No abstract

There is an ongoing debate on the appropriate auction design for competitive electricity balancing markets. Uniform (UPA) and discriminatory price auctions (DPA), the prevalent designs in use today, are assumed to have dierent properties with regard to prices and eciencies. These properties cannot be thoroughly described using analytical methods due to the complex strategy space in repeated multi-unit multiple bid auctions. Therefore, using an agent-based Q-learning model, we simulate the strategic bidding behaviour in these auctions under a variety of market conditions. We nd that UPAs lead to higher prices in all analysed market settings. This is mainly due to the fact that players engage in bid shading more aggressively. Moreover, small players in UPAs learn to free ride on the price setting of large players and earn higher prots per unit of capacity owned, while they are disadvantaged in DPAs. UPAs also generally feature higher eciencies, but there are exceptions to this observation. If demand is varying and players are provided with additional information about scarcity in the market, market prices increase only in case asymmetric players are present.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThe prevalent market structures found in many resource markets consist of a high concentration on the supply side and a low demand elasticity. Market results are therefore frequently assumed to be an outcome of strategic interaction between producers. Common models to investigate the market outcomes and underlying market structures are games representing competitive markets, strategic Cournot competition and Stackelberg structures taking into account a dominant player acting first followed by one or more followers. Besides analysing a previously neglected scenario of the latter kind, we add to the literature by expanding the application of mathematical models by applying an Equilibrium Problem with Equilibrium Constraints (EPEC), which is used to model multi-leader-follower games, to a spatial market. We apply our model by investigating the prevalent market setting in the international market for metallurgical coal between 2008 and 2010, whose market structure provides arguments for a wide variety of market structures. Using different statistical measures and comparing model with actual market outcomes, we find that two previously neglected settings perform best: First, a setting in which the four largest metallurgical coal exporting firms compete against each other as Stackelberg leaders, while the remainders act as Cournot followers. Second, a setting with BHPB acting as sole Stackelberg leader.

No abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractMarkets for natural resources and commodities are often oligopolistic. In these markets, production capacities are key for strategic interaction between the oligopolists. We analyze how different market structures influence oligopolistic capacity investments and thereby affect supply, prices and rents in spatial natural resource markets using mathematical programing models. The models comprise an investment period and a supply period in which players compete in quantities. We compare three models, one perfect competition and two Cournot models, in which the product is either traded through long-term contracts or on spot markets in the supply period. Tractability and practicality of the approach are demonstrated in an application to the international metallurgical coal market. Results may vary substantially between the different models. The metallurgical coal market has recently made progress in moving away from long-term contracts and more towards spot market-based trade. Based on our results, we conclude that this regime switch is likely to raise consumer rents but lower producer rents. The total welfare differs only negligibly.