Search

Lately, there has been an increase in the use of sequential mechanisms, instead of the traditional direct counterparts, in college admissions in many countries, including Germany, Brazil, and China. We describe these mechanisms and identify their shortcomings in terms of incentives and outcome properties. We introduce a new mechanism, which improves upon these shortcomings. Unlike direct mechanisms, which ask students for a full preference ranking over colleges, our mechanism asks students to sequentially make choices or submit partial rankings from sets of colleges. These are used to produce a tentative allocation at each step. If at some point it is determined that a student can no longer be accepted into previous choice, then she is asked to make another choice among colleges that would tentatively accept her. Participants following the simple strategy of choosing the most-preferred college in each step is an ex-post equilibrium that yields the Student-Optimal Stable Matching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes key changes in market and regulatory governance arrangements in the electricity sector in Brazil over the last three decades. The Brazilian reform process during this period can be described as a series of attempts to move toward a market-driven system, interrupted by ad hoc interventions of a political nature or to respond to specific crises. This series of events reveals the pathway of a system that managed to significantly expand and diversify its electricity power mix by harnessing its renewable endowment. The historical role played by hydropower plants with reservoirs—along with a highly integrated electricity system—in smoothing production over time has been considerably diminished and will continue to be as climate change takes its toll. Thus, improvements in market and governance arrangements are required to promote a more diverse electricity mix, with variable renewable energy and demand management playing much more significant roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gradual commercial opening of electricity markets to keep pace with technological evolution and promote the active participation of players to increase their efficiency is recognized as one of the best practices in most developed markets in the world. The same principle applies to the Brazilian electricity sector, which increasingly demands intelligent mechanisms that serve as instruments to optimally face the increasingly complex challenges. Demand response (DR), a mechanism not widely used in Brazil, can offer many advantages to the electric system, such as increasing its competitiveness and improving the reliability of the electric energy supply through the active participation of the energy consumer. This study presents different paths and proposals by which the load side can contribute to increased energy security and avoid the increase in the system operating costs in Brazil. This study tracks the progress of the DR programs adopted in several international markets, observing their remuneration for the services provided to the electricity system, as well as the motivation of the operator, utilities, or market administrator to offer programs that allow the participation of consumers, resulting in benefits for the participant, programs, and system. • Demand Side Management Best Practices. • Active Participation of the Consumer in the Electricity Markets. • Demand Response and the Benefits for the Electrical System. • Ancillary Services, Capacity, Coincident Peak, and Price Response. • Proposals to Accelerate the Demand Response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]