Topic Resource Markets

Pricing Natural Gas in Mexico: An Application of the Little Mirrlees Rule: The Case of Quasi-Rents

In 1997, the Comisión Reguladora de Energía of Mexico implemented a netback rule for linking the Mexican natural gas price to the Texas price. At the time, the Texas price reflected a reasonably competitive market. Since that time, there have been dramatic increases in the demand for natural gas and there are various bottlenecks in the supply of natural gas. As a result, the price of natural gas in ...

COALMOD-World: A Model to Assess International Coal Markets until 2030

Coal continues to be an important fuel in many countries' energy mix and, despite the climate change concerns, it is likely to maintain this position for the next decades. In this paper a numerical model is developed to investigate the evolution of the international market for steam coal, the coal type used for electricity generation. The main focus is on future trade ows and investments in production ...

The Influence of Collusion on Price Changes: New Evidence from Major Cartel Cases

In this paper, we compare the distribution of price changes between collusive and noncollusive periods for ten major cartels. The first moments focus on previous research. We extend the discussion to the third (skewness) and fourth (kurtosis) moments. However, none of the above descriptive statistics can be considered as a robust test allowing a differentiation between competition and cartel. Therefore, ...

Energy Demand Forecasts and Climate Policy Agenda: A Sustainable Energy Mix Needs to Be Clean, Clever and Competitive

Time-Varying Spot and Futures Oil Price Dynamics

We investigate the role of crude oil spot and futures prices in the process of price discovery by using a cost-of-carry model with an endogenous convenience yield and daily data over the period from January 1990 to December 2008. We provide evidence that futures markets play a more important role than spot markets in the case of contracts with shorter maturities, but the relative contribution of the ...

Global Liquidity, World Savings Glut and Global Policy Coordination

The global imbalances of the 2000s and the recent global financial crisis are intimately connected. Both originate in the combination of economic policies adopted by the two key economies, the US and China. Global financial markets served as a transmission belt, both during the boom as during the bust. In the US, the interaction among the Fed's monetary stance, global real interest rates, distorted ...

Energy and Climate Policy: USA Continues to Trail behind, Despite Positive Change

In the course of current climate negotiations, the world is watching the United States in particular. Together with China, the U.S. is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Real progress in protecting the global climate requires substantial action on America's part. The U.S. has the potential to significantly reduce emissions. Per capita energy consumption in the U.S. is still about twice ...

Monetary Policy, Global Liquidity and Commodity Price Dynamics

This paper examines the interactions between money, interest rates, goods and commodity prices at a global level. For this purpose, we aggregate data for major OECD countries and follow the Johansen/Juselius cointegrated VAR approach. Our empirical model supports the view that, when controlling for interest rate changes and thus different monetary policy stances, money (defined as a global liquidity ...

If Another Gas Dispute Breaks out between the Ukraine and Russia, Would Europe Now Be Equipped to Deal with It?

In January 2009, the supply of natural gas from Russia via the Ukrainian pipeline system was interrupted for nearly two weeks. Particularly the countries in Southeastern Europe were ill-prepared for such an event. Disputes regarding both the payment of natural gas supplies and transit rights between Russia and Ukraine have recently flared up again, which gives rise to the question of whether the EU ...

Is Flow Velocity a Significant Parameter in Flood Damage Modelling?

Flow velocity is generally presumed to influence flood damage. However, this influence is hardly quantified and virtually no damage models take it into account. Therefore, the influences of flow velocity, water depth and combinations of these two impact parameters on various types of flood damage were investigated in five communities affected by the Elbe catchment flood in Germany in 2002. 2-D hydraulic ...