The Effects of the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Standards in the US

This paper examines the effects of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) on automobile sales, prices, and fuel consumption. First a discrete choice model of automobile demand and a continuous model of vehicle utilization are estimated using micro data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for 1984–1990. Next, the demand side model is combined with a model of oligopoly and product differentiation on the supply side. With these elements in place, the effects of the CAFE regulation are assessed through simulations, and compared to the effects of alternative policy instruments, such as an increase in gasoline tax.     

Case Study: Solving a Rental Fleet Sizing Model with a Large Time–Space Network

This article addresses a rental fleet sizing problem (RFS) in the context of the truck rental industry, subject to uncertain customer travel time and nonstationary customer demand that is dependent on geographical location, time, and the economic cycle of the industry. We integrate tactical (asset purchases and sales) and operational (empty truck movement and vehicle assignment) decisions, with the explicit incorporation of an asset age factor, to achieve lower cost solutions. Typically, the length of time horizon and number of locations under consideration are quite large, which makes the RFS model computationally challenging to solve. Aggregation procedures are employed for location clustering and end-of-horizon effects are examined through demand scenario-based analyses. For the reduced time–space networks, decision analyses are conducted for the RFS model to provide insights into the truck rental business regarding asset movement decisions and asset procurement/disposal decisions over time and locations.     

生物燃料乙醇产业发展的影响因素研究——基于美国月度数据的VAR模型分析

本文以相对成熟的美国生物燃料乙醇产业为例,选取1982年1月至2014年12月的月度数据,通过构建多变量VAR模型分析影响生物燃料乙醇产业发展的因素。研究结果表明：燃料乙醇产量与玉米价格、汽油价格、GDP、温室气体排放量之间存在着长期稳定的均衡关系;汽油价格和GDP对燃料乙醇产量有正向冲击效应且滞后期长,玉米价格和温室气体排放量对燃料乙醇产量有负向冲击效应并在长期中逐渐收敛为0;政策扶持因素对燃料乙醇产量有显著正向影响;在长期中汽油价格和GDP对燃料乙醇产量的影响较大,而玉米价格和温室气体排放量的影响小。     

原油、汽油价格对燃料乙醇生产成本的影响分析

利用投入产出方法，分析了原油价格、汽油价格与燃料乙醇成本间的关系，并以玉米乙醇、小麦乙醇和木薯乙醇为例，考虑到燃料乙醇的热值只有普通汽油的0．658倍，计算出三种生物质生产燃料乙醇等能量的汽油价格等于乙醇生产成本三个临界点。结果表明，原油的价格上涨到57．95美元／桶时，汽油的价格将上涨到3．751元／L，理论上用三种生物质中的任意一种生产燃料乙醇就不需要政府的补贴的，在生产燃料乙醇中，三种生物质木薯燃料乙醇的经济性最好。     

Commuting Costs and Geographic Sorting in the Housing Market

The demand for housing is heavily influenced by access to employment opportunities. The cost of gasoline determines, in part, the cost of such access and therefore the relative demand across markets with varying commuting needs. Locally exogenous gasoline price movements demonstrate the causal impact of higher fuel costs on housing markets: a shift of market demand toward real estate markets with less costly commutes. Higher fuel prices increase the value of real estate with shorter commutes and easier access to driving alternatives relative to more driving dependent homes. Every incremental $1 per gallon of gasoline reduces home values by 0.143% for every additional mile relative to counterfactual markets, or $5,200 for the average home and commute. This translates into a discount rate of 6.4%, comparable to mortgage rates for the period.     

Experimenting with purchase history based price discrimination

Many purchases of differentiated goods are repeated, giving sellers the opportunity to engage in price discrimination based upon the shopper's previous behavior by either offering loyalty discounts to repeat buyers or introductory rates to new customers. Recent theoretical work suggests that loyalty discounts can be profitable to sellers when customer preferences are not stationary and sellers can pre-commit to prices for repeat buyers, but otherwise returning customers can be expected to pay the same or more than new buyers. This paper reports behavior in controlled laboratory experiments designed to empirically test the impact of these factors on pricing strategies. The results generally support the comparative static predictions of the theoretical model. When customer preferences are fixed over time, sellers attempt to lure customers from their rival. Price pre-commitment for repeat shoppers when buyer preferences vary over time resulted in modest loyalty pricing, but the discounts are not as prevalent as predicted as sellers rarely price below cost. Behaviorally, price pre-commitment to loyal customers is found to reduce prices overall.     

Affiliation bias in the online market for rental accommodation

We find evidence of taste‐based discrimination against rival affiliations in the online market for rental accommodation. Airbnb hosts in college towns increase their listing prices more than hotels on home football games against rival teams. By setting listing prices too high as a result of their affiliation bias against rival fans, hosts experience a 30% reduction in rental income. The overestimation of demand, the cost (inconvenience) of temporary relocation, and the likelihood of incurring damage cannot explain the inverse relation between listing price increases, and rental incomes that is limited to games against rival teams. Instead, greater financial constraints are associated with smaller listing price increases, and higher rental incomes on rival games, suggesting that taste‐based discrimination is a luxury.     

Real Estate Prices During the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression

Using new data on market‐based transactions we construct real estate price indexes for Manhattan between 1920 and 1939. During the 1920s prices reached their highest level in the third quarter of 1929 before falling by 67% at the end of 1932 and hovering around that value for most of the Great Depression. The value of high‐end properties strongly co‐moved with the stock market between 1929 and 1932. A typical property bought in 1920 would have retained only 56% of its initial value in nominal terms two decades later. An investment in the stock market index (including dividends) would have outperformed an investment in a typical property (including net rental income) by a factor of 5.2 over our time period.     

Price Strategies for Idiosyncratic Goods—The Case of Housing

We determine the mechanism that a rational, profit-maximizing seller would use to revise his reservation price for a heterogeneous or infrequently exchanged good. For instance, while one dimension of a home's quality may be easily determined in competitive markets (e.g., the valuation of floor size, location, etc.), other dimensions of quality may be idiosyncratic (unit specific) and unobservable by the seller (e.g., aesthetics of the home). Here, a seller of a new or infrequently exchanged housing unit may use sales success information to revise his expectation of the unit's market-determined value and hence revise his reservation price. The rational seller will, upon arrival of the first buyer inspecting the unit, determine a sequence of reservation prices for this and expected subsequent buyers. This price sequence falls for subsequent buyers and starts from a lower initial price if the first buyer arrives later than expected. Through this mechanism, we offer an explanation for price dispersion and vacancy durations in housing markets. While we explicitly model the real estate market here, this price revision mechanism is also applicable to rental markets, labor markets, used car markets, and other markets characterized by heterogeneity and infrequent sales.     

Understanding heterogeneity in price changes and firm responses to a national unhealthy food tax in Mexico

To address the high prevalence of overweight and obesity in Mexico, an eight percent ad valorem excise tax on non-essential energy-dense foods came into effect on 1 January 2014. This paper estimates price changes after the tax implementation among the top four food categories and by leading vs. non-leading firms using purchase information from over 6000 urban households in the 2012–2015 Nielsen Mexico Consumer Panel. We create product-city-month specific prices that correct for potential biases associated with household and retailer characteristics. Using these corrected prices, we conduct before and after quasi-experimental analyses and find that price increases were larger than eight percent for cookies but were less than eight percent for ready-to-eat cereals, salty snacks, and pre-packaged sweet bread. For the latter food group, event-study analyses on the gradual price change over time suggest that price changes might be the result of an increasing price trend rather than the tax implementation. Firm-level analyses mostly show that price increases by the leading firms were larger than the overall increase at the food market level, helping explain variability in post-tax declines in food purchases as reported in other research. We also find that price changes are generally underestimated when we do not correct prices for biases associated with households and retailers. These results improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind heterogeneous changes in purchases after the tax implementation. Additionally, these results can assist policymakers when designing or improving taxes on non-essential energy-dense foods at a time when these policy options are high on the agenda in many places.     

Poverty effects of food price escalation: The importance of substitution effects in Mexican households

Recent food price increases reportedly caused significant numbers of households to fall into poverty, particularly in the developing world. Most research into the welfare effects of these food price changes assumes constant demand or approximates second order substitution effects. Poverty forecasts with these assumptions may overestimate or underestimate the effect of food price increases in a nation where most households consume diverse food baskets. We account for full substitution by calculating a theoretically consistent food demand system, accounting for household responses to food price changes by decreasing some food purchases and increasing other food purchases. We use Mexican data to confirm the mitigation of adverse welfare effects from food price increases after accounting for country-specific dietary preferences in modeling demand. In comparison to previous literature, our welfare measures predict theoretically consistent numbers of Mexican households entering poverty due to recent food price changes.     

Elektroautos in einer von erneuerbaren Energien geprägten Energiewirtschaft

The German Federal Government wants to establish Germany as a leading market for electric mobility. Potential environmental benefits and changes in the economic framework conditions of the energy sector are described in this paper. In order to quantify the electricity split which is actually used for charging electric vehicles, two economic models for the energy sector, a model for the market penetration of electric vehicles, a vehicle model and an LCA model are brought together. Based on an assumed dynamic increase of electric vehicles to 12 million in 2030, an additional electricity demand of about 18 TWh is calculated. If the vehicles are charged directly after their last daily trip, the peak load increases by 12%—despite the small increase in electricity demand. First model calculations for the development of the European power generation system show that the direct impact on the construction of new power plants remains low even until 2030. An impact of electric mobility on CO₂ certificate prices can only be seen from 2025 onwards and is limited to an increase in certificate prices by a maximum of 8 % in 2030. An optimisation is possible with intelligent charging strategies: The peak load without demand side management can be reduced by 5 GW and about 600 GWh of additional wind energy can used which would otherwise have been throttled due to feed-in management—about 3.5 % of the total electricity demand of electric vehicles. On the other hand, demand side management leads to more coal power plants instead of gas power plants being used to meet the additional electricity demand. If additional renewable sources are installed along with demand side management, the electricity for electric vehicles is almost carbon free. This is also reflected in the life cycle balance of electric vehicles which also includes vehicle and battery production: With today’s average electricity split in Germany, the greenhouse gas emissions of electric vehicles are about comparable to vehicles with conventional combustion engines. However, the electricity split in 2030 or the use of additional renewable energy sources lead to a significant advantage in the greenhouse gas balance.     

Switching costs in the US seed industry: Technology adoption and welfare impacts

We evaluate the role of brand and technology switching costs in the US soybean seed industry using a unique dataset of actual seed purchases by about 28,000 farmers from 1996 to 2016. Using a random coefficients logit model of demand, we estimate brand and technology switching costs, characterize the distributions of buyers’ willingness to pay for seed brands and the glyphosate tolerance (GT) trait, and assess the implications of brand and technology switching costs for farmers’ welfare, technology adoption, firm profits, and firm market shares. We find that farmers are willing to pay large premiums for brand labels, and even larger premiums for the GT trait, although there is considerable heterogeneity in these values. Switching costs play an important role in the soybean seed industry. Eliminating these costs would significantly increase buyers’ welfare, reduce seed prices and firm profits, decrease adoption of the GT trait, and impact industry consolidation by expanding smaller firms’ market shares.     

中国上海燃料油期货定价模型研究

采用协整理论及基于VAR的Grange因果关系检验与冲击反应函数方法对中国上海期货交易所燃料油期货价格作建模分析。单位根检验显示，选取的样本序列均为I（1）。Granger因果关系检验显示：美原油期货价格，新加坡180燃料油现货价格变量为燃料油期价的Granger原因；上海燃料油期货价格是黄埔现货价格的单向的Granger原因，期货价格对现货价格具有发现作用。最终作出的长期协整方程显示：美原油期货价格，新加坡180燃料油现货价格、欧元汇率与上海燃料油现货价构成长期显著的均衡关系。美原油期货价格对沪燃料油期价的弹性为0．85；新加坡180燃料油现货价格对沪燃料油期价的弹性为0．78；欧元汇率对沪燃料油期价的弹性为1．04。从最终建立动态模型来看，模型有较好的拟合及预测精度。因此，该模型对沪燃料油期价风险控制具有较好的参考作用。     

当前国内外油气行业发展形势及展望

2012年上半年,石油需求低迷,供应充足,库存高企,供需从2011年同期的偏紧转为宽松;国际油价波动较大,一季度升至2008年金融危机后的最高水平,二季度大幅回落.天然气市场需求和产量小幅增长,供需保持平衡;北美、欧洲、亚太三大天然气区域市场价差扩大.全球油气并购活动持续低迷,北美非常规气并购市场迅速降温.国际大石油公司生产经营指标下滑.中国石油需求增速大幅回落,对外依存度再创新高;成品油价格前升后降,石油石化行业效益持续下滑;天然气消费快速增长,进口量大幅上升,进口气价倒挂严重.下半年,预期世界经济依然疲软.石油供需仍将宽松,油价略有回升,但将低于去年同期水平;天然气供需继续平衡,三大市场价差仍将维持.中国经济企稳,国内成品油需求有望平稳增长,但涨幅低于预期;天然气将保持消费量与产量、进口量齐增的态势.     

An empirical investigation of the determinants of asymmetric pricing

This article empirically investigates the cause of asymmetric pricing: retail prices responding faster to cost increases than decreases. Using daily price data for over 11,000 retail gasoline stations, I find that prices fall more slowly than they rise as a consequence of firms extracting informational rents from consumers with positive search costs. Premium gasoline prices are shown to fall more slowly than regular fuel prices, which supports theories based upon competition with consumer search. Further testing also rejects focal price collusion as an important determinant of asymmetric pricing.     

Private Labels,National Brands and Food Prices

We study the relationships between national brand prices and the development of private labels, using home-scanned data from a consumer survey reporting purchases for 218 food products. When the impact of private label development is significant (116 cases out of 218), we observe a positive correlation (89%) between brand price and purchases of private labels. When controlling for changes in product quality, we still find a positive relation between private label development and national brand prices. Thus, the change in the national brand product characteristics only partly explains the increase in the national brand prices. Furthermore, the price reactions of national brands differ according to the type of private labels they face. Finally, we demonstrate that the development of private labels has less effect on the prices of second-tier brands than on the prices of the leading brand.      

Flex cars and competition in fuel retail markets

We study how the diffusion of flex (bi-fuel) cars affected competition on ethanol and gasoline retail markets. We propose a model of price competition in which the two fuels become closer substitutes as flex cars penetration grows. We use a large panel of weekly prices at the station level to show that fuel prices and margins have fallen in response to this change. This finding is evidence of market power in fuel retail and indicates that innovations that increase consumer choice benefit even those who choose not to adopt them.     

Cartel pricing dynamics with cost variability and endogenous buyer detection

This paper characterizes collusive pricing patterns when buyers may detect the presence of a cartel. Buyers are assumed to become suspicious when observed prices are anomalous. We find that the cartel price path is comprised of two phases. During the transitional phase, price is generally rising and relatively unresponsive to cost shocks. During the stationary phase, price responds to cost but is much less sensitive than under non-collusion or simple monopoly; a low price variance may then be a collusive marker. Compared to when firms do not collude, cost shocks take a longer time to pass-through to price.     

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.