Incentive Regulatory policies: The Case of Public Transit Systems in France

We assess the empirical relevance of the new theory of regulation, using a principal-agent framework to study the regulatory schemes used in the French urban transport industry. Taking the current regulatory schemes as given, the model of supply and demand provides estimates for the firms’ inefficiency, the effort of managers, and the cost of public funds. It allows us to derive the first-best and second-best regulatory policies for each network and compare them with the actual situation in terms of welfare loss or gain. Fixed-price policies lie between fully informed and uninformed second-best schemes. Cost-plus contracts are dominated by any type of second-best contract. From these results, we may conjecture that fixed-price contracts call for better-informed regulators.Publicad

Incentive Regulatory policies: The Case of Public Transit Systems in France

This paper is aimed at assessing the empirical relevance of the new theory of regulation. It relies on a principal-agent framework for studying the regulatory schemes used in the French urban transport industry. Taking the current regulatory schemes as given, the model of supply and demand provides estimates for the firms' inefficiency, the effort of managers, and the cost of public funds. It allows deriving the first-best and second-best regulatory policies for each network and comparing them with the actual situation in terms of welfare loss or gain. Fixed-price policies are lying between fully informed and uninformed second best schemes. Cost-plus contracts are dominated by any type of second-best contract. From these results, we may conjecture that fixed prices contracts call for better informed regulators.

Combining Spot and Futures Markets: A Hybrid Market Approach to Dynamic Spectrum Access

Dynamic spectrum access is a new paradigm of secondary spectrum utilization and sharing. It allows unlicensed secondary users (SUs) to exploit opportunistically the under-utilized licensed spectrum. Market mechanism is a widely-used promising means to regulate the consuming behaviours of users and, hence, achieves the efficient allocation and consumption of limited resources. In this paper, we propose and study a hybrid secondary spectrum market consisting of both the futures market and the spot market, in which SUs (buyers) purchase under-utilized licensed spectrum from a spectrum regulator, either through predefined contracts via the futures market, or through spot transactions via the spot market. We focus on the optimal spectrum allocation among SUs in an exogenous hybrid market that maximizes the secondary spectrum utilization efficiency. The problem is challenging due to the stochasticity and asymmetry of network information. To solve this problem, we first derive an off-line optimal allocation policy that maximizes the ex-ante expected spectrum utilization efficiency based on the stochastic distribution of network information. We then propose an on-line VickreyCClarkeCGroves (VCG) auction that determines the real-time allocation and pricing of every spectrum based on the realized network information and the pre-derived off-line policy. We further show that with the spatial frequency reuse, the proposed VCG auction is NP-hard; hence, it is not suitable for on-line implementation, especially in a large-scale market. To this end, we propose a heuristics approach based on an on-line VCG-like mechanism with polynomial-time complexity, and further characterize the corresponding performance loss bound analytically. We finally provide extensive numerical results to evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions.Comment: This manuscript is the complete technical report for the journal version published in INFORMS Operations Researc

Concession Length and Investment Timing Flexibility

When assigning a concession contract, the regulator faces the issue of setting the concession length. Another key issue is whether or not the concessionare should be allowed to set the timing of new investments. In this paper we investigate the impact of concession length and investment timing flexibility on the “concession value”. It is generally argued that long-term contracts are privately valuable as they enable a concessionaire to increase her overall discounted returns. Moreover, the real option theory suggests that investment flexibility has an intrinsic value, as it allows concessionaires to avoid costly errors. By combining these two conventional wisdoms, one may argue that long- term contracts, which allow for investment timing flexibility, should always result in higher concession values. Our result suggests that this is not always the case. Firstly, investment flexibility does not always increase the concession value. Secondly, long-term contracts do not necessarily increase the concession value.Concession contracts, Real option theory, Investment timing flexibility, Water utilities

An Institutional Frame to Compare Alternative Market Designs in EU Electricity Balancing

The so-called â electricity wholesale marketâ is, in fact, a sequence of several markets. The chain is closed with a provision for â balancing,â in which energy from all wholesale markets is balanced under the authority of the Transmission Grid Manager (TSO in Europe, ISO in the United States). In selecting the market design, engineers in the European Union have traditionally preferred the technical role of balancing mechanisms as â security mechanisms.â They favour using penalties to restrict the use of balancing energy by market actors. While our paper in no way disputes the importance of grid security, nor the competency of engineers to elaborate the technical rules, we wish to attract attention to the real economic consequences of alternative balancing designs. We propose a numerical simulation in the framework of a two-stage equilibrium model. This simulation allows us to compare the economic properties of designs currently existing within the European Union and to measure their fallout. It reveals that balancing designs, which are typically presented as simple variants on technical security, are in actuality alternative institutional frameworks having at least four potential economic consequences: a distortion of the forward price; an asymmetric shift in the participantsâ profits; an increase in the System Operatorâ s revenues; and inefficiencies

The Question of Generation Adequacy in Liberalised Electricity Markets

This paper presents an overview of the reasons why unregulated markets for the production of electricity cannot be expected to invest sufficiently in generation capacity on a continuous basis. Although it can be shown that periodic price spikes should provide generation companies with sufficient investment incentives in theory, there are a number of probable causes of market failure. A likely result is the development of investment cycles that may affect the adequacy of capacity. The experience in California shows the great social costs associated with an episode of scarce generation capacity. Another disadvantage is that generation companies can manipulate price spikes. This would result in large transfers of income from consumers to producers and reduce the operational reliability of electricity supply during these price spikes. We end this paper by outlining several methods that have been proposed to stabilise the market, which provide better incentives to generation companies and consumers alike.Generation adequacy, Liberalised electricity market

Making Sense of Non-Binding Retail-Price Recommendations

This paper provides a theoretical rationale for non-binding retail price recommendations (RPRs) in vertical supply relations. Analyzing a bilateral manufacturer-retailer relationship with repeated trade, we show that linear relational contracts can implement the surplusmaximizing outcome. If the manufacturer has private information about production costs or consumer demand, RPRs may serve as a communication device from manufacturer to retailer. We characterize the properties of efficient bilateral relational contracts with RPRs and discuss extensions to settings where consumer demand is affected by RPRs, and where there are multiple retailers or competing supply chains.vertical relationships, relational contracts, asymmetric information, price recommendations

Optimal Currency Areas: Why Does the Exchange Rate Regime Matter? (With an Application to UK Membership in EMU)

Microeconomic efficiency and market transparency argue in favour of UK membership in EMU and for Scotland's membership in the UK monetary union and also in EMU. UK seigniorage (government revenues from money issuance) would be boosted by EMU membership. Lender of last resort arrangements would not be substantially affected by UK membership in EMU. The UK is too small and too open to be an optimal currency area. The same point applies even more emphatically to Scotland. The 'one-size-fits-all', 'asymmetric shocks' and 'cyclical divergence' objections to UK membership are based on the misapprehension that independent national monetary policy, and the associated nominal exchange rate flexibility, can be used effectively to offset or even neutralise asymmetric shocks. This 'fine tuning delusion' is compounded by a failure to understand that, under a high degree of international financial integration, market-determined exchange rates are primarily a source of shocks and instability. Instead, opponents of UK membership in EMU view exchange rate flexibility as an effective buffer for adjusting to asymmetric shocks originating elsewhere. I know of no evidence that supports such an optimistic reading of what exchange rate flexibility can deliver under conditions of very high international financial capital mobility. The economic arguments for immediate UK membership in EMU, at an appropriate entry rate, are overwhelming. Monetary union raises important constitutional and political issues. It involves a further surrender of national sovereignty to a supranational institution, the ECB/ESCB. It is essential that this transfer of national sovereignty be perceived as legitimate by those affected by it. In addition, the citizens of the UK have become accustomed to a high standard of openness and accountability of their central bank since it gained operational independence in 1997. The ECB/ESCB must be held to the same high standard, and, while there are grounds for optimism, there still is some way to go there.European Economic and Monetary Union, asymmetric shocks, national sovereignty