Assumption Of Perfect Competition Research Articles

Learning by Doing: Insights from Power Market Modelling in Energy Economics Courses

Much of energy economics curricula involves the study of techno-economic aspects of energy systems with an increasing focus devoted to fostering an understanding of the interactions between innovative technologies and adaptive markets. As the interplay of these dynamics and their impacts on market equilibria and outcomes is quite complex, optimization models are well-suited to facilitate their study. This paper presents two exemplary model approaches and associated case studies, which can be employed to study market developments driving long-term adaptations in the portfolio of power-generation assets as well as scheduling problems of individual plant owners with a focus on assessing the impact of changing market conditions on the profitability of investments. The combination of these two modelling approaches constitutes an innovative means of facilitating students’ understanding of how individual decisions of different market stakeholders lead to welfare-maximizing market equilibria under the assumption of perfect competition. The models are discussed along with the experiences acquired employing them in various forms as project assignments. In summary, the integration of modelling exercises and assignments into the curriculum of energy economics courses has proven to be a practical means of reinforcing and broadening lecture material that is both interesting and rewarding for students.

COVID-19 Impact and Policy Response: A General Equilibrium Approach for Egypt

Abstract The economic impacts of COVID-19 were negative across nations but with different degrees depending on the timing, degree of containment measures and the extent of dependency on the world economy. Moreover, the policy response has been heterogeneous across different countries, but mainly addressing urgent and short-term problems without addressing the structural problems that led to the vulnerability of these countries in crisis times. Thus, the objective of this paper is threefold. First, it distinguishes between the supply and demand effects of COVID-19. Second, we examine the key differences between the short and long terms effects of the policies that were adopted. Finally, we modify the model to include the informal labor that was highly affected by the pandemic, and we relax the assumption of perfect competition and replicate the simulations under an imperfect competitive framework in order to see how reforms pertaining to competition policies can alter the adopted policies. To do so, we use a dynamic CGE model calibrated on the Egyptian Social Accounting Matrix of 2014/2015. Our findings show how the Egyptian economy has been relatively vulnerable to external shocks that affect its sources of foreign currency. Yet, most of the effects are temporary and vanish in the long run. Imperfect competition in commodity markets would increase the adverse effects of the pandemic and undermine the effectiveness of public policies.

Moving from linear to conic markets for electricity

We propose a new forward electricity market framework that admits heterogeneous market participants with second-order cone strategy sets, who accurately express the nonlinearities in their costs and constraints through conic bids, and a network operator facing conic operational constraints. In contrast to the prevalent linear-programming-based electricity markets, we highlight how the inclusion of second-order cone constraints improves uncertainty-, asset-, and network-awareness of the market, which is key to the successful transition towards an electricity system based on weather-dependent renewable energy sources. We analyze our general market-clearing proposal using conic duality theory to derive efficient spatially-differentiated prices for the multiple commodities, comprised of energy and flexibility services. Under the assumption of perfect competition, we prove the equivalence of the centrally-solved market-clearing optimization problem to a competitive spatial price equilibrium involving a set of rational and self-interested participants and a price setter. Finally, under common assumptions, we prove that moving towards conic markets does not incur the loss of desirable economic properties of markets, namely market efficiency, cost recovery, and revenue adequacy. Our numerical studies focus on the specific use case of uncertainty-aware market design and demonstrate that the proposed conic market brings advantages over existing alternatives within the linear programming market framework.

What’s the Point of Efficiency? On Heath’s Market Failures Approach

This article reviews and criticizes Joseph Heath’s market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics. Our criticism is organized into three sections. First, we argue that, even under the ideal assumptions of perfect competition, when markets generate Pareto-efficient distributions, Heath’s approach does not rule out significant harms. Second, we show that, under nonideal conditions, the MFA is either too demanding, if efficiency is to be attained, or not sufficiently demanding, if the goal of Pareto efficiency is abandoned. Finally, we argue that Heath’s appeal to regulations and specific moral requirements as a remedy for market failures is unlikely to safeguard efficiency and exposes a number of general worries regarding the moral force of the MFA. We end this article with a constructive suggestion on how to adjust the MFA to avoid these problems while preserving its contractualist and Paretian spirit.

Evaluation of Systematic Monetary Influences in Pakistan’s Perspective

Traditional macroeconomic theories establish relationship among certain macroeconomic variables based on assumptions of perfect competition and resulting flexible prices. Theories based on these assumptions might not hold for developing economies due to imperfect market structure and fragile financial institutions. This study attempts to analyze the quantity theory of money (QTM) and Phillips curve (PC) relationship from long-run perspective for economy of Pakistan. QTM relates complete absorption of money growth effect into inflation, and PC establishes negative relationship between inflation and unemployment. In the long-run, money is assumed to have only inflationary or nominal effect. Therefore, presence of any long-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment, once inflations is a pure monetary phenomenon in the long-run, cast serious doubts regarding long-run neutrality of money. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modelling approach is opted to analyze long-run impact of money growth on inflation, and long-run effect of inflation on unemployment. The long-run relationship between inflation and unemployment is statistically insignificant for economy of Pakistan. Furthermore, results of this study show that inflation, even in the long-run, does not adjust as theorized in QTM.

Does more market competition lead to higher income and utility in the long run?

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate if more competition leads to higher per capita incomes and/or to a higher level of utility in the long run. To this end, we use a Diamond overlapping‐generations model but relaxing the assumption of perfect competition in the good market. We show that the weaker the competition the more unequal the distribution of income. Surprisingly, we note that in general, tougher competition does not lead either to an increase in per capita incomes or to an increase in nonfirm owners’ utility in the long run.

The Role of Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth and Development Models

For decades, the entrepreneur was considered the” invisible man”. The role of entrepreneurship was ignored in economic literature until the 20th century and in economic growth and development models until the early the 1990s. Since then, the role of entrepreneur is included in different branches of economics. The purpose of this paper is to review the role of the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in economic growth and development models. After being considered an invisible man in the economics literature, Schumpeter 1911, 1934 considered economic development as a dynamic process that disturbs the closed circular flow of the economic system. Schumpeter considered the entrepreneur as an innovator who plays a fundamental role in the process of economic development. However, few attempts have been made to include entrepreneurship in neoclassical and general equilibrium growth and development models due to the assumptions of perfect competition, static market equilibrium and perfect information about markets and production processes. Endogenous growth models (Romer 1986, 1990; Lucas 1990; Schmitz 1989; Aghion and Howitt 1992) make it possible to include entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in growth models by emphasizing the role of knowledge externalities, innovations and returns to scale. They consider entrepreneurship as the channel through which these processes affect economic growth. The paper also reviews empirical studies using three macroeconomics databases to describe the entrepreneurial impact on growth, productivity and employment. JEL Codes: B00, O00, O11

Integrated electricity, hydrogen and methane system modelling framework: Application to the Dutch Infrastructure Outlook 2050

The future energy system is widely expected to show increasing levels of integration across differing energy carriers. Electricity, hydrogen, methane and heat systems may become increasingly interdependent due to coupling through conversion and hybrid energy technologies. Market parties, network operators, policy makers and regulators require tools to capture implications of possible techno-economic and institutional developments in one system for the operation of others. In this article, we provide an integrated electricity, hydrogen and methane systems modelling framework focusing on interdependencies between them. The proposed integrated electricity and (renewable) gas system model is a market equilibrium model with hourly price and volume interactions, considering ramp rates of conventional units, variability of intermittent renewables, conversion, transport as well as storage of electricity, hydrogen and methane. The integrated model is formulated as a linear program under the assumption of perfect competition. As proof-of-concept, the model has been applied to a test case consisting of 34 electricity nodes, 19 hydrogen nodes and 22 methane nodes, reflecting the regional governance scenario in the Dutch Infrastructure Outlook 2050 study. The case study also includes different sensitivity analyses with regard to variable renewable capacity, energy demand and biomass prices to illustrate model response to perturbations of its main drivers. This article demonstrates that the interweaving of electricity, hydrogen and methane systems can provide the required flexibility in the future energy system.

Price-cost margin and bargaining power in the European Union

Using firm-level data between 2004 and 2012 for 11 countries of the European Union (EU), we document the size of product and labour market imperfections within narrowly defined sectors including services which are virtually undocumented. Our findings suggest that perfect competition in both product and labour markets is widely rejected. Levels of the price-cost margin and union bargaining power tend to be higher in some service sectors depicting, however, substantial heterogeneity. Dispersion within sector and across countries tends to be higher in some services sectors assuming a less tradable nature which suggests that the single market integration is partial, particularly relaxing the assumption of perfect competition in the labour market. We report also figures for the aggregate economy and show that Eastern countries tend to depict lower product and labour market imperfections compared to other countries in the EU. Also, we provide evidence in favour of a very limited adjustment of both product and labour market imperfections following the international and financial crisis.

Incentive-Compatibility in a Two-Stage Stochastic Electricity Market With High Wind Power Penetration

A major restructuring of electricity markets takes place worldwide, pursuing maximum economic efficiency. In most modern electricity markets, including the widely adapted Locational Marginal Price (LMP) market, efficiency is only guaranteed under the assumption of perfect competition. Moreover, market design is heavily focused on deterministic conventional generation. Electricity markets, though, are vulnerable to strategic behaviors and challenged by the increased penetration of renewable energy generation. In this paper, we cope with the aforementioned bottlenecks by investigating the application of Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) auction in a two-stage stochastic electricity market. The VCG mechanism achieves incentive-compatibility by rewarding market participants for their contribution towards market efficiency, being attractive from both market operation and participants perspectives. Both traditional and VCG market-clearing approaches are explored and compared, investigating as well the impact of increasing wind power penetration. The main shortcoming of VCG, i.e., not ensuring revenue adequacy, is quantified in terms of market budget imbalance for various levels of wind power penetration. To this end, a novel ex-post budget redistribution scheme is proposed, which achieves to partially recover budget deficit.

Economic Decision-Making for Coal Power Flexibility Retrofitting and Compensation in China

In China, in order to integrate more renewable energy into the power grid, coal power flexibility retrofitting is imperative. This paper elaborates a generic method for estimating the flexibility potential from the rapid ramp rate and peak shaving operation using nonlinear programming, and defines three flexibility elastic coefficients to quantify the retrofitted targets. The optimized range of the retrofitted targets determined by the flexibility elastic coefficients have a reference significance on coal power flexibility retrofitting. Then, in order to enable economic decisions for coal power flexibility retrofitting, we address a profit maximizing issue regarding optimization decisions for coal power flexibility retrofitting under an assumption of perfect competition, further analyzing the characteristic roots of marginal cost equal to marginal revenue. The rationality of current compensation standards for peak shaving in China can also be judged in the analysis. The case study results show that economic decision-making depends on the compensation standard and the peak shaving depth and time. At a certain peak shaving depth and time, with rational compensation standard power plants are willing to carry out coal power flexibility retrofitting. The current compensation standard in Northeast China is high enough to carry out coal power flexibility retrofitting. These research conclusions have theoretical significance for China’s peak shaving compensation standards formulation.

IS THE CREDIT WORTH IT? FOR‐PROFIT LENDERS IN MICROFINANCE WITH RATIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL BORROWERS

ABSTRACTThe bulk of the literature on microcredit has focused on either not‐for‐profit lenders or assumes a perfectly competitive, zero‐profit market equilibrium. Yet the market has experienced a significant shift toward for‐profit lending and the assumptions of perfect competition are likely to be too strong in many locations. We review the state of the literature on for‐profit lending in microcredit, consider its implications for both conventionally ‘rational’ borrowers and for borrowers with behavioral biases, and point out directions for future research.

Market Power and the Laffer Curve

We study commodity taxation and characterize the Laffer curve, a trade-off between tax rates and revenue, in noncompetitive markets. Pricing in these markets leads to incomplete tax pass-through and agents re-optimize their purchase and pricing decisions in response to any tax change. We use detailed data from Pennsylvania, a state that monopolizes retail sales of alcoholic beverages, to estimate a model of demand for horizontally differentiated products that ties consumers' demographic characteristics to heterogeneous preferences for spirits. We find that under the state's current tax policy, spirits are overpriced. Distillers respond to decreases in the tax rate by increasing wholesale prices, which limits the state's revenue gain to only 13% of the incremental tax revenue predicted under the common assumption of perfect competition. The strategic response of noncompetitive firms to changes in taxation therefore flattens the Laffer curve significantly.

수요반응자원이 포함된 전력시장의 쿠르노 경쟁모형 해석

In order to reduce costs of electricity energy at periods of peak demand, there has been an exponential interest in Demand Response (DR). This paper discusses the effect on the participants’ behavior in response to DR. Under the assumption of perfect competition, the equilibrium point of the electricity market with DR is derived by modeling a DR curve, which is suitable for microeconomic analysis. Cournot model is used to analyze the electricity market of imperfect competition that includes strategic behavior of the generation companies. Strategic behavior with DR makes it harder to compute equilibrium point due to the non-differential function of payoff distribution. This paper presents a solution method for achieving the equilibrium point using the best response function of the strategic players. The effect of DR on the electricity market is illustrated using a test system.

Effects of Being in an Occupation – Is ISCO 1 Digit Classification Enough to Model Wages in Poland?

Contrary to neoclassical assumptions of perfect competition, there is a consensus that factors affecting wages include sex, level of education, age, job experience, occupation, post, work-related responsibility and a whole set of personality traits. The paper presents an econometric model that allows to explain wage differences in Poland and extends analyses of wage determinants in Poland by taking into account occupations broken down in accordance with the 2-digit level of International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO). The analysis shows that ISCO 2 digit level is an important and statistically significant determinant of wages in Poland, while models of wages basing on ISCO 1 digit might be not enough to properly capture the role of occupations.

Rationality in Management Theory and Practice: An Aristotelian Perspective

Behaviorism is consistent with the assumptions of perfect competition, with the homo economicus model, and with a form of ethics that enshrines market-based notions of utility, justice, and rights and encourages rational maximizing. Economics and business courses foster this deficient form of ethics, assuming an overriding desire for money, which, according to MacIntyre and Aristotle, crowds out the associative virtues. These beliefs, often associated with Taylor and Friedman, lead to such practices as incentive compensation, which would be effective only if employees were homines economici and thus rational in the sense of knowing how to satisfy whatever desires they have. Against Davidson’s view that psychology cannot be a natural science, Aristotle believes that there can be a teleological, if not exact, science of behavior. Aristotle believes that emotions and objectives may be rational or irrational. But rationality—phronesis, practical wisdom—is not a matter of applying algorithms. Doris questions whether character generates the first premises of an agent’s practical syllogisms, while Haidt has argued that we often act on emotions rather than on the basis of the reasons that we claim motivate us. Aristotle agrees that many people are not virtuous and that weakness of the will is a common occurrence, and he agrees that emotion drives actions. But if you are virtuous, your emotions and desires support your rationality. Aristotle gives us reason to reject the notion that people are homines economici and to treat them as rational deliberators, in part by creating an appropriate culture. The claim that it is in the nature of human beings to deliberate rationally is in part aspirational, but also in part scientific—in Aristotle’s modest sense.

WHY IS FINANCE IMPORTANT? SOME THOUGHTS ON POST-CRISIS ECONOMICS

The global financial crisis of 2008 challenges some relevant aspects of macroeconomic theory such as the neutrality of money. This paper shows that this neutrality is based on the unrealistic assumption of perfect competition. Relaxing this alone (without time lags, price rigidities, menu costs and other frictions) makes money no longer necessarily neutral and hence makes financial crises and institutions much more important. The presence of increasing returns to scale at the firm level and to specialization at the economy level due to the division of labor also makes finance much more important than suggested by traditional economics.

Quão imperfeita é a competição na indústria brasileira?: estimativas de mark up setorial entre 1996 e 2007

O uso de medidas de produtividade na avaliação de políticas públicas baseadas na suposição de concorrência perfeita pode levar a conclusões incorretas sobre a sua eficácia. Nesse sentido, o presente estudo busca analisar quão distante da competição perfeita a indústria de transformação brasileira se encontra. Os resultados apontam que, em média, o preço é 2,41 vezes o custo marginal, rejeitando a validade da hipótese de concorrência perfeita e indicando que análises que não levam em conta tal padrão de competição geram conclusões errôneas. Os setores florestal e metalúrgico apresentaram os maiores mark ups (3,81 e 2,95 respectivamente), sendo tal conclusão robusta a retornos de escala e formas alternativas de mensuração.

An Empirical Analysis of Liquidity and Its Determinants in the German Intraday Market for Electricity

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of liquidity in the German intraday market for electricity. Two models that aim at explaining intraday liquidity are developed. The first model considers the fundamental merit-order and intraday adjustment needs as the drivers of liquidity in a perfectly competitive market. The second model relaxes the assumption of perfect competition in the intraday market and assumes that the trading behavior of profit maximizing market participants influences the liquidity provision. The relevance of commonly used liquidity indicators like the bid ask-spread, resiliency, market depth, price variance, delay and search costs as well as trading volume and the number of trades are analyzed with respect to both models of liquidity. The empirical findings indicate that liquidity in the German intraday market can be explained by the trading model while the purely fundamental model is rejected.

A Critical Appraisal of the Current Use of Transaction Cost Explanations for Government Make-Or-Buy Choices: Towards a Contingent Theory and Forms of Tests

This article aims at contributing to the extant literature on government make-or-buy choices building on transaction cost economics (TCE) by explicitly theorizing about transaction alignment and its relation to performance. It is argued that current theoretical and empirical models of government make-or-buy choices are not able to make predictions that corroborate theory. They are dependent upon the assumption of perfect competition that is ill-suited for the public sector setting. Instead, contingent models that take performance differences into account constitute a more valid model of TCE in this setting. In this article, theoretical models and empirical approaches for such a research agenda are developed.