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Rapidly increasing the proportion of installed wind power capacity with zero carbon emission characteristics will help adjust the energy structure and support the realization of carbon neutrality targets. The intermittency of wind resources and fluctuations in electricity demand has exacerbated the contradiction between power supply and demand. The time-of-use pricing and supply-side allocation of energy storage power stations will help “peak shaving and valley filling” and reduce the gap between power supply and demand. To this end, this paper constructs a decision-making model for the capacity investment of energy storage power stations under time-of-use pricing, which is intended to provide a reference for scientific decision-making on electricity prices and energy storage power station capacity.

Based on the research framework of time-of-use pricing, this paper constructs a profit-maximizing electricity price and capacity investment decision model of energy storage power station for flat pricing and time-of-use pricing respectively. In the process, this study considers the dual uncertain scenarios of intermittency of wind resources and random fluctuations in power demand.

(1) Investment in energy storage power stations is the optimal decision. Time-of-use pricing will reduce the optimal capacity of the energy storage power station. (2) The optimal capacity of the energy storage power station and optimal electricity price are related to factors such as the intermittency of wind resources, the unit investment cost, the price sensitivities of the demand, the proportion of time-of-use pricing and the thermal power price. (3) The carbon emission level is affected by the intermittency of wind resources, price sensitivities of the demand and the proportion of time-of-use pricing. Incentive policies can always reduce carbon emission levels.

This paper creatively introduced the research framework of time-of-use pricing into the capacity decision-making of energy storage power stations, and considering the influence of wind power intermittentness and power demand fluctuations, constructed the capacity investment decision model of energy storage power stations under different pricing methods, and compared the impact of pricing methods on optimal energy storage power station capacity and carbon emissions.

1. Electricity pricing and capacity of energy storage power stations in an uncertain electricity market.

2. Investment strategy of energy storage power stations on the supply side of wind power generators.

3. Impact of pricing method on the investment decisions of energy storage power stations.

4. Impact of pricing method, energy storage investment and incentive policies on carbon emissions.

5. A two-stage wind power supply chain including energy storage power stations.

Electricity pricing and capacity of energy storage power stations in an uncertain electricity market.

Investment strategy of energy storage power stations on the supply side of wind power generators.

Impact of pricing method on the investment decisions of energy storage power stations.

Impact of pricing method, energy storage investment and incentive policies on carbon emissions.

A two-stage wind power supply chain including energy storage power stations.

In less competitive markets, firms with market power are likely to exercise pricing power by setting output prices above their marginal cost, inducing welfare losses from resource misallocation, managerial inefficiency and market instability. In order to address such market imperfections, it is important for regulatory authorities to identify the sources of pricing power and devise policies to address their adverse effects. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to undertake an empirical analysis to identify the determinants of pricing power in the South African non-life insurance market.

The authors estimate the Lerner competitive index as the proxy for pricing power using annual data on 79 firms from 2007 to 2012. In the second stage, the paper employs panel regression techniques in the ordinary least squares, random effects and generalised method of moment’s estimations to examine the effect of insurer level characteristics on pricing power.

The authors find the market to be characterised by firms with high pricing power. Domestic-owned insurers are found to exercise high pricing power compared with foreign-owned insurers. The authors also identify size, cost efficiency, product line diversification, market concentration, leverage and reinsurance contracts as the significant predictors of pricing power in the market. Finally, through a quantile regression analysis, the authors find the effect of cost efficiency, business line diversification and reinsurance to be heterogeneous across different quantiles of pricing power.

The findings provide regulatory authorities with useful indicators in addressing anti-competitive behaviour in high pricing power to enhance the stability of the insurance market and improve consumer welfare and economic development.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is first paper to examine the determinants of pricing power and competitive behaviour in an insurance market.

In the hybrid electricity market consisting of renewable and conventional energy, the generation output of renewable power is uncertain because of its intermittency, and the power market demand is also fluctuant. Meanwhile, there is fierce competition among power producers in the power supply market and retailers in the demand market after deregulation, which increases the difficulty of renewable energy power grid-connection. To promote grid-connection of renewable energy power in the hybrid electricity market, the authors construct different contract decision-making models in the “many-to-many” hybrid power supply chain to explore the pricing strategy of renewable energy power grid-connecting.

Considering the dual-uncertainty of renewable energy power output and electricity market demand, the authors construct different decision-making models of wholesale price contract and revenue-sharing contract to compare and optimize grid-connecting pricing, respectively, to maximize the profits of different participants in the hybrid power supply chain. Besides, the authors set different parameters in the models to explore the influence of competition intensity, government subsidies, etc. on power pricing. Then, a numerical simulation is carried out, they verify the existence of the equilibrium solutions satisfying the supply chain coordination, compare the differences of pricing contracts and further analyze the variation characteristics of optimal contract parameters and their interaction relations.

Revenue-sharing contract can increase the quantity of green power grid-connection and realize benefits Pareto improvement of all parties in hybrid power supply chain. The competition intensity both of power supply and demand market will have an impact on the sharing ratio, and the increase of competition intensity results in a reduction of power supply chain coordination pressure. The power contract price, spot price and selling price have all been reduced with the increase of the sharing ratio, and the price of renewable power is more sensitive to the ratio change. The sharing ratio shows a downward trend with the increase of government green power subsidies.

On the basis of expanding the definition of hybrid power market and the theory of newsvendor model, considering the dual-uncertainty of green power generation output and electricity market demand, this paper builds and compares different contract decision-making models to study the grid-connection pricing strategy of renewable energy power. And as an extension of supply chain structure types and management, the authors build a “many-to-many” power supply chain structure model and analyze the impact of competition intensity among power enterprises and the government subsidy on the power grid-connecting pricing.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the development needs and opportunities in the distribution system operators’ (DSO) tariff structures in the smart-grid environment.

The impacts of the distribution pricing schemes for the stakeholders and their requirements for the tariff structures are evaluated by qualitative analyses. Furthermore, there is a case analysis concerning the practical development possibilities of the DSO tariff structures in Finland.

Major finding of the paper is that the demand-based power band tariff is the optimal solution for the DSO pricing structure, when taking into account the real-life limitations and the requirements of the stakeholders.

Outcomes of the paper can be applied in practice in design of the pricing schemes in the electricity distribution. Incentive provision impacts and cost reflectivity of the DSO tariffs can be improved by implementing the suggested pricing structure.

The paper provides a novel viewpoint on the study of the DSO tariff design by considering the impacts of the pricing for the stakeholders and their requirements for tariff structure. Furthermore, the real-life limitations in the tariff design have been taken into account by analyzing the development options in Finland. Results are useful, especially for the DSOs, regulators and academics, who are working with the tariff development issues.

The aim of the study is to provides a timely examination of the valuation effect of current initiatives to repeal LIFO by analyzing the valuation impact of the potential repeal of LIFO conditional on the pricing power of the firm.

Using the methodology from prior research for all LIFO companies, we use price levels regressions to empirically test the potential tax effect of LIFO’s repeal on the value of the firm. To evaluate the robustness of these results, we also use event study methodology to estimate abnormal returns around the House Bill H. R. 3970.

Results show a favorable (unfavorable) valuation effect for high (low) pricing power firms that are able (unable) to recover tax payments by reducing costs and/or charging higher prices. These findings are robust to alternative measures of valuation (price and returns), as well as long and short event windows and suggest that certain firms may be able to offset post-LIFO repeal increased tax payments by increasing sales-output prices and or decreasing cost-input prices.

The primary contribution of this paper is to provide relevant and new empirical evidence regarding the potential valuation effects of the currently proposed political and regulatory initiatives to abolish LIFO.

This is the first paper in a volume devoted exclusively to antitrust law and economics. It summarizes the other papers and addresses two issues. First, after showing that the federal courts generally view consumer welfare as the ultimate goal of antitrust law, it asks what they mean by that term. It concludes that recent decisions appear more likely to equate consumer welfare with the well-being of consumers in the relevant market than with economic efficiency. Second, it asks whether a buyer must possess monopsony power to induce a price discrimination that is not cost justified. It concludes that a buyer can often obtain an unjustified concession simply by wielding bargaining power, but the resulting concession may frequently – though not always – improve consumer welfare.

In the hybrid electricity market, renewable energy power generator faces the uncertainty of power market demand and the randomness of the renewable energy generation output. In order to improve the grid-connected quantity of green power, the purpose of this paper is to design the pricing mechanism for renewable energy power generator with revenue-sharing contract in a two-stage “multi-single” electricity supply chain which contains a single dominant power retailer and two kinds of power suppliers providing different power energy species.

Considering the dual uncertainties of renewable energy power output and power market demand, the authors design the full-cooperative contract decision-making model, wholesale price contract decision-making model and revenue-sharing contract decision-making model to compare and optimize grid-connected pricing in order to maximize profit of different parties in power supply chain. Then, this paper performs a numerical simulation, discusses the existence of the equilibrium analytical solutions to satisfy the supply chain coordination conditions and analyzes the optimal contract parameters’ variation characteristics and their interaction relationship.

The authors find that the expected profits of the parties in the hybrid power supply chain are concave about their decision variables in each decision-making mode. The revenue-sharing contract can realize the Pareto improvement for all parties’ interest of the supply chain, and promote the grid-connected quantity of green power effectively. The grid-connected price will reduce with the increase of revenue-sharing ratio, and this impact will be greater on the renewable energy power. The greater the competition intensity in power supply side, the smaller the revenue-sharing ratio from power purchaser. And for the same rangeability of competition intensity, the revenue-sharing ratio reduction of thermal power is less than that of the green power. The more the government subsidizing green power supplier, the smaller the retailer sharing revenue to it.

Facing with the dual uncertainties of green power output and market demand and the competition of thermal power in hybrid electricity market, this study can provide a path to solve the problem of renewable energy power grid-connecting. The results can help green power become competitive in hybrid power market under loose regulations. And this paper suggests that the government subsidy policy should be more tactical in order to implement a revenue-sharing contract of the power supply chain.

This paper studies the renewable energy electricity grid-connected pricing under the uncertainty of power supply and market demand, and compares different contract decision-making strategies in order to achieve the power supply chain coordination. The paper also analyzes the competition between thermal power and renewable energy power in hybrid electricity market.

Many companies lack insights or fact-based support for the pricing decisions they make in an increasingly complex environment. In order to optimize their pricing process, managers need to identify key indicators that may influence the performance of their decisions. The purpose of this paper is to report an investigation of pricing determinants in large companies manufacturing capital goods in France. First a conceptual framework is proposed, in order to fill several gaps identified in the literature on pricing practices and more precisely by operating a distinction between environmental variables (determinants), decision making (pricing strategy and price and product-line structures) and its consequence in terms of price level.

The author conducted an empirical research on the determinants of the pricing process. This study consistedof a questionnaire survey addressed to pricing managers (or executives in charge of pricing) in 98 of the largest manufacturing companies in France about their new-product pricing decision-making process.

The author studies environmental determinants and their influence on the pricing and describes the structure of pricing determinants as a five dimensions construct: market-based, value-based, position-based, competition-based and production-based. The results show that firms rely on environmental determinants as indicators of their pricing flexibility. These indicators operate as pricing levers: a good position on these variables gives firms more pricing power. But in the vast majority of the cases, companies extensively relied on competitive conditions instead of taking advantage of a favorable position, described as pricing myopia.

This paper describes current pricing practices in leading companies with key informants (mainly pricing managers) highly involved in the pricing decision process, and contrasts two pricing orientations, pricing power vs pricing myopia.

There is a distinct separation of price discovery from pricing power in China's sugar spot and futures markets. The purpose of this paper is to identify the reasons and provide plausible explanations for this stylized phenomenon. Therefore, the research may deepen the understandings of the operational mechanisms and internal efficiency of China's sugar spot and futures markets.

The authors analyze the historical spot and futures price time series from China's sugar spot market and China's Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange (CZCE) within a co‐integration framework.

It is found that China's sugar spot market has the pricing power, even though the futures market leads the spot market in price discovery. The phenomenon of observed separation of price discovery in spot market from pricing power in futures market may be caused by: irrational speculation in CZCE sugar futures market; oligopoly and local government politics; or the operational efficiency of the wholesale spot market, especially for its comparative advantages of information accessibility in the sugar producing areas. The results are compared with other empirical findings in many other commodities markets to obtain deeper understandings.

The paper uncovers and provides the earliest econometric evidence of the observed stylized phenomenon and also provides plausible explanations for this phenomenon.