Money and Production: A Pluralist Analysis

The purpose of this thesis is to argue that the core of a monetary economy is a network of triangular contracts between banks, firms, workers and capital goods suppliers. Not only does this network give rise to the creation and valuation of money but it is the organising feature of modern economies, giving rise to both episodes of stability and crises. In constructing this argument I consider both orthodox and heterodox points of view. We analyse equilibrium models of money, and find that while money can exist in sequence economies with frictions, models of this type give no justification for its creation, valuation or holding for any significant duration, either theoretically or experimentally. Models that introduce dated goods and trading frictions to motivate the issue of risk-spreading ‘bundled’ debt are more promising for money creation, although they still cannot explain the the holding and valuation of money. Using the concept of team-production of Alchian and Demsetz and that of ‘hostage-taking’ in contracts owing to Williamson, we demonstrate how the issue of a token of generalised purchasing power from a team-production contract can enhance output and consumption. This conclusion motivates an original monetary theory of production that integrates the insights of Post-Keynesian monetary theory and the triangular contracts of the Circulation Approach and expresses them in a way that shows consistent asset and liability matching through a balance sheet approach. The creation and valuation of money and the determination of interest are embedded within the central processes of this economy. The features of the monetary production economy we analyse are in contrast to the mainstream proposition that the economy as a whole is rendered coherent by the existence of a unique and stable equilibrium determined by the utility-maximisation of households and the profit maximisation of firms. Apart from their inability to describe the economy in aggregate, such models treat money as an afterthought that is in no way core to their conception. We set the triangular contracts within a rigorous stock-flow framework of the type developed by Godley and Lavoie and argue that the shifting of the level of impact of uncertainty and failed expectations induced by money leads to specific patterns of economic disruption. These patterns are independent of the specific behavioural characteristics of households and firms and so are robust to policy changes that leave the institutions of the monetary production economy intact. We briefly assess current monetary policy and alternatives in the light of these findings

Natural history societies in Victorian Scotland : towards a historical geography of civic science

This thesis examines the historical geography of Scottish natural history societies active during the period 1831-1900. It argues that the work of the societies described and constituted an important set of relations between science and Scottish civil society that has not been investigated hitherto. The institutional practices of natural history, including fieldwork and display, involved encounters between scientific and cultural expectations which were played out in relation to different audiences and in a variety of sites and spaces. A central concern of Scottish associational naturalists was to transpose science into the language of civic pride and progress. At the same time, members of these societies were anxious to maintain epistemic credibility in relation to a scientific culture itself in flux. The task of appealing both to a local public and to a scientific constituency took different forms in different civic and scientific contexts. The thesis attempts to detail this historical geography with reference to the societies' activities of display, fieldwork, publishing and collective scientific endeavour. The work is based on assessment of primary sources, published and unpublished, and a variety of secondary material. The thesis is organised to reflect the features central to the past geographies of Scottish natural history as associational civic science. The first substantive section (Section II, Chapters 2-5) analyses the efforts of society members to persuade local publics of the relevance and the benefits of associational natural history. Fieldwork involved a series of situated negotiations and affiliations between the language and practices of leisure, aesthetic taste, moral improvement and science. Through public events and built spaces natural history was promoted as an expression of civic culture and as a set of practices capable of transforming urban society. At an individual level, supporters of civic science championed an image of the naturalist as public servant and votary of nature, an image that linked scientific conduct to civic identity. The second substantive section (Section III, Chapters 6-7) examines the influence of the meaning and methods of later-nineteenth-century science on the organisation and activities of Scottish natural history societies. Initiatives to standardise the work of local scientific societies are considered alongside the efforts of individual members to secure a scientific reputation. In addition, the changing relations between the research activities of the societies and the emergence and consolidation of scientific disciplines are investigated alongside the maintenance of an inter-disciplinary ethos. In Chapter 7, engagement with evolutionary ideas is examined, uncovering the ways in which Darwinism was deployed to reinforce, and also to modify, an inductivist view of science and to argue for the continuing relevance of associational natural history to local civil society. In conclusion, the thesis reveals the historical geography of nineteenth-century Scottish natural history to be a dynamic narrative of intellectual and institutional activity conducted in different social and scientific spaces, and it suggests that these practices of local science were an important constituent of civic society and, in part, of national natural knowledge in nineteenth-century Scotland

An approach to analyzing gold supply from the South African gold mines

The gold mining fIrm in South Africa is viewed as a normal fIrm producing gold bearing ore but faced with a quality constraint (grade). Grade, however, is never uniformly distributed in a metalliferous deposit and because high grades are mined fIrst, the quality constraint becomes increasingly severe with cumulated production. The fIrm will continue to mine gold bearing ore until it reaches its mining limit where the marginal cost of recovering the gold is equal to the marginal revenue received from that gold and at that point the economic deposit becomes exhausted. Because the mining limit is determined by cost/technology and price, it is not fIxed and thus the point of economic exhaustion may change. When high grades are mined fIrst the relationship between the tonnage of gold ore and the grade describes the rate at which the grade is expected to fall with cumulated production. In this thesis, the grade for South African Witwatersrand gold producers is modelled to fall exponentially. The mining limit, determined by costs/technology and price, can be expressed in terms of grade. By predicting the decay in grade relative to the tonnage of gold ore and applying a mining limit, a life-time size of the economic deposit can be estimated. The remaining life of a producing gold mine can then be determined and the flow of gold predicted. An empirical treatment using the disk model of a gold deposit is undertaken for a gold mine, a goldfIeld and the total Witwatersrand gold deposit. A dynamic econometric analysis of expected mining costs and gold prices is not attempted; however certain examples are used to illustrate the applicability of the model and the influence of the South African gold mining tax formula on the life of the mine

A Techno-Economic Analysis of Lithium-Ion and Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries for Behind-the-Meter Commercial/Industrial Applications with a Focus on Achievable Efficiency and Degradation Rates.

This thesis concerns vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB), and whether their posited advantages over the more commercially advanced lithium-ion battery (LIB) can translate to improved economic outcomes in realistic use-cases. The key advantage of the VRFB is increased lifetime; the energy storage medium (and major cost component) is simply two solutions of vanadium at differing oxidation states hence here is no scope for the myriad permanent degradation mechanisms that exist in LIB. As such, over a project lifetime VRFB will potentially have lower economic and environmental costs than LIB. A second posited advantage of the VRFB was the low incremental cost of storage duration, allowing longer durations to be more cost competitive. However, VRFB are disadvantaged by lower round-trip efficiency and a higher power capacity cost due to the relatively complex power generating apparatus. In this thesis, bottom up cost modelling for a state of the art VRFB predicted that following cost reductions in LIB over the last 5 years, the cost of incremental usable duration would now be very similar for the two technologies, negating one of the posited benefits. For the full cost-benefit analysis, it was hence important to rigorously define the use-cases and resulting cycle rates. The chosen case study was a commercial/industrial facility in South California. This region is a very promising market for stationary electrical storage, and as such was considered an arena in which VRFB and LIB are likely to compete in the near future. In order to thoroughly explore the thesis two differing archetypal use-case were formulated. In use-case A, the battery was called upon to reduce the electricity bill at the facility by time-shifting power imports to cheaper hours, reducing the peak power consumption each month, and generate revenue by providing spinning reserve and frequency response to the grid operator. The objective was strictly economic; to maximise the net present value of a ten year project. In use-case B, the battery was deployed in conjunction with a PV array in order to achieve self-sufficiency in power. In this case the self-sufficiency objective is in competition with the economic objective (to minimise the levelised cost of electricity), hence a multi-objective optimisation was used to size the battery and PV array. An important contribution made by this thesis was the incorporation of detailed degradation models for both VRFB and LIB. For VRFB, previous case studies had assumed zero degradation, whereas in practice regular intervention is required to avoid electrolyte imbalance. For LIB, similar case studies had employed models attributing all degradation to cycling, whereas continual temperature dependent aging is also important. The latter was modelled in this work. A novel mixed integer-quadratic programming (MIQP) method was introduced that allowed the VRFB operation to be optimised while accounting for the considerable variation in efficiency with power input/output. This is an improvement over previous VRFB case studies where a constant efficiency is assumed. In use-case A this resulted in the discovery of an energy saving strategy whereby the charging was performed at moderate power in order to track the peak efficiency as closely as possible. In a further novel contribution, this model was used to demonstrate the benefit of operating multiple VRFB modules as an ensemble. The benefit arises when a low load must be covered, and some modules may be idled to reduce parasitic losses. In use-case A, it was concluded that VRFB may compete with LIB under certain scenarios at 4 h duration, although the most profitable system is a shorter duration LIB. Both were predicted to break even at 6 h duration when current long duration storage incentives were included. For use-case B, both systems were predicted to achieve a SSR of 0.95 at under ¢21.5kW−1 h−1. Although the costs overlap depending on the scenario, VRFB were estimated to be more likely to be cheaper up to 0.9 SSR, above which reducing cycle rates favoured LIB. This level of self-sufficiency called for a usable duration of 6 h - 7.5 h. An important finding for project developers is hence that 6 h would be a sensible duration for both LIB and VRFB systems as this would cover both use cases effectively. Another novel contribution of this work to estimate the benefit of a hybrid LIB/VRFB system, the hypothesis being that the LIB could be used to cover the less frequent high charge/discharge power events. In use-case B this had the hypothesised effect of increasing the LIB lifetime, but there was negligible predicted effect on the overall levelised cost of electricity. Lastly, a number of important findings were made relating to practical operation of both LIB and VRFB, which should be of interest to asset owners. Firstly, in use-case A, it is unlikely that bidding for regulation provision would be feasible alongside demand charge reduction, as performing the former can result in a loss in the latter. Maintenance timing was predicted to be important for VRFB in use-case A where available revenue varies seasonally, and the capacity should be replenished prior to the peak revenue periods of the summer months. For LIB, it was predicted that managing state of charge will prolong life considerably in use-case B, and climactic variations across Southern California may strongly affect lifetime in both cases

Mineral property - Rights, Royalties and Rents

In a modern economy there is a compelling case why governments should not own property rights to mineral deposits. Assuming they do, however, governments will use these constitution rights to raise revenue. They have two basic instruments to achieve this; a royalty charge on price or a rent tax on income/profits. On the one hand, a royalty charge creates a ‘deadweight loss’ to society by increasing cut-off grades and decreasing the life-of-mine. They are also regressive. However, they are easy to administer. On the other hand, a rent tax avoids the problem of ‘deadweight loss’; it does not impact on the life-of-mine because the tax structure is neutral. But, they aredifficult to administer correctly, particularly in the determination of rents and the defi nition of mining per se. If rents are incorrectly determined capital markets are distorted. And, if mining activities are incorrectly defined, downstream activities could be adversely affected

Fishing rights, redistribution and policy : the South African commercial T.A.C. fisheries

The main objective of this thesis is to provide an analysis of the economic logic behind fisheries policy and redistribution in South African. An examination of the institutional and organizational evolution reveals that South African fisheries policy followed the world trend in the movement toward quota management systems. However, it is argued that due to the peculiarities of the Apartheid political system, South Africa developed a unique and persistent structure of individual fishing rights that resulted in a transfer of power from the fisher to monopsonistic, and subsequently vertically integrated, fish processing companies. Problems, however, arose with the need to redistribute fishing rights to previously repressed racial groups. It is proposed that, within a specific form (TAC), the structure of individual fishing rights can be decomposed into four operational rules, namely, the right of participation, asset size, tradability and duration of term. Policy design is restricted to a feasible set of rules that impact on the flexibility of the system, the incentives facing private fishing companies and fishers, the efficiency of the fisheries management plan and finally the effect it has on a redistribution strategy. Within this analytical framework, South Africa's policy yields a very flexible system favourable to monopsonistic industrial organisation. However, by adding a redistribution constraint, this structure has a number of important effects. First, as new quota holders are added the information costs for effective fisheries management increase exponentially. Second, the transaction costs to private fishing companies are increased. Third, only the resource rent is redistributed (weak redistribution). Next, the micro to small vessel fisheries, the medium vessel fisheries and the large vessel fisheries are examined separately. The major aim is to determine, within the available data, the effect that a weak redistribution policy (redistribution of the resource rent), has on strong redistribution (redistribution of fishing capital and skills). The evidence definitely supports the analytical framework and suggests that fundamentally the structure of individual fishing rights, which evolved in response to a monopsonistic industrial organisation during the apartheid era in South Africa, works against strong redistribution. Also, that different fisheries face different constraints and that these should in certain instances be treated separately