Month: November 2023

Krisztina Katona (University of Technology Sydney) will present his paper on “Essays in electricity market design and semi-structural price modelling” on December 4th at 11:00 AM, room QA406.

Abstract:   

Electricity market designs across the world are complex, diverse and constantly evolving frameworks of policies, with multidisciplinary theoretical work underpinning them. The fast transforming landscape of the electricity sector driven by cutting-edge optimization theory and the global commitment to meet emission goals calls for re-evaluating existing electricity market designs and price models. This thesis contributes to this discussion. To start, the first essay describes the general features of electricity markets. The second essay delves into an in-depth review of the market design of Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM). This is followed by the third essay that presents a novel bid stack electricity price model that replaces the widely used exponential supply functions with hyperbolic ones to permit price negativity. Finally, focusing on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection (PJM) in the United States, the Balancing Market (BM) in Great Britain and the NEM in Australia, the fourth essay infers prices along the supply curves using largely the same optimization algorithms as the respective market operators do to assess the degree of supply monotonicity and compare welfare in these markets.

Marieke Pahlke  (Institute of Operations and Decision Sciences, Corvinus University) will present his paper on “Dynamic Consistency in Ambiguous Dutch Auctions” on November 27th at 11:00 AM, room QA406.

Abstract:   

We study a decreasing price auction with an ambiguity-neutral seller and two ambiguity-averse buyers. Due to the dynamic structure, buyers learn about the valuation of the opponent buyer during the auction. We characterize a belief formation process that allows buyers to consider their knowledge of the information structure. This process leads to a rectangular ex-ante belief set and implies dynamically consistent behavior. Then, we show that the seller can extract almost all surplus even if buyers behave dynamically consistently. Further, in our setting, buyers accept higher prices compared to a consistent planning approach.

Anastas Tenev  (Institute of Economics, Corvinus University) will present his paper on “Directed Reciprocity Subverts Altruism in Highly Adaptive Populations” on November 20th at 11:00 AM, room QA406.

Abstract:   

Directed reciprocity is generally considered to be a powerful driver for cooperation. Using extensive simulations within an established stylized framework, we test the strength of this relationship. We confirm that directed reciprocity boosts cooperation, but only in the case of relatively inert populations. For highly adaptive populations we find the opposite: directed reciprocity impedes cooperation.