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Benchmarking and incentive regulation of quality of service: an application to the UK electricity distribution utilities
Quality of service has emerged as an important issue in post-reform regulation of electricity distribution networks. Regulators have employed partial incentive schemes to promote cost saving, investment efficiency, and service quality. This paper presents a quality-incorporated benchmarking study of the electricity distribution utilities in the UK between 1991/92 and 1998/99. We calculate technical efficiency of the utilities using Data Envelopment Analysis technique and productivity change over time using quality-incorporated Malmquist indices. We find that cost efficient firms do not necessarily exhibit high service quality and that efficiency scores of cost-only models do not show high correlation with those of quality-based models. The results also show that improvements in service quality have made a significant contribution to the sector�s total productivity change. In addition, we show that integrating quality of service in regulatory benchmarking is preferable to cost-only approaches
Credit crises, money, and contractions: A historical view
The relatively infrequent nature of major credit distress events makes a historical approach particularly useful. Using a combination of historical narrative and econometric techniques, we identify major periods of credit distress from 1875 to 2007, examine the extent to which credit distress arises as part of the transmission> of monetary policy, and document the subsequent effect on output. Using turning points defined by the Harding-Pagan algorithm, we identify and compare the timing, duration, amplitude, and comovement of cycles in money, credit, and output. Regressions show that financial distress events exacerbate business cycle downturns both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that a confluence of such events makes recessions even worse.Monetary policy ; Credit ; Business cycles
Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking and Low Energy Gauge Mediation
Dynamical breaking of supersymmetry was long thought to be an exceptional
phenomenon, but recent developments have altered this view. A question of great
interest in the current framework is the value of the underlying scale of
supersymmetry breaking. The "little hierarchy" problem suggests that
supersymmetry should be broken at low energies. Within one class of models, low
energy breaking be achieved as a consequence of symmetries, without requiring
odd coincidences. The low energy theories are distinguished by the presence or
absence of symmetries; in either case, and especially the latter one often
finds modifications of the minimal gauge-mediated spectrum which can further
ameliorate problems of fine tuning. Various natural mechanisms exist to solve
the problem in this framework.Comment: 20 pages (minor change in referencing
Gauge Independence of the S-Matrix in the Causal Approach
The gauge dependence of the time-ordered products for Yang-Mills theories is
analysed in perturbation theory by means of the causal method of Epstein and
Glaser together with perturbative gauge invariance. This approach allows a
simple inductive proof of the gauge independence of the physical S-matrix.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 1 figur
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