Electricity market development in Vietnam: Historical trends and future outlooks

This study discusses electricity market development in Vietnam, focusing on key achievements and future possibilities. The empirical analysis involves the construction of ESSI, a composite indicator for the security of the electricity supply for Vietnam. Specifically, principal component analysis (PCA) is performed based on eight normalized variables representing four aspects of electricity security. ESSI trends for Vietnam and other ASEAN+6 countries are reviewed and compared during the 1996–2019 period. This research finds that, except for Brunei, the ESSIs of the ASEAN+6 have been on the rise. The findings are robust to different normalization techniques. Policy implications are then offered.     

Optimal policies for electromobility: Joint assessment of transport and electricity distribution costs in Norway

This paper develops a stylized economic model for passenger transport in the greater Oslo area, in which the agents' choices of car ownership, transport pattern, and electric vehicle (EV) charging are jointly determined. If enough EVs charge during peak hours, costly grid expansions may be needed. We examine how the distribution system operators can mitigate these costs with different pricing schemes and how this, in turn, affects the transport market equilibrium. We find that applying tariffs differentiated between peak and off-peak periods will help strike a better balance between grid investment costs and EV-owners’ disutility of charging during off-peak hours.     

A better deal for consumers and an attractive environment for investors: The regulators' perspective on the development and use of regulatory and competition powers

This paper provides a perspective from two economic regulators on the way in which economic regulation in the UK has developed over time. Regulation has delivered great benefits, but its development has been at odds with expectations at the time of privatisation. In particular, effective competition has not caused regulation to ‘wither on the vine’, and be replaced with ‘normal markets’, subject to ex post interventions through competition law. This is not because of the (in)action of ‘lazy old regulators’ or because of any regulatory capture, but instead reflects the complexities of regulated sectors, their underlying economics, market structure, conduct and technology, as well as in the legislative and policy framework. Regulators can and do use competition law tools and we recognise that it is important for the health of the regime as a whole that we do. But where markets are being opened to competition the ex ante regulatory tool kit is important. And even where competition exists it may still be the case that ex ante regulatory tools provide surer, quicker benefits for consumers, and an important mechanism for securing much needed new investment. That said, it is important that we continue to make the case for economic regulation, and it is important that the regime should continue to adapt and evolve. We conclude by setting out how the formation of the UK Regulators' Network will help in doing this.     

Independent regulation of government-owned monopolies: An oxymoron? The case of electricity distribution in Australia

The network component of household electricity bills served by government-owned network service providers in Australia more than doubled between 2007 and 2013. Their regulated assets and profits more than tripled over this period. These outcomes have been delivered under a similar system of price cap regulation that has delivered quite different outcomes in Great Britain, and in Victoria (Australia) to the privately owned network service providers in that state. We conclude that changes in operating conditions, demand, customer numbers or reliability do not explain this. Rather we find that government ownership has undermined the authority and independence of economic regulation. The Australian experience in the regulation of government-owned electricity distributors casts doubt on the assumption that regulation can be entirely independent of government ownership, or would operate in the same way as for an entity in private ownership.     

The Brazilian electricity market architecture: An analysis of instruments and misalignments

Brazil's current electricity market design heavily relies on auctions, long-term contracts, and central coordination mechanisms. Combining these instruments has proved to be effective in ensuring resource adequacy, a key policy objective. However, the implications of the dominance of the centrally coordinated auctions for long-term contracts are worth examining. This paper argues that the current market architecture may not represent the optimum long-term solution for a sustainable market as it ignores consumer preferences to drive investment decisions, transfers risks to consumers, has made the short-term market less relevant, and suffers from regulatory and design complexities.     

谈我国房地产交易市场的现状与发展对策

介绍了国内房地产市场的发展情况,从规范房地产市场行为、对房地产市场进行科学化管理、提高房地产市场从业人员的素质等几方面论述了加快房地产业发展的对策,指出加强和规范房地产市场,使人民群众满意,社会和谐,安居乐业,是房地产市场健康发展的根本保证。     

The regulatory experience of Italy and the United States with dedicated incentives for strategic electricity transmission investment

There is a trend in regulatory practice towards providing dedicated incentives for strategic investments. Italy and the United States have the longest experience with authorizing returns and risk-mitigating incentives that deviate from standard regulatory treatment for policy purposes. In these countries, the regulatory incentives are based on a case-by-case assessment of capital projects. We find that the Italian scheme is simpler, which reduces administrative costs. The U.S. scheme is more advanced in the case-by-case assessment. Even though dedicated incentives may be controversial, our analysis of both experiences shows that, notwithstanding significant learning costs, both schemes have facilitated substantial financial investment in strategically important infrastructure.     

Design of regional flexibility markets for electricity: A product classification framework for and application to German pilot projects

With the growing role of distributed energy resources, the electricity network is challenged by numerous technical problems, such as capacity congestion and over- or under-voltage. An often-discussed response, especially in the European zonal electricity system, is to implement regional flexibility markets. We contribute to this discussion by providing a comprehensive classification framework for the design of flexibility products by combining technical requirements with classical auction theory. The framework structures 23 product parameters in four stages of abstraction. By applying the framework to five market approaches used in current German research projects, we demonstrate its usefulness for consistent comparison of flexibility products at a high level of detail. This framework can empower national and international policymakers and practitioners in assessing flexibility markets holistically, thereby facilitating the implementation of sound solutions.     

The market (in-)stability reserve for EU carbon emission trading: Why it might fail and how to improve it

The EU parliament has accepted a proposal of the EU commission on the backloading of EU emission allowances (EUA), where the auctioning of EUAs is postponed to future time periods. The EU commission has also proposed a market stability reserve (MSR), which is a quantity-based stabilisation policy that is aimed at controlling the volume of EUAs in circulation.Using an agent-based electricity market simulation with endogenous investment and a CO₂ market (including banking), we analyse the backloading reform and the proposed MSR. We find backloading to only have a short-term impact of CO₂ prices; regardless, there is a significant risk of high CO₂ prices and volatility in the EU ETS.Our simulations indicate that the triggers of the proposed MSR appear to be set too low for the hedging need of power producers, effectively leading to a stricter cap in its initial 10–15 years of operation. While the current proposal may be improved by choosing different triggers, a reserve that is based on volume triggers is likely to increase price volatility, contrary to its purpose. Additional problems are the two-year delay in the response time and the abruptness of the response function, combined with the difficulty of estimating future hedging behaviour.     

Unintended consequences of regulatory reporting requirements for small and medium size construction entities: Australian evidence

The Queensland Building Services Authority (QBSA) regulates the construction industry in Queensland, Australia, with licensing requirements creating differential financial reporting obligations, depending on firm size. Economic theories of regulation and behaviour provide a framework for investigating effects of the financial constraints and financial reporting requirements imposed by QBSA licensing. Data are analysed for all small and medium construction entities operating in Queensland between 2001 and 2006. Findings suggesting that construction licensees are categorizing themselves as smaller to avoid the more onerous and costly financial reporting of higher licensee categories are consistent with US findings from the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulation which created incentives for small firms to stay small to avoid the costs of compliance with more onerous financial reporting requirements. Such behaviour can have the undesirable economic consequences of adversely affecting employment, investment, wealth creation and financial stability. Insights and implications from the analysed QBSA processes are important for future policy reform and design, and useful to be considered where similar regulatory approaches are planned.     

The political economy of renewable energy policies in Germany and the EU

In this paper, we employ a public choice perspective to analyze the development of policies for renewable energy sources (RES) in the EU in general and in Germany more specifically. In doing so, we explain the main characteristics of current RES policies by reference to the self-interest driven motivations of voters, stakeholders and political actors. One important puzzle, which we address, is the following: How could effective RES-policies be introduced against the political opposition of fossil-fuel interest groups in the past? Via analyzing the German example in more detail, we show how over time a self-reinforcing interplay of ideological and financial RES support has emerged. Moreover, we argue that observed specific design choices for RES policies in Germany, such as largely riskless remuneration schemes and high degrees of technology differentiation, as well as decentralized decision-making across EU Member States, can be traced back to politicians' need to balance a variety of partly opposing interests. A major benefit of the presented analysis is that it provides a realistic assessment of the challenges for RES policy reform – any reform effort critically depends on its ability to balance stakeholder interests.     

The nexus between information technology and environmental pollution: Application of a new machine learning algorithm to OECD countries

This paper examines the linkages among Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) penetration, electricity consumption, economic growth, urbanization, and environmental pollution for 25 OECD countries over the 1990–2017 period. We first conduct several panel data analyses and then write and apply a new Machine Learning (ML) algorithm. Empirical findings show that ICT usage enhances economic growth, and it is also a crucial driver of electricity consumption, which, in turn, translates into polluting emissions. The ML results highlight internet usage emerges as a substantial CO₂ emissions-enabler, thus corroborating our panel data findings. Potential policy measures are discussed.     

The impact of renewable energy on household electricity prices in liberalized electricity markets: A cross-national panel data analysis

The main research questions addressed in this paper are: first, have electricity market reforms achieved lower household electricity prices and, second, has the introduction of renewable energy increased household electricity prices in deregulated markets Answers to the questions were derived using static and dynamic panel data analysis from 1991 to 2014 employing explanatory variables such as the extent of electricity market reform and the share of generation from renewable energy resources. The dynamic model suggests that a lower household electricity price is associated with the degree of electricity market reform, while the share of renewable energy in electricity generation is not statistically significant.     

Positive Planning in Australia: A Review of Historical and Emergent Rationales

The role of public land agencies in Australia has ebbed and flowed over the past few decades broadly reflecting political cycles. Initially, in the early 1970s, the Land Commission Program (LCP) was established under the Whitlam government on a rationale with two broad bases: to create more efficient and fairer land markets; and to produce higher quality design outcomes. At the end of the Whitlam era—partly resulting from objections from the private sector, government-sponsored critiques of the land program and the ideologies of conservative governments—the influence of government in land development was substantially reduced. Today, although the variety of activities of public land developers is considerably wider, there remains significant scope for increased government involvement in land development, based on the emergence of new imperatives arising from complex shifts in social conditions, community preferences and scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the imperatives that led to the establishment of the LCP in 1972 are still relevant today.     

Urban growth,transportation and the spatial dimension of the labour market: A note

Recently, Duranton and Turner estimated the impact of interstate highways on the average growth of US cities between 1983 and 2003. By estimating a structural model, one of their striking points is that increasing a city's initial stock of highways by 10 per cent leads to a 1.5 per cent positive respond of the city's employment over the sample period. This note mainly argues that their investigation leaves out potential spillovers of labour input from neighbouring growth centres/cities in the steady‐state directly implied by the open city assumption. More specifically, this contribution readily extends Duranton and Turner's work by a general equilibrium effect induced by the urban system's labour market fluctuations which is a direct consequence of the open city assumption.     

A Decade of Transit Oriented Development Policies in Brisbane,Australia: Development and Land-Use Impacts

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) involves intense, mixed development around transit nodes. This article investigates the extent to which TOD policies have become reality in Brisbane, a city of two million in eastern Australia, which has embraced TOD at a policy level. It also aims to present a straightforward method which cities in Australia and internationally can employ to measure the outcomes of their TOD policies. Through GIS analysis, the authors measure the level of concentration of population, dwellings, and jobs in rail-based TOD nodes—as opposed to areas that are unserved by the train network. The results do not support the notion that Brisbane is a transit-oriented city. Nonetheless, there is a moderate trend toward the concentration of people and dwellings in TOD areas. The planning sector could accelerate this trend through policy measures.     

The political economy of margin squeeze liability in the Turkish telecommunications market: A comparative assessment

This paper studies the increasing importance of margin squeeze issue in the Turkish telecommunications market with a comparative assessment. Recent literature does not provide enough insight into the political economy of margin squeeze. The ideological background of the countries dominates their margin squeeze policies. The socialist experience and ordoliberal ideologies affect European Union (EU)’s margin squeeze policy. The EU policy leads to endorse margin squeeze as a standalone liability and it becomes relevant to the regulation and competition law. Turkey is one of the follower of the EU policy. However, the EU margin squeeze size does not fit to Turkey. The EU perspective is not an appropriate politically because it leads to the risk of conflict of authority. This risk has not existed yet in the EU because the EU has a supranational structure that allows the EU Commission to act as a central planner. However, the risk of conflict of authority is politically significant because Turkey is a nation state that does not allow the administrative authorities to act as a central planner. The EU margin squeeze policy is also not suitable for Turkey in terms of economics. Since, the EU approach leads to waste of resources. On the other hand, United States (US) courts endorse margin squeeze as a regulatory instrument and irrelevant to the imposition of antitrust law. The US practice seems to be more suitable for Turkey because it eliminates the risk of conflict of authority and waste of resources. The new Turkish regulatory framework on margin squeeze is more compatible with the US practices. Although the Turkish practice has formed under the influence of the Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Teliasonera cases, new margin squeeze regulation allows to follow the Linkline and Trinko decisions to ensure consumer welfare rather than competitors’ profitability.     

Heterogeneous analysis of energy consumption,financial development,and pollution in Africa: The relevance of regulatory quality

The need to examine the effects of energy and financial development on pollution reduction via the channel of regulation necessitates this study. The study analyses data from 18 African nations between 1996 and 2017 using the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) approach. We employ panel data from energy use, regulatory quality, financial development, investment, trade, urbanisation, and CO2 emissions. Empirical findings show that energy use negatively but insignificantly impacts pollution over the short run while positively and significantly in the long run. For financial development, the impact is positive in the short run and negative in the long run. Most strikingly, regulatory quality exerts a negative and significant impact on pollution in both the short and long terms, while its interactive effects with energy use and financial development may significantly reduce short-run and long-run pollution. The study is original by examining the mediating role of regulatory quality in the effects of energy and financial development on pollution, with findings confirming regulatory quality as a crucial channel for enhancing the capacity of both sectors in improving Africa's environmental pollution.     

The challenge of change for innovation in construction: A North Cyprus perspective

A vision of change for innovation within the perspective of revaluing the construction industry is essential to develop a culture of self-sustaining improvement, mutual recognition, respect and support in the long term in North Cyprus. The research attempts to put forward a case for a restructuring of the construction sector in order to deliver a step in change in quality of output and to realise maximum value to all clients, stakeholders and end users. The main objective of this study is to (1) determine current innovation practices and identify key issues that contribute to successful implementation (2) assess the existence and severity of barriers to change for innovation (3) propose solutions for overcoming barriers to change for innovation in construction industry and develop a framework to revaluate the construction industry. The research includes an extensive literature study, interviews with managers on the challenge of change for innovation in construction, analysis of this information to develop findings, and extending these to present the key strategic issues that could be targeted for revaluing the construction industry. The paper commences on understanding the firms’ own processes and detecting their weaknesses and strengths, determining the strategies and actions that should be made in the short term to adopt innovation practices and helping the North Cyprus construction industry to learn as a whole. The paper concludes how the drivers of change for innovation can offer benefits to construction firms in North Cyprus if appropriate strategies are adopted.     

The selection of effective retrofit scenarios for panel houses in urban neighborhoods based on expected energy savings and increase in market value: The Vilnius case

Some of the problems associated with assessing the retrofit effectiveness of apartment buildings in urban areas are considered. The retrofit of houses should be followed by the amelioration of their surroundings. The priority order of districts to be renovated depends on the condition of the buildings in a district and on strategic urban development programmes. In order to determine the profitability of investments in housing retrofit, a number of retrofit scenarios should be developed. The authors of this paper offer a new approach to determining the retrofit effectiveness of houses based both on expected energy savings and the increase in market value of renovated buildings. In line with the proposed approach, retrofit scenarios for apartment buildings in Vilnius were developed, i.e. retrofit investment packages for various districts were prepared and arranged in the priority order for their application according to the method of geographical analysis suggested by the authors.