Browsing Working Papers by Title

Now showing items 160-179 of 334

    • Irreversibility, uncertainty and investment 

      Pindyck, Robert S. (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 1990)
      Most investment expenditures have two important characteristics. First, they are largely irreversible; the firm cannot disinvest, so the expenditures are sunk costs. Second, they can be delayed, allowing ...

    • Is the gasoline tax regressive? 

      Poterba, James M. (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 1990)
      Claims of the regressivity of gasoline taxes typically rely on annual surveys of consumer income and expenditures which show that gasoline expenditures are a larger fraction of income for very low income households than ...

    • Joint implementation : lessons from Title IV's voluntary compliance programs 

      Atkeson, Erica (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 1997.)
      The United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), signed by more than 150 nations in June 1992, commits signatory countries to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Article ...

    • Laissez faire, collective control or nationalization of the global commons 

      Eckaus, Richard S. (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 1992)
      The use of the atmosphere as a dumping place for greenhouse gases has been a matter of laissez faire. Proposals for international agreement to restrict the rate of such emissions are, in effect, proposals for collectively ...

    • Lessons from Phase 2 compliance with the U.S. Acid Rain Program 

      Ellerman, A. Denny (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2003)
      This paper provides preliminary answers to four questions concerning the behavior of agents operating under the SO2 Allowance Trading Program that could not be adequately answered until several years' data on compliance ...

    • Liability and Financial Responsibility for Oil Spills under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and Related Statutes 

      Greenstone, Michael (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2011-06-01)

    • Local and Seasonal Effects in the U.S. of Global Climate Change 

      Eckaus, Richard S. (MIT CEEPR, 2012-05-21)
      Though the facts of global climate change are beyond doubt, there has been relatively limited information about its local consequences. Global climate models and their derivatives have provided often differing and unspecific ...

    • The long-run evolution of energy prices 

      Pindyck, Robert S. (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 1999)
      I examine the long-run behavior of oil, coal, and natural gas prices, using up to 127 years of data, and address the following questions: What does over a century of data tell us about the stochastic dynamics of price ...

    • Long-term contracts and asset specificity revisited : an empirical analysis of producer-importer relations in the natural gas industry 

      Neumann, Anne; Hirschhausen, Christian von (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2006)
      In this paper, we analyze structural changes in long-term contracts in the international trade of natural gas. Using a unique data set of 262 long-term contracts between natural gas producers and importers, we estimate the ...

    • Long-term Energy Supply Contracts in European Competition Policy: Fuzzy not Crazy 

      Glachant, Jean-Michel; Adrien, de Hauteclocque (2008)
      Long-term supply contracts often have ambiguous effects on the competitive structure, investment and consumer welfare in the long term. In a context of market building, these effects are likely to be worsened and thus even ...

    • The macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks : why are the 2000s so different from the 1920s? 

      Blanchard, Olivier; Galí, Jordi (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2007)
      We characterize the macroeconomic performance of a set of industrialized economies in the aftermath of the oil price shocks of the 1970s and of the last decade, focusing on the differences across episodes. We examine four ...

    • Managing a portfolio of real options : sequential exploration of dependent prospects 

      Smith, James L.; Thompson, Rex W. (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2004)
      We consider the impact of sequential investment and active management on the value of a portfolio of real options. The options are assumed to be interdependent, in that exercise of any one is assumed to produce, in addition ...

    • Margins, Liquidity and the Cost of Hedging 

      Mello, Antonio S.; Reilly, John E. (MIT CEEPR, 2012-05-21)
      Recent financial reforms, such as the Dodd-Frank Act in the U.S. and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation, encourage greater use of clearing and therefore increased margining of derivative trades. They also impose ...

    • Market power and electricity market reform in Northeast China 

      Zhang, Xiaochun; Parsons, John E. (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2008)
      The Northeast region of China has been used as a testing ground for creation of a functioning wholesale electric power market. We describe the ownership structure of the generation assets for those plants participating in ...

    • Market power in a storable-good market : theory and applications to carbon and sulfur trading 

      Liski, Matti; Montero, Juan-Pablo (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2005)
      We consider a market for storable pollution permits in which a large agent and a fringe of small agents gradually consume a stock of permits until they reach a long-run emissions limit. The subgame-perfect equilibrium ...

    • Market Power in Pollution Permit Markets 

      Montero, Juan Pablo (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2009-04)
      As with other commodity markets, markets for trading pollution permits have not been immune to market power concerns. In this paper, I survey the existing literature on market power in permit trading but also contribute ...

    • Market power in the England and Wales wholesale electricity [market, 1995-2000] 

      Sweeting, Andrew (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2004)
      This paper shows that generators exercised increasing market power in the England and Wales wholesale electricity market in the second half of the 1990s despite declining market concentration. It examines whether this was ...

    • Market-Based Emissions Regulation and Industry Dynamics 

      Fowlie, Meredith; Reguant, Mar; Ryan, Stephen P. (MIT CEEPR, 2013-01)
      We assess the long-run dynamic implications of market-based regulation of carbon dioxide emissions in the US Portland cement industry. We consider several alternative policy designs, including mechanisms that use production ...

    • A market-based environmental policy experiment in Chile 

      Montero, Juan-Pablo; Katz, Ricardo Santiago; Sánchez, José Miguel (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2000)
      Despite growing interest in the use of emissions trading for pollution control, empirical evidence for this regulatory instrument has been confined to a few experiences in the United States. This paper broadens the empirical ...

    • Markets for power in the United States : an interim assessment 

      Joskow, Paul L. (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2005)
      The transition to competitive wholesale and retail markets for electricity in the U.S. has been a difficult and contentious process. This paper examines the progress that has been made in the evolution of wholesale and ...