SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Palmer, Karen L.; Burtraw, Dallas.

In the mid-1990s, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was preparing to release Order 888 requiring open access to the transmission grid, the commission, environmental groups, and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, raised the question of how open access and greater competition in wholesale electricity markets might affect the environment. If open access worked as expected, underutilized older coal-fired generators in the Midwest and elsewhere might find new markets for their power, leading to associated increases in air pollution emissions. Restructuring also might lead to retirements of inefficient nuclear facilities, whose generation would be replaced by fossil generation, further increasing emissions. On the other hand, some...

'Second-Best' Adjustments to Externality Estimates in Electricity Planning with Competition

Palavras-chave: Electricity; Electric utilities; Regulation; Competition; Environment; Air pollution; Natural gas; Coal; Nuclear; Renewables; Customer choice; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; L51; L94; L98.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10656

Burtraw, Dallas; Palmer, Karen L.; Krupnick, Alan J..

A number of state public utility commissions are using "social costing" methods to consider externalities in electricity resource planning. The most comprehensive and formal method is the use of monetary place-holders in the financial evaluation of new investments and potentially in system dispatch to reflect quantitative estimates of externality values. This approach necessarily must take existing environmental and social regulation as given. Furthermore, regulated utilities face increasing competition from electricity generators outside their service territory who may not be affected by social costing. The lack of universal and uniform social costing places PUC actions soundly in the realm of "second-best policy" and they may have unintended consequences...

Licences, "Use or Lose" Provisions and the Time of Investment

Palavras-chave: Second-best; Environmental regulation; Electricity regulation; Environmental adders; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q25; Q48; L51.

Ano: 1995

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10753

Dosi, Cesare; Moretto, Michele.

Exclusive rights granted by public authorities, like concessions to develop natural resources or electromagnetic spectrum licences, often have option-like features. However, to avoid licences being unused for lengthy periods, regulators sometimes set time limits, after which the exclusive right of exercise may be revoked. In this paper we analyse the impact of use or lose ("UOL") provisions upon the private time of investment. We find that the risk of losing the licence because of inaction generally increases the probability of early investment. However, when capital costs are expected to decline over time, UOL provisions may involve a "perverse effect", by increasing, rather than reducing, the expected time of investment, with respect to a situation where...

The Public Management of Risk: Separating Ex Ante and Ex Post Monitors

Palavras-chave: Licences; Real Options; Use or Lose Provisions; Time of Investment; Financial Economics; L51; D44; D92.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/59756

Hiriart, Yolande; Martimort, David; Pouyet, Jerome.

When a firm undertakes risky activities, the conflict between social and private incentives to implement safety care requires public intervention which can take the form of both monetary incentives but also ex ante or ex post monitoring, i.e., before or after an accident occurs. We delineate the optimal scope of monitoring depending on whether public monitors are benevolent or corruptible. We show that separating the ex ante and the ex post monitors increases the likelihood of ex post investigation, helps prevent capture and improves welfare.

Food Safety and Defense Risks in the U.S.-Mexico Produce Chain

Palavras-chave: Risk Regulation; Monitoring; Capture; Integration; Separation; Financial Economics; L51; D82.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/98454

Auctioning Monopoly Franchises: Award Criteria and Service Launch Requirements

Nganje, William E.; Richards, Timothy J.; Bravo, Jesus; Hu, Na; Kagan, Albert; Acharya, Ram N.; Edwards, Mark R..

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Agribusiness; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; I18; I28; L51.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/94707

Dosi, Cesare; Moretto, Michele.

We study the competition to acquire the exclusive right to operate an infrastructure service, by comparing two different specifications for the financial proposals - "lowest price to consumers" vs "highest concession fee", and two alternative contractual arrangements: a contract which imposes the obligation to immediately undertake the investment required to operate the concessioned service and a contract which simply assigns to the winning bidder the right to supply the market at a date of her choosing. By comparing the returns of these alternative award criteria and concessioning conditions, we show that concessioning without imposing rollout time limits may or may not provide a higher expected social value, depending on the bidding rule used to allocate...

Market-Based Instruments for the Optimal Control of Invasive Insect Species: B. Tabaci in Arizona

Palavras-chave: Concessions; Auctions; Award criteria; Service Rollout Time limits; Public Economics; L51; D44; D92.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50409

Richards, Timothy J.; Ellsworth, Peter; Tronstad, Russell; Naranjo, Steve.

Invasive insect species represent perhaps one of the most significant potential sources of economic risk to U.S. agricultural production. Private control of invasive insect species is likely to be insufficient due to negative externality and weaker-link public good problems. In this study, we compare a system of Pigouvian taxes with tradable permits for invasive species control. While the emissions control literature shows that taxes are preferred to permits under cost uncertainty, invasive species control involves correlated cost and benefit uncertainty, so we expect a quantity-based system to be preferred. Monte Carlo simulations of optimal steady-state outcomes confirm our expectations.

A Note on Emissions Taxes and Incomplete Information

Palavras-chave: Externalities; Invasive species; Optimal control; Permits; Spatial-temporal model; Taxes.; Environmental Economics and Policy; Public Economics; Risk and Uncertainty; H23; L51; Q28; Q57..

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/61189

Chavez, Carlos A.; Stranlund, John K..

In contrast with what we perceive is the conventional wisdom about setting emissions taxes under uncertainty, we demonstrate that setting a uniform tax equal to expected marginal damage is not generally efficient under incomplete information about firms’ abatement costs and damages from pollution. We show that efficient taxes will deviate from expected marginal damage if there is uncertainty about the slopes of the marginal abatement costs of regulated firms. Moreover, efficient emissions tax rates will vary across firms if a regulator can use observable firm-level characteristics to gain some information about how the firms’ marginal abatement costs vary.

Capital Structure and Regulation: Does Ownership Matter?

Palavras-chave: Emissions Taxes; Incomplete Information; Uncertainty; Environmental Economics and Policy; Public Economics; Risk and Uncertainty; L51; Q28.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/42129

Bortolotti, Bernardo; Cambini, Carlo; Rondi, Laura; Spiegel, Yossi.

We construct a comprehensive panel data of 96 publicly traded European utilities over the period 1994-2005 in order to study the relationship between the capital structure of regulated firms, regulated prices, and investments, and examine if and how this interaction is affected by ownership structure. We show that firms in our sample increase their leverage after becoming regulated by an independent regulatory agency, but only if they are privately controlled. Moreover, we find that the leverage of these firms has a positive and significant effect on regulated prices, but not vice versa, and it also has a positive and significant effect on their investment levels. Our results are consistent with the theory that privately-controlled firms use leverage...

Informality, Size, and Regulation: Theory and an Application to Egypt

Palavras-chave: Regulated utilities; Regulatory agencies; Capital structure; Leverage; Investment; Private and state ownership; Public Economics; L51; G31; G32; L33.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/7449

Giugale, Marcelo M.; El-Diwany, Sherif.

The paper shows how, when the enforceability of regulations is size-sensitive, price competition can lock firms into informality and, thus, smallness, depending on the form of the production function. In that context, exogenours "help"packages targeted to informal firms "promote" micro and small enterprises (i.e., increase their numbers) but do not "develop" them (i.e., foster their growth). The "help" only generates a short-term span of abnormal profits for existing informal firms, and a long-term income transfer toward informal-market consumers. The model is tested in the context of Egypt's micro and small enterprise sector.

The Induced Innovation Hypothesis and Energy-Saving Technological Change

Palavras-chave: Informality; Size Regulation; Egypt; Hide-Outs; Agricultural and Food Policy; O17; L11; L51.

Ano: 1997

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18542

Newell, Richard G.; Jaffe, Adam B.; Stavins, Robert N..

We develop a methodology for testing Hick's induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product-characteristics model of energy-using consumer durables, augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the influence of government regulations. For the products we explored, the evidence suggests: (i) the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy prices and regulations, (ii) the direction of innovation was responsive to energy price changes for some products but not for others, (iii) energy price changes induced changes in the subset of technically feasible models that were offered for sale, (iv) this responsiveness increased substantially during the period after energy-efficiency product labeling was required, and (v) nonetheless, a sizeable portion of...

COSTS OF CO-EXISTENCE AND TRACEABILITY SYSTEMS IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY IN GERMANY AND DENMARK

Palavras-chave: Induced innovation; Energy efficiency; Technological change; Economic incentives; Regulation; Standards; Climate change; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; L51; O31; O38; Q40; Q20; Q48.

Ano: 1998

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10521

Menrad, Klaus; Gabriel, Andreas; Gylling, Morten.

Paper prepared for presentation at the Fourth International Conference on Coexistence between Genetically Modified (GM) and non-GM based Agricultural Supply Chains (GMCC) Melbourne (Australia), 10th to 12th November 2009

Consumer Preference Not to Choose: Methodological and Policy Implications

Palavras-chave: Genetic engineering; GMO; Food industry; Co-existence; Agricultural and Food Policy; L51; O32.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91301

Brennan, Timothy J..

Residential consumers remain reluctant to choose new electricity suppliers. Even the most successful jurisdictions, four U.S. states and other countries, have had to adopt extensive consumer education procedures that serve largely to confirm that choosing electricity suppliers is daunting. Electricity is not unique in this respect; numerous studies find that consumers are generally reluctant to switch brands, even when they are well-informed about product characteristics. If consumers prefer not to choose, opening regulated markets can reduce welfare, even for some consumers who do switch, as the incumbent can exploit this preference by raising price above the formerly regulated level. Policies to open markets might be successful even if limited to...

Implementing Electricity Restructuring: Policies, Potholes, and Prospects

Palavras-chave: Electricity markets; Deregulation; Consumer choice; Residential markets; Consumer/Household Economics; L94; L51; D11; B40.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10573

Brennan, Timothy J.; Palmer, Karen L.; Martinez, Salvador A..

Electricity is one of the last U.S. industries in which competition is replacing regulation. We briefly review the technology for producing and delivering power, the history of electricity policy, and recent state and international experience. We then outline the major questions facing policymakers as they decide whether, when, and how to implement restructuring. We conclude with some thoughts on the California electricity crisis and other political controversies. Although the California experience has come to define what it means for electricity markets to fail, most of the problems it raised are among those we know how to solve or prevent. The still unresolved make-or-break issue remains whether the cooperation necessary to maintain reliability is...

China’s Electricity Market Reform and Power Plants Efficiency

Palavras-chave: Electricity restructuring; Regulation; Deregulation; Public Economics; L51; L94; D4.

Ano: 2001

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10508

Ma, Chunbo; Zhao, Xiaoli; Ma, Qian; Zhao, Yue.

In the past three decades, Chinese electricity industry has experienced a series of regulatory reforms serving different purposes at different stages. In 2002, the former vertically integrated electricity utility - the State Power Corporation (SPC) – was divested and the generation sector was separated from the transmission and distribution networks in an effort to improve production efficiency. In this paper we study the impact of the reform on efficiency of fossil-fired power plants using plant-level data during 2000-2008. Our results from the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and panel regressions show that: 1) the total factor productivity (TFP) growth mainly comes from technological change; 2) the technical efficiency of previously SPC-managed power...

The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy

Palavras-chave: Efficiency; DEA; Malmquist Index; China; Electricity; Industrial Organization; Productivity Analysis; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; D24; L11; L51; L94; L98.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/117811

Keohane, Nathaniel O.; Revesz, Richard L.; Stavins, Robert N..

In the realm of environmental policy instrument choice, there is great divergence between the recommendations of normative economic theory and positive political reality. Four gaps stand out. First, despite the advantages of market-based policy instruments, they have been used to a minor degree, compared with conventional, command-and-control instruments. Second, pollution-control standards have typically been much more stringent for new than for existing sources, despite the inefficiency of this approach. Third, in the few instances in which market-based instruments have been adopted, they have nearly always taken the form of grandfathered tradeable permits, rather than auctioned permits or pollution taxes, despite the advantages in some situations of...

Banking on "Green Money": Are Environmental Financial Responsibility Rules Fulfilling Their Promise?

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy; L51; H11; P16; K32; Q28.

Ano: 1997

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10759

Boyd, James.

Financial responsibility rules are an increasingly common form of environmental regulation. Currently, the operators of landfills, underground petroleum storage tanks, offshore rigs, and oil tankers must demonstrate the existence of adequate levels of capital as a precondition to the legal operation of their businesses. Environmental financial responsibility ensures that firms possess the resources to compensate society for pollution costs created in the course of business operations. In addition to providing a source of funds for victim compensation and pollution remediation, financial responsibility is thought to motivate better decision-making, particularly regarding the management of long-term risks. This article describes both the promise of financial...

CO-EXISTENCE COSTS UNDER GERMAN REGULATION - CASE STUDIES OF BT MAIZE

Palavras-chave: Financial responsibility; Environmental liability; Waste disposal; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q28; L51; K32.

Ano: 1996

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10592

Reitmeier, Daniela; Menrad, Klaus.

Paper prepared for presentation at the 10th ICABR International Conference on Agricultural Biotechnology: Facts, Analysis and Policies Ravello (Italy), June 29th to July 2nd, 2006

Optimal Incentives Under Moral Hazard and Heterogeneous Agents: Evidence from Production Contracts Data

Palavras-chave: Co-existence measure; GMO; Bt maize; GIS; Germany; Agricultural and Food Policy; L51; O32.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91329

Dubois, Pierre; Vukina, Tomislav.

In this paper we develop an analytical framework for the estimation of the structural model parameters of an incentive contract under moral hazard with heterogeneous agents. Using micro level data on swine production contract settlements, we confirm that contract farmers are heterogenous with respect to their risk aversion and that this heterogeneity affects the principal's allocation of production inputs across farmers. Assuming that contracts are optimal, we obtain estimates of a lower and an upper bound of agents' reservation utilities. We show that farmers with higher risk aversion have lower outside opportunities and hence lower reservation utilities.

Cost Savings Sans Allowance Trades? Evaluating the SO2 Emission Trading Program to Date

Palavras-chave: Contracting; Heterogenous agents; Moral hazard; Livestock Production/Industries; Production Economics; D82; L24; Q12; K32; L51.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24645

Burtraw, Dallas.

Title IV of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act initiated a historic experiment in incentive-based environmental regulation through the use of tradable allowances for emission of sulfur dioxide by electric generating facilities. To date, relatively little allowance trading has taken place; however, the costs of compliance have been much less than anticipated. The purpose of this paper is to address the apparent paradox that the allowance trading program may not require (very much) trading to be successful. Title IV represented two great steps forward in environmental regulation: first a move toward performance standards and second formal allowance trading. The first step has been sufficient to date for improving dynamic efficiency and achieving...