Planning the production of electrical energy

In the paper, an effort is made to answer many of the perplexing questions concerning pricing and investment decisions that must be faced if the development of the electrical energy industry in the United States is to be carried on within a fully integrated or at least partially integrated framework.By using an intertemporal-spatial equilibrium model, solutions are suggested to such problems as the efficient pricing, allocation, and additions to generating capacity facing the electrical energy industry when peak demands occur at different times in different regions, when regions have different kinds and sizes of generating plants and are endowed with resources of different costs and availabilities, when prices do not reflect marginal costs, and when there are restrictions on transmission capacity.     

Some Aggregate Effects of Heterogeneity in Information Processing

This paper analyzes the equilibrium of an economy where economic agents differ with respect to their information gathering and processing abilities. Our results depend on the magnitude of the relative risk aversion. We show that the unsophisticated (with respect to their information processing abilities) agents are disproportionately important in the cases of both large and small risk aversion. In the case of the relative risk aversion measure being greater than unity volatility of aggregate consumption is reduced. This supports the view that observed consumption in many countries fluctuates less than predicted by models with fully rational agents only.     

A note on defining geographic markets

This paper offers an approach to delineating geographic markets and/or product markets based on the notion of instantaneous causality. After providing a brief review of the issue of concern and a discussion of the relevant statistical methodology the flour market in the United States is examined. It is concluded that the flour market in fact is national in scope.     

THE DEMAND FOR ENERGY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Interfuel substitution, a priori , seems to be of considerable importance in the economy of the United Kingdom. Consequently, an appropriate model is developed and estimated. All energy sources are demonstrated to be substitutable. Coal is the most price responsive with natural gas, oil and electrical following. The results are not inconsistent with other studies of energy substitution. Moreover, when the issue of the stability of the demand for energy types is considered, the suggestion that the demand for coal, oil, natural gas, and electrical energy have remained virtually constant over the past three decades.     

Taxation,inflation, and the terms of trade

The interaction between changes in the rate of inflation and tax systems can have potential terms of trade effects. An open-economy macroeconomic model is presented in which such effects are analyzed. The asset menu consists of money, corporate capital whose nominal income is subject to taxation, and consumer durables whose return is tax exempt. This may be contrasted with the conventional menu of money and capital and/or bonds. Durables are imported. An increase in the rate of inflation then implies that the terms of trade of the country in question deteriorates in the long run.     

Entry,capacity, investment and oligopolistic pricing: A model of the U.S. fiberglass insulation industry

In this paper, a model is developed that suggests that entry into an industry selling a relatively homogeneous product can be deterred by investment decisions. The model characteristics are related to the institutional structure of the fiberglass insulation industry in the United States with the conclusion that the behavior of the industry closely emulates that behavior predicted by the analysis.     

The Impact of Incentive Regulation on Service Quality in Telecommunications in the United States

Incentive regulation in the form of price caps was adopted for interstate access servicein 1991 as a way to provide local exchange carriers with an incentive to improve theirproductive efficiency. An issue that has arisen with the adoption of price cap regulationis whether deterioration in service quality for interstate access service has been an unintended consequence. The analysis in this paper uses several different measures ofservice quality, including the average installation interval, the percent of commitmentsmet, total trouble reports, and the average repair interval for both switched access service and special access service, to investigate empirically whether there has been a decline in service quality between 1991 and 2000. The results are conclusive. Overall service quality has fallen. To rectify the situation, a proposal is offered to adjust the price cap index to penalize LECs who fail to provide an acceptable level of aggregate service quality.     

RETESTING THE UNCERTAINTY EFFECT USING LOTTERIES WITH REAL PRODUCTS AND MONEY

In the current study, several experiments re‐examine the uncertainty effect using lotteries that include real products, monetary outcomes and electronic gift cards in a between‐subjects design. The study also takes the selling position into consideration, in addition to the buying position considered by all previous works on the uncertainty effect. The results indicate that for all types of lotteries, the bids are higher than the bids for the worst possible realization. These findings are consistent with the internality axiom and do not support the uncertainty effect.     

The Search for a Critical Concentration Revisited

This paper examines the issue of whether there is a four-firm critical concentration ratio above which industries earn supranormal profits. A statistical test is employed to investigate the functional stability of the estimated relationship. Although the initial results indicate a range in the concentration ratio of between 0.48 and 0.55 over which the functional relationship destabilizes, additional analysis fails to identify a clear break in the concentration-profitability relationship. It can only be concluded that a critical concentration does not appear to exist.