IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v56y2008i5p1131-1145.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regulation of Natural Gas Distribution Using Policy Benchmarks

Author

Listed:
  • Kumar Muthuraman

    (McCombs School of Business, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712)

  • Tarik Aouam

    (School of Business Administration, Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco)

  • Ronald Rardin

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701)

Abstract

Local distribution companies (LDCs) play the role of purchasing and delivering natural gas to their consumers, and state regulators oversee the pricing of natural gas to consumers. The common method of regulation, based on the cost of service, provides arguably little incentive for the LDC to optimally manage their procurement activities. In the light of recent deregulation and other changes, benchmarking-based regulatory schemes are being increasingly perceived as the right direction to pursue. Various states are experimenting with simple benchmark mechanisms that have inherent deficiencies and are often criticized. In this paper, we propose and characterize a new kind of benchmark that we call a policy benchmark as a mechanism for regulation. Using variance as the measure of risk, we formulate the regulator's and the LDC's problems as multiple-objective optimizations. We provide rigorous characterizations of the dominance frontiers for a two-stage model. We also provide multistage formulations that take into account various natural gas market microstructures. We compute solutions under parameters estimated from relevant real-world data and illustrate that the structures of the dominance frontiers remain unaltered from the characterizations provided by a stylized two-stage model.

Suggested Citation

  • Kumar Muthuraman & Tarik Aouam & Ronald Rardin, 2008. "Regulation of Natural Gas Distribution Using Policy Benchmarks," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(5), pages 1131-1145, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:56:y:2008:i:5:p:1131-1145
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1070.0507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.1070.0507
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.1070.0507?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Avery & Gerald G. Brown & John A. Rosenkranz & R. Kevin Wood, 1992. "Optimization of Purchase, Storage and Transmission Contracts for Natural Gas Utilities," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 40(3), pages 446-462, June.
    2. Jennifer N. Carpenter, 2000. "Does Option Compensation Increase Managerial Risk Appetite?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 2311-2331, October.
    3. Sanjiv Ranjan Das & Rangarajan K. Sundaram, 2002. "On The Regulation Of Fee Structures In Mutual Funds," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Marco Avellaneda (ed.), Quantitative Analysis In Financial Markets Collected Papers of the New York University Mathematical Finance Seminar(Volume III), chapter 1, pages 1-36, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Admati, Anat R & Pfleiderer, Paul, 1997. "Does It All Add Up? Benchmarks and the Compensation of Active Portfolio Managers," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(3), pages 323-350, July.
    5. R. Mark Isaac, 1982. "Fuel Cost Adjustment Mechanisms and the Regulated Utility Facing Uncertain Fuel Prices," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 158-169, Spring.
    6. Jennifer Carpenter, 1999. "Does Option Compensation Increase Managerial Risk Appetite?," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 99-076, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    7. Mark Grinblatt & Sheridan Titman, 1989. "Adverse Risk Incentives and the Design of Performance-Based Contracts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(7), pages 807-822, July.
    8. Baron, David P. & De Bondt, Raymond R., 1981. "On the design of regulatory price adjustment mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 70-94, February.
    9. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, April.
    10. Andrei Shleifer, 1985. "A Theory of Yardstick Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(3), pages 319-327, Autumn.
    11. Nelson, Daniel B & Ramaswamy, Krishna, 1990. "Simple Binomial Processes as Diffusion Approximations in Financial Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(3), pages 393-430.
    12. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    13. Jaeyoung Sung, 1995. "Linearity with Project Selection and Controllable Diffusion Rate in Continuous-Time Principal-Agent Problems," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(4), pages 720-743, Winter.
    14. Starks, Laura T., 1987. "Performance Incentive Fees: An Agency Theoretic Approach," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 17-32, March.
    15. Crew, Nicholas, 1997. "Using Market Prices to Regulate the Costs of a Utility's Inputs," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 195-216, March.
    16. John M. Mulvey & Robert J. Vanderbei & Stavros A. Zenios, 1995. "Robust Optimization of Large-Scale Systems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 264-281, April.
    17. Hui Ou-Yang, 2003. "Optimal Contracts in a Continuous-Time Delegated Portfolio Management Problem," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 173-208.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aouam, Tarik & Muthuraman, Kumar & Rardin, Ronal L., 2016. "Robust optimization policy benchmarks and modeling errors in natural gas," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(3), pages 807-815.
    2. Nicola Secomandi & Sunder Kekre, 2014. "Optimal Energy Procurement in Spot and Forward Markets," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 270-282, May.
    3. Aouam, Tarik & Rardin, Ronald & Abrache, Jawad, 2010. "Robust strategies for natural gas procurement," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 205(1), pages 151-158, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Livio Stracca, 2006. "Delegated Portfolio Management: A Survey Of The Theoretical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(5), pages 823-848, December.
    2. Ping Hu & Jayant Kale & Ajay Subramanian, 2003. "Compensation, Career Concerns, and Relative Risk Choices by Mutual Fund Managers: Theory and Evidence," Levine's Bibliography 666156000000000349, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Constantin Mellios & Anh Ngoc Lai, 2022. "Incentive Fees with a Moving Benchmark and Portfolio Selection under Loss Aversion," Post-Print hal-03708926, HAL.
    4. Thomas P. Gehrig & Torben Lütje & Lukas Menkhoff, 2009. "Bonus Payments and Fund Managers' Behavior: Transatlantic Evidence," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 55(3-4), pages 569-594.
    5. Alexander, Gordon J. & Baptista, Alexandre M., 2008. "Active portfolio management with benchmarking: Adding a value-at-risk constraint," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 779-820, March.
    6. Cuoco, Domenico & Kaniel, Ron, 2011. "Equilibrium prices in the presence of delegated portfolio management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 264-296, August.
    7. Yang, Tianna & Hou, Wenxuan, 2016. "Pay-performance sensitivity and risk-taking behaviors: Evidence from closed-end funds," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 274-288.
    8. Cadenillas, Abel & Cvitanic, Jaksa & Zapatero, Fernando, 2004. "Leverage decision and manager compensation with choice of effort and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 71-92, July.
    9. Igan, Deniz & Pinheiro, Marcelo, 2012. "The effects of relative performance objectives on financial markets," MPRA Paper 43452, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Natasa Bilkic & Thomas Gries, 2014. "Destructive Agents, Finance Firms, and Systemic Risk," Working Papers CIE 76, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    11. Jennifer Huang & Clemens Sialm & Hanjiang Zhang, 2011. "Risk Shifting and Mutual Fund Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(8), pages 2575-2616.
    12. Aouam, Tarik & Muthuraman, Kumar & Rardin, Ronal L., 2016. "Robust optimization policy benchmarks and modeling errors in natural gas," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(3), pages 807-815.
    13. Saltuk Ozerturk, 2004. "Equilibrium Incentives to Acquire Precise Information in Delegated Portfolio Management," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 25(1), pages 25-36, February.
    14. Emilio Barucci & Gaetano Bua & Daniele Marazzina, 2018. "On relative performance, remuneration and risk taking of asset managers," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 517-545, November.
    15. Igan, Deniz & Pinheiro, Marcelo, 2016. "Delegated Portfolio Management, Benchmarking, and the Effects on Financial Markets," Journal of Financial Transformation, Capco Institute, vol. 43, pages 144-157.
    16. Sheng, Jiliang & Wang, Jian & Wang, Xiaoting & Yang, Jun, 2014. "Asymmetric contracts, cash flows and risk taking of mutual funds," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 435-442.
    17. Agarwal, Vikas & Gómez, Juan-Pedro & Priestley, Richard, 2012. "Management compensation and market timing under portfolio constraints," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 1600-1625.
    18. Juan-Pedro Gómez & Tridib Sharma, 2006. "Portfolio delegation under short-selling constraints," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 28(1), pages 173-196, May.
    19. Basak, Suleyman & Pavlova, Anna & Shapiro, Alex, 2003. "Offsetting the Incentives: Risk Shifting and Benefits of Benchmarking in Money Management," Working papers 4303-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    20. Andrea M. Buffa & Dimitri Vayanos & Paul Woolley, 2022. "Asset Management Contracts and Equilibrium Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(12), pages 3146-3201.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:56:y:2008:i:5:p:1131-1145. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.