Topic Resource Markets

Renewable Energy in Europe: Strong Political Will Required for Ambitious Goals

A number of substantive goals and mechanisms for implementing an integrated climate and energy policy have been ratified over the last two years at the European level. By 2020, greenhouse gas emissions in Europe are to be reduced by at least 20 percent; energy efficiency improved by 20 percent; and the share of energy from renewable sources increased to 20 percent. According to a recent European Council ...

The World Gas Model: A Multi-Period Mixed Complementarity Model for the Global Natural Gas Market

We provide the description and illustrative results of the World Gas Model, a multi-period complementarity model for the global natural gas market. Market players include producers, traders, pipeline and storage operators, LNG liquefiers and regasifiers as well as marketers. The model data set contains more than 80 countries and regions and covers 98% of world wide natural gas production and consumption. ...

Overcoming Data Limitations in Nonparametric Benchmarking: Applying PCA-DEA to Natural Gas Transmission

This paper provides an empirical demonstration for a practical approach of efficiency evaluation against the background of limited data availability in some regulated industries. Here, traditional DEA may result in a lack of discriminatory power when high numbers of variables but only limited observations are available. We apply PCA-DEA for radial efficiency measurement to US natural gas transmission ...

Understanding the Roles and Interactions of International Cooperation on Domestic Climate Policies: Editorial

Introduction: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change defines the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (Art. 4.1 of UNFCCC). It is the common responsibility of all countries to pursue mitigation actions so as to achieve climate stabilization. The differentiated nature of historic responsibility, capabilities and economic situation creates a responsibility for developed ...

Policy Targets: Lessons for Effective Implementation of Climate Actions

Policy targets are used to improve the implementation of domestic and international actions, in a national context and in international frameworks. But how can domestic and international experience be useful for climate policy? Case studies point to the value of defining policy targets more broadly than final outcomes, which in the case of climate policy are CO2 emission reductions. There is a need ...

A History of Conditionality: Lessons for International Cooperation on Climate Policy

This article surveys the experience of conditionality provisions applied by the World Bank, the IMF, bilateral donors, and the European Union's accession process. Ownership is essential for effective cooperation and requires domestic climate policies to be country-driven and decision-making to be equitable. Bilateral cooperation allows for a direct exchange of expertise and long-term relationships. ...

Corporate Espionage

We consider a multimarket framework where a set of firms compete on two interrelated oligopolistic markets. Prior to competing in these markets, firms can spy on others in order to increase the quality of their product. We characterize the equilibrium espionage networks and networks that maximize social welfare under the most interesting scenario of diseconomies of scope. We find that in some situations ...

A Model for the Global Crude Oil Market Using a Multi-Pool MCP Approach

This paper proposes a partial equilibrium model to describe the global crude oil market. Pricing on the global crude oil market is strongly influenced by price indices such as WTI (USA) and Brent (Northwest Europe). Adapting an approach for pool-based electricity markets, the model captures the particularities of these benchmark price indices and their influence on the market of physical oil. This ...

Where Economics and the Environment Intersect

Perspectives of the European Natural Gas Markets until 2025

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic several-layer model of European natural gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European country (or region), and final demand. Our model results suggest rather modest changes in the overall ...