From time to time UK governments and their agencies have been concerned about the level of competion in the beer market, and, in particular, whether competition is sufficiently effective to ensure that, given the government tax take, prices are kept low in relation to costs.
The costs and effectiveness of two CO2 emission control policies in Japan
This study examines perspectives of different generating systems (nuclear, LNG, coal, oil, thermal power) in economic terms by extimating their generating costs at the plants commissioned in fiscal 1992 and those in fiscal 2000 from current and likely levels of unit construction cost, fuel price and other conditions.
Environmental regulation is defined as regulation undertaken to protect environmental standards. The precise objectives are, however, frequently far less clear, sometimes even to the regulator. Definition of precise objecives of the regulation is a crucial first step.
This paper integrates a simple model of the global economy with a model of the global climate in order to calculate the associated evolution of global warming over the very long term. It includes both a brief non technical overview of the model and a detailed description of the model.
Energy prices are a much favoured target of public policy, subject to price controls in franchised monopoly markets, with a levy applied to electricity generated from fossil-fuel generating sets passed over to the operators of nuclear power stations.
The paper starts with a reinterpretation of the debate between Janos Kornai and Stanislaw Gomulka on causes of shortages in the Soviet-type economies (STEs). The paper discusses both economic and political aspects of control of firms’ finances and shows that the solution of the agency problem by regulation alone must lead to very disappointing results.
The aim of this paper is to examine how the completion of the single market, subsidiarity, and transparency and efficiency have influenced the major changes to the Commission’s competition policy that have taken place over the last few years, and in particular in 1992.
This paper sets out results from work in progress on the issue of tariff structures for access to, and use of, network facilities. Starting from a simple version of the notional path approach, it is argued that it is relatively straightforward to extend the method so as to incorporate genuine network features into the resulting tariff structures. The resulting approach is called least-cost notional flow analysis. The generalisation leads naturally to a tariff structure based on entry and exit charges. It also offers a framework in which conflicting objectives – such as cost reflectivitiy, cost recovery, spatial averaging of prices, ease of monitoring, etc. — can be traded-off in a relatively transparent way.
Three papers based upon presentations at a seminar held at Hertford College, Oxford in February 1992. The presentations were intended to offer rather different perspectives on gas regulation.