partners or rivals strategies for the iterated prisoner s dilemma within the class of memory one strategies for the iterated prisoner s dilemma we characterize partner strategies competitive strategies and zero determinant strategies if a player uses a partner strategy both players can fairly share the social optimum but a co player preferring an unfair solution will be penalized by obtaining a reduced payoff a player using a competitive strategy never obtains less than the co player a player using a zero determinant strategy unilaterally enforces a linear relation between the two players payoffs these properties hold for every strategy used by the co player whether memory one or not

examining the cost efficiency of chinese hydroelectric companies using a finite mixture model this paper evaluates the operational activities of chinese hydroelectric power companies over the period 2000 2010 using a finite mixture model that controls for unobserved heterogeneity in so doing a stochastic frontier latent class model which allows for the existence of different technologies is adopted to estimate cost frontiers this procedure not only enables us to identify different groups among the hydro power companies analysed but also permits the analysis of their cost efficiency the main result is that three groups are identified in the sample each equipped with different technologies suggesting that distinct business strategies need to be adapted to the characteristics of china s hydro power companies some managerial implications are developed

an examination of the equilibrium specification and structure of production for canadian telecommunications multiple output models of canadian telecommunications production are estimated under different production equilibria a specification test is conducted between the short and long run equilibrium models and the long run equilibrium is rejected in order to capture the nature of the disequilibrium a dynamic cost of adjustment model is estimated for bell canada there are significant adjustment costs and it is estimated that for 1 00 of marginal capital costs the carrier must incur an additional cost of 0 30 to install the new capital into the production process

a study of the impact of sectoral shifts on aggregate unemployment in canada the recent trend in macro economic literature has been to explain cycles in aggregate output and employment in terms of unexpected nominal shocks only in these models the natural rate of unemployment is constant this paper diverges from this approach and following a recent paper by david lilien 1982 considers the impact of real as well as nominal variables the main findings are 1 a significant part of the fluctuations in the canadian unemployment over the 1957 83 period was caused by real shocks to the economy and 2 most of the transmission of the business cycle from the united states to canada is effected through real variables as well une etude de limpact de deplacements sectoriels sur le niveau de ch6mage agrege au canada dans la litterature macroeconomique recente on a eu tendance a expliquer les cycles dans le niveau de la production et de l emploi a peu pres strictement en termes de chocs nominaux non anticipes dans ces modeles le taux de ch6mage naturel est constant ce memoire prend des distances par rapport a cette approche et suit pluto t la direction suggeree par un memoire recent de david lilien qui considere l impact des variables reelles tout autant que celui des variables nominales les resultats principaux sont 1 une portion significative des fluctuations dans le niveau du chomage canadien entre 1957 et 1983 a et causee par des chocs reels subis par l economie 2 le gros de h1 transmission du cycle economique des etats unis vers le canada se fait par le truchement des variables reelles

toward fully renewable electric energy systems renewable energy sources are here to stay for a number of important reasons including global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels we explore in this paper how a thermal dominated electric energy system can be transformed into a renewable dominated one this study relies on a stochastic programming model that allows representing the uncertain parameters plaguing such long term planning exercise being the final year of our analysis 2050 we represent the transition from today to 2050 by allowing investment in both production and transmission facilities with the target of achieving a renewable dominated minimum cost system the methodology developed is illustrated using a realistic large scale case study finally policy conclusions are drawn

market based generation and transmission planning with uncertainties this paper presents a stochastic coordination of generation and transmission expansion planning model in a competitive electricity market the monte carlo simulation method is applied to consider random outages of generating units and transmission lines as well as inaccuracies in the long term load forecasting the scenario reduction technique is introduced for reducing the computational burden of a large number of planning scenarios the proposed model assumes a capacity payment mechanism and a joint energy and transmission market for investors costs recovery the proposed approach simulates the decision making behavior of individual market participants and the iso it is an iterative process for simulating the interactions among gencos transcos and iso the iterative process might be terminated by the iso based on a pre specified stopping criterion the case studies illustrate the applications of proposed stochastic method in a coordinated generation and transmission planning problem when considering uncertainties

productivity change technical progress and relative efficiency change in the public accounting industry we present evidence on components of productivity change in the public accounting industry toward the end of the 20th century using revenue and human resource data from 64 of the 100 largest public accounting firms in the united states for the 1995 1999 period we analyze productivity change technical progress and relative efficiency change over time the average public accounting firm experienced a productivity growth of 9 5 between 1995 and 1999 we find support for the hypothesis that technical progress rather than an improvement in relative efficiency was the reason for this productivity growth firms that were early movers into management advisory services mas and those that emphasized growth in mas over growth in the traditional audit and tax services enjoyed significantly higher productivity growth than their peers these firms also contributed significantly more to the industry s technical progress

the graph of prisoners dilemma supergame payoffs as a function of the discount factor abstract the set of subgame perfect correlated equilibrium of the infinitely repeated discounted prisoners dilemma depends on the discount factor the graph of the correspondence of these equilibrium payoffs versus the discount factor is derived and presented these results are especially applicable to situations in which there is a random chance of the supergame ending or an exogenous probability of cooperative breakdown

estimating the value of electricity storage in pjm arbitrage and some welfare effects significant increases in prices and price volatility of natural gas and electricity have raised interest in the potential economic opportunities for electricity storage in this paper we analyze the arbitrage value of a price taking storage device in pjm during the six year period from 2002 to 2007 to understand the impact of fuel prices transmission constraints efficiency storage capacity and fuel mix the impact of load shifting for larger amounts of storage where reductions in arbitrage are offset by shifts in consumer and producer surplus as well as increases in social welfare from a variety of sources is also considered

input substitution economies of scale and productivity growth in the us upholstered furniture industry cost factor demand and productivity growth are considered in the upholstered furniture industry over 1958 87 factors are divided into labour capital and materials it is found that all inputs are substitutes in production although substitution elasticities are small factor demand is price inelastic for all inputs the industry operates around minimum average cost productivity growth is small but significant the results indicate that labour will continue to be important in the industry however regional comparative advantage is not related to labour alone the results suggest that policies to attract or retain the industry must consider the low degree of factor substitution

a game theoretic model for generation expansion planning problem formulation and numerical comparisons this paper presents an application of noncooperative game theory to generation expansion planning gep in a competitive electricity industry the authors apply the cournot model of oligopoly behavior to formulate a gep model that may characterize expansion planning in a competitive regime particularly in pool dominated generation supply industries numerical experiments are conducted on a test system to analyze generation investment and market participation decisions of candidate expansion units that vary in costs and forced outage rates the numerical results point to 1 greater industry expansion and system reliability under cournot competition than under centralized expansion planning and 2 higher probabilistic measures of reliability from multi player expansion than from expansion by a traditional monopolist with an equivalent reserve margin requirement furthermore the authors summarize analytical results involving a simplified version of the gep game

multistage stochastic investment planning with multiscale representation of uncertainties and decisions we propose a multistage multiscale linear stochastic model to optimize electricity generation storage and transmission investments over a long planning horizon the multiscale structure captures large scale uncertainties such as investment and fuel cost changes and long run demand growth rates and small scale uncertainties such as hour to hour demand and renewable availability uncertainty the model also includes a detailed treatment of operating periods so that the effect of dispatch decisions on long term investments are captured the proposed model can be large in size the progressive hedging algorithm is applied to decompose the model by scenario greatly reducing computation times we also derive bounds on the optimal objective function value to assess solution quality we use a case study based on the state of texas to demonstrate the model and show the benefits of its detailed representation of the operating periods in making investment decisions

generation capacity expansion in liberalized electricity markets a stochastic mpec approach this paper proposes a bilevel model to assist a generation company in making its long term generation capacity investment decisions considering uncertainty regarding the investments of the other generation companies the bilevel formulation allows for the uncoupling of investment and generation decisions as investment decisions of the single investing generation company are taken in the upper level with the objective to maximize expected profits and generation decisions by all companies are considered in the lower level the lower level represents the oligopolistic market equilibrium via a conjectured price response formulation which can capture various degrees of strategic market behavior like perfect competition the cournot oligopoly and intermediate cases

a general index of technical change this paper outlines a procedure for estimating a general index of technical change within the context of a quite general production technology specifically when panel data are available for firms in an industry time specific dummies can be combined in a nonlinear estimation procedure to yield a general index of technical change that may be both nonneutral and scale augmenting this approach offers numerous advantages over the traditional time trend representation of technical change for example the general index can serve as the basis for analysis of the determinants of technical change results for a sample of 30 electric utilities over the period 1951 78 show that the productivity decline of the 1970s can be attributed primarily to sulphur oxide restrictions and secularly declining capacity utilization due to rapidly increasing peak load demands

price cost margins exports and productivity growth with an application to canadian industries a model is estimated for oligopolistic industries producing multiple outputs in short run equilibrium outputs are sold domestically and exported while capital is treated as a quasi fixed factor the model is applied to the canadian non electrical machinery electrical products and chemical products industries the results show that there is significant oligopoly power in each of the industries and that the degree of this power differs between the domestic and export markets total factor productivity is decomposed price cost margins exert little influence but the rate of technological change returns to scale and the rate of capital adjustment determine productivity growth

the evolution of cooperation in infinitely repeated games experimental evidence 1 for example in infinitely repeated prisoner s dilemma games with patient agents both cooperate and defect may be played in equilibrium even though the theory of infinitely repeated games has been used to explain cooperation in a variety of environments no definitive solution has been provided to the problem of equilibrium selection when both cooperation and defection are possible equilibrium outcomes which one should we expect to prevail previous experimental evidence has shown that subjects often fail to coordinate on a specific equilibrium when they play a small number of infinitely repeated games some subjects attempt to establish cooperative agreements while others defect but how would behavior evolve as subjects learn from previous repeated games would cooperation prevail when it can be supported in equilibrium or will subjects learn

confidence intervals for elasticity estimators in translog models this paper examines the distribution fu nctions of elasticity estimators in translog demand models the authors consider the normaland ratio of normals distributions and present confidence intervals for the elasticity estimators the results suggest that only elasticity estimato rs based on the means of the actual cost shares are likely to follow either the normal or ratio of normals distribution function examination of three published empirical studies demonstrates that inferences regarding the values of elasticities cannot be made from point estimates alone and suggests a trade off between the level of aggregation and the width of confidence intervals for the elasticit y estimators copyright 1986 by mit press

cost structure and capacity in the norwegian pelagic fisheries the parameters of the short run cost function are estimated for three vessel types taking part in the norwegian pelagic fisheries purse seine vessels trawlers and coastal vessels the generalized translog functional form is used estimates of returns to scale are calculated and the results indicate that there are substantial economies of scale in all vessel classes it is further investigated whether excess capacity varies with vessel size and age the analysis suggests increased quotas per vessel to avoid rent dissipation with the total allowable catch given the number of participating vessels must be reduced

substitution possibilities for unpriced natural resources restricted cost functions for the canadian metal mining industry a bstract the effects of resource depletion on economic growth depend critically on the elasticities of substitution between non renewable natural resources and reproducible inputs estimation of the elasticities of substitution for natural resources has been hindered by the absence of data on their prices which results from the prevalence of vertical integration in natural resource industries in this paper we use the theory of restricted cost functions to develop a general procedure for estimating substitution possibilities for unpriced inputs estimation of the model with data for the canadian metal mining industry indicates that the elasticities of substitution for the natural resource metallic ore are equal to unity

economic information about ironmaking ironmaking is an important world wide industry iron produced in blast furnaces is a crucial inout for almost three quarters of the steel produced in the world according to the international iron and steel institute few industries have recieved as much attention as the steel industry yet very little is known about the cost structure of ironmaking one of its major inputs this paper attempts to fill that void by the first application of the restricted translog cost function on time series data for the ironmaking plant of one of the world s major steel producers all this information revealed is new for the first time estimates of the elasticities of inout demand for variables inputs and elasticities of substitution are presented major results include the findings that there is more substitution are presented major results include the findings that there is more substitution between variable inputs than was previously thought that disembodies technical change exists and is hicks neutral and that te

valuation of flexible transmission investment options under uncertainty significant uncertainty surrounds the future development of electricity systems primarily in terms of size location and type of new renewable generation to be connected in this paper we assess the potential for flexible network technologies such as phase shifting transformers and non network solutions such as energy storage and demand side management to constitute valuable interim measures within a long term planning strategy the benefit of such flexible assets lies not only in the transmission services provided but also in the way they can facilitate and de risk subsequent decisions by deferring commitment to capital intensive projects until more information on generation development becomes available a novel stochastic formulation for transmission expansion planning is presented that includes consideration of investment in these flexible solutions the proposed framework is demonstrated with a case study on the ieee rts where flexible technologies are shown to constitute valuable investment options when facing uncertainties in future renewable generation development

regulation capital vintage and technical change in the electric utility industry this paper presents estimates of the rate of technical change in the electric power industry over the period 1951 78 the estimated model directly incorporates the effects of rate of return regulation and uses both a time trend and a vintage index to represent disembodied and embodied technical change respectively the results indicate that disembodied technical change was the primary source of cost reduction during 1951 70 and that tighter regulation as represented by a one point reduction in the rate of return would have reduced the rate of technical change by an average of 1 2 during 1951 78 34 references 18 footnotes 3 tables