Michael Giberson From Newsday: Two Nassau County legislators Thursday called on the State Senate to join the Assembly in extending the ban on zone pricing for gasoline, which they said unfairly charges more in well-to-do communities than in those less so. For readers not up on their New York geography, Nassau County is the portion …
Michael Giberson The Dallas Morning News has published an in-depth story detailing the apparent lack of effort put into consumer protection issues in the restructured retail power market in Texas. The story focuses on the prepaid end of the business, which mostly services customers lacking established credit and unable to post a deposit. Rates tend …
Is Consumer Protection Lacking in Texas Retail Electric Power Market? Read More »
Michael Giberson At least some retail gasoline consumers in New York expected that the zone pricing ban implemented last year would tend to equalize retail gasoline prices in an area. Rochester TV station WHEC discovers that a year after the law was signed by the governor, and about 10 months after the zone pricing law …
New York’s Zone Pricing Ban Not Eliminating Retail Gasoline Price Differences Read More »
Michael Giberson The post title was extracted from the conclusion of Henry Neilson’s article, “Price gouging versus price reduction in retail gasoline markets during Hurricane Rita” (Economic Letters, October 2009), but I’m not sure the evidence supports the conclusion of altruism. Neilson collected gasoline price data in the Byran-College Station, Texas, area for several weeks …
“Gas Station Owners Were Surprisingly Altruistic During That Time of Crisis” Read More »
Lynne Kiesling From a good article in today’s New York Times: 2009 is turning out to be a bumper year for new oil discoveries; new oil discoveries always occur, but this year has been unusually fruitful. This quote from the article illustrates the important dynamic intertemporal incentives that price signals provide: These discoveries, spanning five …
Price Signals and Free Markets Lead to Oil Exploration: Who’d a Thunk It? Read More »
Michael Giberson From a reliability perspective, the crucial aspect of the real-time wholesale prices is that they result from the security-constrained economic dispatch, which is based on a real-time assessment of grid capabilities. Experience has shown that market prices work best to support reliability when prices are locational, because locational prices that are consistent with …
Power Prices Work Best to Support Reliability when Prices Are Locational Read More »
Michael Giberson From Walmart’s contribution to a complaint against PJM filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday: Demand response initiatives can originate with a utility program, an ISO or RTO program, or by the customer for different reasons. Walmart has been one of the pioneers of demand response in addition to being a …
Walmart Says Iso Power Markets Offer Best Programs for Supporting Demand Response Read More »
Michael Giberson A Reuters story on an ethanol techology advancement is titled, “UK technology could turn U.S. ethanol industry green.” The essence of the process is a composting bacteria that can take distillers’ grain, a by-product of ethanol production, and extract more ethanol from it. Because the process works while the distillers’ grain is still …
Will Ethanol Become an Environmentally-friendly Fuel Some Day? Read More »
Michael Giberson From Columbia, South Carolina’s The State newspaper, more evidence of the predictable effects of anti-price gouging laws: A day after drivers began a panic-buying run on gas, S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster invoked the state’s price-gouging law with fines up to $1,000 per offense and up to 30 days in jail. Hotlines were …
Retail Gasoline Stations Shutting Down to Avoid Price Gouging Complaints Read More »
Michael Giberson Will the CFTC regulatory actions increase the market power of OPEC? As OPEC prepares to meet this evening in Vienna, the usual pre-meeting chatter arises: what will they do? what should they do? does it matter what they do? This time around, though, interest in whether the CFTC’s actions may enhance OPEC power. …
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