol a regime intended to protect the earth s protective ozone shield the new model accurately predicts the timing and content of shifts in ec preferences suggesting that a synthesis of realist and liberal approaches is possible

discrete time volatility forecasting with persistent leverage effect and the link with continuous time volatility modeling we first propose a reduced form model in discrete time for s p 500 volatility showing that the forecasting performance can be significantly improved by introducing a persistent leverage effect with a long range dependence similar to that of volatility itself we also find a strongly significant positive impact of lagged jumps on volatility which however is absorbed more quickly we then estimate continuous time stochastic volatility models that are able to reproduce the statistical features captured by the discrete time model we show that a single factor model driven by a fractional brownian motion is unable to reproduce the volatility dynamics observed in the data while a multifactor markovian model fully replicates the persistence of both volatility and leverage effect the impact of jumps can be associated with a common jump component in price and volatility this article has online supplementary materials

entrenching the yoshida defense doctrine three techniques for institutionalization japan s level of defense expenditure relative to tbe size of its economy bas long been uniquely low among the major industrialized countries as of 1995 japan s expenditures stood at 0 96 percent of gross domestic product gdp even adding to this tbe approximately 0 3 percent of gdp devoted to pensions for retired personnel the level of spending is considerably less than that of major westem states such as tbe united states united kingdom france and germany as well as industrialized asian states such as south korea taiwan malaysia and singapore furthermore these relative magnitudes have remained reasonably stable over tbe past few decades see table 1 defense expenditure as a percentage of gdp or gnp gross national product often referred to simply as defense burden has over tbe past few decades become the standard benchmark for measuring a state s relative contribution to international security because of this tbe appropriateness and consequences of japan s relatively low expenditure of national wealth on defense bave been hotly debated botb in japan and abroad critics accuse japan of unfairly exploiting a defense free ride to build its economic success and others worry that japan s lack of military capabilities prevents it from becoming a normal state whose political role is commensurate

roughing it up including jump components in the measurement modeling and forecasting of return volatility a rapidly growing literature has documented important improvements in financial return volatility measurement and forecasting via use of realized variation measures constructed from high frequency returns coupled with simple modeling procedures building on recent theoretical results in barndorff nielsen and shephard 2004a 2005 for related bi power variation measures the present paper provides a practical and robust framework for non parametrically measuring the jump component in asset return volatility in an application to the dm exchange rate the s p500 market index and the 30 year u s treasury bond yield we find that jumps are both highly prevalent and distinctly less persistent than the continuous sample path variation process moreover many jumps appear directly associated with specific macroeconomic news announcements separating jump from non jump movements in a simple but sophisticated volatility forecasting model we find that almost all of the predictability in daily weekly and monthly return volatilities comes from the non jump component our results thus set the stage for a number of interesting future econometric developments and important financial applications by separately modeling forecasting and pricing the continuous and jump components of the total return variation process

the geopolitics of cross border electricity grids the israeli arab case abstract countries often attempt to establish regional electricity grids however whereas research on natural resources frequently seeks to understand policy outcome through a geopolitical prism when it comes to electricity studies the prism is always economic or technical hence this study is a first attempt to identify the geopolitical dimension of cross border electricity grids the study argues that success in establishing electricity grids requires identifying how the geopolitical dimension interplays with the physical dimension to examine the role of these geopolitical bottlenecks the study examines negotiation protocols spanning over 15 years on establishing ten grid connections between israel and its arab neighbors it finds that electricity geopolitics has been used both as a platform for deeper international cooperation and as a stick against neighboring states when policies are driven by a peace dividend proposals for grid connection appear to evolve and overcome the dependency and the security economy bottlenecks when relations deteriorate proposals for grid connections appear to undergo reconsideration and to be held hostage by higher politics if when and how electricity grids materialize is a function of the nature of the electricity network as a twofold package and of the ability of the planning process to accommodate geopolitical uncertainty

stock index realized volatility forecasting in the presence of heterogeneous leverage effects and long range dependence in the volatility of realized volatility in this article we account for the presence of heterogeneous leverage effects and the persistence in the volatility of stock index realized volatility the heterogeneous autoregressive har realized volatility rv model is extended in order to account for asymmetric responses to negative and positive shocks occurring at distinct frequencies as well as for the long range dependence in the heteroscedastic variance of the residuals compared with established har and autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average arfima realized volatility models the proposed model exhibits superior in sample fitting as well as out of sample volatility forecasting performance the latter is further improved when the realized power variation rpv is used as a regressor while we show that our analysis is also robust against microstructure noise

realized volatility and the influence of market measures on predictability analysis of nord pool forward electricity data abstract this is the first paper to utilize intra daily high frequency data and to apply known market measures for the prediction of volatility in the nord pool electricity forward market the work is based on recent methods of separating realized volatility into two components continuous and jump volatilities in addition the link between future price volatility and current observable economic variables is examined the measures trading volume time to maturity asymmetric effect from negative shocks and intra week seasonality are assessed to identify improvements in day ahead predictions the model where the total variation is separated into its continuous and jump components is compared with the simpler heterogeneous autoregressive model of realized variation both in and out of sample the results show a strong degree of persistence in realized volatility and significant impacts from the mentioned market measures when predicting nord pool forward price volatility hence there is a clear preference for models accounting for the systematic impact of market measures to improve volatility assessment for tomorrow moreover separating the total variation into continuous and jump components seems potentially useful when predicting day ahead volatility

side payments versus security cards domestic bargaining tactics in international economic negotiations the literature on international economic cooperation has devoted relatively little attention to domestic bargaining tactics and their determinants recent scholarship has tended to stress the utility and frequency of side payments while discounting other prominent bargaining tactics and a broader understanding of tactical choice this article argues that policymakers choose among domestic bargaining tactics to garner support when faced with situations in which other government officials or societal interest groups block the ratification of international economic agreements focusing on offers of side payments and attempts at issue redefinition the article s findings suggest that differences in domestic resistance to proposals of material compensation and in external security threat may explain choices between those tactics in domestic bargaining

dimensions of sustainability geographical temporal institutional and psychological well being depends on produced goods natural amenities and preferences each can be influenced through policies and education production of goods exhibits a hierarchical structure similar to ecosystems subsystems adapt while sustaining system productivity that is higher levels have greater resilience in agriculture the farm has little adaptability the region can shift production among locations and a nation can shift among regions forests exhibit an intertemporal geographical hierarchy in which harvests are replaced by growth elsewhere and later regrowth this structure is useful in responding to change and uncertainty preferences too can and must be informed through education

forecasting day ahead electricity spot prices the impact of the exaa to other european electricity markets abstract in our paper we analyze the relationship between the day ahead electricity price of the energy exchange austria exaa and other day ahead electricity prices in europe we focus on markets which settle their prices after the exaa which enables traders to include the exaa price into their calculations for each market we employ econometric models to incorporate the exaa price and compare them with their counterparts without the price of the austrian exchange by employing a forecasting study we find that electricity price models can be improved when exaa prices are considered

the case of negative day ahead electricity prices in recent years germany has significantly increased its share of electricity produced from renewable sources which is mainly due to the renewable energy act eeg the eeg substantially impacts the dynamics of intra day electricity prices by increasing the likelihood of negative prices in this paper we present a non gaussian process to model german intra day electricity prices and propose an estimation procedure for this model most importantly our model is able to generate extreme positive and negative spikes a simulation study demonstrates the ability of our model to capture the characteristics of the data

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

guns butter and anarchy a state in the international system implicit in realism must allocate its limited resources between satisfying its intrinsically valued ends and the means of military power i formalize this guns versus butter problem in a simple infinite horizon model in which two states must continually decide how to allocate their resources and whether to attack the other state the analysis establishes sufficient conditions to ensure the existence of an equilibrium in which neither state attacks shows that there is a strictly pareto dominant pair of peaceful equilibrium payoffs characterizes the unique peaceful markov perfect equilibrium that yields them and describes the comparative statics of the equilibrium allocations more broadly the analysis also suggests that the notion of anarchy has little if any substantive significance distinctively related to international politics and that the problem of absolute and relative gains is superfluous

forecasting spot price volatility using the short term forward curve abstract we use high frequency real time spot prices and day ahead forward prices from the pennsylvania new jersey maryland wholesale electricity market to calculate describe and forecast spot price volatility we introduce the concept of forward realized volatility calculated from day ahead forward prices forward realized volatility improves forecasts of spot price volatility in the sense of higher r 2 s and significantly lower forecast errors when compared with forecasts based solely upon historical volatility the largest forecast improvements obtained when the change in forward realized volatility is large in magnitude splitting total volatility into its continuous and jump components is crucial for forecasting volatility at weekly and monthly horizons

asymmetric volatility in european day ahead power markets a comparative microeconomic analysis this paper uses high frequency spot price data from fourteen wholesale electricity markets in europe to analyze asymmetric volatility in european day ahead power markets with exponential garch e garch and tarch models our data set ranges from 1992 to 2015 and consists of approximately 926 000 observations as such this paper constitutes the most extensive and comprehensive work conducted so far on european power markets to the best of our knowledge unlike most of the literature that treats price as a continuous variable and attempts to model its trajectory this paper adopts a unique approach and regards each hour in a day a separate market the results show in post 2008 period the most expensive electricity is consumed in turkey ireland and uk while the cheapest power is in russia nordic countries and czech republic russia poland and czech republic have the least volatile markets while france ireland and portugal have the most volatile ones volatility has decreased in many european countries in post 2008 period besides we find magnitude effect is usually larger than the leverage effect meaning that the absolute value of price change is relatively more important than the sign of the change whether it is an increase or a decrease to explain volatility in european day ahead power markets moreover the results imply there is not a uniform inverse leverage effect in electricity prices that is price increases are more destabilizing in some european markets e g poland slovenia ireland netherlands than comparable price decreases but vice versa also holds true in some other countries e g portugal and france leverage or inverse leverage effect in post 2008 period is relatively stronger in portugal france and ireland but its impact is quite limited in turkey and germany furthermore although the impact of seasonality on prices is obvious a specific pattern cannot be identified finally large changes in the volatility will affect future volatilities for a relatively longer period of time in nordic countries ireland and the uk while changes in current volatility will have less effect on future volatilities in czech republic russia and turkey

quadratic arch models we introduce a new model for time varying conditional variances as the most general quadratic version possible within the arch class hence it encompasses all the existing restricted quadratic variance functions its properties are very similar to those of garch models but avoids some of their criticisms in univariate applications to daily u s and monthly u k stock market returns qarch adequately represents volatility and risk premia qarch is easy to incorporate in multivariate models to capture dynamic asymmetries that garch rules out such asymmetries are found in an empirical application of a conditional factor model to 26 u k sectorial stock returns

analyzing insider trading from the perspectives of utilitarian ethics and rights theory the common view is that insider trading is always unethical and illegal but such is not the case some forms of insider trading are legal furthermore applying ethical principles to insider trading causes one to conclude that it is also sometimes ethical this paper attempts to get past the hype the press reports and the political grandstanding to get to the truth of the matter the author applies two sets of ethical principles utilitarianism and rights theory in an attempt to determine when and in what circumstances insider trading is ethical the views of henry manne an early proponent of insider trading are critically examined as are the major arguments against insider trading is insider trading good for the company if it is used as a form of executive compensation which makes it possible to pay lower salaries than would otherwise be the case does insider trading cause the stock market to work more efficiently if insider trading does increase efficiency is that sufficient to call for its total legalization or are there other things to be considered several arguments against insider trading have been put forth over the last few decades but there are problems with all of them one of the main arguments is the fairness argument the problem with this argument is that different people have different definitions of unfairness a closely related argument is the level playing field argument which advocates wider dissemination of information so that it is less asymmetric one problem with the level playing field argument is that it is better applied to sporting competitions than to trading in information some economists argue that forcing the disclosure of nonpublic information can actually result in more harm than good and must necessarily involve the violation of property rights other arguments examined in this chapter include the fiduciary duty argument the problem of outside traders the misappropriation doctrine and the restrictions that insider trading laws place on freedom of speech and press the article concludes by setting forth some principles or guidelines to determine when insider trading should be punished and when it should not

absolute and relative gains in international relations theory the problem of absolute and relative gains divides neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism the former assumes states focus primarily on their absolute gains and emphasizes the prospects for cooperation the latter supposes states are largely concerned with relative gains and emphasizes the prospects for conflict existing work in international relations theory generally traces the differences between these two theories to different assumptions about states preferences using a simple game theoretic model this essay offers a reformulation of the problem of absolute and relative gains that links changes in the states behavior the feasibility of cooperation and especially the states concern for relative versus absolute gains explicitly to changes in the constraints facing the states many of the differences between neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism appear as special cases of the model

the security dilemma revisited robert jervis s article cooperation under the security dilemma is among the most important works in international relations of the past few decades in it jervis develops two essential arguments first he explains that the security dilemma is the key to understanding how in an anarchic international system states with fundamentally compatible goals still end up in competition and at war the security dilemma exists when many of the means by which a state tries 1 to increase its security decrease the security of others it provides the rational foundation for what jervis termed the spiral model which describes how the interaction between states that are seeking only security can fuel competition and strain political relations 2 second jervis explains that the magnitude and nature of the security dilemma depend on two variables the offense defense balance and offense defense differentiation 3 as a result the security dilemma can vary across space and time although states exist in a condition of international anarchy that does not vary there can be significant variation in the attractiveness of cooperative or competitive means the prospects for achieving a high level of security and the probability of war

a garch forecasting model to predict day ahead electricity prices price forecasting is becoming increasingly relevant to producers and consumers in the new competitive electric power markets both for spot markets and long term contracts price forecasts are necessary to develop bidding strategies or negotiation skills in order to maximize profits this paper provides an approach to predict next day electricity prices based on the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic garch methodology that is already being used to analyze time series data in general a detailed explanation of garch models is presented and empirical results from the mainland spain and california deregulated electricity markets are discussed

forecasting electricity spot prices using time series models with a double temporal segmentation the french wholesale market is set to expand in the next few years under european pressure and national decisions in this article we assess the forecasting ability of several classes of time series models for electricity wholesale spot prices at a day ahead horizon in france electricity spot prices display a strong seasonal pattern particularly in france given the high share of electric heating in housing during winter time to deal with this pattern we implement a double temporal segmentation of the data for each trading period and season we use a large number of specifications based on market fundamentals linear regressions markov switching ms models and threshold models with a smooth transition an extensive evaluation on french data shows that modelling each season independently leads to better results among nonlinear models ms models designed to capture the sudden and fast reverting spikes in the price dynamics yield more accurate forecasts finally pooling forecasts give more reliable results

rationalist explanations for war realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war against this view i show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms the first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it the second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible

short term forecasting of electricity prices for miso hubs evidence from arima egarch models this study estimates three time series models arima arima egarch and arima egarch m for hourly real time electricity prices for each of the five hubs of the midwest independent system operator miso and examines the in and out of sample forecasting performance of the respective models the results from the arima models reveal the presence of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity recognizing the possibility of asymmetric time varying volatility the egarch specification for the variance equation demonstrates the presence of an inverse leverage effect in electricity prices for each hub with respect to forecasts no one model clearly dominates the others in terms of in sample forecasting performance based on four forecast evaluation statistics however the arima egarch m model outperforms the other models michigan hub is the exception in terms of the out of sample forecasting performance

realized volatility and price spikes in electricity markets the importance of observation frequency abstract this paper uses high frequency spot price data from eight wholesale electricity markets in australia canada and the united states to estimate realized volatility and the frequency of price spikes i find similar levels of realized volatility in australia and north america with estimates ranging from 1500 to 2700 much greater than estimates reported previously in the literature in hourly data the frequency of price spikes ranges from approximately 35 to 40 in seven of eight markets i present evidence that increasing the lag length in the calculation of bipower variation improves jump detection in electricity prices

forecasting realized volatility in electricity markets using logistic smooth transition heterogeneous autoregressive models we apply the non parametric realized volatility technique and the associated jump detection test to measure volatility and jumps in electricity prices then we propose a group of logistic smooth transition heterogeneous autoregressive lsthar models of realized volatility the models can simultaneously approximate long memory behavior and describe sign and size asymmetries they differ in the underlying heterogeneous autoregressive structure and the transition variable specification the out of sample forecast accuracy of the lsthar models is evaluated through the diebold mariano test and the superior predictive ability test in terms of the mean square error and the mean absolute error using high frequency prices from the australian new south wales nsw electricity market as empirical data we draw the following conclusions 1 introducing the logistic smooth transition structure with appropriate transition variable specification to the heterogeneous autoregressive models improves volatility forecasts 2 overall the lsthar model that uses the sum of beta function weighted past returns as the transition variable and includes past daily jumps as a predictor is the superior model for predicting volatility in the nsw market this model significantly outperforms the others

how renewable production depresses electricity prices evidence from the german market abstract the urgency of climate change has led several countries to develop renewable energy in order to reduce co2 emissions through the means of various subsidies in the electricity sector one drawback of such policies is the negative impact on electricity prices known as the merit order effect this paper aims at assessing how intermittent renewable production depresses electricity prices in germany which has experienced a significant increase of its renewable capacity over the last two decades to do so we use a two regime markov switching model that enables to disentangle the impact of wind and solar generation depending on the price being high or low we find as expected that renewable production induces a negative marginal effect which is stronger in regimes of relatively high prices in addition we show that both wind and solar productions have a significant impact on the distribution of prices and in particular on the frequency and expected duration of each regime this has implications in terms of market design security of supply and support mechanisms for renewables

the effect of the feed in system policy on renewable energy investments evidence from the eu countries abstract we study the effect of the feed in system fis policy on wind and solar photovoltaic energy investments in the european union eu over the time period between 1992 and 2015 considering the heterogeneity of the policies and market conditions across the eu countries we develop a fis subsidy performance indicator that distinguishes feed in tariff fit from feed in premium fip and considers other important aspects of each of these contracts such as the duration tariff price energy spot price and production costs as well as the market conditions we conclude that the mere existence of the fis policy does not necessarily enhance renewable energy investments it depends on the type of the fis contract and its features and may vary across the different sources of renewable energy some of our findings are new to the literature and can have important implications in the development of new public investment incentives to promote renewable energy

scraps of paper agreements and the durability of peace in the aftermath of war what determines whether peace lasts or fighting resumes and what can be done to foster durable peace drawing on theories of cooperation i argue that belligerents can overcome the obstacles to peace by implementing measures that alter incentives reduce uncertainty about intentions and manage accidents a counterargument suggests that agreements are epiphenomenal merely reflecting the underlying probability of war resumption i test hypotheses about the durability of peace using hazard analysis controlling for factors including the decisiveness of victory the cost of war relative capabilities and others that affect the baseline prospects for peace i find that stronger agreements enhance the durability of peace in particular measures such as the creation of demilitarized zones explicit third party guarantees peacekeeping and joint commissions for dispute resolution affect the duration of peace agreements are not merely scraps of paper rather their content matters in the construction of peace that lasts

do intergovernmental organizations promote peace a basic debate in world politics involves the impact of intergovernmental organizations igos on international conflict liberals functionalists and others see igos as capable of transforming global anarchy while realists emphasize the essential irrelevance of igos in managing such fundamental processes as war and peace recent quantitative studies also yield disparate conclusions depending on particular econometric assumptions implying variously that igos foster pacific relations among states have no impact on dispute behavior or even increase dispute propensity at least part of the problem is a lack of theoretical and empirical specificity the authors apply bargaining theory to develop a middle path between the realist and liberal perspectives only some igos those with security mandates and the most sophisticated institutional structures are likely to influence dispute behavior the authors combine the theory with two improvements in research design first igos vary in capability mandate and cohesion the authors construct a dataset of igo institutional heterogeneity and member cohesiveness second states join igos for reasons that are not unrelated to why states fight the authors control for the level of international involvement among countries and find support for their arguments in initial tests

research bets and behavioral ir behavioral ir faces a fundamental challenge the actors in most ir models and theories are not individuals they are aggregates like states ministries interest groups political parties and rebel factions there are two broad approaches to attempting to integrate behavioral research about individuals the first a quasi behavioral approach makes nonstandard assumptions about the preferences beliefs or decision making processes of aggregate actors the second tries to build theories in which the key actors are individuals pursuing the former means that the assumptions about actors will be only weakly linked to the empirical findings propelling behavioral research the second approach faces formidable obstacles that international relations theory has confronted for a long time and for the most part has not overcome

a critique of the legal and philosophical case for rent control rent control is an economic abomination it diverts investments away from residential rent units it leads to their deterioration it is responsible for urban decay such as in the south bronx it does not help poor tenants it is a horrendous means of income redistribution yet this economic regulation is beloved of intellectuals hot beds of pro rent control sentiment are berkeley ann arbor and cambridge particularly in the legal and philosophical communities the present article is dedicated to an exploration and rejection of the arguments in behalf of rent control which emanate from this source

electricity price short term forecasting using artificial neural networks this paper presents the system marginal price smp short term forecasting implementation using the artificial neural networks ann computing technique the described approach uses the three layered ann paradigm with backpropagation the retrospective smp real world data acquired from the deregulated victorian power system was used for training and testing the ann the results presented in this paper confirm considerable value of the ann based approach in forecasting the smp

relative gains and the pattern of international cooperation many political situations involve competitions where winning is more important than doing well in international politics this relative gains problem is widely argued to be a major impediment to cooperation under anarchy after discussing why states might seek relative gains i demonstrate that the hypothesis holds very different implications from those usually presumed relative gains do impede cooperation in the two actor case and provide an important justification for treating international anarchy as a prisoner s dilemma problem but if the initial absolute gains situation is not a prisoner s dilemma relative gains seeking is much less consequential its significance is even more attenuated with more than two competitors relative gains cannot prop up the realist critique of international cooperation theory but may affect the pattern of cooperation when a small number of states are the most central international actors

the relative gains problem for international cooperation modern realism claims that the fear that others will enjoy relatively greater benefits frequently impedes international cooperation recent articles in this review by duncan snidal and robert powell modeled conditions under which the impact of relative gains varied joseph grieco criticizes snidal s model as based on assumptions that allow him to avoid rather than confront the realist arguments he also argues that powell s model while constructive ignores important additional sources of sensitivity to relative gains in response powell discusses the value of alternative assumptions about preferences and constraints in international relations snidal defends his analysis and presents an additional proof to support the independence of his central result the diminishing impact of relative gains with increasing numbers of states from assumptions of concern to grieco both responders emphasize their work as contributing to a contextually rich theory of international politics that builds on elements of both realism and neo liberalism

power and interdependence revisited ten years ago we published power and interdependence 1 the passage of a decade makes this an appropriate time to reread and reevaluate that book and to take stock of the research program to which it contributed in doing this we hope to deepen and enrich scholarly understanding of the politics of interdependence and to stimulate reflection on directions for the field of international relations over the next decade 2 such a reappraisal seems particularly opportune given the changes in world politics and especially in american policy that have marked the intervening years stanley j michalak commented in 1979 that the authors may cringe from the analogy but power and interdependence may well become the politics among nations of the 1970s 3 but from the perspective of the late 1980s the world may look different while the 1970s were seen as the decade of interdependence many observers regard the use of force and concern for security as characteristic of the 1980s indeed the view is widespread in some circles that the 1980s resemble the 1950s more than the 1970s and that hans j morgenthau s work is more relevant to contemporary issues of world politics than power and interdependence

renewable energy regulation and structural breaks an empirical analysis of spanish electricity price volatility abstract international experience proves that electricity prices have undergone major changes in volatility since the entry of green technologies the intermittency of renewable sources is one of the reasons for these changes as it leads to higher volatility in periods of higher participation by renewables we argue that the development of the regulatory system promoting renewable electricity also plays a crucial role we raise a question that deserves attention could an incentive scheme induce higher share of renewables and lower volatility simultaneously in this paper we conduct an empirical analysis with spanish data we analyze possible ensuing structural changes in spanish electricity spot price volatility from january 2002 to december 2017 we identify two structural breaks linked to important measures related to renewable electricity i the abolishment of the feed in tariff scheme and ii the establishment of a more market oriented regulation based on investment and operating costs we conclude that stable regulatory policies reduce volatility even though the presence of renewable sources is greater furthermore market based policy measures achieve lower volatility encouraging good integration of intermittent renewable electricity

applying arma garch approaches to forecasting short term electricity prices abstract accurately modeling and predicting the mean and volatility of electricity prices can be of great importance to value electricity bid or hedge against the volatility of electricity prices and manage risk the paper applies various autoregressive moving average arma models with generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch processes namely arma garch models along with their modified forms arma garch in mean arma garch m to model and forecast hourly ahead electricity prices in total 10 different model structures are adopted and this paper thus conducts a comprehensive investigation on the arma garch based time series forecasting of electricity prices multiple statistical measures are employed to evaluate the modeling sufficiency and predication accuracy of the arma garch m methods the results show that the arma garch m models are in general an effective tool for modeling and forecasting the mean and volatility of electricity prices while arma sgarch m models are simple and robust and the arma gjrgarch m model is very competitive in addition we observe that hourly electricity prices exhibit apparent daily weekly and monthly periodicities and have the nonlinear and asymmetric time varying volatility together with an inverse leverage effect