Aquaculture's Potential Impacts on Conservation of Wild Stocks and Biodiversity

Anderson theorizes that development of the aquaculture of a fish species (also captured in an open-access fishery) favours the conservation of its wild stocks, if competitive market conditions prevail. However, his theory is subject to significant limitations. While this is less so within his model, it is particularly so in an extended one outlined here. These other models allow for the possibility that aquaculture development can impact negatively on wild stocks thereby shifting the supply curve of the capture fishery, or raise the demand for the fish species subject both to aquaculture and capture. Such development can threaten wild fish stocks and their biodiversity. While aquaculture development could in principle have no impact on the biodiversity of wild stocks or even raise aquatic biodiversity overall, its impact in the long-term probably will be one of reducing aquatic diversity both in the wild and overall. The development of aquaculture does not automatically ensure long-term sustainability of fish and other aquatic supplies.

Quotable value: A case of increasing value

In 2005 Quotable Value was New Zealand’s largest valuation and property information organisation with approximately 230 staff and 22 offices throughout the country. While Government reforms within New Zealand had forced this former Government department to operate in a competitive market, a booming property industry and a number of innovative projects generating new income streams had fuelled Quotable Value’s success and growth. Recent changes in the economic environment, however, and predictions that the property bubble would soon burst, also presented a number of threats. The challenge for Quotable Value was how to sustain and build further growth.

Exploring the characteristics of the market-driven firms and antecedents to sustained competitive advantage

During the last few decades, identifying and examining the characteristics of market-driven firms have been a dominant theme in strategic marketing research. It has been argued that market-driven firms are superior in their market sensing and customer linking capabilities, enabling market-driven firms to outperform their competitors. This paper reports the findings of a study that examines the role market-focused learning capability and marketing capability in innovation-based competitive strategy on sustainable competitive advantage. The findings indicate that entrepreneurship is an important factor in sustained competitive advantage (SCA) and while market-focused learning capability leads to higher degrees of innovation, marketing capability enables SCA. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Genetic algorithm-based spinning reserve dispatching in a competitive electricity market

Power systems rely greatly on ancillary services in maintaining operation security. As one of the most important ancillary services, spinning reserve must be provided effectively in the deregulated market environment. This paper focuses on the design of an integrated market for both electricity and spinning reserve service with particular emphasis on coordinated dispatch of bulk power and spinning reserve services. A new market dispatching mechanism has been developed to minimize the ISO's total payment while ensuring system security. Genetic algorithms are used in the finding of the global optimal solutions for this dispatching problem. Case studies and corresponding analyses haw been carried out to demonstrate and discuss the efficiency and usefulness of the proposed market.

Composite auction method for suppressing unreasonable electricity price spikes in a competitive electricity market

The existence of undesirable electricity price spikes in a competitive electricity market requires an efficient auction mechanism. However, many of the existing auction mechanism have difficulties in suppressing such unreasonable price spikes effectively. A new auction mechanism is proposed to suppress effectively unreasonable price spikes in a competitive electricity market. It optimally combines system marginal price auction and pay as bid auction mechanisms. A threshold value is determined to activate the switching between the marginal price auction and the proposed composite auction. Basically when the system marginal price is higher than the threshold value, the composite auction for high price electricity market is activated. The winning electricity sellers will sell their electricity at the system marginal price or their own bid prices, depending on their rights of being paid at the system marginal price and their offers' impact on suppressing undesirable price spikes. Such economic stimuli discourage sellers from practising economic and physical withholdings. Multiple price caps are proposed to regulate strong market power. We also compare other auction mechanisms to highlight the characteristics of the proposed one. Numerical simulation using the proposed auction mechanism is given to illustrate the procedure of this new auction mechanism.

Optimal dispatch of spinning reserve in a competitive electricity market using genetic algorithms

Ancillary service plays a key role in maintaining operation security of the power system in a competitive electricity market. The spinning reserve is one of the most important ancillary services that should be provided effectively. This paper presents the design of an integrated market for energy and spinning reserve service with particular emphasis on coordinated dispatch of bulk power and spinning reserve services. A new market dispatching mechanism has been developed to minimize the cost of service while maintaining system security. Genetic algorithms (GA) are used for finding the global optimal solutions for this dispatch problem. Case studies and corresponding analyses have been carried out to demonstrate and discuss the efficiency and usefulness of the proposed method.

Measuring market power in electricity generation: A long-term perspective using a programming model

This paper focuses on measuring the extent to which market power has been exercised in a recently deregulated electricity generation sector. Our study emphasises the need to consider the concept of market power in a long-run dynamic context. A market power index is constructed focusing on differences between actual market returns and long-run competitive returns, estimated using a programming model devised by the authors. The market power implications of hedge contracts are briefly considered. The state of Queensland Australia is used as a context for the analysis. The results suggest that generators have exercised significant market power since deregulation.

Electronic commerce investments, the resource-based view of the firm, and firm market value

Firms have embraced electronic commerce as a means of doing business, either because they see it as a way to improve efficiency, grow market share, expand into new markets, or because they view it as essential for survival. Recent research in the United States provides some evidence that the market does value investments in electronic commerce. Following research that suggests that, in certain circumstances, the market values noninnovative investments as well as innovative investments in new products, we partition electronic commerce investment project announcements into innovative and noninnovative to determine whether there are excess returns associated with these types of announcements. Apart from our overall results being consistent with the United States findings that the market values investments in electronic commerce projects, we also find that noninnovative investments are perceived as more valuable to the firm than innovative investments. On average, the market expects innovative investments to earn a return commensurate with their risk. We conclude that innovative electronic commerce projects are most likely seen by the capital market as easily replicable, and consequently have little, if any, competitive advantage period. On the other hand, we conclude from the noninnovative investment results that these types of investments are seen as being compatible with a firm's assets-in-place, in particular, its information technology capabilities, a view consistent with the resource-based view of the firm.

Institutional governance systems and variations in national competitive advantage: An integrative framework

Creating competitive industries has become one of the key tasks of governments. Different adaptation outcomes in industries across nations cannot be accounted for fully simply by an emphasis on firm-level capabilities, market-driven policies, or state-level policies. We propose an integrative framework that draws on both the strategic management and political economy literature to explain variations in national industrial competitiveness.. We discuss differences with respect to institutional characteristics and capabilities, competitive outcomes, conditions of best fit, and who bears the cost of industry adaptation.

Energy derivative market and derivative pricing via simulation

The deregulation of power industry worldwide has delivered the efficiency gains to the society; meanwhile, the intensity of competition has increased uncertainty and risks to market participants. Consequently, market participants are keen to hedge the market risks and maintain a competitive edge in the market; and this is a good explanation to the flourish of electricity derivative market. In this paper, the authors gave a comprehensive review of derivative contract pricing methods and proposed a new framework for energy derivative pricing to suit the needs of a deregulated electricity market

Load profiling and data mining techniques in electricity deregulated market

This paper presents load profiles of electricity customers, using the knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) procedure, a data mining technique, to determine the load profiles for different types of customers. In this paper, the current load profiling methods are compared using data mining techniques, by analysing and evaluating these classification techniques. The objective of this study is to determine the best load profiling methods and data mining techniques to classify, detect and predict non-technical losses in the distribution sector, due to faulty metering and billing errors, as well as to gather knowledge on customer behaviour and preferences so as to gain a competitive advantage in the deregulated market. This paper focuses mainly on the comparative analysis of the classification techniques selected; a forthcoming paper will focus on the detection and prediction methods.