Allowance trading activity and state regulatory rulings : evidence from the U.S. Acid Rain Program

The U.S. Acid Rain Program is one of the first, and by far the most extensive, applications of a market based approach to pollution control. From the beginning, there has been concern whether utilities would participate in allowance trading, and whether regulatory activity at the state level would further complicate utilities' decision to trade allowances. This paper finds that public utility commission regulation has encouraged allowance trading activity in states with regulatory rulings, but that allowance trading activity has not been limited to states issuing regulations. Until there is evidence suggesting that significant additional cost savings could have been obtained if additional allowance trading activity had occurred in states without regulations or that utilities in states with regulations are still not taking advantage of all cost saving trading opportunities, this analysis suggests that there is little reason to believe that allowance trading activity is impeded by public utility commission regulations

Allowance trading activity and state regulatory rulings : evidence from the U.S. Acid Rain Program

The U.S. Acid Rain Program is one of the first, and by far the most extensive, applications of a market based approach to pollution control. From the beginning, there has been concern whether utilities would participate in allowance trading, and whether regulatory activity at the state level would further complicate utilities' decision to trade allowances. This paper finds that public utility commission regulation has encouraged allowance trading activity in states with regulatory rulings, but that allowance trading activity has not been limited to states issuing regulations. Until there is evidence suggesting that significant additional cost savings could have been obtained if additional allowance trading activity had occurred in states without regulations or that utilities in states with regulations are still not taking advantage of all cost saving trading opportunities, this analysis suggests that there is little reason to believe that allowance trading activity is impeded by public utility commission regulations.Supported by a grant from the National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) and by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Intertemporal pricing of sulfur dioxide allowances

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 initiated the first large-scale use of the tradable permit approach to pollution control. The theoretical case for this approach rests on the assumption of an efficient market for emission rights. This paper presents the inter-temporal pattern of allowance prices that should be observed in the market for sulfur dioxide allowances in world of certainty with no transaction costs, and demonstrates that this pattern is roughly consistent with what is observed. Where there are deviations, these deviations can be explained using the theory that is applied to other well established, well functioning markets. The empirical analysis in this paper suggests that the forward market for emission rights has become reasonably efficient.Funded by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program

Auction Design and the Market for Sulfur Dioxide Emissions

Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 created a market for electric utility emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2). Recent papers have argued that flaws in the design of the auctions that are part of this market have adversely affected its performance. These papers incorrectly assume that trade can only occur at auctions, however. Our empirical analysis of the SO2 emissions market shows that the auctions have become a small part of a relatively efficient market and that the auction design problems that have attracted the most attention have had no effect on actual market prices

Auction design and the market for sulfur dioxide emissions

Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 created a market for electric utility emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2). Recent papers have argued that flaws in the design of the auctions that are part of this market have adversely affected its performance. These papers incorrectly assume that trade can only occur at auctions, however. Our empirical analysis of the SO2 emissions market shows that the auctions have become a small part of a relatively efficient market and that the auction design problems that have attracted the most attention have had no effect on actual market prices.Supported by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the Acid Rain Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The geographic expanse of the market for wholesale electricity

This paper exploits a large mine-level database to contribute to our understanding of the micro-sources of productivity growth. The database contains observations for labor input and coal output at every mine in the United States from 1972 through 1995, as well as a number of characteristics pertaining to technology, location and ownership. The research proceeds in two stages. Because of the pronounced heterogeneity of this industry, we divide the national data into eleven sub-aggregates, according to geography and mining technology, and calculate indices of national coal mining productivity growth that are corrected for heterogeneity. The second stage of the research is the application of panel regression techniques to each of the eleven relatively homogeneous sub-aggregates. By this process, we are able to identify and to quantify four sources of productivity change: the level of annual output, the price of output relative to labor, mine-specific fixed effects and residual time effects. The last effect accounts for only a small part of the remarkable improvement in coal mining labor productivity that has been observed since the late 1970s.Supported by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research

Making Sense of "Apportionment" in Patent Damages

Unreasonably large damages awards in patent litigation have been an important force in motivating the movement for patent reform. "Apportionment" has found support as a solution to problem damages awards. Under apportionment, the portion of the overall value of the product that is "attributable" to the patented technology is identified. Then, reasonable royalty damages are calculated with reference to this apportioned value of the patented technology rather than the overall value of the product. While the problems that have motivated the apportionment movement are real and serious, apportionment makes sense as a solution only under the assumption that an economically invalid approach to calculating damages is being taken in the first place. A more sensible solution is to require litigants to take an economically valid approach to damages. In addition, when there are complementarities between assets, such that the combined use of two or more assets is worth more than their individual use, no unique way exists to apportion the overall value of the product among the assets (including the patented technology at issue), rendering apportionment infeasible in many cases. We consider these and other issues that surround apportionment

Establishing an adjusted p-value threshold to control the family-wide type 1 error in genome wide association studies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>By assaying hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms, genome wide association studies (GWAS) allow for a powerful, unbiased review of the entire genome to localize common genetic variants that influence health and disease. Although it is widely recognized that some correction for multiple testing is necessary, in order to control the family-wide Type 1 Error in genetic association studies, it is not clear which method to utilize. One simple approach is to perform a Bonferroni correction using all <it>n single nucleotide polymorphisms (</it>SNPs) across the genome; however this approach is highly conservative and would "overcorrect" for SNPs that are not truly independent. Many SNPs fall within regions of strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) ("blocks") and should not be considered "independent".</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We proposed to approximate the number of "independent" SNPs by counting 1 SNP per LD block, plus all SNPs outside of blocks (interblock SNPs). We examined the <it>effective </it>number of independent SNPs for Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) panels. In the CEPH Utah (CEU) population, by considering the interdependence of SNPs, we could reduce the total number of effective tests within the Affymetrix and Illumina SNP panels from 500,000 and 317,000 to 67,000 and 82,000 "independent" SNPs, respectively. For the Affymetrix 500 K and Illumina 317 K GWAS SNP panels we recommend using 10^-5, 10^-7and 10^-8and for the Phase II HapMap CEPH Utah and Yoruba populations we recommend using 10^-6, 10^-7and 10^-9as "suggestive", "significant" and "highly significant" p-value thresholds to properly control the family-wide Type 1 error.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>By approximating the effective number of independent SNPs across the genome we are able to 'correct' for a more accurate number of tests and therefore develop 'LD adjusted' Bonferroni corrected p-value thresholds that account for the interdepdendence of SNPs on well-utilized commercially available SNP "chips". These thresholds will serve as guides to researchers trying to decide which regions of the genome should be studied further.</p

Therapeutic Targeting of Proteostasis in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis—a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Preclinical Research

Funding This work was supported by AMS: 210JMG 3102 R45620 and CSO and MNDS: 217ARF R45951. Medical Research Council (MRC UK; MR/L016400/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD