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This note presents a simplifed version of the model of voluntary reserve targets (VRT) developed in Baughman and Carapella (forthcoming), with a Walrasian interbank market. First, the model makes transparent the role of target setting in controlling the market rate. Second, the simplicity of the model allows for an analysis of the interaction between VRT and tolerance bands, which are a common tool for controlling rate variability. We find that the persistent overshooting of interbank rates observed during the Bank of England's experiment with VRT may derive from the interaction between target setting and tolerance bands, a new explanation relative to the literature. We also suggest a simple remedy.

This analysis applies a novel learning-curve methodology with uncertainty through Monte Carlo simulation to forecast market share of competing renewable fuel production technologies from 2025 through 2050. The analysis incorporates uncertainty in technology learning rate within Wright's Law, market rate of growth, and project-specific bidding to develop build-out scenarios for renewable hydrogen production capacity to serve the global market through 2050 with California as a proxy. Two major hydrogen production technologies are included: electrolyzers (with proton exchange membrane electrolytic cells as proxies) and thermochemical devices (with gasifiers as proxies). The method provides a quantitative foundation to forecasting technology shares in emerging sectors, overcomes the weakness of point estimates of relative cost that generally lead to binary behavior, and can support policy development and assessment of community impacts associated with the large-scale facility build-out needed to serve the growing demand for renewable hydrogen in transportation and other applications. Results show that biomass gasifiers are the dominant technology in the early market but the higher learning rate of electrolyzers and long-term trend of price decline for renewable electricity leads to equal shares for new installations by the mid-term and eventually to electrolyzers having the dominant share of new facilities. Electricity, biomass, and initial gasifier technology costs are the three primary factors impacting 2050 renewable hydrogen market composition.

Developed from meaningful work and business ethics, we investigate the motivational effect of meaningful work on paid staff (not volunteers) with a “shortage” of ethical employment practices situated in the Not-for-Profit sector. We tested the traditional notion of meaningful work by nature and by line manager support (under its business-like practices) to compensate for the “sacrifice” (low pay and job stress caused by poor employment terms) of front line staff working alongside professional managers paid the market rate. Using a mixed-method case study, we employed SEM modelling to analyse a staff survey of 125 valid responses and administrative records of staff resignation, alongside interviews. The results show that meaningful work by nature and by line manager support are positively and significantly associated with job satisfaction but neither has a significant effect on staff resignation action. There is no empirical evidence to support the compensating effect of meaningful work by nature; meaningful work by line manager support has a stronger effect only through reduced job stress, rather than compensating for the low pay, in preventing resignation. The qualitative analysis reveals that continued low pay and using precarious employment contracts have evoked the questioning of ethics of employment practices in this sector. We discuss the implications and suggest further areas of research.

Electric vehicles have become a trend as a replacement to gasoline-powered vehicles, and been promoted by worldwide policy makers as a solution to combat environmental problems and stimulate economy. Whereas the current market share of electric vehicles is still low, one main obstacle is no enough extreme fast charging, which requires high capital costs and strategic planning. Proper placement of extreme fast charging stations can maximize investment utility, promote public acceptance of electric vehicles, minimize adverse effects on transportation and power networks, and improve penetration market rate for electric vehicles. As such, the research on extreme fast charging station siting and sizing has received considerable attention in the past decade, where optimization modeling has become the main approach. This survey is to review various optimization models, examine their characteristics and evaluate their applications. We also discuss challenges/limitations of the optimization modeling approach for the extreme fast charging location planning, and point out future research directions. Our study can serve as a tutorial/reference to the extreme fast charging location optimization modeling, and attempts to attract more talents and research interests in this exciting field.

What is the optimal rate of new housing supply? We answer this question with a simple model of new housing supply where the choice variable is the rate of new housing lot sales. This model is informed by the cost-side assumptions of the static equilibrium model but allows for demand for home-buying to vary over time. It differs from static models of housing production equilibrium by assuming that landowners hold land assets that are sold in asset markets to create new supply. Landowners maximise the present value of their balance sheet by choosing a rate of new housing lot sales, accounting for the effect on asset price growth from their sales in a housing market of finite depth. The resulting absorption rate equation has radically different parameter effects compared to the popular static housing density model. Constraints on density, for example, increase the optimal rate of supply by reducing the return to delaying development. Interest rates, land value tax rates, and demand growth, positively relate to the optimal rate of supply. The policy lessons are (1) the relationship between demand growth and the optimal supply rate limits the ability for market supply to reduce prices, and (2) increasing the cost to delaying housing development is the primary way to increase the market rate of housing supply.

Evictions are a pressing issue facing many low-income renters. The growing scholarship on evictions generally groups together all types of evictions across multiple property and owner types. Evicti...

This paper examines banks’ interest rate risk management and its effects on the persistence and valuation of banks’ earnings. We construct a novel measure to capture the extent to which a bank is able to generate persistent net interest income (the primary component of a bank’s earnings) by changing interest rates on assets and liabilities in response to market interest rate changes. This measure builds on traditional maturity gap, but in explaining changes in net interest income, our model takes into consideration asymmetrical changes in the interest rates of rate sensitive liabilities and assets. We hypothesize that banks with the ability to enhance yields on assets and reduce funding costs through interest rate risk management strategies are more likely to have persistent net interest income and, thus, higher valuation of net interest income. Using a sample of bank holding companies from 1997 to 2011, we find evidence supporting our hypotheses. Our study enhances our understanding of banks’ interest rate risk management and can help investors and bank regulators assess banks’ interest rate risk management and earnings sustainability.

A policy concern is that the initiation of Hospital Compare (HC) reporting in Medicare provided leverage to insurers in price negotiations for lowering private sector prices without regard to hospital performance. Using the sequential Nash bargaining framework we provide economic intuition to the contrary: while average hospital prices decline under quality disclosures, hospitals with above‐average quality are able to exert a stronger bargaining position, consequently capturing prices above the market rate. To explore this issue empirically we estimate variants of difference‐in‐difference models, examining the effects of the three main scores (heart attack, heart failure, and combined mortalities) on transaction prices of related hospital procedures. States which had similar mandated reporting systems in place before the initiation of HC form the control group. Analyzing claims data of privately insured patients, we find that HC exerted downward pressure on prices. However, hospitals rated “above‐average” captured higher prices, thereby offsetting the overall policy effect fully or partially. Leads and lags analysis lends further support for our difference‐in‐difference approach. We find that highly ranked hospitals received a quality premium of 8–14%, comparable to price effects found in other health care markets. We conclude that HC was effective at constraining prices without penalizing high performers.