Productivity and Efficiency of US Gas Transmission Companies: A European Regulatory Perspective

Keywords JEL Classification On both sides of the Atlantic the regulation of gas transmission networks has undergone major changes since the early 1990’s. Whereas in the US the long-standing regime of cost-plus regulation was complemented by increasing pipe-to-pipe competition, most European countries moved towards incentive regulation complemented by market integration. We study the impact of US regulatory reform using a Malmquist-based productivity analysis for a panel of US interstate companies. Results are presented for changes in productivity, as well as for several convergence tests. The results indicate that taking productivity and convergence as performance indicators, regulation has been rather successful, in particular during a period where overall demand was flat. Lessons for European regulators are twofold. First, the US analysis shows that benchmarking of European transmission operators would be possible if data were available. Second, our results suggest that, in the long-run, market integration and competition are alternatives to the current European model. Natural gas transmission; utility regulation; data envelopment analysis; total factor productivity; convergenc

Infrastructure performance and reform in developing and transition economies: evidence from a survey of productivity measures

The authors review about 80 studies on electricity and gas, water and sanitation, and rail and ports (with a footnote on telecommunications) in developing countries. The main policy lesson is that there is a difference in the relevance of ownership for efficiency between utilities and transport in developing countries. In transport, private operators have tended to perform better than public operators. For utilities, ownership often does not matter as much as sometimes argued. Most cross-country studies find no statistically significant difference in efficiency scores between public and private providers. As for the country-specific studies, some do find differences in performance over time but these differences tend to matter much less than a large number of other variables. Across sectors, private operators functioning in a competitive environment or regulated under price caps or hybrid regulatory regimes tend to catch up best practice faster than public operators. There is a very strong case to push regulators in developing and transition economies toward a more systematic reliance on yardstick competition in a sector in which residual monopoly powers tend to be common.Enterprise Development&Reform,Labor Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance

The 30/20 GHZ net market assessment

By creating a number of market scenarios variations dealing with network types, network sizes, and service price levels were analyzed for their impact on market demand. Each market scenario represents a market demand forecast with results for voice, data, and video service traffic expressed in peak load megabits per second

The Global Entry of New Pharmaceuticals: A Joint Investigation of Launch Window and Price

Research on the launch of new products in the international realm is scarce. The present paper is the first to document how launch window (difference in months between the first worldwide launch and the subsequent launch in a specific country) and launch price are interrelated and how regulation influences both launch window and launch price. The research context is the global - 50 countries worldwide - launch of 58 new ethical drugs across 29 therapeutic areas. We show that the fastest launch occurs when the launch price is moderately high and the highest launch price occurs at a launch window of 85 months. We find that the health regulator acts strategically in that the extent to which it delays the launch of a new drug increases with the price of the new drug. We also find that regulation overall increases the launch window, except for patent protection. Surprisingly, regulation does not directly impact launch price. The descriptive information on average launch window and launch price and the interconnection between launch window and launch price allows managers in ethical drug companies to build more informed decisions for international market entry. This study also provides public policy analysts with more quantitative evidence regarding launch window and launch price on a broad sample of countries and categories

Structural dynamics branch research and accomplishments for fiscal year 1987

This publication contains a collection of fiscal year 1987 research highlights from the Structural Dynamics Branch at NASA Lewis Research Center. Highlights from the branch's four major work areas, Aeroelasticity, Vibration Control, Dynamic Systems, and Computational Structural Methods, are included in the report as well as a complete listing of the FY87 branch publications

Conceptual design studies of candidate V/STOL lift fan commercial short haul transport for 1980 - 1985 V/STOL lift fan study

Conceptual designs of V/STOL lift fan commercial short haul transport aircraft for the 1980-85 time period were studied to determine their technical and economic feasibility. The engine concepts included both integral and remote fans. The scope of the study included definition of the hover control concept for each propulsion system, aircraft design, aircraft mass properties, cruise performance, noise and ride qualities evaluation. Economic evaluating was also studied on a basis of direct operating costs and route structure

An Assessment of PIER Electric Grid Research 2003-2014 White Paper

This white paper describes the circumstances in California around the turn of the 21st century that led the California Energy Commission (CEC) to direct additional Public Interest Energy Research funds to address critical electric grid issues, especially those arising from integrating high penetrations of variable renewable generation with the electric grid. It contains an assessment of the beneficial science and technology advances of the resultant portfolio of electric grid research projects administered under the direction of the CEC by a competitively selected contractor, the University of California’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment, from 2003-2014

Electromechanical Dynamics of High Photovoltaic Power Grids

This dissertation study focuses on the impact of high PV penetration on power grid electromechanical dynamics. Several major aspects of power grid electromechanical dynamics are studied under high PV penetration, including frequency response and control, inter-area oscillations, transient rotor angle stability and electromechanical wave propagation.To obtain dynamic models that can reasonably represent future power systems, Chapter One studies the co-optimization of generation and transmission with large-scale wind and solar. The stochastic nature of renewables is considered in the formulation of mixed-integer programming model. Chapter Two presents the development procedures of high PV model and investigates the impact of high PV penetration on frequency responses. Chapter Three studies the impact of PV penetration on inter-area oscillations of the U.S. Eastern Interconnection system. Chapter Four presents the impacts of high PV on other electromechanical dynamic issues, including transient rotor angle stability and electromechanical wave propagation. Chapter Five investigates the frequency response enhancement by conventional resources. Chapter Six explores system frequency response improvement through real power control of wind and PV. For improving situation awareness and frequency control, Chapter Seven studies disturbance location determination based on electromechanical wave propagation. In addition, a new method is developed to generate the electromechanical wave propagation speed map, which is useful to detect system inertia distribution change. Chapter Eight provides a review on power grid data architectures for monitoring and controlling power grids. Challenges and essential elements of data architecture are analyzed to identify various requirements for operating high-renewable power grids and a conceptual data architecture is proposed. Conclusions of this dissertation study are given in Chapter Nine