allocation of fixed transmission cost to wheeling transactions by cooperative game theory this paper describes a methodology to allocate the cost of transmission network facilities to wheeling transactions in decentralized power systems the authors propose that the responsibility placed on transmission facilities involved in each transaction be according to the transmission usage pattern their proposal incorporates the mw mile method and considers economies of scale of transmission network facilities they also incorporate a nucleolus scheme in the cooperative game theory to deal with matters of conflict the applicability of their method is demonstrated in a numerical example

opening the black box of agglomeration economies for measuring cities competitiveness through international firm networks the ability of cities to operate in global networks is usually measured according to their central position within multinational firm linkages these measures are often used at the interurban level and neglect the intraurban processes of multiplier effects the present study demonstrates that this affects the measurement of city centrality in business networks intraurban capabilities of interaction are considered in the measurement of interurban indices the study is based on hypothetical networks at a micro level between long range links and it mobilises processes as agglomeration economies social capital developments and transaction costs these processes at the intraurban level strengthen the efficiency of interurban linkages it is suggested that the indices used to measure city centrality should include these local effects applied to a small sample of six firm networks the methodology shows advantages for emerging large metropolises but insufficient local effects for specialised clusters the mu

tariffs and load management the french experience the aim of an electric public utility is the optimum control of the electrical energy generating and consumption system consistency is required between the means of control at level of supply and the means of control at level of demand on the demand side marginal cost pricing is an efficient tool to achieve a good management this paper presents the french experience in this field

utility cogenerator game for pricing power sales and wheeling fees the authors have studied an extensive game model of an electricity market where a cogenerator sells excess electricity to an electric utility or to an end user they found that a buy back system the utility purchases cogenerated power is as efficient as a cogenerator customer wheeling system and that these two systems are more desirable than a monopoly system for the regulator the buy back rate should be equal to lp bargaining solution or less than nash bargaining solution the marginal cost of the electric utility they also conducted an analysis of a two period electricity market in which they found that the cogenerator that can supply excess power during peak period obtains the market advantage

bidding strategies for electricity producers in a competitive electricity marketplace this paper presents a methodology for the development of bidding strategies for electricity producers in a competitive electricity marketplace initially the problem is modeled as a two level optimization problem where at the first level a market participant tries to maximize his expected profit under the constraint that at the second level an independent system operator dispatches power solving an optimal power flow problem that minimizes total system cost it is assumed that each supplier bids a linear supply function and chooses his bidding strategy based on probabilistic estimates of demand and rival behavior monte carlo simulation is used to calculate the expected profit and genetic algorithms are employed to find the optimal strategy subsequently the formulation is expanded to account for different market participants risk profiles it is shown that risk aversion may influence the optimal bidding strategy of an individual

application of games with incomplete information for pricing electricity in deregulated power pools the authors present a game theory approach to the problem of pricing electricity in deregulated marketplaces they assume that an independent operator receives bids by pool participants and defines transactions among participants by looking for the minimum price that satisfies the demand in the pool the competition among pool participants is modeled as a noncooperative game with incomplete information they assume that each pool participant knows its own operation costs but does not know his opponents operation costs the game with incomplete information is transformed into a game with complete but imperfect information and solved using the nash equilibrium idea the approach presented in this paper is geared towards providing support for pricing electricity in deregulated pools

global networks cities and economic performance observations from an analysis of cities in europe and the usa the network paradigm has been highly influential in spatial analysis in the globalisation era as economies across the world have become increasingly integrated so called global cities have come to play a growing role as central nodes in the networked global economy the idea that a city s position in global networks benefits its economic performance has resulted in a competitive policy focus on promoting the economic growth of cities by improving their network connectivity however in spite of the attention being given to boosting city connectivity little is known about whether this directly translates to improved city economic performance and if so how well connected a city needs to be in order to benefit from this in this paper we test the relationship between network connectivity and economic performance between 2000 and 2008 for cities with over 500 000 inhabitants in europe and the usa to inform european policy

impacts of network constraints on electricity market equilibrium nash equilibrium is usually used as the solution of generator s strategic bidding in electricity markets the available literature has shown by simulation that multiple market equilibria or no pure equilibrium may be induced after the inclusion of network constraints transmission constraints this paper presents a systematical analysis for the impacts of network constraints on the market equilibrium in oligopolistic electricity markets in our modeling the independent system operator iso dispatches generation and determines nodal prices via solving an optimal power flow opf and the individual generator optimizes its submitted supply function with nash supply function equilibrium sfe strategy after taking into account iso s decision making process on dispatched generations and nodal prices the conditions for the existence of equilibrium are given and it is shown that there may be multiple equilibria or no pure nash equilibrium the equilibrium if it exists will be at a point where generators pay no congestion charge

electric power system planning under time of use rates investment decisions under time of use rates and their relationship to utility system planning are examined optimal investment and price under social welfare maximization are derived and compared with the results of static analyses for a multiplant case the optimal pricing and investment policy are characterized by a plant of lower cost in a wide range of cost parameters it is found that the second best price the so called ramsey price is higher than the best price by an amount proportional to the ratio of deficit to revenue of an electric utility

game theory approach to use of noncommercial power plants under time of use pricing the authors use the game theory approach for evaluating the impact of the introduction of customer owned noncommercial power plants ncp when time of use pricing is used various results from this analysis are derived some of which are that the conflict between ncp customer and the supplier forces the supplier to reduce the price of ncp customers perception of the situation in which they are involved in plays an important role in this conflict the game model analysis presented provides a detailed quantitative information on electricity prices and on the ways of using ncp

a continuous strategy game for power transactions analysis in competitive electricity markets this article presents a game theory application for analyzing power transactions in a deregulated energy marketplace such as poolco where participants especially generating entities maximize their net profits through optimal bidding strategies i e bidding prices and bidding generations in this article the electricity market for power transactions is modeled as a noncooperative game with complete information where the solution is determined in a continuous strategy domain having recourse to the nash equilibrium idea in order to provide more apprehensible analysis we suggest a new hybrid solution approach employing a two dimensional graphical approach as well as an analytical method finally the proposed approach is demonstrated on a sample power system

bidding strategy of virtual power plant for participating in energy and spinning reserve markets part i problem formulation this paper addresses the bidding problem faced by a virtual power plant vpp in a joint market of energy and spinning reserve service the proposed bidding strategy is a non equilibrium model based on the deterministic price based unit commitment pbuc which takes the supply demand balancing constraint and security constraints of vpp itself into account the presented model creates a single operating profile from a composite of the parameters characterizing each distributed energy resources der which is a component of vpp and incorporates network constraints into its description of the capabilities of the portfolio the presented model is a nonlinear mixed integer programming with inter temporal constraints and solved by genetic algorithm ga

generator bidding in oligopolistic electricity markets using optimal control fundamentals and application in this paper optimal control is applied to study generator bidding in an oligopolistic electricity market the repeated bidding process in hourly based real time electricity markets is modeled as a dynamic feedback system an optimal control problem is then formulated to explore individual generator s long term multiperiod optimization behavior particularly in our formulation the periodic property of the system demand is considered several lemmas are included for concerning system stability based on the necessary conditions for optimality from the pontryagin maximum principle a sweeping method is proposed and an optimal state feedback control rule is then obtained via backward induction numerical results suggest that the generator who unilaterally applies optimal control for generation decisions will obtain more profits a sensitivity analysis is also performed identifying these market factors that affect the performance of optimal control

a real options analysis of coffee planting in vietnam vietnam grew from an insignificant to the world s second largest coffee producer during the 1990s to understand this growth this article examines vietnamese coffee growers investment decisions using real options theory the study finds that producers with variable costs of 19 cents lb and total cost of 29 3 cents lb would enter coffee production at a coffee price of 47 cents lb and exit at a coffee price of 14 cents lb most vietnamese growers appear to be sufficiently efficient to continue producing coffee even at relatively depressed price levels

transaction analysis in deregulated power systems using game theory the electric power industry is in transition to a deregulated marketplace for power transactions in this environment all power transactions are made based on price rather than cost a regional power pool is noted as the most straightforward path to a deregulated electricity marketplace however many questions remain unanswered regarding the economics of power pool participation in a deregulated energy marketplace participants are interested in maximizing their own profits regardless of the system wide profits it is perceived that competition will reduce the price of electricity for retail customers however the key issue for participants is related with the price definition to remain competitive in this paper the authors use game theory to simulate the decision making process for defining offered prices in a deregulated environment the outcome of this study may be used by power pool coordinators to discourage unfair coalitions a modified ieee 30 bus power system is used as a deregulated power pool to illustrate the main features of the proposed method

place your bets towards an understanding of globalisation socio financial engineering and competition within a financial centre globalisation and technical change increase the intensity of competition within and between financial centres already subject to competitive pressures from an apparently highly mobile financial cap

hysteresis and the shortage of agricultural labor fruit and vegetable growers often allege a shortage of agricultural workers but in a review of the h2a nonimmigrant guestworker program the general accounting office claims that no such shortage exists the apparent shortage may be due to workers that are in the labor force but do not choose to take agricultural jobs according to real options theory when nonagricultural jobs are uncertain workers require added incentive to invest in sectoral migration estimates of an arbitrage model in monthly washington state wage data show the labor shortage probability to be far greater than the probability of a surplus

the city network paradigm measuring urban network externalities in recent years network behaviour has been analysed extensively as the emerging model for economic growth by network behaviour a metaphor for co operative behaviour among individuals corporate

immigration reform and farm labor markets farmers throughout the united states report a shortage of workers at the same time there are proposals to strengthen the enforcement of existing immigration laws in this paper we develop an equilibrium approach to examine the impact of removing undocumented workers from the california agricultural labor market and to infer whether there is evidence of shortages using individual worker data we find evidence that is consistent with a persistent shortage in some sub sectors of the california farm labor market further we conduct counter factual policy simulations over a range of possible policy alternatives and find that removing 50 all undocumented farm workers from the state would lead to an increase in wages of over 22

benefit optimization of centralized and decentralized power systems in a multi utility environment the objective is to examine the theoretical bases for benefit optimization in centralized and decentralized electric power systems in a centralized single control power system cost revenue and profit are used as system performance criteria for benefit optimization and the conditions are compared the results show that conventional cost minimization is not necessarily equivalent to benefit optimization based on other criteria in a decentralized multi utility power system benefit optimization and its allocation are investigated at the unconstrained economic optimum economic optimum with constraints and conditions under which the solution is an economic suboptimum the data from the epri regional systems are used to show practical examples of the benefit allocation with wheeling transactions although some rules are better for society than others there still is not one right answer to determine the rules for benefit optimization

investment decisions in hog finishing an application of the real options approach in this paper option pricing theory is applied to an investment problem in hog production a stochastic simulation model capable of pricing american type options is developed this is achieved by recursive calculation of the exercise frontier the model is used to determine the investment trigger and the disinvestment trigger for a pig fattening barn under german market conditions it turns out that the investment trigger taking into account the value of waiting in an uncertain environment can be considerably higher compared to classical investment criteria such as the net present value this offers an explanation as to why farmers are indeed reluctant to invest in hog production another finding is the sensitivity of the option prices with respect to the stochastic process that is assumed for revenues and variable costs of the production activity

price taker bidding strategy under price uncertainty this paper provides a framework to obtain the optimal bidding strategy of a price taker producer an appropriate forecasting tool is used to estimate the probability density functions of next day hourly market clearing prices this probabilistic information is used to formulate a self scheduling profit maximization problem that is solved taking advantage of its particular structure the solution of this problem allows deriving a simple yet informed bidding rule results from a realistic case study are discussed in detail

transmission analysis by nash game method this paper describes an open access transmission method for maximizing profits in a power system the proposed method is based on the nash bargaining game for power flow analysis in which each transaction and its optimal price are determined to optimize the interests of individual parties transmission losses are considered by the proposed method and test cases and results are discussed to present the merits of the proposed method

is there a farm size productivity relationship in african agriculture evidence from rwanda whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in africa is of considerable policy relevance this paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in rwanda where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector nationwide plot level data from rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications the inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village level market wage rates these findings imply that in rwanda labor market imperfections rather than other unobserved factors seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm size productivity relationship

a new game theoretic framework for maintenance strategy analysis in this paper a new approach to maintenance scheduling of generating units msu in competitive electricity markets is presented the main contribution of this study can be focused on modeling a game theoretic framework for the msu problem to analyze strategic behaviors of generating companies gencos the msu problem is formulated as a dynamic noncooperative game with complete information the player corresponds to the profit maximizing individual genco and the payoff of each player is defined as the profit from the energy auction market the optimal strategy profile is defined by the nash equilibrium of the game numerical results for two genco systems are used to demonstrate the basic ideas of the proposed scheme and large scale ieee reliability test systems are also considered to show the applicability of the proposed framework the results obtained indicate that maintenance schedule can be one of the crucial strategic behaviors whereby genco maximizes their profit in a competitive market environment