Nori Tarui

The Effects of Utility Revenue Decoupling on Electricity Prices

Revenue decoupling (RD) is a regulatory mechanism that allows adjustments of retail electricity rates for the regulated utility to recover its required revenue despite fluctuations in its sales volume. The U.S. utility data in 2000–2019 reveals that RD is associated with about a 4-percentage point higher growth rate of residential electricity prices within the first year after […]

Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on global fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions

We assess the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on global fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions over the two-year horizon 2020Q1-2021Q4. We apply a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model, which captures complex spatial-temporal interdependencies across countries associated with the international propagation of economic impact due to the virus spread. The model makes use of a unique quarterly data […]

UHERO’s Nori Tarui giving the Keynote Speech at the Society for Environmental and Economic Studies 2020 Annual Conference (in Japanese).

What goes around comes around: Export-enhancing effects of import-tariff reductions

In international trade, transportation requires a round trip for which a transport firm has to commit to shipping capacity that is sufficient to meet the maximum shipping volume. This may cause the “backhaul problem.” Trade theory suggests that, facing the problem, transport firms with market power adjust their freight rates strategically when import tariffs change. As a […]

Webinar: “How to Control Hawaii’s Coronavirus Epidemic and Bring Back the Economy: The Next Steps” (in Japanese, by Nori Tarui)

In collaboration with Maji Connection and the Consulate-General of Japan in Honolulu, UHERO’s Nori Tarui presents “How to Control Hawaii’s Coronavirus Epidemic and Bring Back the Economy: The Next Steps” by Sumner La Croix and Tim Brown (language: Japanese).

Revenue Decoupling for Electric Utilities: Impacts on Prices and Welfare

Under traditional (cost-of-service) electric utility regulation, regulated utilities may not recover their fixed costs when their sales are lower than expected. Revenue decoupling (RD) is a mechanism that allows price adjustments so that the regulated utility recovers its required revenue. This paper investigates the welfare and distributional impacts of RD. Theoretically, we find that the […]

Backfiring with Backhaul Problems: Trade and Industrial Policies with Endogenous Transport Costs

Trade barriers due to transport costs are as large as those due to tariffs. This paper incorporates the transport sector into a standard model of international trade and studies the effects of trade and industrial policies. Transport firms need to commit to a shipping capacity sufficient for a round trip, with a possible imbalance of shipping volumes in […]

Electric utility regulation under enhanced renewable energy integration and distributed generation

The economic environment for electric utilities is changing in the United States given increased penetration of distributed generation and limited rooms for sales growth. This paper reviews the recent development of relevant policies in the United States and their economic impacts. This review indicates both challenges and opportunities in improving the policies to enhance distributed […]

Intergenerational Games with Dynamic Externalities and Climate Change Experiments

Dynamic externalities are at the core of many long-term environmental problems, from species preservation to climate change mitigation. We use laboratory experiments to compare welfare outcomes and underlying behavior in games with dynamic externalities under two distinct settings: traditionally studied games with infinitely-lived decision makers, and more realistic intergenerational games. We show that if decision […]