The Trade-off Between Static and Dynamic Efficiency in Electricity Markets - A Cross Country Study

This paper is the first to explicitly test for the presence of a trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency in a regulated industry, the electricity industry. We show for 16 European countries over the period 1998-2007 that higher electricity end-user prices in a country subsequently lead to higher investments in the capital stock, i.e. in generation, distribution and transmission assets. Moreover, there is a trade-off between vertical economies and competition. Ownership unbundling and forced access to the incumbent transmission grid increase competition but come at the cost of lost vertical economies. Generally, we find that regulation that affect only the market like the establishment of a wholesale market or free choice of suppliers increase investment activity via spurring competition. Regulation, however, that adversely affects the incumbent directly, like ownership unbundling, decreases aggregate investment spending. (author's abstract)Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economic

A parametric approach to estimate the green bond premium

We analyze whether green bonds are traded on a premium versus conventional issuances of the same issuer. We estimate the difference in yield between a sample of 160 green bonds and a synthetic conventional bond with identical characteristics. The paper finds that green bonds have been traded on slightly higher yields than conventional bonds. This premium seems to decline in 2016 and 2017. Our data suggests that there is no significant difference between the developed and emerging markets and between different industry groups

Vertical disintegration in the European electricity sector: Empirical evidence on lost synergies

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At present, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. From a policy perspective, a successful unbundling regime would require that the benefits of increased competition in power generation would at least offset the associated efficiency losses from vertical divestiture. Since evidence on this topic is scarce, this study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ unique firm-level panel data of European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI of 14% for the median sized integrated utility. Moreover, EVI tend to increase with firm size

Vertical Disintegration in the European Electricity Sector: Empirical Evidence on Lost Synergies

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At presence, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. However, the benefits of increased competition from ownership unbundling of the transmission grid may come at the cost of lost vertical synergies between the formerly integrated stages of electricity supply. The policy debate generally neglects such potential costs of unbundling, yet concentrates on its benefits. Therefore European crosscountry evidence may shed some light on this issue. This study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ novel firm-level panel data of major European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI, which put the policy measure of transmission ownership unbundling into question. (authors' abstract)Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economic

Contraction heat transfer coefficient correlation for rectangular pin fin heat sinks

The demand for smaller but more powerful electronic components is ever increasing. This demand puts a strain on engineers to produce optimal cooling designs for these electronic components. One method for cooling these electronic components is with heat sinks which effectively increase the surface area available for extracting the heat from the electronic components. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software is sometimes used to aid in the design process, but CFD simulations are computationally expensive and take long to complete. This causes the design engineer to test only a few proposed designs based on his/her experience and select the design that performs the best out of the tested designs, which might not be the optimum. The temperature distribution inside the heat sink can be solved relatively quickly with the diffusion equation, but the flow around the heat sink complicates the CFD simulation and increases the solving time significantly. Therefore, applications have been developed where the interaction between the heat sink and the flow around the heat sink is replaced by heat transfer coefficients. These coefficients are calculated from correlated equations which contain the flow properties. The flow properties are extracted from a flow network solver, which solves the flow around the heat sink. This procedure results in less expensive simulations, which can be used together with an optimisation procedure to develop an optimum cooling design. In this dissertation, a correlation for the contraction heat transfer coefficients of rectangular pin fin heat sinks was developed. A methodology was developed where consecutive regression lines were fitted to a large set of data extracted from numerous CFD simulations. The combination of these regression lines formed the basis of the correlation, which was divided into two correlations; one for laminar flow and another for turbulent flow. The correlations were tested against CFD simulations as well as experimental data. The results indicate that these correlations can be effectively used to calculate the contraction heat transfer coefficients on pin fin heat sinks.Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2011.Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineeringunrestricte

Die proportio quintupla in einigen Villancicos des Cancionero Musical de Palacio

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Vexierklänge. Anmerkungen zu einem Tiento de falsas von Juan Cabanilles

The 5th tiento de falsas of Juan Bautista Cabanilles is off the beaten track of his further compositions with this designation. Besides the typical dissonances and unusual progressions in tientos de falsas, this piece for organ surprises with an intricate polyphonic setting. Nearly two thirds of the whole piece can be reduced to a minimum of motivic material, that is presented in continually new facets by canonic voice-leading, sequences and inversion. Yet the rhythmic and melodic structure of this piece of an altogether traditional style is not touched. The effect upon the listener, describable as thrilling or charming - at the same time vexing by the monotony and fascinating by the subtle harmonic graduation of the sounds - proves this tiento as a jewel of a very late manierism.[de] Das fünfte Tiento de falsas von Juan Bautista Cabanilles fällt aus dem Rahmen seiner übrigen Kompositionen mit dieser Titelangabe. Neben den für die Tientos de falsas typischen Dissonanzen und ungewöhnlichen Fortschreitungen überrascht dieses Orgelstück mit einem intrikaten polyphonen Satz. Fast zwei Drittel des gesamten Stücks lassen sich auf ein Minimum an motivischem Material zurückführen, das durch kanonische Stimmführung, Sequenzierung und Umkehrung in immer neuen harmonischen Facetten gezeigt wird, während sich die rhythmische und die grobmelodische Struktur nicht verändert. Die Wirkung auf den Hörer, die ais durch die Monotonie quälender, jedoch durch die feinfarbliche harmonische Abstufung der Klänge gleichzeitig faszinierender Reiz beschrieben werden kann, weist in Verbindung mit der sehr traditionellen Satztechnik dieses Tiento ais ein Kabinettstiick des sehr spaten Manierismus aus