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on Regulation |
| By: | He, Haoran; Chen, Yefeng; Last Name, First Name |
| Abstract: | One method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to subsidize emissions-reducing activities. The question is how to allocate such subsidies. Allocation through auctions is an emerging mechanism. In a controlled experimental market setting, we compare the effects of a variety of auction mechanisms for allocating subsidies for carbon emissions reduction in China. Besides the conventional auction mechanisms, we place particular focus on testing the actual performance of the auction mechanism proposed by Erik Maskin (2011). We find that, while the Maskin auction mechanism spends the most from a fixed subsidy budget and leads to the largest emissions reduction, its per-unit emissions reduction cost is higher than that of discriminatory and uniform-price auction mechanisms. Both the Maskin and uniform-price auctions outperform discriminatory auctions in price discovery. Furthermore, from the government’s perspective, the Maskin auctions exhibit the strongest improvement tendency with repeated auctions. |
| Keywords: | auctions, subsidy allocation, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, emissions reduction |
| JEL: | C91 C93 D64 |
| Date: | 2014–04–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-14-06-efd&r=reg |
| By: | Katarzyna Maciejowska |
| Abstract: | In the paper, Structural Vector Autoregressive models (SVAR) are used to identify fundamental and speculative shocks, in the UK electricity market. The structural shocks are identified via short run restrictions, which are imposed on the matrix of instantaneous effects. In the research, two main types of shocks are considered: fundamental shocks, which result from unexpected changes of demand, supply and generation costs and speculative shocks, which are associated solely with electricity prices. The results indicate that speculative shocks play an important role in the price setting process. Although they account for a significant part (from 30% to 95%) of the price volatility, I do not find evidence that the influence differs between peak and off-peak hours. When fundamental shocks are considered, some dependence between their effects on electricity prices and periods of the day is confirmed. For example, the impact of wind supply shocks on electricity prices is significantly stronger during the peak hours than during the off-peak hours. Moreover, they become a major source of electricity price volatility during the peak hours. Finally, it is confirmed that shocks associated with generation costs (prices of fuels) don’t have any instantaneous effect on the electricity prices. |
| Keywords: | Electricity spot prices; Structural analysis; Vector autoregression; |
| JEL: | C32 C51 E31 Q41 Q47 |
| Date: | 2014–04–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wuu:wpaper:hsc1405&r=reg |
| By: | Basu, Kaushik; Dixit, Avinash |
| Abstract: | The paper argues that to achieve compliance of firms with regulations such as product quality or environmental or health standards it is better to have industries with a few large corporations than numerous small firms. A model is constructed to show that limited liability constraints bind more easily in competitive industries, making it harder to impose sufficiently severe penalties and costlier to send sufficient monitors. Having large corporations allows the government effectively to delegate some of its monitoring functions to the managers of the corporation. The tradeoff between this issue and the usual argument in favor of competition is considered. |
| Keywords: | Microfinance,Small Scale Enterprise,Regulatory Regimes,Public Sector Regulation,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures |
| Date: | 2014–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6860&r=reg |
| By: | François DESTANDAU; Anne ROZAN; Sandrine SPAETER |
| Abstract: | Through the Water Framework Directive, the European Commission urges its Mem- ber states to reach a level of "good status" of water for 2015. This level can be different from the regional first-best. Neither the supra-regional regulator (European Commission) nor the regional regulator (Member State) knows perfectly this firstbest. Each region can estimate it thanks to a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). If the estimated first-best is lower than the "good status" level, the region can ask to be exempted from reaching the latter. In this paper, we show that regional regulators do not always invest largely in CBA in optimum, although under-investment increases the probability of being urged to reach the highest level of water quality. Besides, the optimal exemption policy announced by the supra-regional regulator, which depends on the CBA's investment, shall also depend on the local risk preferences and environmental vulnerability. If the exemption policy is uniform across the regions, we obtain that more risk averse and/or more environmentally vulnerable populations invest less in the CBA, contrary to the first intuition. Policy implications are discussed. |
| Keywords: | Supra-Regional Regulator, Regional Regulators, Exemption Policy, Imperfect Estimation, Local Préférences. |
| JEL: | D8 Q25 Q28 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2014-09&r=reg |