OIL AS AN ENERGY PROPELLER, IS THE LARGEST INTERNATIONALLY TRADED COMMODITY THAT SHOWS HIGHLY VISIBLE INTERPLAY OF POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN THE DETERMINATION OF ITS INVESTMENT, PRODUCTION, TRADE AND PRICING POLICIES. THIS UNIQUENESS, NO DOUBT DEMANDS A WELL ARTICULATED OIL POLICY FOR AN OIL...

The paper presents univariate and panel unit root tests for gasoline and oil price convergence over the last decade. We test for the absolute versus relative version of the LOOP and estimate the speed of convergence as well as its development over time. Our results show that the absolute version...

The recent economic literature shows a new interest in the links between politics and economics. In this paper, we join Hibbs’ partisanship theory with the literature of fiscal policies international co- ordination. Furthermore, by considering a monetary union context, we also open a new angle...

We give the reader a tour of good energy optimization models that explicitly deal with uncertainty. The uncertainty usually stems from unpredictability of demand and/or prices of energy, or from resource availability and prices. Since most energy investments or operations involve irreversible...

For many economic problems standard statistical analysis, based on the notion of stationarity, is not adequate. These include modeling seasonal decisions of consumers, forecasting business cycles and - as we show in the present article - modeling wholesale power market prices. We apply standard...

In this paper we study simple time series models and assess their forecasting performance. In particular we calibrate ARMA and ARMAX (where the exogenous variable is the system load) processes. Models are tested on a time series of California power market system prices and loads from the period...

The value of a gas fired power depends on the spark spread, defined as the difference between the price of electricity and the cost of gas used for the generation of electricity. We model the spark spread using a two-factor model, allowing mean-reversion in short-term variations and uncertainty...

We address the issue of modeling spot electricity prices with regime switching models. After reviewing the stylized facts about power markets we propose and fit various models to spot prices from the Nordic power exchange. Afterwards we assess their performance by comparing simulated and market...

In this paper we study two statistical approaches to load forecasting. Both of them model electricity load as a sum of two components – a deterministic (representing seasonalities) and a stochastic (representing noise). They differ in the choice of the seasonality reduction method. Model A...

In this paper we propose a jump diffusion type model which recovers the main characteristics of electricity spot price dynamics, including seasonality, mean reversion, and spiky behavior. Calibration of the market price of risk allows for pricing of Asian-type options written on the spot...