Exposing agricultural cooperatives to competition.

We examine the optimal regulation of agricultural markets when farmers have organized their activity in a cooperative which is the monopoly supplier of an upstream product and which competes with a single rival firm in selling a homogenous downstream product. The rival's marginal cost is private information and therefore the rival expects to earn an information rent. We show that the optimal access price discriminates against the private rival because rent is more valuable in the cooperative than in the private firm, and the regulator therefore sacrifices some cost efficiency in order to shift rents. Thus, while competition will benefit farmers, consumers and tax payers, the extent of competition should optimally be somewhat limited.Agricultural markets; cooperatives; regulation; access pricing.

Natural Gas Network and Access Pricing

Formålet med notatet er å utvikle en normative model for prising av gasstransport. Modellen tar utgangspunkt i nyere reguleringsteorier, der kontrakten mellom en regulator og en bedrift er preget av informasjonsasymmetri og kan beskrives v.h.a. prinsipal-agent modeller. Innledningsvis beskriver jeg gassmarkedet og behovet for regulering. Deretter utleder jeg en normativ prismodell. Til slutt evaluerer jeg ECP-regelen mot min normative modell

Sustainable Mobility

This is the accepted version of a chapter from the following publication: Hall, Gössling, Scott, Hall, Michael C., Gössling, Stefan, & Scott, Daniel. (2015). The Routledge handbook of tourism and sustainability. London: Routledge.acceptedVersio

Five criteria for global sustainable development

A clear understanding of the global-level sustainable development concept is necessary before applying it to projects at a national, local or firm level. Such lower-level projects may concern managing production and consumption of energy, organization of cities and using land productively. However, the Sustainable development goals adopted at the United Nations Summit in September 2015 do not provide adequate guidance, even at the global level, because the goals are too many, too vague and often not quantified. Based on the 1987 report Our Common Future, we derive five criteria for the development of primary goals and corresponding indictors and quantified thresholds to be met.publishedVersionacceptedVersio

Troublesome Leisure Travel: The Contradictions of Three Sustainable Transport Policies

Sustainable passenger transport policies are most often directed towards everyday travel and ignore the large and expanding amount of leisure travel. The paper examines whether policies aimed at reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions for everyday travel may have the opposite effect on leisure travel by reviewing studies of three sustainable passenger transport policies: developing more compact cities, building pro-environment awareness and attitudes, and promoting the growth of information and communication technologies. We found that the policies may indeed have unintended effects and suggest several mechanisms that could explain why this opposite effect occurs. Consideration is also given to the implications for developing more comprehensive sustainable transport policies.publishedVersio

Sustainable Mobility

acceptedVersio

Swedish-Norwegian tradable green certificates: Scheme design flaws and perceived investment barriers

The EU Commission recommends using market-based support schemes for renewable-electricity projects. One example is the Swedish-Norwegian tradable green certificate scheme. We examine whether design features in the Norwegian part of this scheme, specifically, the scheme's short duration and the way it is to be abruptly terminated, contribute to investors' perceptions of barriers. We apply econometric techniques on primary data collected in two surveys of Norwegian investors in hydropower, and we use real options theory to predict and interpret investors' responses. We show that: (1) immediately after the scheme was introduced, investors are eager to lock in future subsidies by investing immediately and concerned with factors that may delay the completion of their projects; (2) as the certificate deadline neared, investors have become increasingly pessimistic and concerned with economic and risk barriers. Investors in big hydropower plants with regulation reservoirs are particularly concerned with the risk of not completing their projects in time to gain the right to sell certificates. These findings are consistent with the predicted responses to the scheme design derived from real options theory. In contrast to earlier studies, we find no difference in responses to the scheme design across investor types.publishedVersio

Troublesome leisure travel: Counterproductive sustainable transport policies

In this chapter, we present three well-established sustainable transport policies – developing more compact cities, building pro-environment awareness and attitudes, and promoting growth of information and communication technologies – designed to reduce emissions from everyday travel and show that these policies may also be associated with increased emissions from leisure travel. Moreover we suggest mechanisms to explain why a given policy may produce these contradictory effects. Finally, we examine the policy implications of the results and discuss further research.publishedVersio

Teori- og forskningsevaluering av forskningsarbeidet: Evans, J. og Green, R. (2003), "Why did British electricity prices fall after 1988?", Cambridge Working Papers in Economics CWPE 0326

I notatet gir jeg en kort presentasjon av Evans og Green sin artikkel om det britiske kraftmarkedet. Deretter gjennomfører jeg en teori- og forskningsevaluering av deres arbeid med utgangspunkt i Karl Popper sitt kriterium om falsifiserbarhet. På bakgrunn av evalueringen presenterer jeg til slutt noen forslag til forbedringer i det videre forskningsarbeid med problemstillingen