1,721,068 research outputs found
Essays on the Italian electricity market
Get PDFThe thesis is a collection of three empirical essays focussing on the Italian electricity market. The first chapter, titled “Assessing market power in the Italian electricity market: a synthetic supply approach”, is a joint work with Prof. Luigi Grossi and Prof. Michael. G. Pollitt and was published among the Energy Policy Research Group Working Papers (no. 1930). This chapter investigates the bidding behaviour of the leading firms in the Italian electricity market, in particular on the Italian day-ahead market. The methodology adopted is synthetic supply, proposed by Ciarreta et al (2010), which consists in a two-step procedure, i.e. 1) power plants association and 2) hourly bidding schedule “translation”. Thanks to synthetic supply it is possible to create hourly counterfactual supply curves and see if there are differences between actual and synthetic equilibria. In other words, the idea is to investigate the difference in mark-up between the bidding schedules of power plants with very similar features. For this reason, power plants were associated with very strict criteria: technology, energy efficiency and many others. Furthermore, an algorithm in R was developed to compute hourly equilibria in the day-ahead market. This way, it is possible to assess if there are any differences between the bidding behaviour of the leading operators and the bidding behaviour of smaller generators. The findings suggest that during the years under examination (2015-2018), the market underwent higher prices and a non-negligible consumer surplus loss, especially during the months when above average heating and cooling were required. The second chapter, titled “Detecting strategic capacity withholding through a synthetic supply approach - Cui Prodest?”, puts forward a new methodology in the field of market monitoring. The methodology of synthetic supply and the R code are employed. However, the way synthetic supply is used in this chapter is completely new. A four-step procedure is proposed to investigate strategic capacity withholding, i.e. 1) hourly supply curves are created and extra capacity is artificially added to the supply schedule, 2) synthetic and actual prices are compared and anomalous price spikes detected, 3) synthetic and actual revenues are compared, to see if any market operator could have obtained more revenues from a scenario where some capacity was withheld, 4) the SSCW index is proposed to better interpret the results. The chapter carries out an empirical analysis of the Italian day-ahead market in 2018. This approach is a significant contribution to the literature because it enables the analysis of manipulative behaviour with a different perspective compared to the methodology currently available. The third chapter, titled “Covid-19 and the Italian electricity market: impacts, developments and implications”, investigates the effects of the restrictive measures employed by the Italian Government in response to Covid-19 on the Italian electricity market. This chapter presents a data description of the main market variables of the electricity market and uses an econometric model to estimate the effects of geographical and production lockdowns on the zonal quantities purchased and on the PUN (nationwide unit price). Data suggests that both quantity purchased, and prices were affected by the lockdowns, especially in the bidding areas of Northern Italy. The bidding zones of Southern Italy seem to be considerably less affected by restrictive measures. This is also confirmed by the econometric model. In addition, fall in demand led to a smaller quantity purchased, compared to the corresponding weeks in previous years, leading to substantial changes in the mix of energy sources. This chapter proposes a complete description of the evolution of the electricity market during the pandemic and provides useful policy recommendations on how financial resources should be allocated to relieve the Italian economy
Demand-side management strategies and the residential sector: lessons from the international experience
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Tools and policies to promote decarbonization of the electricity sector
No full textThis chaptersummarisesboth marketand non-market-basedpolicies andtoolsavailable forencouragingdecarbonisationof the electricity sector.Market-based policiesinclude carbon pricing, through a carbon tax on electricity generation or a cap-and-trade program on emissions, and second-best tradable standards, which include emissions intensity standards, clean energy standards, and renewable portfolio standards.Popular non-market, technology-specific policymechanismsdiscussed include targeting specific technologies through subsidies, or discouraging the use of dirtier resources, such as coal, through a mandated phase-out. Policy options for encouraging energy efficiency in the power sector to reduce emissions are also explored.Policies that price carbon are more economically efficient than other, particularly non-market policies but can be politically challenging.Since multiple policies are often used simultaneously, interactions between these various market and non-marketpoliciesare discussed. Examples are drawn from experiences in several countries, including parts of Europe, the US, Asia, and South America.</p
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