2012
Some Political Economy of Global Warming
After recent disillusions, international climate change negotiations need to be jumpstarted. This paper first argues that countries’ strategic positioning will increase the cost of delay beyond that associated with the classic free-riding problem. It then investigates the governance of an agreement and the design of negotiation and compensation, emphasizing political economy considerations. The paper concludes…
Rethinking Gas Markets–and Capacity
The “U.S. Model” of natural gas markets is based on long-term, point-to-point commercial capacity rights (MDQXY) that reflect the physical capacity of the pipeline and are traded frequently among system users (shippers) in markets independent of the transmission system operator (TSO). When physical capacity is complex and scarce and the gas market is dynamic there…
Book Reviews
Marginal Costs with Wings a Ball and Chain Pipelines and Institutional Foundations for the U.S. Gas Market
The United States has highly competitive gas markets (spot and futures), showing prices in recent years that have definitively diverged from world oil prices. Those gas markets were not “built” in the manner of administered electricity markets. Rather, they were the result of a revolution in federal pipeline regulation designed purposely to free the gas…
Back Matter
Designing the European Gas Market: More Liquid & Less Natural?
Designing a gas market is defining how the commodity, the transmission and ancillary services are traded. The European Union has built the commoditization of natural gas through the socialization of several costs of trade. This choice aims at obtaining more liquid markets through the creation of virtual hubs of trade. These virtual hubs ignore most…
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German Nuclear Policy Reconsidered: Implications for the Electricity Market
In the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima-Daiichi, German nuclear policy has been reconsidered. This paper demonstrates the economic effects of an accelerated nuclear phase-out in Germany on the European electricity market. An optimization model is used to analyze two scenarios with different lifetimes for nuclear plants in Germany (phase-out vs. prolongation). Based on…