The "supply-of-storage" for natural gas in California

Do natural gas storage decisions in California respond to futures price spreads? Daily data about flows into and out of storage facilities in California over 2001-2005 and daily price spreads are used to investigate whether the net injection profile is consistent with the "supply-of-storage" curve deduced by Working for wheat. Storage decisions in California do seem to be influenced by intertemporal signals on NYMEX, but the magnitude of the effect is small. Strong seasonal and weekly cycles determine the net injection profile to a considerable extent. Regulatory requirements and operational constraints also limit the size of the response to intertemporal arbitrage opportunities. Results are surprisingly sensitive to the level of aggregation considered.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

MARKET-MAKING BEHAVIOR IN FUTURES MARKETS

This paper examines voluntary market-making behavior, namely scalping, in futures markets. Specifically, this paper studies what factors determine scalpers' entry and exit, and how scalping affects market liquidity and price volatility. The data used for the analysis are time-stamped electronic transaction data marked with traders' identities from the Dalian Futures Exchanges in China. The contributions of this paper are: (1) to give detailed analysis of scalping behavior and its impact on market liquidity; (2) to develop new econometric tools for analyzing time-series count data; (3) to propose a new measure of liquidity.Liquidity, Market-Making, Futures Markets, Scalpers, Autoregressive Conditional Intensity (ACI), Volatility, Marketing,

Implementing Options Markets in California To Manage Water Supply Uncertainty

In California, the tremendous spatial and temporal variation in precipitation suggests that flexible contractual arrangements, such as option contracts, would increase allocative efficiency of water over time and space. Under such arrangements, a water agency pays an option premium for the right to purchase water at some point in the future, if water conditions turn out to be dry. The premium represents the value of the flexibility gained by the buyer from postponing its decision whether to purchase water. In California, the seller of existing option arrangements is often an agricultural producer who can fallow land, in the event that a water option is exercised. In this simulation-optimization approach, we seek to determine the value of transferring water uncertainty from one party to another at several locations in California, given current water prices and the spatial and temporal distribution of water year types in the state. (Preliminary analysis covers northern California; future analysis will incorporate southern California.) We analyze within a mathematical programming framework whether increased trading among water agencies across time as well as space would result in significant gains from trade. We use output from CALVIN, an economic-engineering optimization model of the California water system which runs the current configuration of the California water system over historical hydrological conditions, to generate water's imputed price at different locations during different seasons. We also explore reasons why previous theoretical calculations of option value in the western United States have far exceeded option premia on existing bilateral contracts.Risk and Uncertainty,

The Role of Harvest Timing in Pest Management: Grower Response to Infestation by the California Olive Fruit Fly

Crop Production/Industries,

Spatial and Temporal Modeling of Community Non-Timber Forest Extraction

This paper examines the interaction of spatial and dynamic aspects of resource extraction from forests by local people. Highly cyclical and varied across both space and time, the patterns of resource extraction resulting from the spatial-temporal model bear little resemblance to the patterns drawn from focusing either on spatial or temporal aspects of extraction, as is typical in both the modeling and empirical literature to date. Combining the spatial-temporal model with a measure of success in community forest management.the ability to avoid open-access resource degradation.characterizes the impact of incomplete property rights on patterns of resource extraction and stocks. Key words: Spatial and temporal modeling; renewable resources; non-timber forest products; common property resources

Analyzing the Impact of Excluding Rural People from Protected Forests: Spatial Resource Degradation and Rural Welfare

This paper examines how forest-dependent villagers meet a resource requirement when they are excluded from some area of a forest. Forest managers who value both pristine and degraded forest should take into account a .displacement effect. resulting in more intensive villager extraction elsewhere, and a .replacement effect. in which villagers purchase more of the resource from the market. Similarly, forest managers who have poverty concerns should recognize that exclusion zones tend to be more costly to villagers without market access and those with low opportunity costs of labour- typically the poorest villagers.

Pests and Agricultural Commodity Losses: Evaluating Alternative Approaches to Damage Function Estimation

Estimating the economic impact of a pest requires linking biological and economic systems via a damage function. The most common damage function approach links exogenous pest populations to cumulative commodity yield losses at harvest. This type of representation is a reduced form because is not pest population levels per se that drive damage, but the underlying factors that affect pest populations and the susceptibility of the host. We specify and estimate a structural damage function and compare the results with those of the reduced form. We do so using two alternative models, one that explains the level of crop damage from a pest, and one that explains the timing of that damage during the host’s growing season. We address our objectives within an empirical application to the olive fruit fly in California. In formulating the structural damage function, we draw from current scientific literature on olive fly and olive fruit phenology. The structural damage function takes into account the feedback between climate, host susceptibility, and pest populations. Moreover, the structural approach disaggregates damage rates across space and time, unlike the typical reduced form. The estimation results indicate that endogeneity is a salient concern in both the timing of initial crop damage, and in the levels of damage evidenced in some cultivars. The structural damage function dominates the trapping-based reduced form in terms of explanatory power in every model estimated.Crop Production/Industries,

Effectiveness of Deer Repellents in Connecticut

Browsing by overabundant herds of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can cause significant economic damage to agricultural crops and landscape plantings. In many instances, for both commercial growers and homeowners, commercially available repellents may be an appealing alternative to physical exclusion and lethal control of animals. We tested 10 different commercially-available repellents (Chew-Not®, Deer Off®, Deer-Away® Big Game Repellent, Plantskydd®, Bobbex®, Liquid Fence®, Deer Solution®, Hinder®, Repellex® systemic tablets, and coyote urine) on yews (Taxus cuspidata Densiformis) at 2 different locations in Connecticut. The study included both positive (fence) and negative (no treatment) controls. We planted yews in 2 blocks at each location in the spring of 2006; each block had 12 groups of 6 yews. We randomly assigned one of the 12 treatments to each group of yews within each block. We applied repellents based on manufacturers’ label recommendations for the 2006 and 2007 growing seasons and recorded application costs. We derived a protection index based on plant size and dry needle weights at the end of the 2007 growing season. In general, repellents that required more frequent application performed better. Bobbex® ranked highest, but was the most expensive repellent treatment. Hinder® performed nearly as well at a fraction of the cost. Yews protected by Repellex®, Deer Solution®, coyote urine, and Plantskydd® were the same size as unprotected controls at both sites and did not have significantly more needles. No repellents prevented 100% of browse damage. The choice of repellent usage is a trade-off among effectiveness, cost, ability to follow recommended reapplication interval, and plant to be protected

Controls-structures-electromagnetics interaction program

A technology development program is described involving Controls Structures Electromagnetics Interaction (CSEI) for large space structures. The CSEI program was developed as part of the continuing effort following the successful kinematic deployment and RF tests of the 15 meter Hoop/Column antenna. One lesson learned was the importance of making reflector surface adjustment after fabrication and deployment. Given are program objectives, ground based test configuration, Intelsat adaptive feed, reflector shape prediction model, control experiment concepts, master schedule, and Control Of Flexible Structures-II (COFS-II) baseline configuration

A Rapid and Computationally Inexpensive Method to Virtually Implant Current and Next-Generation Stents into Subject-Specific Computational Fluid Dynamics Models

Computational modeling is often used to quantify hemodynamic alterations induced by stenting, but frequently uses simplified device or vascular representations. Based on a series of Boolean operations, we developed an efficient and robust method for assessing the influence of current and next-generation stents on local hemodynamics and vascular biomechanics quantified by computational fluid dynamics. Stent designs were parameterized to allow easy control over design features including the number, width and circumferential or longitudinal spacing of struts, as well as the implantation diameter and overall length. The approach allowed stents to be automatically regenerated for rapid analysis of the contribution of design features to resulting hemodynamic alterations. The applicability of the method was demonstrated with patient-specific models of a stented coronary artery bifurcation and basilar trunk aneurysm constructed from medical imaging data. In the coronary bifurcation, we analyzed the hemodynamic difference between closed-cell and open-cell stent geometries. We investigated the impact of decreased strut size in stents with a constant porosity for increasing flow stasis within the stented basilar aneurysm model. These examples demonstrate the current method can be used to investigate differences in stent performance in complex vascular beds for a variety of stenting procedures and clinical scenarios