nep-reg New Economics Papers
on Regulation
Issue of 2013‒11‒09
seven papers chosen by
Natalia Fabra
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

  1. "Testing the Effectiveness of Regulation and Competition on Cable Television Rates" By Mary T. Kelly; John S. Ying
  2. Nash equilibrium for coupling of CO2 allowances and electricity markets By Mireille Bossy; Nadia Maizi; Odile Pourtallier
  3. An Empirical Analysis of Liquidity and its Determinants in The German Intraday Market for Electricity By Simon Hagemann; Christoph Weber
  4. Projections of future emissions and energy use from passenger cars as a result of policies in the EU with a dynamic model of technological change By Aileen Lam
  5. Literature Review of Energy-Economics Models, Regarding Technological Change and Uncertainty By Pablo Salas
  6. Distributional effects of water tariff reforms: An empirical study for Lima, Peru By Barde, Julia Alexa; Lehmann, Paul
  7. Modeling Passenger Train Delay Distributions - Evidence and Implications By Bergström, Anna; Krüger, Niclas

  1. By: Mary T. Kelly (Department of Economics, Villanova University); John S. Ying (Department of Economics, University of Delaware)
    Abstract: Regulation of the cable television industry was marked by remarkable periods of deregulation, re-regulation, and re-deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s. Using FCC firm-level survey data spanning 1993 to 2001, we model and econometrically estimate the effect of regulation and competition on cable rates. Our calculations indicate that while regulation lowered rates for small system operators, it raised them for medium and large systems. Meanwhile, competition consistently decreased rates from 5.6 to 8.8 percent, with even larger declines during periods of regulation. Our results suggest that competition is more effective than regulation in containing cable prices.
    Keywords: cable rates; regulation; competition.
    JEL: L50 L51 L96 L97 L98
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dlw:wpaper:13-06.&r=reg
  2. By: Mireille Bossy; Nadia Maizi; Odile Pourtallier
    Abstract: In this note, we present an existence result of a Nash equilibrium between electricity producers selling their production on an electricity market and buying CO2 emission allowances on an auction carbon market. The producers' strategies integrate the coupling of the two markets via the cost functions of the electricity production. We set out a clear Nash equilibrium that can be used to compute equilibrium prices on both markets as well as the related electricity produced and CO2 emissions covered.
    Date: 2013–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1311.1535&r=reg
  3. By: Simon Hagemann; Christoph Weber (Chair for Management Sciences and Energy Economics, University of Duisburg-Essen)
    Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of liquidity in the German intraday market for electricity. Two models that aim at explaining intraday liquidity are developed. The first model considers the fundamental merit-order and intraday adjustment needs as the drivers of liquidity in a perfectly competitive market. The second model relaxes the assumption of perfect competition in the intraday market and assumes that the trading behavior of profit maximizing market participants influences the liquidity provision. The relevance of commonly used liquidity indicators like the bid ask-spread, resiliency, market depth, price variance, delay and search costs as well as trading volume and the number of trades are analyzed with respect to both models of liquidity. The empirical findings indicate that liquidity in the German intraday market can be explained by the trading model while the purely fundamental model is rejected. Hence, the question arises how these different sources of uncertainty will impact the network operator's replacement decision. Further it is of interest how much value can be attributed to the reduction of the uncertainty. In this paper, an optimal replacement strategy in an analytical stationary state model is derived explicitly with local and global optima. Based on a discrete mixture model of failure rates under perfect replacement, we show how different assumptions about the underlying type of uncertainty will affect the replacement decision. In a further step, the value of information representing the cost difference between a state of parameter certainty and the state of parameter uncertainty is derived. Trough the course of some applications, it is shown that the value of information increases with the level of uncertainty. Some exemplary calculations are presented to show that the magnitude of the value of information is significant.
    Keywords: Intraday market, electricity, liquidity, fundamental model, trading model
    JEL: L94 Q41
    Date: 2013–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dui:wpaper:1317&r=reg
  4. By: Aileen Lam (Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge)
    Abstract: Transport is the only sector in the EU in which greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. This paper uses the FTT (future technology transformation) framework to project energy use and emissions from passenger cars in the EU 27 until 2050. Projections are made based on four policy scenarios in order to explore the effect of different policies on penetration and diffusion of cleaner transport technologies. All our scenario projections support the dominance of hybrid cars in 2050. However, our results illustrate that strong emission targets cannot be achieved by only encouraging low-emitting cars, but requires strong policies targeting the cleanest cars. Further emission reductions can be achieved by non-pecuniary measures such as car use reductions and scrappage schemes.
    Keywords: Transport, Technological change, Emissions, Fuel use
    JEL: O33 O38 R41
    Date: 2013–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ccc:wpaper:005&r=reg
  5. By: Pablo Salas (Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge)
    Abstract: The power sector contributes with more than one third of the anthropogenic green house gas (GHG) emissions, and therefore it is a relevant target for climate change mitigation measures. However, its technological evolution is co-dependent with many other complex phenomena, such as climate policies, energy investment, natural resources availability, social and political change, among others. In order to create the appropriate policies that help us to adopt low carbon energy technologies, it is necessary to understand how these uncertain phenomena interact, and what are the implications in terms of carbon emissions. This paper is an overview of some of the energy-economic models available to study the evolution of the power sector, with particular emphasis in the uncertain drivers of technological change, and the consequent impacts on GHG emissions.
    Keywords: Energy Modelling, Technological Change, Uncertainty
    JEL: O33 Q47 D81
    Date: 2013–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ccc:wpaper:003&r=reg
  6. By: Barde, Julia Alexa; Lehmann, Paul
    Abstract: This study analyzes the affordability and distributional implications of water tariff reforms for poor water customers under means-tested tariffs in comparison to increasing block tariffs (IBTs) using volumetric targeting. For this purpose, we employ a unique data set for Lima, Peru. Our analysis reveals that from a pro-poor perspective, the performance of means-tested tariffs is mixed. On the one hand, they distribute more income to poor households than the IBTs, given the assumption that the overall revenue to the water supplier remains constant. On the other hand, the share of poor customers who actually benefit from water subsidies declines with means-testing. Nevertheless, means-tested tariffs clearly outperform IBTs in terms of excluding non-poor customers from being subsidized. These findings should be generalized with care as the performance of the tariff crucially depends on the cut-off value for cross-subsidies and the block prices chosen under volumetric targeting and on the design of the means-test. Our analysis further suggests that a proper assessment of individual welfare effects should take household size into account and rest on a broad set of affordability and distributional indicators. Interestingly, our results are relatively insensitive to the price elasticity of water demand. --
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ufzdps:142013&r=reg
  7. By: Bergström, Anna (Dept. of Economics); Krüger, Niclas (Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute)
    Abstract: This paper addresses the lack of reliability within the Swedish rail network by identifying passenger train delay distributions. Arrival delays are analyzed in detail using data provided by the Swedish Transport Administration, covering all train departures and arrivals during 2008 and 2009. The paper identifies vulnerabilities by size, space and time in the network. Our results show that the delay distribution seems to be plagued by low probability high impact events. A major share of all delay time is associated with the tail of the delay distribution, indicating that extreme delays cannot be neglected when prioritizing between measures improving rail infrastructure. Delays are not only concentrated in size, but also concentrated in space and time and seem to follow a precise power law with respect to days and an exponential distribution with regard to stations. Moreover, we also examine the link between capacity usage and expected delay over different time scales.
    Keywords: Delay; Reliability; Passenger trains; Delay distribution; Value of time; Cost-benefit analysis
    JEL: H54 R42
    Date: 2013–11–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:kaunek:0010&r=reg

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