Optimal charging of electric vehicles considering constraints of the medium voltage distribution network

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Optimal Exchange Rate Policy in a Growing Semi-Open Economy

This paper considers an alternative perspective to China's exchange rate policy. It studies a semi-open economy where the private sector has no access to international capital markets but the central bank has full access. Moreover, it assumes limited financial development generating a large demand for saving instruments by the private sector. The paper analyzes the optimal exchange rate policy by modeling the central bank as a Ramsey planner. Its main result is that in a growth acceleration episode it is optimal to have an initial real depreciation of the currency combined with an accumulation of reserves, which is consistent with the Chinese experience. This depreciation is followed by an appreciation in the long run. The paper also shows that the optimal exchange rate path is close to the one that would result in an economy with full capital mobility and no central bank intervention.

Optimal exchange rate policy, optimal incomplete taxation and business cycles

Implementation and collapse of exchange rate pegging schemes are recur- rent events. A currency crisis (pegging) is usually followed by an economic downturn (boom). This essay explains why a benevolent government should pursue Þscal and monetary policies that lead to those recurrent currency crises and subsequent periods of pegging. It is shown that the optimal policy induces a competitive equilibrium that displays a boom in periods of below average de- valuation and a recession in periods of above average devaluation. A currency crisis (pegging) can be understood as an optimal policy answer to a recession (boom).

Determining the Socially Optimal Recycling Rate

What municipal recycling rate is socially optimal? One credible answer would consider the recycling rate that minimizes the overall social costs of managing municipal waste. Such social costs are comprised of all budgetary costs and revenues associated with operating municipal waste and recycling programs, all costs to recycling households associated with preparing and storing recyclable materials for collection, all external disposal costs associated with waste disposed at landfills or incinerators, and all external benefits associated with the provision of recycled materials that foster environmentally efficient production processes. This paper discusses how to estimate these four components of social cost to then estimate the optimal recycling rate. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Socially Optimal Recycling Rate: Evidence from Japan

This paper estimates the average social cost of municipal waste management as a function of the recycling rate. Social costs include all municipal costs and revenues, costs to recycling households to prepare materials estimated with an original method, external disposal costs, and external recycling benefits. Results suggest average social costs are minimized with recycling rates well below observed and mandated levels in Japan. Cost-minimizing municipalities are estimated to recycle less than the optimal rate. These results are robust to changes in the components of social costs, indicating that Japan and perhaps other developed countries may be setting inefficiently high recycling goals. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Online Supplement to ‘Myopic Allocation Policy with Asymptotically Optimal Sampling Rate’

This document is the Online Supplement to ‘Myopic Allocation Policy with Asymptotically Optimal Sampling Rate,’ to be published in the IEEE Transactions of Automatic Control in 2017.

Carregamento ótimo de veículos elétricos considerando as restrições das redes de distribuição de média tensão

Pós-graduação em Engenharia Elétrica - FEIS

How optimal are the extremes?: Latin American exchange rate policies during the Asian crisis

Includes bibliography

Capital Controls with International Reserve Accumulation: Can this Be Optimal ?

Motivated by the Chinese experience, we analyze a semi-open economy where the central bank has access to international capital markets, but the private sector has not. This enables the central bank to choose an interest rate different from the international rate. We examine the optimal policy of the central bank by modelling it as a Ramsey planner who can choose the level of domestic public debt and of international reserves. The central bank can improve savings opportunities of credit-constrained consumers modelled as in Woodford (1990). We find that in a steady state it is optimal for the central bank to replicate the open economy, i.e., to issue debt financed by the accumulation of reserves so that the domestic interest rate equals the foreign rate. When the economy is in transition, however, a rapidly growing economy has a higher welfare without capital mobility and the optimal interest rate differs from the international rate. We argue that the domestic interest rate should be temporarily above the international rate. We also find that capital controls can still help reach the first best when the planner has more fiscal instruments.

Semi-dwarfing (Rht-B1b) improves nitrogen-use efficiency in wheat, but not at economically optimal levels of nitrogen availability

A UK field experiment compared a complete factorial combination of three backgrounds (cvs Mercia, Maris Huntsman and Maris Widgeon), three alleles at the Rht-B1 locus as Near Isogenic Lines (NILs: rht-B1a (tall), Rht-B1b (semi-dwarf), Rht-B1c (severe dwarf)) and four nitrogen (N) fertilizer application rates (0, 100, 200 and 350 kg N/ha). Linear+exponential functions were fitted to grain yield (GY) and nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE; GY/available N) responses to N rate. Averaged over N rate and background Rht-B1b conferred significantly (P<0.05) greater GY, NUE, N uptake efficiency (NUpE; N in above ground crop / available N) and N utilization efficiency (NUtEg; GY / N in above ground crop) compared with rht-B1a and Rht-B1c. However the economically optimal N rate (Nopt) for N:grain price ratios of 3.5:1 to 10:1 were also greater for Rht-B1b, and because NUE, NUpE and NUtE all declined with N rate, Rht-Blb failed to increase NUE or its components at Nopt. The adoption of semi-dwarf lines in temperate and humid regions, and the greater N rates that such adoption justifies economically, greatly increases land-use efficiency, but not necessarily, NUE.

Regional integration and the issue of choosing an appropriate exchange-rate regime in Latin America

Includes bibliography

An MILP model for the plug-in electric vehicle charging coordination problem in electrical distribution systems

A new mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed to represent the plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) charging coordination problem in electrical distribution systems. The proposed model defines the optimal charging schedule for each division of the considered period of time that minimizes the total energy costs. Moreover, priority charging criteria is taken into account. The steady-state operation of the electrical distribution system, as well as the PEV batteries charging is mathematically represented; furthermore, constraints related to limits of voltage, current and power generation are included. The proposed mathematical model was applied in an electrical distribution system used in the specialized literature and the results show that the model can be used in the solution of the PEVs charging problem.

Globally optimal learning rates in multilayer neural networks

A method for calculating the globally optimal learning rate in on-line gradient-descent training of multilayer neural networks is presented. The method is based on a variational approach which maximizes the decrease in generalization error over a given time frame. We demonstrate the method by computing optimal learning rates in typical learning scenarios. The method can also be employed when different learning rates are allowed for different parameter vectors as well as to determine the relevance of related training algorithms based on modifications to the basic gradient descent rule.