The adoption of distributed energy resources such as PV cells, electric vehicles and batteries in grids is increasing steadily. This brings new challenges for distribution networks. current network tariffs were not designed these types usage and, many cases, they are adequate anymore. Thus, tariff frameworks have been proposed. In this paper, we focus on the question how to assess whether a giv...

It is evidence that the demand for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) connections increases day by day in all European countries as much as worldwide and it is well known that Internet’s penetration is considerably amazing. At the same time, due to the fierce competition among ADSL connections providers, several packages are offered in attractive tariffs. As a product consists of various...

In our paper on "Revenue Seeking: A Generalization of the Theory of Tariffs" (1980), we extended the theory of tariffs to include revenue seeking. We also compared tariffs with quotas, under seeking activities associated with the revenues from the former and with the rents (i.e., license premia) from the latter. We argued, among other propositions, that: (1) Revenue seeking was a zero-output ac...

Public finance experts have long explored the issue of income taxes making the cost of market transactions higher than nonmarket ones. A 50 percent income tax, for example, requires $20,000 in income to purchase $10,000 of market goods. The tax can be avoided, however, if the same goods can be produced at home. The upshot is that income taxes encourage the home production of goods and services ...

In this paper, we study the pricing of Internet services under monopoly and duopoly environments using a game-theoretic model in which a service provider and users all try to maximize their payoffs. First, we compare a few popular pricing schemes, including flat, volume-based, two-part and nonlinear tariffs with respect to revenue, social welfare and user surplus. We perform a sensitivity study...

Utility regulators frequently focus as much or more on the distributional impact of electric rate structures as on their efficiency. The goal of protecting low-income consumers has become more central with recent increases in wholesale power costs and anticipation of significant costs of greenhouse gas emissions in the near future. These concerns have led to the widespread use of increasing-blo...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to investigate if the Danish national diagnosis-related group (DRG) tariffs for surgery for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) were good estimates of the actual costs in two local hospitals in the Central Region of Denmark. METHODS We collected clinical data for 178 AAA patients operated at Skejby Hospital and Viborg Hospital in the period 2005-2006 from th...

An all-units discount is a price reduction applied to all units purchased if the customer’s total purchases equal or exceed a given quantity threshold. Since the discount is paid on all units rather than marginal units, the tariff is discontinuous and exhibits a negative marginal price (“cliff”) at the threshold that triggers the discount. This paper shows that all-units discounts arise in opti...