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U.S. airlines have lost nearly $60 billion (2009 dollars) in domestic markets since deregulation, most of it in the last decade. More than 30 years after domestic airline markets were deregulated, the dismal financial record is a puzzle that challenges the economics of deregulation. I examine...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012461914
Human activity has disrupted the natural balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and is causing climate change. Burning fossil fuels and deforestation result directly in about 9 gigatons of carbon (GtC) emissions per year against the backdrop of the natural carbon flux -- emission and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462552
Utility regulators frequently focus as much or more on the distributional impact of electric rate structures as on their efficiency. The goal of protecting low-income consumers has become more central with recent increases in wholesale power costs and anticipation of significant costs of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462829
One of the most critical concerns that customers have voiced in the debate over real-time retail electricity pricing is that they would be exposed to risk from fluctuations in their electricity cost. The concern seems to be that a customer could find itself consuming a large quantity of power on...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012466141
Adoption of real-time electricity pricing -- retail prices that vary hourly to reflect changing wholesale prices -- removes existing cross-subsidies to those customers that consume disproportionately more when wholesale prices are highest. If their losses are substantial, these customers are...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467083
A number of recent antitrust lawsuits have been settled with discount contracts in which the defendants agree in the future to sell to the plaintiffs at a discount off of the price they offer to other buyers. Economists often object to such settlements, arguing that the sellers will partially or...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012473802
With dramatic declines in the cost of solar PV technology over the last 5 years, the electricity industry is in the midst of discussions about whether to use this low-polluting renewable energy source in grid-scale generation or in distributed generation (DG), mostly with rooftop solar PV....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012457326
Improving the efficiency with which we use energy is often said to be the most cost-effective way to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, such improvements usually lower the cost of using energy-intensive goods and may create wealth from the energy savings, both of which lead to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012459618
While time-varying retail electricity pricing is very popular with economists, that support is not matched among regulators and consumers. Many papers have been written estimating and extolling the societal benefits of time-varying rates -- especially dynamic rates that change on a day's notice...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460622
Generating electricity from renewable sources is more expensive than conventional approaches, but reduces pollution externalities. Analyzing the tradeoff is much more challenging than often presumed, because the value of electricity is extremely dependent on the time and location at which it is...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460962