On the tying of aid to tariff reform

This paper considers the welfare effects of foreign aid that is tied to changes in the recipient's tariff. By constructing a three-country model with tariffs, and by allowing for changes both in the amount of aid and in the tariff rates, we are able to consider the welfare implications of two different rules of aid conditionality: (i) a rule which leaves the donor's welfare unchanged, and (ii) a rule which leaves the recipient government's total revenue unchanged. It is shown that the tying of aid to a tariff reform can, inter alia, be used to ensure Pareto improvement.

Residential tariff structure and battery energy storage impact in queensland LV network

Distributed renewable energy has become a significant contender in the supply of power in the distribution network in Queensland and throughout the world. As the cost of battery storage falls, distribution utilities turn their attention to the impacts of battery storage and other storage technologies on the low voltage (LV) network. With access to detailed residential energy usage data, Energex's available residential tariffs are investigated for their effectiveness in providing customers with financial incentives to move to Time-of Use based tariffs and to reward use of battery storage.

Steepest ascent tariff reform

The policy reform literature is primarily concerned with the construction of reforms that yield welfare gains. By contrast, this paper’s contribution is to develop a theoretical concept for which the focus is upon the sizes of welfare gains accruing from policy reforms rather than upon their signs. In undertaking this task, and by focusing on tariff reforms, we introduce the concept of a steepest ascent policy reform, which is a locally optimal reform in the sense that it achieves the highest marginal gain in utility of any feasible local reform. We argue that this reform presents itself as a natural benchmark for the evaluation of the welfare effectiveness of other popular tariff reforms such as the proportional tariff reduction and the concertina rules, since it provides the maximal welfare gain of all possible local reforms. We derive properties of the steepest ascent tariff reform, construct an index to measure the relative welfare effectiveness of any given tariff reform, determine conditions under which proportional and concertina reforms are locally optimal and provide illustrative examples.