Browsing by Author "Walls, W. David"
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- ItemOpen AccessThe behaviour of Alberta gamblers: Evidence from the tote at Northlands Park(National Association of Gambling Studies Australia, 2004-11) Walls, W. David; Busche, KellyWe analyzed more than 500 races run at Northlands Park horse track in Alberta, Canada. Bettors are revealed to place their bets in a way that is inconsistent with the maximisation of expected monetary returns. In contrast to nearly all of the previous literature on betting market inefficiency, we find that bettors overbet the favourites and underbet the longshots: Where other researchers find that bettors have a preference for risky bets and the ‘thrill of hitting the longshot’, we find that Alberta bettors have a preference for the bets that have yield the highest frequency of wins even though the average return is lower. The behaviour of Alberta bettors is consistent with a betting strategy where one aims to have the lowest rate of decay in one’s game bank or alternatively the lowest price per hour for an active gaming participant at the track.
- ItemOpen AccessEssays on Distance Functions and Inefficiency Measurement(2018-07-11) Esheba, Muna; Serletis, Apostolos; Walls, W. David; Yuan, Lasheng; Gordon, Daniel Vernon; Kien C. TranThis dissertation includes three essays on distance functions and inefficiency measurement. The main focus of the three essays is the measurement and determinants of technical inefficiency theoretically and empirically. Essay 1 provides an up-to-date review that focuses on research methods, including different approaches to measuring technical inefficiency using distance functions, the development of modeling technical inefficiency, and the most common econometric estimation techniques. It also provides a useful guide on when these methods can be used and how to implement them. Regarding estimation issues, I address the important issues that should be managed in future applications while estimating technical inefficiency, including violation of theoretical and econometric regularity, the inaccurate choice of functional form, ignoring the possibility of heterogeneity and heteroskedasticity, and suffering from the endogeneity problem. I also discuss different approaches to deal with these issues, as well as potentially productive areas for future research. Essay 2 derives the interactive effect between input and output technical inefficiencies theoretically using directional distance functions. This derivation solves the arbitrary decomposition of overall technical inefficiency into input and output components in previous studies. I argue that overall technical inefficiency equals the sum of input and output technical inefficiencies plus an interactive effect component which captures the interactions between them. I prove the results theoretically using exogenous and endogenous directional vectors. Essay 3 investigates the relationships among input, output, and overall technical inefficiencies empirically using US banking data set. Using Bayesian estimation with the monotonicity conditions imposed at each observation, I estimate these inefficiencies separately using directional input, output, and technology distance functions. I model the overall technical inefficiency as a linear function of input and output technical inefficiencies, and a term capturing the interactions between them. These determinants of overall technical inefficiency are estimated simultaneously with the variables that determine the frontier. I find significant evidence of the interactive effect between input and output technical inefficiencies which has a negative effect on the overall technical inefficiency. This result is robust to alternative directional vectors and model specifications, suggesting that the adjustability of both inputs and outputs is required for the improvement of efficiency.
- ItemOpen AccessEssays on natural gas price behavior(2003) Iourkova, Inna; Walls, W. DavidTo analyze patterns in the behavior of North American natural gas prices, we consider a number of topics, which are organized in separate chapters. The second chapter introduces the reader not familiar with the energy industry to the North American gas and the world oil commodity markets. The rest of the chapters would be useful for the energy market participants interested in modeling energy price behavior. We examine statistical properties of the Henry Hub natural gas price series over the deregulated period starting 1991. We also examine the properties of the WTI oil price where appropriate, as we distinguish between the oil market being a world commodity market, and the natural gas market being a North American market. We look for possible dependencies in the behavior of the commodity prices on spot and futures markets while testing for effectiveness of futures price formation. We also address a macro-economic issue of the cyclical patterns in natural gas and oil prices behavior.
- ItemOpen AccessExtreme value theory analysis of Alberta power prices(2005) Zhang, Wei; Walls, W. David
- ItemOpen AccessImplications of Implementing an Efficient Residential Transmission and Distribution Tariff and an Efficient Reimbursement Price for Excess Rooftop Solar Production in Alberta(2018-05-23) Renborg, Lars Georg; Church, Jeffrey R.; Hollis, Aidan; Walls, W. DavidRooftop solar is forecast to grow in Alberta to 5878 MW of installed capacity by 2030. The efficient level of rooftop solar installed by 2030 is 3634 MW. The additional 2244 MW of solar by 2030 is caused by incorrect residential transmission tariffs and incorrect reimbursement prices for excess solar production. The efficient level of rooftop solar (3634 MW by 2030) minimizes electricity costs for Albertans. The additional MW of solar will cost Albertans between 214 and 230 million dollars (2017 Canadian dollars) over the next thirteen years in additional electricity costs compared to if the same electricity had been produced from the grid. Updating the transmission tariff and the reimbursement price for excess solar production will save Albertans between 214 and 230 million dollars in electricity costs over the next thirteen years.
- ItemOpen AccessLaboratory economics as a research tool in the study of gambling markets(National Association for Gambling Studies Inc., 2004) Harvey, Patrick J.; Walls, W. DavidIn this short paper we discuss the use of experimental economics as a useful research tool in the study of gambling markets. Through a laboratory experiment, data can be collected that reveal individual choices in response to several parameters relevant in gambling markets. These data can then be analyzed using the same wealth of statistical techniques developed by econometricians for the analysis of market data. We provide an example experiment design that shows how the revenue-maximizing level of gambling taxation can be determined based on demand parameters revealed in a laboratory setting.
- ItemOpen AccessSolutions for the Resource Adequacy Issue in Alberta: Capacity Market, Scarcity Pricing, or Single Buyer Model(2018-04-30) Bao, Tianjiao; Hollis, Aidan; Church, Jeffrey; Walls, W. DavidThis thesis focuses on possible solutions to resolve the resource adequacy issue in an energy-only market with a low price cap. Many reasons lead to resource inadequacy, including demand flaws, the missing money problem, poor coordination by investors, and penetration of renewables. In order to ensure resource adequacy in the long run, the energy-only market requires a new market mechanism to incentivize investors to create more new capacity. The thesis mainly analyzes three possible solutions: a capacity market, increase of the price cap up to the value of lost load (VOLL) in the energy-only market (Scarcity Pricing), and a single buyer model.
- ItemOpen AccessThree Essays in Energy and Policy Analysis(2020-01-03) During, Adegboyega Daniel; Gordon, Daniel Vernon; Walls, W. David; Boyce, John R.This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I estimated the cost of lifting natural gas in Alberta. I applied activity based costing to estimate the cost of production for each well for the period under review and used this in estimating the production parameter in a Cobb-Douglas model. I subjected this to various robustness tests and the results were consistent across the variations of the data applied. The contribution of this paper is to add to empirical understanding of the cost characteristics in lifting natural gas at the well level using data from wells in Alberta, Canada. I am particularly interested in measuring for common factors affecting production costs across reservoirs and also for individual well effects. In the second chapter, I investigate how an important policy impacted crude oil production in some states in Nigeria and restored peace back in the region. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I estimate the causal effect of amnesty on crude oil production in three states of the Niger Delta region that experienced militant attacks. I find that this policy eliminated the militant activities and increased crude oil production in these three states by about 40% relative to the six control states. The results suggest that rather than the repressive actions of the government in the past, amnesty was a better solution in the short term to ensure relative peace and sustained crude oil production in the region. In the final chapter, I consider how institutional changes, once in place, effect educational outcomes. In this chapter, I examine the effect of a change from a civil law to Sharia law impacts education outcomes of Muslims in the states that adopted Sharia law. I found that contrary to the subjective reasoning of the average southern non Muslims, Sharia had no negative impact on education outcomes as a whole. I further estimated these effects by sex, age, and intensity of adoption of Sharia and found that females in High Intensive Sharia states were affected by the adoption of Sharia and they lost between half and three quarters of a year of education. On the extensive effect of Sharia conducted via probit, there was an increase in the probability of enrolment in school of between 14% and 18%. These effects are estimated through difference-in-differences and triple differences approaches.