A NEW ALGORITHM FOR COMPUTING COMPENSATED INCOME FROM ORDINARY DEMAND FUNCTIONS

This paper proposes a REversible Second-ORder Taylor (RESORT) expansion of the expenditure function to compute compensated income from ordinary demand functions as an alternative to the algorithm proposed by Vartia. These algorithms provide measures of Hicksian welfare changes and Konus-type cost of living indices. RESORT also validates the results by checking the matrix of compensated price effects. obtained through the Slutsky equation, for symmetry and negative semi-definiteness as required by expenditure minimization. In contrast, Vartia's algorithm provides no validation procedure. RESORT is similar to Vartia's algorithm in using price steps. It computes compensated income at each step "forward" from the initial to the terminal prices, and insures that the compensated income computed "backward" is equal to its value computed in the "forward" procedure. Thus, RESORT is "reversible" and guarantees unique values of compensated income for each set of prices and, as a result, also unique measures of welfare changes and cost of living indices. These unique results are not, however, guaranteed by the usual Taylor series expansion for computing compensated income.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

ALTERNATIVE AUCTION INSTITUTIONS FOR ELECTRIC POWER MARKETS

Restructuring of electric power markets is proceeding across the United States and in many other nations around the world. The performance of these markets will influence everything from the prices faced by consumers to the reliability of the systems. The challenges of these changes present many important areas for research. For much of the northeastern United States, restructuring proposals include, at least for the short term, the formation of a single-sided auction mechanism for the wholesale market. This research uses experimental methods to analyze how these markets may function. In the experiments, the two basic uniform price auction rules are tested under three different market sizes. Early experimental results suggest the commonly proposed last-accepted-offer auction works well, but market power could be a real concern.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Measuring Hicksian Welfare Changes From Marshallian Demand Functions

A.E. Res. 91-10A problem persists in measuring the welfare effects of simultaneous price and income changes because the Hicksian compensating variation (CV) and equivalent variation (EV), while unique, are based on unobservable (Hicksian) demand functions, and observable (Marshallian) demand functions do not necessarily yield a unique Marshallian consumer's surplus (CS). This paper proposes a solution by a Taylor series expansion of the expenditure function to approximate CV and EV by way of the Slutsky equation to transform Hicksian price effects into Marshallian price and income effects. The procedure is contrasted with McKenzie's money metric (MM) measure derived from a Taylor series expansion of the indirect utility function. MM requires a crucial assumption about the marginal utility of income to monetize changes in utility levels. No such assumption is required by the proposed procedure because the expenditure function is measured in money units. The expenditure approach can be used to approximate EV and CV while the MM is an approximation to EV. The EV and CV approximations are shown to be very accurate in numerical examples of two prices and income changing simultaneously, and are generally more accurate than MM

MODELING THE U.S. DAIRY SECTOR WITH GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

An econometric framework for estimating a two-regime dairy structural system is presented. Failure to account for switching between regimes due to government price intervention raises the problem of selectivity bias. Further, since a structural system of equations is involved, the problem is not limited to the market associated with the intervention. Rather, bias from a single source can distort all equations in the system. The ramifications of not correcting for the bias in policy analyses are investigated.Agricultural and Food Policy, Industrial Organization,

AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE U.S. GENERIC DAIRY ADVERTISING PROGRAM USING AN INDUSTRY MODEL

The market impacts of generic dairy advertising are assessed using an industry model which encompasses supply and demand conditions at the retail, wholesale, and farm levels, and government intervention under the dairy price support program. The estimated model is used to simulate price and quantity values for four advertising scenarios: (1) no advertising, (2) historical fluid advertising, (3) historical manufactured advertising, and (4) historical fluid and manufactured advertising. Compared to previous studies, the dairy-industry model provides additional insights into the way generic dairy advertising influences prices and quantities at the retail, wholesale, and farm levels.Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

THE HIDDEN SYSTEM COSTS OF WIND GENERATION IN A DEREGULATED ELECTRICITY MARKET

WP 2011-01Earlier research has shown that adding wind capacity to a network can lower the total annual operating cost of meeting a given pattern of loads by displacing conventional generation. At the same time, the variability of wind generation and the need for higher levels of reserve generating capacity to maintain reliability standards impose additional costs on the system that should not be ignored. The important implication for regulators is that the capacity payments [“missing money”] for eachMW of peak system load is now much higher. Hence, the economic benefits to a network of using storage, controllable load and other mechanisms to reduce the peak system load will be higher with high penetrations of wind generation. These potential benefits are illustrated in a case study using a test network and a security constrained OPF with endogenous reserves (SuperOPF). The capabilities of the SuperOPF provide a consistent economic framework for evaluating Operating Reliability in real-time markets and System Adequacy for planning purposes. The scenarios considered make it possible to determine 1) the amount of conventional generating capacity needed to meet the peak system load and maintain System Adequacy, and the amount of wind dispatched, 2) total payments by customers in the Wholesale Market, and the amount of missing money paid to generators to maintain their Financial Adequacy, 3) changes in the congestion rents for transmission that are collected by the system operator, and finally, 4) the total annual system costs paid by customers directly in the Wholesale Market and, indirectly, as missing money. The results show that the benefits (i.e. the reduction in the total annual system costs) from making an investment in wind capacity and/of upgrading a tie line are very sensitive to 1) how much of the inherent variability of wind generation is mitigated, and 2) how the missing money paid to conventional generators is determined (e.g. comparing a regulated market with a deregulated market).This research was supported by the US Department of Energy through the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions (CERTS) and by the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSERC)

Coordinated interchange scheduling and opportunity cost payment: a market proposal to seams issues

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Exome-wide association study to identify rare variants influencing COVID-19 outcomes : Results from the Host Genetics Initiative

Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2022 Butler-Laporte et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Host genetics is a key determinant of COVID-19 outcomes. Previously, the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative genome-wide association study used common variants to identify multiple loci associated with COVID-19 outcomes. However, variants with the largest impact on COVID-19 outcomes are expected to be rare in the population. Hence, studying rare variants may provide additional insights into disease susceptibility and pathogenesis, thereby informing therapeutics development. Here, we combined whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing from 21 cohorts across 12 countries and performed rare variant exome-wide burden analyses for COVID-19 outcomes. In an analysis of 5,085 severe disease cases and 571,737 controls, we observed that carrying a rare deleterious variant in the SARS-CoV-2 sensor toll-like receptor TLR7 (on chromosome X) was associated with a 5.3-fold increase in severe disease (95% CI: 2.75–10.05, p = 5.41x10-7). This association was consistent across sexes. These results further support TLR7 as a genetic determinant of severe disease and suggest that larger studies on rare variants influencing COVID-19 outcomes could provide additional insights.Peer reviewe