Notes on Cloud computing principles

This letter provides a review of fundamental distributed systems and economic Cloud computing principles. These principles are frequently deployed in their respective fields, but their inter-dependencies are often neglected. Given that Cloud Computing first and foremost is a new business model, a new model to sell computational resources, the understanding of these concepts is facilitated by treating them in unison. Here, we review some of the most important concepts and how they relate to each other

Cost-allocation principles for pipeline capacity and usage

This paper applies principles f rom game theory to the problem o f allocating the cost o f a shared facility, such as a pipeline. The theory o f cooperative games s t r ongl y suggest s t hat no method e x i s t s for allocating costs that wi l l achieve all major policy goals. We apply results from the theory o f cooperative games a n d principles o f cost allocation to assess some c o mmo n l y adopted rules for allocating costs and def i ni ng u n i t charges. Mos t notably, the postage-stamp toll is f o u n d to fail a mi ni mal set o f commonly applied principles.cost allocation; pipeline

An analysis of Federal Reserve pricing

An abstract for this article is not availableFederal Reserve banks ; Prices

Prioritising the best use of biomass resources: conceptualising trade-offs

02.09.13 KB. Ok to add report to Spiral. Authors hold copyrightUsing biomass to provide energy services is one of the most versatile options for increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the existing system. This report reviews metrics used to compare alternative bio-energy pathways and identifies limitations inherent in the way that they are calculated and interpreted. It also looks at how companies and investors approach strategic decisions in the bio-energy area. Bio-energy pathways have has physical and economic attributes that can be measured or modelled. These include: the capital cost, operating cost, emissions to air, land and water. Conceptually, comparing alternative pathways is as simple as selecting the attributes and metrics you consider to be most important and ranking the alternative pathways accordingly. At an abstract level there is good agreement about which features of bio-energy pathways are desirable, but there is little agreement about which performance metrics best capture all the relevant information about a bio-energy pathway. Between studies there is also a great deal of variation and this impedes comparison. Common metrics describe energetic performance, economic performance, environmental performance (emissions, land and water use), and social and ecological performance. Compound metrics may be used to integrate multiple attributes but their highly aggregate nature may make them difficult to interpret. Insights that may be drawn from the analysis include:

Shaping the Global Arena: Preparing the EU Emissions Trading Scheme for the post-2012 Period. CEPS Task Force Reports No. 61, 6 March 2007

Having been underway for more than two years, the review of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is entering a decisive phase with the European Commission’s recent announcement that it will table formal proposals in the second half of 2007. Based on an assessment of the EU ETS, this new CEPS Task Force Report tests the performance of four different design models (a cap-and-trade system based on free allocation, benchmarks, auctioning and a credit-and-baseline system) against 10 criteria under three headings: environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency and the contribution of the ETS to achieving long-term climate change policy objectives. Based on this assessment, the report makes a number of recommendations in the area of allocation, creation of investment incentives and the merits of including new sectors and new gases. The report also addresses the particular challenge of completing the EU ETS review before a global post-2012 agreement can be reached, i.e. the EU ETS will be reviewed against an unknown global context

Decentralization in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and Lessons for Global Policy

In 2005, the European Union introduced the largest and most ambitious emissions trading program in the world to meet its Kyoto commitments for the containment of global climate change. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has some distinctive features that differentiate it from the more standard model of emissions trading. In particular, it has a relatively decentralized structure that gives individual member states responsibility for setting targets, allocating permits, determining verification and enforcement, and making some choices about flexibility. It is also a “cap-within-a-cap,” seeking to achieve the Kyoto targets while only covering about half of EU emissions. Finally, it is a program that many hope will link with other greenhouse gas trading programs in the future—something we have not seen among existing trading systems. Examining these features coupled with recent EU ETS experience offers lessons about how cost effectiveness, equity, flexibility, and compliance fare in a multi-jurisdictional trading program, and highlights the challenges facing a global emissions trading regime.emissions trading, Kyoto Protocol, European Union, linking, climate change

Analyzing Cost Efficient Production Behavior Under Economies of Scope: A Nonparametric Methodology

In designing a production model for firms that generate multiple outputs, we take as a starting point that such multi-output production refers to economies of scope, which in turn originate from joint input use and input externalities. We provide a nonparametric characterization of cost efficient behavior under these conditions, and subsequently institute necessary and sufficient conditions for data consistency with such efficient behavior that only include observed firm demand and supply data.We illustrate our methodology by examining the cost efficiency of research programs in Economics and Business Management faculties of Dutch universities.This application shows that the proposed methodology may entail robust conclusions regarding cost efficiency differences between universities within specific specialization areas, even when using shadow prices to evaluate the different inputs.production behavior;multi-product firms;input externalities;joint input use;economies of scope;nonparametric tests

Nonparametric tests of optimizing behavior in public service provision: Methodology and an application to local safety

We develop a positive non-parametric model of public sector production that allows us to test whether an implicit procedure of cost minimization at shadow prices can rationalize the outcomes of public sector activities. The basic model focuses on multiple C-outputs and does not imply any explicit or implicit assumption regarding the trade-offs between the different inputs (in terms of relative shadow prices) or outputs (in terms of relative valuation). The proposed methodology is applied to a cross-section sample of 546 Belgian municipal police forces. Drawing on detailed task-allocation data and controlling, among others, for the presence of state police forces, the cost minimization hypothesis is found to provide a good fit of the data. Imposing additional structure on output valuation, derived from available ordinal information, yields equally convincing goodness-of-fit results. By contrast, we find that aggregating the labor input over task specializations, a common practice in efficiency assessments of police departments, entails a significantly worse fit of the data.Public agencies, optimizing behavior, nonparametric production, local police departments

A Methodological Note on the Estimation of Programming Models

The paper introduces a general methodological approach for the estimation of constrained optimisation models in agricultural supply analysis. It is based on optimality conditions of the desired programming model and shows a conceptual advantage compared to Positive Mathematical Programming in the context of well posed estimation problems. Moreover, it closes the empirical and methodological gap between programming models and duality based functional models with explicit allocation of fixed factors. Monte Carlo simulations are performed with a maximum entropy estimator to evaluate the functionality of the approach as well as the impact of empirically relevant prior information in small sample situations.Agricultural Supply Analysis, Programming Models, Maximum Entropy Estimation, Prior Information, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Is There a Desirable Rate of Inflation? A Theoretical and Empirical Survey

In this paper, I survey the existing literature and examine three related questions: (1) What inflation rate constitutes the appropriate target for the central bank? (2) What is an operational definition of price stability for the conduct of monetary policy? (3) What is the policy framework for pursuing price stability in practice? In doing so, I emphasize that it is crucially important for a central bank to seek to maintain a price environment that is neither inflationary nor deflationary and is consistent with stability of the economy in the long run. I propose two definitions of price stability, gmeasured price stabilityh and gsustainable price stability.h I argue that g sustainable price stabilityh should be the fundamental goal for monetary policy. Although, from the viewpoint of accountability, gmeasured price stabilityh is important as a quantitative yardstick by which to evaluate policy achievement, it should not be the justification for preventing the central bank from its pursuit of gsustainable price stability.h Since observed changes in price indices are affected by various types of external shocks and measurement errors, it is indeed quite difficult to assess whether the underlying rate of inflation is stable or not. Therefore, even if gmeasured price stabilityh seems to be maintained, a central bank may need to alter interest rates promptly if it judges that the maintenance of gsustainable price stabilityh is at risk. In this sense, it is deemed important to construct a framework for monetary policy designed to maintain policy flexibility with a high degree of transparency by properly ensuring consistency between g measured price stabilityh and gsustainable price stability.h The current policy framework adopted by the Bank of Japan can be viewed as aiming at a kind of gconstrained discretionh by restricting pure discretion under open independence in line with this direction.