Electricity market design is evolving with the increase in electricity generated from renewable sources. The market system was originally designed for dispatchable fossil fuel electricity generation with high marginal costs rather than renewable electricity generation with nearly zero marginal costs and high upfront capital costs. When short term prices no longer cover long term investment costs, new market design is needed. An alternative is to increase interconnection to facilitate increased trade between markets (Pollitt and Chyong, 2018). Economic theory would suggest that eliminating barriers to trade across a regional market will decrease consumer costs and producer profits in areas that increase imports, while increasing producer profits and consumer costs in areas that increase exports (Dahlke, 2018). Trade through interconnectors can exploit differences in wind and sun conditions across regions and so reduce supply variability; higher shares of renewable electricity raises the value of market integration even further (Newbery et al., 2018). In this context, the EU has been progressively harmonizing national and regional electricity markets, to form a single market that includes more than 500 million people. The Multi-Regional Coupling organized through European power exchanges coordinates the clearing of day-ahead markets and determines day-ahead prices across the countries involved (Politico, 2018). In the 1996, 2003 and 2009 EU electricity directives, the development of integrated wholesale power markets across the continent was encouraged in order to incentivise market-driven investment in generation across Europe. The Internal Energy Market (IEM) in Europe provides for free trade across border and non-discrimination between internal and cross-border transactions. On October 1st 2018, Ireland was one of the final countries to integrate with this market due to the small isolated nature of this synchronous system which required additional precautions to put in place new market arrangements. The Irish electricity market has been a wholesale all-island market (including Northern Ireland, called the SEM) since 2007. The integration of the all-island electricity market with European electricity markets was expected to increase the use of the interconnector with Great Britain which should “deliver increased levels of competition which should help put a downward pressure on prices as well as encouraging greater levels of security of supply and transparency” (EirGrid, 2016). In addition to integration with Europe, other features were included in the new I-SEM market, such as changes to how energy is bought and sold; how generators are remunerated for availability; forward trading arrangements and market liquidity; market power controls; and the systems, policies and procedures that are required to operate the market (EirGrid, 2016). This has led to new balancing, capacity, and intraday markets that did not previously exist in the Irish market. With the integration of the Irish market, the IEM now comprises 20 countries, with 38 interconnectors and a total generating capacity of over 3,000 TW (EirGrid, 2016). The European Target model sets out the common rules and arrangements for market coupling in Europe. It includes a common price coupling algorithm for scheduling day-ahead markets and determining flows between geographic regions. The energy transactions involving sellers and buyers from different bidding zones are centrally collected to maximise the most efficient and effective trades. In theory, unless the network is congested, markets should converge to a single price. When the network is congested, prices diverge. The integration of the Irish electricity market with the IEM provides a natural experiment with which to test economic theory relating to the benefits of interconnection, regional electricity trade, and market rule changes for consumers,producers and markets. While there is an extensive literature on electricity market design and theory, it is rare to find empirical data such as this with which to test the theory. This integration is relatively recent, yet it provides an ideal opportunity to examine in detail several features over the period directly before and after the change. Ireland, as an isolated market. Ireland has been identified as a country at the forefront of market change due to the high share of renewable electricity and its isolated market (Polllitt and Chyong, 2018). It also serves as a good case study, as there are less confounding factors in an analysis of market design, compared with more geographically integrated countries.
The 24th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Manchester, United Kingdom, 26-29 June 2019
Modern electricity markets are characterized by increasing shares of intermittent production which has almost zero marginal costs. The effect of introducing large amounts of cheap power into the system is known as the merit order effect – a shift of a supply curve to the right which delivers lower equilibrium prices. The lower prices and the fact that fossil-fuel generators are used less often exacerbate adequacy problems – there is a threat that not enough generating capacity will be available in the system since generators´ revenues are low and investment needs are not met. This and the fact that energy markets are often capped in order to prevent market power leads to the so called “missing money problem” (Teirila and Ritz, 2018, Bublitz et al., 2019). One possible remedy is to supplement the energy only markets with capacity markets (Newbery, 2016; Cramton et al, 2013; Joskow, 2007). Recently the electricity market on the island of Ireland has been completely restructured, a change that affected also the capacity mechanism, transforming it from an administrative decision-based to a market-based mechanism, an auction. The move however has not been a smooth one, with a supply of Dublin put at risk as one of the main suppliers in the area wanted to withdraw from the market as a result of not being able to successfully secure the operation of its two units. Since Irish electricity demand is forecast to grow by between 15% and 47% over the next ten years, with over a quarter of all electricity consumed by data centres, many of which will be in the Dublin region (EirGrid, 2018a), the threat of losing one of the suppliers become even more serious. In this case study we show how even with considerable analysis and preparation, the introduction of an auction system is not without risk.
Using internet services over broadband connections may help some firms become more productive, generating more output from a given amount of labour and capital equipment. However, there is mixed evidence internationally about how large this benefit has been in practice and which types of firms are most likely to improve their productivity by using these technologies. In this research we examine the effects of broadband availability on the productivity of service sector firms.
The 24th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Manchester, United Kingdom, 26-29 June 2019
Despite the importance of self-regulation for school readiness and success across the lifespan, little is known about children’s conceptions of this important ability. Using mixed-method interviews, this research examined kindergarten children’s (n?=?57) perspectives on self-regulation in a disadvantaged area in Dublin, Ireland. Children depicted school as requiring regulation of their emotional, cognitive and behavioural responses. They characterised school as a dynamic setting, placing emphasis on the regulatory challenges of the outdoor environment. Children also described difficulties associated with navigating complex social interactions, often without assistance from external supports. The results inform strategies to support children’s emerging self-regulation abilities.
The 6th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists (WCERE 2018), Gothenburg, Sweden, 25-29 June 2018
Building on COM/ENV/EPOC/CTPA/CFA/RD(2018)1, this document presents a social cost-benefit analysis of reforms in the motor vehicle taxes in Ireland since 2008.
This paper examines the US airline industry in terms of the relationships between the three largest full service carriers, American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines, and the set of regional carriers that are contracted to provide feeder services to them. The evolution of the regional carriers and the full service carriers are compared and recorded and the current industry structure and size is described. The paper uses the full set of Official Airline Guide (OAG) schedules for 2017 to analyse the industry structure and scale, overlap and seasonality in service provision among the groups of carriers and to understand the network organisation and capacity deployment strategy of the largest network carriers in the US market. The analysis provides evidence to explain how the large airlines are improving their cost and financial performance as well as significantly improving their operational efficiency through the achievement of high overall load factors. The sophistication in each airline's schedule design and service delivery is highlighted.
The capacity to self-regulate is a key developmental ability that has become a focal point for research across multiple disciplines. Yet interdisciplinary collaboration on self-regulation is rare and the term is often applied in different ways across studies. Drawing on literature from psychology, medical sciences, sociology, and economics, this article provides a synthesis of disciplinary approaches to research on self-regulation. A review of search returns from one prominent database per discipline is used to investigate overlap and divergence on the topic. This review argues that interdisciplinary collaboration has the potential to integrate perspectives on self-regulation into a more coherent body of work, resulting in advances that could not be achieved through any one discipline alone. The review also identifies and discusses three current impediments to collaboration: terminology, measurement, and disciplinary conventions.
This squib supports Kyle Johnson’s contention that ellipsis is not involved in gapping. However, I note several problems with his specific proposal, suggesting across-the-board movement is not the way to go either. These problems have to do with the symmetric nature of coordination in gapping constructions, and with the nature of gapping in Dutch, where the proposed analysis can be shown not to work. I end by proposing an even more radical ellipsis-free analysis of gapping.
European countries have been required to formulate a national preference in relation to the EU Financial Transaction Tax. The two leading approaches to explaining how the financial sector makes its views felt in the political process – the structural power of the financial services sector based on potential disinvestment, and its instrumental power arising from direct political lobbying – fall short of providing a comprehensive account. The missing link is how and why policy-makers might be willing to adopt the priorities of key sectors of the financial services industry. We outline how two levels of ideational power might be at work in shaping outcomes, using Ireland as a case study. We argue firstly that background systems of shared knowledge that are institutionalized in policy networks generated broad ideational convergence between the financial sector and policymakers over the priorities of industrial policy in general. Secondly, and against that backdrop, debate over specific policy choices can leave room for a wider range of disagreement and indeed political and ideational contestation. Irish policymakers proved responsive to industry interests in the case of the FTT, but not for the reasons normally given. This work seeks to link literatures in two fields of inquiry. It poses questions for liberal intergovernmentalism in suggesting that the translation of structurally grounded material interests into national policy preferences is far from automatic, and argues that this is mediated by ideational considerations that are often under-estimated. It also contributes to our understanding of how constructivist explanations of policy outcomes work in practice, through a detailed case study of how material and ideational interests interact.
Future power systems with high penetrations of variable renewables will require increased levels of flexibility from generation and demand-side sources in order to maintain secure and stable operation. One potential flexibility source is large-scale energy storage, which can provide a variety of ancillary services across multiple time scales. In order for appropriate levels of investment to take place, and in order for existing assets to be utilized optimally, it is essential that market signals are present which encourage suitable levels of flexibility, either from storage or alternative sources. Suboptimal storage plant dispatch due to uncertainty and inefficient market incentives are represented as operational constraints on the storage plant, and the impact of these inefficiencies are highlighted. Thus, changes required in operational practices for storage plant at different installed wind capacity levels, and the challenges that private storage plant operators will face in generating appropriate bids in a market environment at high variable renewable penetrations are explored. The impacts on system generating costs and storage profits are explored under different plant operating assumptions.
The period leading up to 2008 was one of rapid growth in the Irish economy. After a long period of low growth, high unemployment and the accumulation of large public debts throughout the late seventies up to the mid-eighties, there was a sustained period of high growth from the late eighties until 2007, with average growth rates of over 6 per cent in this period. This is often referred to as the period of the 'Celtic Tiger'. Honohan and Walsh (2002) provide a good discussion of some of the main factors thought to be the causes of this boom and suggest that it can be seen as a period of catch-up as the Irish economy recovered from low growth rates associated with poor policy decisions and benefited from a set of other favourable factors. Some of these factors are: access to the single European market, an improvement in the industrial relations climate, favourable conditions for attracting inward foreign direct investment and an improved fiscal position. While Honohan and Walsh (2002) expected a slowdown in growth in the new millennium as the Irish economy converged towards full employment and levels of output per head close to those of its European neighbours, the period from 2000 to 2007 was one of continued economic growth. The nature of growth in this period meant that the Irish economy was particularly exposed to the 2008 financial crisis.
Conduct problems have been associated with poor language development, however the direction of this association in early childhood remains unclear. This study examined the longitudinal directional associations between conduct problems and expressive language ability. Children enrolled in the UK Millennium Cohort Study (N = 14, 004; 50.3 % boys) were assessed at 3 and 5 years of age. Parent reports of conduct problems and standardised assessments of expressive language were analyzed using cross-lagged modeling. Conduct problems at 3 years was associated with poorer expressive language at 5 years and poorer expressive language at 3 years was associated with increased conduct problems by 5 years. The results support reciprocal associations, rather than a specific unidirectional path, which is commonly found with samples of older children. The emergence of problems in either domain can thus negatively impact upon the other over time, albeit the effects were modest. Studies examining the effects of intervention targeting conduct problems and language acquisition prior to school entry may be warranted in testing the efficacy of prevention programmes related to conduct problems and poor language ability early in childhood.
The aim of this paper is to revise and correct the results obtained in Beladi et al. [Beladi, H., Chakrabarti, A., Marjit, S., 2010. Cross-border merger, vertical structure, and spatial competition. Economics Letters 109, 112-114]. Specifically, we prove that the Nash equilibrium locations of the downstream firms are the same in the pre-merger free-trade case as they are following a cross-border upstream merger.
Background: Early childhood is a crucial period for language development and building social skills. While distinct, these two processes may impact upon each other.Aims: The current study aimed to identify the directional associations between expressive language ability and prosocial behaviour between three and five years of age.Methods: Participants included 14, 004 children and their families enrolled in the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Children's expressive language and prosocial behaviour were assessed at three and five years of age utilizing standardized assessments and parent reports. Cross-lagged models were used for data analysis.Results: Better expressive language at three years was associated with increased prosocial behaviour by five years. No support for the inverse direction of association was found.Conclusions: Children's early ability to effectively express themselves with others may help in building better social relationships by entry into formal schooling. Programming efforts that are tailored towards enhancing positive behavioural growth and social skills in the toddler years are likely to be effective when expressive language is also a targeted component of the toddler's skill development.
The ethical dilemmas encountered in business are often complex and stressful, and the dilemmas analysed in this report raise issues common to boards across the globe. Although reference is made to a UK regulatory context, including the UK Corporate Governance Code, many of the regulatory principles are applicable in other jurisdictions. The dilemmas could therefore easily be used outside the UK by tailoring the context and discussion accordingly, thus helping to embed ethical values and thinking into the day-to-day work of company directors wherever they may be based.
Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of information and knowledge exchange and sharing between managers and non-executive directors is important in assessing the dynamic processes of accountability in boardrooms. By analysing information/knowledge at multiple levels, invoking the literature on implicit/tacit and explicit information/knowledge, the authors show that information asymmetry is a necessary condition for effective boards. The authors introduce a conceptual model of manager-non-executive director information asymmetry as an outcome of the interpretation of information/knowledge-sharing processes amongst board members. The model provides a more nuanced agenda of the management-board information asymmetry problem to enable a better understanding of the role of different types of information in practice.Design/methodology/approach– The analysis of information/knowledge exchange, sharing and creation and the resultant conceptual model are based on the following elements: manager-non-executive director information/knowledge, management-board information/knowledge and board dynamics and reciprocal processes converting implicit/tacit into explicit information/knowledge.Findings– The paper provides new insights into the dynamics of information/knowledge exchange, sharing and creation between managers and non-executive directors (individual level)/between management and boards (group level). The authors characterise this as a two-way process, back-and-forth between managers/executive directors and non-executive directors. The importance of relative/experienced “ignorance” of non-executive directors is revealed, which the authors term the “information asymmetry paradox”.Research limitations/implications– The authors set out key opportunities for developing a research agenda from the model based on prior research of knowledge conversion processes and how these may be applied in a boardroom setting.Practical implications– The model may assist directors in better understanding their roles and the division of labour between managers and non-executive directors from an information/knowledge perspective.Originality/value– The authors apply Ikujiro Nonaka’s knowledge conversion framework to consider the transitioning from individual implicit personal to explicit shared information/knowledge, to understand the subtle processes at play in boardrooms influencing information/knowledge exchange, sharing and creation between managers and non-executive directors.
Culture-led regeneration has long been recognised as a mechanism of re-branding declining urban areas by providing cultural infrastructure, such as museums, galleries and theatres. Whilst often lauded for its potential to economically regenerate cities, the model has shown to have a less positive impact on marginalised households and neighbourhoods. This article explores the utilisation of culture-led regeneration in three disadvantaged Irish social housing estates and finds that it did generate benefits, but not the economic ones predicted by the main authors in this field. Rather its benefits were primarily social – it helped to combat stigmatisation, build local capacity and improve community cohesion. Levels of community participation in cultural activities were very strong in two of the case study neighbourhoods, but much weaker in the third less generously resourced neighbourhood, which raises questions about the levels of investment needed to ensure success and the long-term sustainability of these programmes.
