Fee Regime Research Articles

The future of Swiss hydropower: how to distribute the risk and the profits?

Low electricity prices put economic pressure on hydropower companies. A more flexible water fee design can counteract this pressure and support hydropower companies during times when market revenues are low. However, this comes at the cost of lower revenues for resource owners. Using a sample of cost data for 62 companies and revenue data derived from an electricity market model, we have quantified this trade-off for the case of Switzerland. We found that electricity market price developments dominate changes in water fees and that for the profitability of hydropower, electricity prices are more important than water fee levels. However, with electricity prices of around CHF 40 per MWh, water fees can make the difference between profit and loss. Therefore, while flexible water fee regimes shift the market risk from producers to resource owners to some extent, the extent of this risk shift depends on the detailed design of the flexible regime.

Fragmentation, Price Formation and Cross-Impact in Bitcoin Markets

In the light of micro-scale inefficiencies due to the highly fragmented bitcoin trading landscape, we use a granular data set comprising orderbook and trades data from the most liquid bitcoin markets, to understand the price formation process at sub-1-second time scales. To this end, we construct a set of features that encapsulate relevant microstructural information over short lookback windows. These features are subsequently leveraged, first to generate a leader–lagger network that quantifies how markets impact one another, and then to train linear models capable of explaining between 10% and 37% of total variation in 500 ms future returns (depending on which market is the prediction target). The results are then compared with those of various PnL calculations that take trading realities, such as transaction costs, into account. The PnL calculations are based on natural taker strategies (meaning they employ market orders) associated with each model. Our findings emphasize the role of a market's fee regime in determining both its propensity to lead or lag, and the profitability of our taker strategy. We further derive a natural maker strategy (using only passive limit orders) which, due to the difficulties associated with backtesting maker strategies, we test in a real-world live trading experiment, in which we turned over 1.5 M USD in notional volume. Lending additional confidence to our models, and by extension to the features they are based on, the results indicate a significant improvement over a naive benchmark strategy, which we also deploy in a live trading environment with real capital, for the sake of comparison.

Equilibrium analysis of parking for integrated daily commuting

We analyze the commuting patterns and parking modes for integrated daily commuting under different regimes. Based on a bi-direction bottleneck network with a spatial pattern of parking, the daily commuting patterns with parking location choices are analyzed. Without road toll and parking fee, there exist two equilibrium flow patterns and one parking mode. Increasing the parking density would postpone the earliest departure time and shorten the length of departure time period. A linear location-dependent parking fee regime without road toll is then proposed. We find that three parking modes occur across the parking fee rate and the morning efficiency loss always exists no matter how the fee rate is changed. Furthermore, a combined regime of linear location-dependent parking fee and time-varying road toll is developed to minimize the total daily social cost (TDSC). Two parking modes occur as the parking fee rate increases and there exist four equilibrium flow patterns. We show that the linear location-dependent parking fees could either advance or postpone the earliest morning departure time. An inappropriate parking fee rate may increase both individual and social costs. The best system performance can be achieved with joint consideration of both the TDSC and parking supply cost.

Fragmentation, Price Formation, and Cross-Impact in Bitcoin Markets

In light of micro-scale inefficiencies induced by the high degree of fragmentation of the Bitcoin trading landscape, we utilize a granular data set comprised of orderbook and trades data from the most liquid Bitcoin markets, in order to understand the price formation process at sub-1second time scales. To achieve this goal, we construct a set of features that encapsulate relevant microstructural information over short lookback windows. These features are subsequently leveraged first to generate a leader-lagger network that quantifies how markets impact one another, and then to train linear models capable of explaining between 10% and 37% of total variation in 500ms future returns (depending on which market is the prediction target). The results are then compared with those of various PnL calculations that take trading realities, such as transaction costs, into account. The PnL calculations are based on natural taker strategies (meaning they employ market orders) that we associate to each model. Our findings emphasize the role of a market's fee regime in determining its propensity to being a leader or a lagger, as well as the profitability of our taker strategy. Taking our analysis further, we also derive a natural maker strategy (i.e., one that uses only passive limit orders), which, due to the difficulties associated with backtesting maker strategies, we test in a real-world live trading experiment, in which we turned over 1.5 million USD in notional volume. Lending additional confidence to our models, and by extension to the features they are based on, the results indicate a significant improvement over a naive benchmark strategy, which we also deploy in a live trading environment with real capital, for the sake of comparison.

Streetlaw – assisting access to justice in the Employment Tribunal: A practice report

<p>If you have not yet read the judgment of Lord Reed in the Supreme Court decision of Unison v The Lord Chancellor, please allow yourself a little time over the coming weeks to enjoy a clear and evidence-based statement on access to justice in the employment tribunals of England and Wales. The case was brought by Unison, the UK public workers union, and challenged the introduction in July 2013 of the requirement to pay a fee to lodge an employment tribunal claim. Having reviewed some of the key common law authorities and quoting from the Magna Carta and Donoghue v Stevenson no less, Lord Reed concluded that the fee regime was unlawful “because it has the effect of preventing access to justice”. This landmark decision in July 2017 brought an immediate end to the fee regime. Time will tell whether the UK Government will attempt another fee scheme in the future, but there are other more pressing issues occupying Whitehall at the moment.</p><p><br />The four-year fee regime and the Unison challenge brought access to justice in employment tribunals very much into the public eye. Other barriers to access were also widely discussed and reported, including the lack of legal aid and legal representation for claimants in employment law matters. A number of law clinics and pro bono schemes operate to give guidance and advice to the public, in addition to the essential work of ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service). The purpose of this paper is to share with you my experience of a university student Streetlaw project at the Cardiff Employment Tribunal providing guidance to unrepresented claimants about tribunal practice and procedure.</p><p><br />The concept of Streetlaw is familiar to readers of this Journal as a form of public legal education aimed at helping members of the public to understand their rights. It is also frequently referred to as “legal literacy”, the importance of which Richard Grimes explains in a previous edition of this Journal. The key aim of our Streetlaw project is to educate potential claimants about what to expect in the run up to their employment tribunal hearing and what happens on the day. As I shall explain, however, there are a number of secondary aims and several other beneficial outcomes.</p>

The Design of Variable Water Fees and its Impact on Swiss Hydropower Companies and Resource Owners

Water fees are a remuneration to be paid by the operators of hydropower plants to the owners of the water resource right. In Switzerland the fee is based on the gross capacity of the plant and independent from market conditions. This regulation implies that cantons and municipalities have a constant income from water fees, because the whole market risk lies with the producers. As revenues of hydropower companies have dropped after 2012 due to low electricity prices Swiss hydropower producers have been calling for a change in the water fee regime. The currently most probable policy change is a flexibilization of water fees. Within this paper we analyse the impacts of different water fee reform options – and how they depend on market conditions – from the hydropower producers (companies) and resource owners (cantons and municipalities) perspective. We find that electricity market price developments dominate the water fees in most cases, but for a range of electricity prices between 40 and 60 CHF/MWh water fees can make a difference. However, there is a larger variability between plants than between market scenarios, i.e., in every scenario, we find plants that make profits and others that make losses. We also show that a uniform water fee favors storage/pump-storage plants, whereas a differentiation of the water fee level by plant type favors run-of-river units.

The university for students: annual AUA lecture 2017

In 2011, David Willetts issued a White Paper with the title ‘Students at the Heart of the System’. In 2011 the headlines were, inevitably, about the new tuition fee regime which, it was hoped, woul...

Vexatious Claims: Challenging the Case for Employment Tribunal Fees

Since July 2013, recourse to Employment Tribunals in the United Kingdom has attracted fees of up to £1,200 for single claimants. The impact of this reform has been dramatic: within a year, claims dropped by nearly 80 per cent. This paper suggests that this fee regime is in clear violation of domestic and international norms, including Article 6(1) ECHR and the EU principle of effective judicial protection. Drawing on rational choice theory and empirical evidence, we argue that the resulting payoff structures, negative for the majority of successful claimants, strike at the very essence of these rights. The measures are, furthermore, disproportionate in light of the Government's stated policy aims: fees have failed to transfer cost away from taxpayers, have failed to encourage early dispute resolution, and have failed to deter vexatious litigants. The only vexatious claims, we find, appear to be those which motivated the reforms in the first place.

Managing the student experience in English higher education: Differing responses to market pressures

This paper reports on recent research aimed at assessing how the management of the undergraduate student experience in English higher education is changing in the light of the new tuition fee regime introduced in 2012, as well as other government policies aimed at creating market-type pressures within the higher education sector. A distinction was observed between the research-intensive universities studied – defined here as institutions where research income comprised 20 per cent or more of total turnover, with correspondingly strong positions in published research-based rankings – and universities largely dependent on income from teaching, with weaker market positions. Broadly speaking, the latter group were responding to market pressures by centralizing services, standardizing procedures, and strengthening management controls over teaching processes. The research-intensive universities tended to work within existing institutional cultures to respond to students' needs. Organizational change here usually took the form of creating more coherent functional groupings of student services, rather than comprehensive reorganizations. It appears to us that these different responses to a changed environment point to the creation of two distinct English university types, one strongly managerial with 'student as customer' orientations, and a smaller group with less centralized, more collegial cultures.

Transmission and generation investment in electricity markets: The effects of market splitting and network fee regimes

We propose an equilibrium model that allows to analyze the long-run impact of the electricity market design on transmission line expansion by the regulator and investment in generation capacity by private firms in liberalized electricity markets. The model incorporates investment decisions of the transmission system operator and private firms in expectation of an energy-only market and cost-based redispatch. In different specifications we consider the cases of one vs. multiple price zones (market splitting) and analyze different approaches to recover network cost—in particular lump sum, generation capacity based, and energy based fees. In order to compare the outcomes of our multilevel market model with a first best benchmark, we also solve the corresponding integrated planner problem. Using two test networks we illustrate that energy-only markets can lead to suboptimal locational decisions for generation capacity and thus imply excessive network expansion. Market splitting heals these problems only partially. These results are valid for all considered types of network tariffs, although investment slightly differs across those regimes.

GP responses to price regulation: evidence from a French nationwide reform.

This paper uses a French reform to evaluate the impacts of overbilling restrictions on general practitioner (GP) care provision, fees and incomes. Since 1990, this reform has introduced conditions self-employed GPs must fulfil to be permitted to bill freely. We exploit 2005 and 2008 public health insurance administrative data on GP activity and fees. We use fuzzy regression discontinuity techniques to estimate local causal impacts for GPs who established practices in 1990 and who were constrained by the new regulation to charge regulated prices (compliers). We find that those GPs practices to income effects. In the regulated fee regime, GPs face prices lower by 42% and provide 50% more care than they would do in the unregulated fee regime. Male care provision increasing reaction is larger than the female one, which results in a higher male labour income in the regulated fee regime than with unregulated fees, whereas it is the opposite for women. With regulated fees, GPs limit side-salaried activities, use more lump-sum payment schemes and occupy more often gatekeeper positions.

Malaria care seeking behavior of individuals in Ghana under the NHIS: Are we back to the use of informal care?

BackgroundMalaria is Ghana's most endemic disease; occurring across most parts of the country with a significant impact on individuals and the health system as whole. Treatment seeking for malaria care takes various forms. The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was introduced in 2004 to promote access to health services to mitigate the negative impact of the user fee regime. Ten years on, national coverage is less than 40% of the total population and patients continue to make direct payments for health services. This paper analyses the care-seeking behaviour of households for treatment of malaria in Ghana under the NHI policy.MethodUsing a cross-sectional survey of household data collected from three districts in Ghana covering the 3 ecological zones namely the coastal, forest and savannah, a multinomial logit model is estimated. The sample consists of 365 adults and children reporting being ill with malaria in the last four weeks prior to the study.ResultsOut of the total, 58% were insured and 71% of them sought care from a formal health facility. Among the insured, 15% chose informal care compared to 48% among the uninsured. The results from the multinomial logit estimations show that health insurance and travel time to health facility are significant determinants of health care demand. The results show that the insured are 6 times more likely to choose regional/district hospitals: 5 times more likely to choose health centres/clinics and 7 times more likely to choose private hospitals/clinics over informal care when compared with the uninsured. Individual characteristics such as age, education and wealth status were significant determinants of health care provider choice for specific categories of health facilities.ConclusionOverall, for malaria care the uninsured are more likely to choose informal care compared to the insured for the treatment of malaria.

Are Unions a Constitutional Anomaly?

The Supreme Court’s decision last term in Harris v. Quinn is its latest, and surely not its last, of dozens of encounters since the 1940s with the issue of mandatory union fees – fees that individuals may be required to pay as a condition of employment to the union that represents them in collective bargaining. Along the way to striking down the “agency fee” in Harris on First Amendment grounds, the Court proclaimed the current agency fee regime, blessed many times by the Court itself, to be an “anomaly.” This Article asks whether and how labor unions are themselves “anomalies” in our legal system, particularly in their constitutional entitlements. Its answer is a qualified and complicated “yes.” A solution to the agency fee problem, and to other constitutional puzzles in labor law, lies in a deeper understanding of how and why unions are distinctive in our legal system – distinctive even among private entities with public regulatory functions, which have frequently provoked constitutional controversy. To begin with, unions are voluntary associations of workers with constitutional entitlements to freedom of expression and associational autonomy. On the other hand, unions are also regulatory actors subject to a constellation of sui generis rights, powers, restrictions, and duties under U.S. labor law – a quid pro quo by which the labor laws both constrain and empower unions. Whatever the wisdom of the particular quid pro quo embodied in the labor laws – and it has been criticized from both ends of the political spectrum – it provides an essential context for the adjudication of constitutional claims by and against unions. This Article calls for reframing those constitutional claims to include both the quid and the quo of labor law – not only the alleged burdens that the labor laws impose on unions or individuals, but also any logically linked benefits or powers it confers on the claimant. The proposed analysis recasts not only the agency fee controversy and the related puzzle posed by state right-to-work laws, but also recurring challenges to the constitutionality of restrictions on union speech and recent efforts to bring “worker centers” under the umbrella of labor law. At the same time it offers clues to the future of unions and labor law if the Court continues down the path foreshadowed in Harris.

Exploring the Impact of the Increased Tuition Fees on Academic Staffs’ Experiences in Post-92 Universities: A Small-Scale Qualitative Study

The introduction of the new tuition fee regime in the UK academic session 2012–2013 has resulted in concerns in the Higher Education (HE) community that students’ expectations may become unmanageable. Previous research has explored the expectations and experiences of undergraduate psychology students; the current study extended this by considering whether the increased tuition fees have changed the experiences of academic staff in HE. To achieve this, five semi-structured interviews with psychology staff in two post-92 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) were undertaken. Results suggested staff perceptions have undergone minimal change in their day-to-day experiences. However, perceptions of the wider HE issues, such as meeting targets and fulfilling requirements of the role, appear to be enhanced following the contextual changes of HE. Finally, the results reported here suggest generally good staff satisfaction, regardless of these changing times within the sector. Future research and the need for more widespread, large scale studies are discussed.

‘The answer is brought about from within you’: A Student‐Centred Perspective on Pedagogy in Art and Design

AbstractThis article reports on the ways that a group of third‐year undergraduate art and design students conceptualise the pedagogy they experience on their course. This study is part of broader research funded by the Group for Learning in Art and Design (GLAD) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) that employs qualitative interviewing approaches to explore the ways that a small sample of art and design students studying in two English post‐1992 universities interpret and understand the questions in the National Student Survey (this is a questionnaire that UK students complete during the final year of their undergraduate studies). The analysis suggests that the students' conceptions of art and design pedagogy might be best understood as a form of ‘reverse transmission’ that places the students as active co‐producers of their learning.The study reflects on the centrality of project centred learning in art and design and explores the challenges concerning the nature and scope of the art and design lecturers' role, particularly in the context of the UK's increased student fee regime.

The tuition fee ‘shock’: Analysing the response of firstyear students to a spatially discontinuous policy change in Germany

AbstractUsing the introduction of tuition fees at German public universities as an exogenous shock, this paper investigates its causal impact on the enrolment and migration decision of high‐school graduates. Specifically, we conduct a quasi‐experimental analysis by exploiting the spatial and temporal variation in tuition fee regimes as a result of a Federal Constitutional Court decision. Our empirical results show that the introduction of tuition fees had a particular impact on student migration. We observe three effects: first, male students show a stronger migration response compared to female students. Second, changes in migration behaviour are sensitive to geographical distance. Finally, comparing different types of higher education institutions, we find that the migration effect is larger for universities compared to technical colleges and colleges of arts or music.

European Union’s Public Fishing Access Agreements in Developing Countries

The imperative to increase seafood supply while dealing with its overfished local stocks has pushed the European Union (EU) and its Member States to fish in the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries through various types of fishing agreements for decades. Although European public fishing agreements are commented on regularly and considered to be transparent, this is the first global and historical study on the fee regime that governs them. We find that the EU has subsidized these agreements at an average of 75% of their cost (financial contribution agreed upon in the agreements), while private European business interests paid the equivalent of 1.5% of the value of the fish that was eventually landed. This raises questions of fisheries benefit-sharing and resource-use equity that the EU has the potential to address during the nearly completed reform of its Common Fisheries Policy.

Upfront versus rating contingent fees: Implications for rating quality

This paper theoretically investigates whether compensating a credit rating agency (CRA) with an upfront fee, rather than a rating contingent fee, can improve rating quality. I show that an upfront fee delivers the same rating quality as the rating contingent fee if the CRA sets its rating policy before the issuer solicits a rating, whereas it can potentially improve quality if the rating policy is set only after a rating is solicited. These results suggest that the “Franken Amendment” that has been removed from the Dodd-Frank Act might be crucial for the proposed upfront fee regime to improve rating quality.

“I’d be expecting caviar in lectures”: the impact of the new fee regime on undergraduate students’ expectations of Higher Education

The introduction of the new tuition fee regime in the UK has resulted in growing concerns about the impact on students’ expectations of their university experiences (e.g. Jones in Perspectives 14(2):44–48, 2010). This is coupled with reports from those such as the OIA (Office of the Independent Adjudicator (2012) Annual Report. Accessed on July 22, 2013. Retrieved from, http://oiahe.org.uk/media/88650/oia-annual-report-2012.pdf) which detailed the rise in the number of student complaints year on year. The current study explored undergraduate psychology students’ (N = 62) expectations and derived experiences of Higher Education through a series of focus groups. In particular, a focus on students’ perceptions of level of support, contact time, and resources were explored. These were undertaken both before (n = 21) and after (n = 41) the introduction of the fee rise, to provide a cross-sectional comparison of the potential changes. Thematic analysis of the narratives indicated minimal support for the idea that increased tuition fees had heightened expectations in Higher Education. Additionally, although there were some discrepancies between students’ expectations and experiences, particularly in relation to level of support and contact time, this did not have a detrimental impact on satisfaction of their University experiences. This was related to the fact that these experiences exceeded their original expectations. One noteworthy finding however, suggested that higher tuition fees were related to greater expectations of graduate employability. The implications of this are discussed, as well as the implications of student satisfaction (using models such as the Student Satisfaction Index Model; Zhang et al. in Int J Bus Manag 3(9):46–51, 2008), for institutional policies of recruitment and retention.

Examining the potential impact of full tuition fees on mature part-time students in English higher education

This paper examines current part-time mature learners’ views on the potential impact upon future students as full fees are introduced from 2012. It investigates the problems which part-time mature learners may face with the advent of student loans and subsequent debt, given that they are usually combining complex lives with their studies, with less time to repay any loan in their working lifetime. Despite government rhetoric about the need to increase participants from these groups, most advice and guidance has focused on the traditional full-time market, with little being done to investigate the views of part-time mature learners or to provide appropriate support for them from 2012 onwards.The views have been gathered through focus group discussions with students in a traditional English university and four of its further education partner colleges via online forums. Resultant data have been analysed to look at emerging themes, which can be summarised as: relief that the respondents had avoided the new fee regime; lack of understanding about current funding; fear that their families would suffer and taking a loan would somehow be a ‘selfish’ strategy; fear that graduate employment would still elude them; fear that their age would mean that they would never be able to repay the debt; a perception that the new regime would generate ‘extra’ money for universities which would be reflected in increased contact hours and wariness about the generous repayment terms currently offered because a change of government could signal new policies and processes.