俄罗斯国内天然气价格改革及其影响

俄罗斯国内天然气价格实施政府定价机制,价格水平较低.俄政府从2006年开始以市场原则为基础开展天然气价格改革,开放电子交易平台,允许少量的天然气自由贸易;设定价格范围,允许新增供应天然气的价格浮动;制订新的天然气价格公式,实施国内与国外销售同等收益的原则.俄国内天然气价格的快速提升将使中国和俄罗斯的天然气价格谈判更加困难.     

Price relations between export and domestic rice markets in Thailand

Many rice importing countries argue that rice exporting nations isolate their domestic markets through the use of stabilization pricing policies which cause international rice markets to become excessively volatile. For the argument to hold any weight, price transmission between exporting countries’ domestic and export markets should be unidirectional whereby export prices are driven by domestic prices but domestic prices are not affected by export prices. The study tests the hypothesis on Thailand, traditionally the world’s largest rice exporter. The results from the causality tests are not entirely clear, however the results from the impulse response functions show that while the shocks originating in the domestic market are higher in magnitude in the export market in the short-run, the shocks originating in the export market are more persistent in the domestic market. This suggests that although Thailand’s domestic policies are somewhat effective in the immediate months after the shock they allow price transmission from its export market to transfer over to its domestic market in the long-run. The results therefore imply that Thailand’s domestic pricing programs are not heavily distorting world rice markets.     

How far down the path to free trade? The importance of rice price stabilization in developing Asia

International trade agreements are pushing the world in the direction of free trade. But price stabilization, which is inconsistent with completely free trade, remains important in developing Asia because of the large share of rice in economic output. A policy of pure price stabilization for rice, without consistent protection (either subsidization or taxation), can help to create the macroeconomic stability that is essential for sustained rapid economic growth by increasing the quantity and efficiency of investment throughout the economy. Pure price stabilization can also generate significant equity gains by protecting poor consumers and farmers from sharp fluctuations in prices. While domestic commodity price stabilization schemes have a checkered history around the world, the experience of Asian countries in stabilizing rice prices offers more scope for optimism. Asian governments have been generally successful in stabilizing rice prices, and there are several instances where this has been accomplished without sustained protection of either consumers or farmers. However, there is room for improved stabilization mechanisms that would lower the costs of intervention.     

Rice market integration and food security in Nepal: The role of cross-border trade with India

Coarse rice market integration between Nepal and India is analyzed applying a threshold autoregressive model. The price response behaviour of traders is found to be consistent with an asymmetric price adjustment mechanism, indicating coarse rice prices in Nepal respond to shocks originating in India. The results show that adjustments to negative price deviations from long-run stable equilibrium are faster than adjustments to the positive ones given a null threshold. Given that trade flows mainly from India to Nepal, Nepali traders would adjust their prices upward to align with the long-run equilibrium value relatively more quickly in the case of negative price deviations, than if the price deviations were positive. Such a high speed of adjustment to negative price deviations could be detrimental to net food buyers’ food security status in the absence of a price stabilization mechanism. However, a price stabilization policy in Nepal, a food deficit and import dependent country, would hardly have any effect on prices unless further effort is made to build up the level of national food reserves for short-term food security interventions. In the current context of structurally low levels of national food reserves, an alternative short-term policy such as foreign aid, in the form of food or income transfers, targeting the most vulnerable households to price increases is necessary through social safety net programmes. In the long-run, an improvement of transportation infrastructure between market hubs (other than the Biratnagar trade basin) in the Terai (Nepal) and India would contribute to the reduction of transaction costs and create incentives for more competition in formal cross-border trade with India. In times of negative shocks such as the high food price crisis in 2008, restrictive food trade policies in India will continue to undermine household food security in Nepal.     

俄罗斯国内天然气价格改革及其影响

俄罗斯政府从2006年开始基于市场化原则发展国内天然气市场,进行价格改革,除了保留对居民用户的气价管控外,非居民用户气价开始从政府管控向定价公式转变,定价公式基于国外国内销售同等收益的原则与国际成品油价格挂钩.俄政府允许部分天然气在商品交易所按自由价格出售,并将逐步从管控气价转为管控管输费用.俄国内气价的市场化发展加大了我国引进俄罗斯天然气资源的难度.     

Domestic and international impacts of the rice trade policy reform in the Philippines

Faced with high domestic rice prices that have fueled inflation above the 2018 target and penalized poor consumers the most, the government of the Philippines has decided to abandon the quantitative restrictions on imports and replace them with tariffs. This paper uses a global rice model based on a partial equilibrium framework to assess the possible impacts of this reform on imports, production, consumption and prices. In contrast with past similar studies, we address three key concerns (i) the heterogeneity in farm price across 16 regions in response to the combined effect of the tarriffication and the average historical trend in productivity increase at 1.5% between 2001 and 2018, (ii) the differentiation of imports by origin partly due to the different tariffs applied to countries within and beyond the Association of South East Asian Nations, and (iii) the effect on domestic prices in third countries. The simulation results suggest that the reform would increase imports by 2.47 million tons (20.7%) in 2019. We also find a large decline in farm prices and retail prices respectively by PhP 6.1/kg (30.1%) and PhP 7.6/kg (17.4%) in 2019 that explains an increase in rice consumption. We estimate the fall in total inflation at 1.2% in 2019 but less over time. Further, the large fall in farm prices in 2019 is shared quite evenly among regions in the short term but returns to pre-reform levels in the near term. Using a higher price elasticity of supply for one region obtained from panel data surveys, we show a more pronounced decline in production than the national average. Such differentiated results confirm the relevance of using a regionally disaggregated model to design more targeted policies. We also show a slight increase in world prices, which led to small increases in the domestic prices of South and Southeast Asian rice markets. While this reform is largely pro-poor consumers, policy makers would need to use the additional tariff revenue to help rice growers either increase their competitiveness and modernize their rice production or shift to other crops.     

Common Knowledge Reference Price and Asymmetric Price Adjustments

There is abundant empirical evidence showing that asymmetric price adjustments exist in a wide variety of markets. Prices tend to rise faster when costs rise, relative to the rate at which prices drop when costs fall. This paper argues that a common knowledge reference price—a government suggested retail price—eases the existence of asymmetric price adjustments in a scenario where costs are ever-increasing. Our analysis of the Colombian retail gasoline market suggests that when costs rise by more than the reference price, prices tend to rise more slowly relative to when costs grow by less than the reference price.     

Opportunity Cost Pass‐Through from Fossil Fuel Market Prices to Procurement Costs of the U.S. Power Producers

This paper investigates the transmission of fossil fuel commodity spot market price changes to procurement costs of U.S. power producers. We measure and compare the speed and magnitude with which spot prices predict procurement costs using restricted access fuel price data. Natural gas spot prices are quickly reflected in procurement costs. Coal spot prices offer very little predictive power to coal procurement costs. Although not causal, the empirical results also show differences across regulatory status. These findings may have implications for the electricity market deregulation literature that creates marginal cost curves as a competitive benchmark.     

Discounts and Public Service Obligations in the Airline Market: Lessons from Spain

We examine the impact of the universal service policy that was applied to the Spanish airline market during the period 2001?C2009. Our analysis shows that routes that benefit from price discounts that were granted by the government to island residents enjoy higher demand than the rest of the country??s domestic routes. However, the lower elasticity of demand of these routes allows airlines to set higher prices. We also find that airlines that operate inter-island routes on which their services are regulated by price caps and frequency floors charge lower prices and schedule higher flight frequencies than is the case on unregulated routes. Overall, our analysis suggests that price discounts for island residents help guarantee the profitability of routes that are regulated by public service obligations.     

Is the variability of world wheat prices increasing?

Estimates are derived of the potential variability of world wheat prices and the sources of this variability. These indicate a sizable increase in the probability of large short-run fluctuations in price. The bulk of this variability is due to fluctuations in the domestic grain production of developing and centrally-planned economies. However, most market participants are unresponsive to short-run changes in world price, and transmit a substantial amount of domestic variability to the world market. The key factor in world price stability is the short-run responsiveness of wheat exports from the USA. It is likely that both the physical and policy factors that have contributed to increased variability will persist.     

An improved maize marketing system for African countries: the case of Zimbabwe

This article proposes a system for Zimbabwe which retains government control of national stocks and enables the parastatal marketing system to stabilize prices, at the same time ensuring a more rational delivery system in rural areas with prices reflecting storage and transport costs. The local population is encouraged to fulfill local needs, thus avoiding the expense of directing all marketing and processing through the urban areas. A more localized system will also have greater multiplier effects. Zimbabwe's maize marketing system is used to show how this system could be modified with benefits to rural consumers, producers and government. Data suggest there is little market exploitation: price differentials between markts reflect transport costs, returns on storage are reasonable, and voluntary procurement operations are usually able to stabilize prices. Zoning, movement restrictions and compulsory procurement have been shown to destabilize food markets; prices between markets are higher in periods of strict control than when marketing is relatively free. Controlled marketing answers a real political and economic need in Zimbabwe. Existing public food marketing agencies are not inherently inefficient. While stabilizing maize supply, there are important advantages in announcing preplanting prices, but any trade in maize only takes place after price setting. It is unlikely that there would be both imports and exports in any 1 year, except when previous contracts are being fulfilled. 2 policy options are available to cover anticipated periods of insufficient national maize production: the maintenance of a strategic reserve; and importation of maize to cover supply shortfalls. Single-channel marketing should be replaced by an internal free market operating between floor and ceiling prices by supply manipulation to prevent excessive producer and consumer welfare fluctuations. This system would be more efficient and have beneficial effects on development. It is more equitable for the rural poor, and result in greater stability of producer incomes, more reliable food supplies, higher producer prices and the release of public funds.     

电力市场效率评估与碳市场价格设计——基于电碳市场关联视角下的传导率估计

厘清并量化电力市场与碳市场间的关联关系,是深化电力市场改革与实现"双碳"目标的重要抓手。本文基于2006—2018年中国100个地级及以上城市的面板数据,使用似不相关回归模型评估了电力市场效率,在此基础上研究了电、碳市场关联条件下碳价对电价的传导率,并对不同场景下全国碳市场的碳价进行了优化设计。研究发现:(1)与非试点地区相比,碳市场试点地区中电力市场的无谓损失率更低,并且市场效率的提高具有更高的碳减排作用。(2)电、碳市场关联条件下,碳价对电力市场中居民电价的传导率高于对工业电价的传导率,但均远低于完全竞争条件下的传导率水平。(3)传导率的提升能够缓解"降电价"与"碳减排"之间的矛盾。当前传导率下电力市场效率目标与碳减排目标的协同实现需要碳价的大幅提升,而在完全传导的理想情况下最优碳价约为40元/吨。(4)长期而言,当前传导率下碳排放总量下降场景、经济增速放缓场景对应的最优碳价分别为255.05元/吨、173.63元/吨,而人口老龄化场景并未对最优碳价的设置形成约束。本文的研究不仅为电力市场与碳市场之间的关联奠定了理论基础,也为全国碳市场价格机制的优化设计提供了政策参考。     

Spatial competition and price discrimination with capacity constraints

We characterize mixed-strategy equilibria when capacity-constrained suppliers can charge location-based prices to different customers. We establish an equilibrium with prices that weakly increase in the costs of supplying a customer. Despite prices above costs and excess capacities, each supplier exclusively serves its home market in equilibrium. Competition yields volatile market shares and an inefficient allocation of customers to firms. Even ex-post cross-supplies may restore efficiency only partly. We show that consumers may benefit from price discrimination whereas the firms make the same profits as with uniform pricing. We use our findings to discuss recent competition policy cases and provide hints for a more refined coordinated-effects analysis.     

Trade subsidies,export bans and price stabilization: Lessons of Bangladesh–India rice trade in the 2000s

During the world food price crisis of 2007–08, rice importing countries suffered through a sharp increase in international rice prices and disruptions in supply as several rice exporters restricted trade to mitigate their domestic price increases. Perhaps no country was more affected by these disruptions than Bangladesh. Our analysis shows that prior to the 2007 crisis, when Bangladesh imported an average of nearly 1 million tons of rice per year from India, domestic wholesale prices of rice in Bangladesh were co-integrated with import parity prices of subsidized Below Poverty Line (BPL) rice. When in mid-2007, India sharply curtailed exports, rice prices surged in Bangladesh.Model simulations show that a relatively small increase in private consumer stocks equivalent to about 2 weeks of normal consumption could account for the large surge in domestic prices in Bangladesh and that an additional 300,000 tons (in addition to approximately 700,000 tons of net rice distribution that actually occurred) would have been sufficient to stabilize prices in the November 2007–April 2008 period. The Bangladesh analysis thus shows that in spite of the uncertainty in international markets, careful planning, timely interventions and openness to trade can substantially reduce requirements for public stockholding.     

Endogenous price commitment,sticky and leadership pricing: Evidence from the Italian petrol market

This article studies dynamic pricing strategies in the Italian gasoline market before and after the market leader unilaterally announced its commitment to adopt a sticky-pricing policy. Using daily Italian firm level prices and weekly average EU prices, we show that the effect of the new policy was twofold. First, it facilitated price alignment and coordination on price changes. After the policy change, the observed pricing pattern shifted from cost-based to sticky-leadership pricing. Second, using a dif-in-dif estimation and a synthetic control group, we show that the causal effect of the new policy was to significantly increase prices through sticky-leadership pricing. Our paper highlights the importance of price-commitment by a large firm in order to sustain (tacit) collusion.     

Search Costs, Lags and Prices at the Pump

Evidence is mounting that long lags and asymmetric price responses to changes in wholesale prices are characteristic of many retail markets. Although long lags are often attributed to search costs, little empirical evidence exists to support this claim. The analysis offered in this paper compares price responses in gasoline and diesel markets in 15 U.S. cities. Search costs vary across these two markets, and the evidence indicates a much faster response in the diesel market where search costs are lower. Asymmetric responses, where prices rise faster than they fall, are also evident in the data. While asymmetric responses have been attributed to oligopolistic behavior, the arguments presented in this paper point to search theory as an alternative explanation.     

Einfluss der CO2-Zertifikatspreise auf die Stromgestehungskosten im deutschen Energiemix

In the past, electricity generation costs in Germany’s energy mix depended for the most part on the development of fossil fuel prices. Despite the strongly increasing share of renewable energies in the energy mix, the generation of electricity from fossil fuel power plants, especially brown and bituminous coal power plants, still dominates in Germany today. Alongside fossil fuels as an increasing cost factor, the price of CO₂ is also gaining importance as a price factor in the production of electricity from fossil fuel power plants. The establishment of the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in 2005 formed the basis of CO₂ emissions pricing, and was oriented on the emission reduction targets of the European Union. Although the price of CO₂-certificates in free trade is shown on several stock exchanges, the CO₂ price is still policy driven. The amount of free allocated and traded CO₂-certificates is set on a European policy level. Current decisions on temporary limitations of the trade volume have corresponding effects on exchange prices. This article aims to investigate the impact of CO₂-certificate prices on electricity generation costs in the German energy mix. Comparing real CO₂ prices to forecasts for 2013 provides findings on the effects that the political decisions of the European Parliament with regard to the limitation of the trade volume of available CO₂-certificates have on electricity generation costs in the German energy mix.     

Consequences of further opening of the Korean dairy market

This paper develops a simulation of Korean dairy policy that is tailored to the data, institutions, and policies in South Korea. It compares potential effects of changes in trade and domestic policy to baseline projections to 2015. Beverage milk continues to be supplied from domestic sources, implying imports compete in the manufacture of tradable products. We model manufactured dairy product supply, demand, and trade on a milk fat and non-fat-solid component basis reflecting product fungibility over the 10-year horizon used for our trade policy analysis. We find that if the domestic price support is removed with no change in trade policy, the market price of raw milk falls by about 2% and raw milk production declines by 4.5%. Under substantial tariff cuts of 30–40% with no effective change in domestic dairy policy, Korean fat and non-fat-solid prices fall by 7% and 11%, fat and non-fat-solid imports rise by 9% and 7% and Korea raw milk production falls by about 2% relative to the baseline. Prices of Korean farmer-owned dairy inputs, labor, and capital fall by about 1%.     

A quantitative analysis of trade policy responses to higher world agricultural commodity prices

The worldwide spike in prices of agricultural commodities in 2007–2008 elevated food security and social stability issues to the forefront, especially in many food-deficit countries. In order to mitigate the global food commodity price pressure on domestic markets, several major exporting and importing countries, mostly developing economies, adopted trade policy changes such as export bans (or raising export restrictions) or reducing import tariffs during the same period. This paper estimates the potential impacts of these policies on the world prices and trade of major agricultural commodities using a set of multi-country, multi-commodity, and partial-equilibrium models. Our findings suggest that over all, the trade policy responses in various countries increased the prices of all agricultural commodities, although the impact on the total net trade varies by commodity. The simulation results show that the overall impact of trade policy distortions on the world rice price is most significant at 24%, followed by wheat (14%) and barley (9%). In general, the poorer food-deficit countries/regions, which have limited power to manipulate their trade policies, experienced higher price increases compared to those major trading countries that adopted policy interventions. Also, the developing countries that are net importers which did not implement trade policy interventions experienced significant welfare losses resulting from interventions implemented by other major trading countries.     

DO ROCKETS RISE FASTER AND FEATHERS FALL SLOWER IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF LOCAL MARKET POWER? EVIDENCE FROM THE RETAIL GASOLINE MARKET*

This study explores the possibility that local market power influences the observed asymmetric relationship between changes in wholesale gasoline costs and changes in retail gasoline prices. I exploit an original data set of weekly gas station prices in Southern California from September, 2002 to May, 2003, and take advantage of detailed station and local market level characteristics to determine the extent to which geographic and product differentiation influence price response asymmetry. I find that brand identity, proximity to rival stations and local market features and demographics each influence a station's predicted price‐response asymmetry.