Resources and Energy最新文献

This paper examines recent trends and future prospects for continued change in the regulation of the electric power industry. Future procurement of supplies will rely more on competitive bidding, and this will require opening up access to the transmission grid. The paper outlines problems for both developments. Competitive bidding could be a useful tool if utilities can bargain hard with suppliers and if a large number of independent producers remain so as to discourage implicit price collusion. Allowing wholesale traders greater access to transmission could be accomplished if problems are addressed. Access guidelines and legal responsibilities must maintain the integrity of the grid. New transactions must increase efficiency and not just redistribute surplus from existing trades. Transmission services must be priced to provide an equitable division of gains between the wholesale traders and the wheeling utility's equity holders and native customers. Recommendations for regulatory guidelines are spelled out.

This paper summarizes issues discussed at a recent conference on the electric utility regulation. The conference identified significant issues for five major topic areas: industry restructuring, both competitive bidding and transmission access; incentives regulation; the environment, particularly the Clean Air Act; innovative pricing of electricity; and demand side management, particularly energy conservation programs. This paper provides background on each of these topics and enumerates the major issues involved with each topic.

This paper discusses important issues that need to be addressed in demand-side management programs and evaluates how well Katz's proposal addresses these issues. The paper notes that under conservation programs the obligation of the utilities becomes providing minimum electric bills for consumers. In light of prices in excess of marginal costs, too much conservation may being done. The cited market imperfections are not pervasive enough to warrant special incentives. The paper lays out five issues that must be addressed by conservation programs including cost allocation, utility incentives and verification of energy saved among others. Katz's proposal is then analyzed in light of these issues. The overall conclusion is that Katz's scheme benefits the utility with little for consumers; however, it does relatively little damage and is superior to traditional conservation programs.

This paper discusses the connection between macro-economic conditions and movements to regulate or deregulate certain industries. High demand, technological change and inflation induce deregulation while low demand and financial distress induce regulation. Airlines and long-distance telephone services are discussed in this context with some implications for electric utilities.

Irrigated agriculture is a major consumer of limited water resources and also a substantial source of pollution. Use of modern irrigation technologies has been proposed as one of several possible solutions to problems of water resource scarcity and environmental pollution in many irrigated agricultural areas. An economic model to assess irrigation technology choice is developed, which expands many of the aspects developed in previous publications, and takes into consideration aspects such as weather conditions and the dual effects of input quality (soil and water). General relationships between variables are derived and tested for cotton and tomatoes under conditions prevailing on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, California. The results from the empirical model provide the following main conclusions: (1) modern irrigation technologies serve to substantially reduce impacts of quality and weather differences on profitability; (2) the impacts of changing one input quality indicator are not independent of other input-quality indicators; (3) the categorization of technologies as ‘input saving’ or ‘yield increasing’ may be misleading; (4) technology choices are sensitive to product (crop) characteristics, and (5) taxation on pollution increases the likelihood of water conservation, adoption of modern technologies, or transition from one crop to another.

In addition to consuming large quantities of water, irrigation pumping requires a significant amount of energy. Furthermore, crop and irrigation technology decisions have a direct impact on the demand for these resources. This paper develops an empirical model of crop and irrigation technology choice and presents estimates for a number of western states. The model demonstrates that growers react to relative price changes in a manner consistent with profitmaximizing theory. Costs are more important than revenues in inducing growers to alter their production choices. An example demonstrates how the model can assess the impact of new irrigation technologies and aid in water and energy conservation planning

This paper examines the impact of an increase in the gasoline tax and the imposition of a tax on crude oil and natural gas on the United States economy. The analytical approach used in the analysis consists of a general equilibrium model composed of 12 producing sectors, 13 consuming sectors, six household categories classified by income, and a government. The effects of a 10 cents per gallon and a 25 cents per gallon increase in the tax on gasoline and the impact of a $1.00 per barrel and a $5.00 per barrel tax on crude oil and natural gas on prices and quantities are examined. The results are revealing. For example, a 10 cents per gallon tax increase on gasoline would result in lower output by the producing sectors (by about $5.795 billion), lower consumption of goods and services (by about $5.910 billion), and a reduction in welfare (by about $7.607 billion). The government would realize an increase in revenue of about $4.970 billion. In the case of a $1.00 per barrel tax on crude oil and natural gas, there would be lower output by the producing sectors (by about $5.238 billion), lower consumption of goods and services (by about $5.093 billion), and a reduction in welfare (by about $4.992 billion). The government would realize an increase in revenue of $3.964 billion.

The free access use of interrelated renewable resources creates a mis-allocation of use between stocks (species) as well as over time. This paper develops a taxation system that treats the multi-dimensional spectrum of such a system, including dynamic, economic, and ecologic factors. The policy places a demand on the free access users to account for the externalities of their activities, thus forcing them to follow the optimal mode. In theory three methods may be equivalent (under certain assumptions) in terms of ecologic-economic efficiency: per landing royalties, per effort tax and allocated catch quotas. In practice they require different data sets and distribution procedures. This paper models per landing royalties and a transformation into either of the two other methods is feasible. The tax is exemplified over a system of two ecologically competitive species presented by the Gauss model and the tax can be adjusted to other advanced or specific versions. Other empirical and theoretical policies do not treat one or more aspects, in particular the ecological element, of this problem.

This paper examines the dynamic behaviour of mining firms in the context of a two-stage Hotelling model of resource extraction. Initially, the model is described and the corresponding set of Hotelling conditions (Euler equations) are derived. This model is then applied to a set of data pertaining to a panel of 14 Canadian copper mining firms. A multiplicatively separable cost function specification is chosen and is estimated (i) in isolation from and (ii) in conjunction with the Euler equations. In both cases it is found that there are inconsistencies between the estimated parameters and the underlying model. These discrepancies are more pronounced when the entire system of equations is estimated. The Euler equations and cost function are estimated via the Generalized Method of Moments. This is an improvement over previous tests of dynamic efficiency in that it allows for direct estimation of the Hotelling conditions