a game theoretic approach for optimal time of use electricity pricing demand for electricity varies throughout the day increasing the average cost of power supply time of use tou pricing has been proposed as a demand side management dsm method to influence user demands in this paper we describe a game theoretic approach to optimize tou pricing strategies gt tou we propose models of costs to utility companies arising from user demand fluctuations and models of user satisfaction with the difference between the nominal demand and the actual consumption we design utility functions for the company and the users and obtain a nash equilibrium using backward induction in addition to a single user type scenario we also consider a scenario with multiple types of users each of whom responds differently to time dependent prices numerical examples show that our method is effective in leveling the user demand by setting optimal tou prices potentially decreasing costs for the utility companies and increasing user benefits an increase in social welfare measure indicates improved market efficiency through tou pricing

deforestation and optimal management in a general discrete time model of optimal forest management where land may be diverted to alternative use and stocks of standing trees may yield flow benefits we investigate the economic and ecological conditions under which optimal paths lead to total deforestation i e complete long term removal of forest cover we show that if deforestation occurs from some initial state then it must occur in finite time along every optimal path so that zero forest cover is the globally stable optimal steady state we develop a condition that is both necessary and sufficient for deforestation deforestation is less likely if the immediate profitability of timber harvest the benefits from stocks of standing forests and the timber content of trees are higher we characterize the minimum forest cover along optimal paths when deforestation is not optimal we design a simple linear subsidy on standing forest biomass that can motivate a private owner who does not take into account the external benefits from standing trees to conserve forests

nonrenewable resource scarcity nonrenewable resource theory often is summarized by hotelling s rule this paper reviews theoretical extensions and empirical investigations of resource extraction models observed data are often inconsistent with the hotelling rule suggesting that other characteristics of nonrenewable resource supply including exploration heterogeneous ore quality technological progress and capital investment are important determinants of the dynamic behavior of resource prices given the persistent recurrence of concern about nonrenewable resource scarcity measures of nonrenewable resource scarcity and the empirical evidence for the time trends of those measures are reviewed finally the implications of nonrenewable resource scarcity for economic growth are examined

effect of inter temporal factors on the real time pricing of electricity a rigorous theoretical framework for the solution of the price formation and optimal dispatch problems taking into account intertemporal dependence of demand under spot and dynamic tariffs is presented the case in which a common tariff is to be applied to all customers is examined the difference in system response for spot and day ahead dynamic tariffs is illustrated simulation examples of a variety of event types are provided

the tree cutting problem in a stochastic environment the case of age dependent growth abstract harvest policies are derived for growing biological assets e g forests livestock subject to stochastic age dependent growth and price uncertainty the task posed is analyzed as a continuous time optimal stopping problem for diffusion processes both single and ongoing rotation problems are considered qualitative comparative static and numerical results are provided

controlling electricity consumption by forecasting its response to varying prices in a real time electricity pricing context where consumers are sensitive to varying prices having the ability to anticipate their response to a price change is valuable this paper proposes models for the dynamics of such price response and shows how these dynamics can be used to control electricity consumption using a one way price signal estimation of the price response is based on data measurable at grid level removing the need to install sensors and communication devices between each individual consumer and the price generating entity an application for price responsive heating systems is studied based on real data before conducting a control by price experiment using a mixture of real and synthetic data with the control objective of following a constant consumption reference peak heating consumption is reduced by nearly 5 and 11 of the mean daily heating consumption is shifted

timber price dynamics following a natural catastrophe catastrophic shocks to existing stocks of a renewable resource can cause long run price shifts with timber these long run price shifts may be accompanied by a short run price drop due to salvage hurricane hugo damaged 20 of southern pine timber in the south carolina coastal plain in 1989 to estimate the short and long run effects of the hurricane on the prices of timber stocks we estimated an intervention model of the residuals of cointegration of south carolina sawtimber and pulpwood stumpage prices with prices of similar products from other regions modeling revealed a 30 negative price spike due to salvage and a long run enhancement effect leading to prices that are 10 to 30 higher than they would have been had hugo not occurred

does inflation adjust faster to aggregate technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks this paper studies u s inflation adjustment speed to aggregate technology shocks and to monetary policy shocks in a medium size bayesian vector autoregression model according to the model estimated on the 1959 2007 sample inflation adjusts much faster to aggregate technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks these results are robust to different identification assumptions and measures of aggregate prices however by separately estimating the model over the pre and post 1980 periods this paper further shows that inflation adjusts much faster to technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks in the post 1980 period but not in the pre 1980 period

interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts the effects of monetary policy existing theory and evidence on the effects of monetary policy are reviewed substantial room for disagreement among economists remains new evidence based on multivariate time series studies of several countries is presented while certain patterns in the data consistent with effective monetary policy are strikingly similar across countries others particularly the tendency of interest rate increases to predict high inflation are harder to reconcile with effective monetary policy

business cycle dynamics under rational inattention we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model with rational inattention and compare its predictions to data households and decision makers in firms have limited attention and optimally allocate their attention rational inattention is the only source of slow adjustment the model matches the empirical impulse responses to monetary policy shocks and aggregate technology shocks at the same time profit losses and utility losses from inattention are very small furthermore it matters whether one uses this model or a conventional dsge model for policy analysis

use value exchange value and resource scarcity abstract i review the literature on natural resource scarcity indicators scarcity indicators can be classified by what is being measured value of the resource stock or value of extracted resource commodities who s value is considered social vs private scarcity and by the mode of valuation considered exchange value and use value prices and rents are common measures of exchange value or indicators of exchange scarcity and unit costs can be seen as use value indicators or indicators of use scarcity the major aim of this paper is to demonstrate the links between productivity indicators such as unit costs and the classical concept of use value the two classes of indicator relate to john commons discussions of scarcity and efficiency and a marginal vs a non marginal approach to value and scarcity the classical use value concept also has wider relevance for issues of valuation in energy resource and environmental policy

monetary policy and price responsiveness to aggregate shocks under rational inattention this paper presents a general equilibrium model that is consistent with recent empirical evidence showing that the u s price level and inflation are much more responsive to aggregate technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks the model of this paper builds on recent work by mackowiak and wiederholt 2009 who show that models of endogenous attention allocation deliver prices to be more responsive to more volatile shocks as everything else being equal firms pay relatively more attention to more volatile shocks in fact according to the u s data aggregate technology shocks are more volatile than monetary policy shocks inducing in this paper firms to pay more attention to the former than to the latter however most important this work adds to the literature by showing that the ability of the model of this paper to account for observed price dynamics crucially depends on monetary policy in particular this paper shows how interest rate feedback rules affect the incentives faced by firms in allocating attention a policy rate responding more actively to expected inflation and output fluctuations induces firms to pay relatively more attention to more volatile shocks this new mechanism of transmission of monetary policy helps rationalizing the observed behavior of prices in response to technology and monetary policy shocks and implies novel predictions about the impact of changes in taylor rules coefficients on economic fluctuations

a test of the theory of exhaustible resources an empirical test of the theory of exhaustible resources requires an estimate of the time path of the shadow price of the unextracted resource that generally is not observable because of the prevalence of vertical integration in natural resource industries in this paper we use duality theory to derive an econometric model that provides a statistical test of the theory of exhaustible resources a restricted cost function is used to obtain estimates of the shadow prices of unextracted resources the procedure is illustrated with data for the canadian metal mining industry for this industry the empirical implications of the theory of exhaustible resources are strongly rejected

asset retirement with infinitely repeated alternative replacements harvest age and species choice in forestry abstract at what age should productive assets be retired how should replacements be chosen when they differ in their uncertain ability to generate future incomes as a particular version of that problem we study the tree harvesting decision with two possible replacement species whose values as timber are stochastic and whose growth functions are deterministic in the single rotation wicksell problem starting with a bare piece of land an empty shop it is optimal to choose and plant one species immediately if its current value is sufficiently high relative to that of the other species the alternative equipment however if the species are insufficiently price differentiated it is preferable to leave the land vacant the shop empty despite the opportunity cost of doing so in the repeated version of the problem it is never optimal to leave the land bare provided the cost of replacement is null furthermore the optimal harvest tree retirement age not only depends on the price and current productivity of the trees in place but also on the price and productivity of the other species because it may replace the current one the harvest age reaches a peak at some critical threshold of the relative price that signals the necessity to switch to the alternative species indeed this is when the opportunity cost of choosing one alternative replacement over the other is the highest the land value and also the value of the firm is similar to an american option with free boundary infinite expiry period and endogenous payoff the paper highlights the opportunity cost of alternative replacement options and the central role of their volatility in both asset retirement and replacement choice decisions all results are derived analytically a numerical treatment by the penalty method completes the resolution

management of a multiple cohort fishery the hard clam in great south bay this paper develops a reasonably general multiple cohort model and derives conditions for optimal harvest and age structure based on a discrete time control problem which maximizes the present value of net revenues subject to recruitment and spawning constraints the model is applied to the hard clam resource in great south bay which is located on long island new york the steady state optimum calls for exclusive harvesting of the younger and more valuable littleneck cohorts leaving the older and less valuable cherrystone and chowder cohorts to specialize in regeneration most of the models employed by economists to characterize renewable resources have presumed that the resource population can be adequately described by a single index or state variable such a view is consistent with much of the classical literature in physical biology where population growth was described using the logistic equation lotka volterra such models may be inadequate however when dealing with a resource where recruitment and fecundity are dependent on the population s age structure or where the revenues and costs of resource exploitation vary with the age at harvest clark biologists have been aware of the importance of age specific attributes and have developed several models to characterize the population dynamics of a single species lewis and leslie independently developed models where the abundance of various

can long run restrictions identify technology shocks gali s innovative approach of imposing long run restrictions on a vector autoregression var to identify the effects of a technology shock has become widely utilized in this paper we investigate its reliability through monte carlo simulations using calibrated business cycle models overall gali s methodology appears to be fruitful the impulse responses derived from the artificial data generally have the same sign and qualitative pattern as the true responses and the approach can be informative in discriminating between alternative models however our results reveal some important quantitative shortcomings including considerable estimation uncertainty about the impact of technology shocks on macroeconomic variables more generally the conditions under which the methodology performs well appear considerably more restrictive than implied by the key identifying assumption this underscores the importance of using economic models to guide in the implementation of the approach in interpreting the results and in assessing its limitations jel c32 e32 o33

technology shocks and monetary policy assessing the fed s performance abstract the purpose of the present paper is twofold first we characterize the fed s systematic response to technology shocks and its implications for u s output hours and inflation second we evaluate the extent to which those responses can be accounted for by a simple monetary policy rule including the optimal one in the context of a standard business cycle model with sticky prices our main results can be described as follows first we detect significant differences across periods in the response of the economy as well as the fed s to a technology shock second the fed s response to a technology shock in the volcker greenspan period is consistent with an optimal monetary policy rule third in the pre volcker period the fed s policy tended to overstabilize output at the cost of generating excessive inflation volatility our evidence reinforces recent results in the literature suggesting an improvement in the fed s performance

factoring the elasticity of demand in electricity prices as electricity markets are liberalized consumers become exposed to more volatile electricity prices and may decide to modify the profile of their demand to reduce their electricity costs this paper analyzes the effect that the market structure can have on the elasticity of the demand for electricity it then describes how the consumers behavior can be modeled using a matrix of self and cross elasticities it is shown how these elasticities can be taken into consideration when scheduling generation and setting the price of electricity in a pool based electricity market these concepts are illustrated using a 26 generator system

testing the efficiency of extraction from a stock resource the theoretical conditions for efficient extraction from a known stock resource by a competitive mining firm are reviewed these conditions are tested using proprietary data from a mining firm output price data and coefficient estimates from a translog cost system are used to compute the in situ value of the resource and the stock effect changes in the in situ value over time are then statistically compared with the expected price path the results reject the hypothesis that the data are consistent with the theoretical model and the maintained hypotheses variations of the basic model that incorporate a time varying discount rate an alternative expected price series and a constraint on the rate of output are also tested and rejected 46 references 10 tables

demand shifting bids in energy auction with non convexities and transmission constraints the major objective of this paper was to propose clearing and pricing models suitable for demand shifting bids in the efficient but non convex pool based auction complex generators offers bring non convexities into the efficient auctions due to e g start up costs and times this paper focused on the responsive demands introducing simple yet adequate linear constraints into a multi period bid offer based optimal power flow opf dc model as the standard locational marginal prices lmps may not support the auction outcomes due to non convexities uplifts are needed to reduce generators loss previous work has developed a minimum uplift pricing model that directly optimizes prices so that uplifts arising from generators profit suboptimality and simple elastic demands benefit suboptimality are minimized this work extended the mixed integer linear programming milp formulation of the previous model to incorporate new linear constraints defining benefit suboptimality of demand shifting bids furthermore the transmission constrained market was attempted as a result the buyers were protected against over curtailment moreover prices complemented with minimum uplifts were fair for both generators and demands the models were validated on the literature based cases including ieee rts 24 node 24 hour system

what do technology shocks tell us about the new keynesian paradigm abstract researchers have used unanticipated changes to monetary policy to identify preference and technology parameters of macroeconomic models this paper uses changes in technology to identify the same set of parameters estimates based on technology shocks differ substantially from those based on monetary policy shocks in the post world war ii united states a positive technology shock reduces inflation and increases hours worked significantly and rapidly in both cases relative to policy shock identification technology shock identification implies i long duration durability in preferences instead of short duration habit ii built in inflation inertia disappears and price flexibility increases in response to technological improvement consumption durability increases hours worked because households temporarily increase labor supply to accumulate durables towards a new higher steady state level limited nominal rigidities allow inflation to fall because firms are able to immediately cut prices when households labor supply increases finally we consider alternative data constructions and econometric specifications we find that i and or ii hold in nearly every case

reliability differentiated real time pricing of electricity optimal resource planning and power dispatch models from a societal welfare point of view imply an optimal pricing policy which is referred to here as reliability differentiated real time pricing or in short reliability differentiated pricing this pricing scheme combines real time pricing and priority pricing with reliability differentiation based on consumer outage costs this pricing policy is analyzed the model used in the analysis is developed with particular emphasis on consumer behavior and welfare effects the implications of the model for the pricing of spinning reserve and firm capacity as well as for revenue reconciliation are examined it is concluded that such a pricing scheme will in general result in greater attainable welfare than either the real time pricing or priority pricing paradigms moreover it results in the maximum attainable welfare for the system with revenue reconciliation and provides an optimal pricing scheme for spinning revenue and firm capacity

renewable resources with endogenous age classes and allocation of land it is shown that if it is optimal to allocate all land to forestry the long run stationary state is a cyclical solution around an equilibrium with an even timber flow the equilibrium cycles vanish when it is optimal to allocate some fraction of land outside forestry we present numerical examples on the transitional dynamics and long and short run timber supply when land conversion is costly the cycles do not vanish and the long run equilibrium between forestry and agriculture is represented by a continuum

what does a technology shock do a var analysis with model based sign restrictions abstract this paper estimates the effects of technology shocks in var models of the u s identified by imposing restrictions on the sign of impulse responses these restrictions are consistent with the implications of a popular class of dsge models with both real and nominal frictions and with sufficiently wide ranges for their parameters this identification strategy thus substitutes theoretically motivated restrictions for the atheoretical assumptions on the time series properties of the data that are key to long run restrictions stochastic technology improvements persistently increase real wages consumption investment and output in the data hours worked are very likely to increase displaying a hump shaped pattern contrary to most of the related var evidence results are not sensitive to a number of specification assumptions including those on the stationarity properties of variables

the stochastic rotation problem a generalization of faustmann s formula to stochastic forest growth abstract in the present paper we study the optimal cutting strategy 1 2 for an ongoing forest by using stochastic impulse control we show how faustmann s formula can be generalized to stochastic growing forests the paper extends and clarifies previous studies by miller and voltaire 1983 clarke and reed 1989 and reed and clarke 1990

unemployment and business cycles we develop and estimate a general equilibrium search and matching model that accounts for key business cycle properties of macroeconomic aggregates including labor market variables in sharp contrast to leading new keynesian models we do not impose wage inertia instead we derive wage inertia from our specification of how firms and workers negotiate wages our model outperforms a variant of the standard new keynesian calvo sticky wage model according to our estimated model there is a critical interaction between the degree of price stickiness monetary policy and the duration of an increase in unemployment benefits

has monetary policy become more effective we investigate the implications of changes in the structure of the u s economy for monetary policy effectiveness estimating a vector autoregression over the pre and post 1980 periods we provide evidence of a reduced effect of monetary policy shocks in the latter period we estimate a structural model that replicates well the economy s response in both periods and perform counterfactual experiments to determine the source of the change in the monetary transmission mechanism and in the economy s volatility we find that by responding more strongly to inflation expectations monetary policy has stabilized the economy more effectively in the post 1980 period

a test of the hotelling rule using old growth timber data the paper tests hotelling s prediction that scarcity rent for a non renewable resource will rise at the rate of discount in a market equilibrium we perform the test using data for old growth timber a resource that is effectively non renewable in contrast to previous studies for this resource a measure of scarcity rent is directly observable in the form of stumpage price bids in timber auctions we construct a model that allows for replanting and captures the institutional framework of the western u s timber market the modified hotelling rule that we derive is not rejected in several of our specifications

electricity tariffs under imperfect knowledge of participant benefits the authors consider the problem of establishing tariffs for electrical energy under uncertainty about the value of the energy to the participants a tariff update that achieves welfare maximization asymptotically through successive approximations to the ideal tariff is proposed the successive update of the tariff avoids the need for accurate a priori knowledge of electricity system demand and generation as a function of price the key results are a tariff update algorithm and a proof of local convergence two necessary steps for implementation of practical responsive pricing

the structural dynamics of output growth and inflation some international evidence we examine the dynamics of output growth and inflation in the us euro area and uk using a structural time varying coefficient var there are important similarities in structural inflation dynamics across countries output growth dynamics differ swings in the magnitude of inflation and output growth volatilities and persistences are accounted for by a combination of three structural shocks changes over time in the structure of the economy are limited and permanent variations largely absent changes in the volatilities of structural shocks matter

mining of the forest and the time path of the price of timber abstract the paper analyzes the effect of transportation site specific costs and the effect of mining depletion of the forest on the time path of the price and of the net price of timber in two forestry models the models differ in that one has zero costs and the other has positive costs the analyses yield the standard mining theory results for certain cases they also yield extentions of these results for cases with growth of the harvested trees and or regeneration on the harvested land the paper concludes as one would expect that the theory of the mine is useful in analyzing the time path of the price of timber

mineral depletion with cost as the extraction limit a model applied to the behavior of prices in the nickel industry abstract this article follows papers by pindyck and heal and barrow in applying a hotelling type depletion model to a particular resource industry in this case that of nickel by means of the model the resource rent per ton of nickel is calculated as the proper index of extractive resource scarcity the time path of this resource rent indicates that the model explains industry behavior well and that as in the two previous studies depletion has been an important determinant of prices and rents in this industry

optimal forest rotation when stumpage prices follow a diffusion process a key assumption in the faustmann rule for financial maturity is that stumpage prices are constant over time timber price series however exhibit wide fluctuations over time which this paper models as a lognormal diffusion process comparing the diffusion results modeled here to the fixed price faustmann results show 1 the prescribed rotation length is generally longer 2 computed stand values are higher using the diffusion model with the greatest divergence occurring when a stand is about the midpoint of a rotation 3 as the stumpage price volatility increases the gain in computed npv increases though in a nonlinear fashion

dynamic tariffs theory of utility consumer interaction the general theoretical models of dynamic tariffs such as spot pricing are extended to include the issues of optimal response of industrial consumers and the effect of large scale penetration of these tariffs on the utility load curve applications oriented theoretical consumer and utility models are integrated for the purpose of establishing an overall systems approach to the behavior and interaction of the participants in a dynamic tariff environment a systematic analysis of the effect of significant consumer response on the system load curve is undertaken a methodologically sound approach to system load and price forecasting is presented

valuing the impact of large scale ecological change in a market the effect of climate change this paper establishes a methodology for valuing the impact of large scale ecological changes in a market given the large capital stocks inherent in most ecological systems the dynamic nature of most ecological change and the dynamic response of markets it is critical to build dynamic models to capture the resulting effects this paper demonstrates how to construct such a model using the impacts of climate change on u s timber markets as an example across a wide range of scenarios and models warming is predicted to expand timber supplies and thus benefit u s timber markets copyright 1998 by american economic association

a test of the hotelling valuation principle time series tests of the hotelling r percent rule for natural resource prices have not been strongly supportive but the tests and the data are subject to serious difficulties we propose here an alternative testing strategy based on another but less widely known implication of the hotelling model we test this implication which we call the hotelling valuation principle by regressing the market values of the reserves of a sample of u s domestic oiland gas producing companies on their estimated hotelling values we find that the estimated hotelling values account for a significant portion of the observed variations in market values and that the hotelling measures are better indicators of the market values of petroleum properties than two widely cited publicly available alternative appraisals

the optimal forest rotation with evolving prices timber is unique among natural resources in that its price shows a long term increasing trend relative to the price of other goods ruttan and callahan 1962 manthy 1978 adams and haynes 1980 in the best known forest econometric model project this trend to continue one explanation for this secular rise in price relates to the virtual mining of the standing stock of old growth mature timber and its positive effect on real stumpage prices hotelling s 1931 theory of the mine postulates that as a stock of nonrenewable re

a hotelling faustmann explanation of the structure of christmas tree prices we examine the relationship between a tree price and a tree age height using a hotelling faustmann type model of optimal plantation management which accounts for the possibility of replanting and biological growth the model predictions are tested using the data on christmas tree prices in north carolina collected in december 1997 the estimates show that in general the rates of change in prices between adjacent age cohorts reflect a competitive equilibrium in the capital market thus supporting the hotelling faustmann paradigm rigorous empirical testing of the basic economic models of optimal natural resource pricing has proven to be difficult the source of the difficulty has been the unavailability of micro level data on either prices or extraction harvest rates for in situ resource stocks 1 for nonrenewable resources hotelling s famous pricing rule has rarely been tested with firm level data stollery s study of the international nickel company of canada supported hotelling s rule and miller and upton s study of oil company values supported a corollary called the hotelling valuation principle most other studies such as halvorsen and smith and farrow have refuted this bedrock of natural resource economics in fact two studies of old growth timber essentially a nonrenewable resource provide some of the most compelling support for the hotelling model berck johnson

a real options approach to the valuation of a forestry investment abstract the theory of real options is used to model the optimal tree harvesting decision the value of the option to harvest is estimated using a dynamic programming approach and a general numerical solution technique suitable for any type of stochastic process for prices the conditions under which the optimal harvest time is independent of price are examined in addition the impact of assuming future lumber prices are mean reverting is considered it is found that option value and optimal cutting time are significantly different under the mean reversion assumption compared to geometric brownian motion