Nori Tarui

Effects of alternative pricing structures on electricity consumption and payments in the commercial and industrial sector November 28, 2023 Abstract: We investigate the distributional and welfare impacts when commercial and industrial (C&I) electricity end users face a dynamic pricing structure as opposed to a constant volumetric price with demand charge on individual users’ peak usage. While demand charge does not necessarily reduce the system-wide peak, it often constitutes a large share of C&I users’… Read More
Sea level rise risk interactions with coastal property values: a case study of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i September 14, 2023 Abstract: Climate change-induced sea level rise (SLR) will affect a range of coastal assets and prompt difficult decisions about coastal land use across the world. Several recent studies find that current and projected SLR is associated with relatively lower property values. We contribute to this growing body of research with a case study of O‘ahu,… Read More
After the Maui wildfires: The road ahead. August 31, 2023 By Steven Bond-Smith, Daniela Bond-Smith, Carl Bonham, Leah Bremer, Kim Burnett, Makena Coffman, Peter Fuleky, Byron Gangnes, Rachel Inafuku, Ruben Juarez, Sumner La Croix, Colin Moore, Dylan Moore, Nori Tarui, Justin Tyndall, and Chris Wada The immediate recovery efforts from the devastating Maui wildfires continue, and at UHERO we share our community’s anguish over the… Read More
Embracing TOU: Nudges, Rates, and Renewable Energy August 21, 2023 By Michael Roberts, Nori Tarui and Ethan Hartely Hawaiian Electric Company is about to embark on a significant experiment: a pilot program introducing time-of-use (TOU) pricing. Designed to reduce electricity prices during daylight hours when solar power is abundant and increase them during the evening when the sun sets and demand rises, this initiative could… Read More
Managing retreat for sandy beach areas under sea level rise July 24, 2023 Abstract: Sea level rise (SLR) is projected to impact approximately one billion people by 2100. For many coastal communities, retreat is the most viable long-term option due to exposure risk under SLR and increased coastal hazards. Our research analyzes the costs of retreating coastal development at an iconic beach in Hawaiʻi that is experiencing severe… Read More
What’s a (Better) Beach Day Worth? Economic Valuation of Changes in Waikīkī Beach Characteristics May 24, 2023 Abstract: Whether beach nourishment, an established beach management measure, is justified depends on its benefits and costs. We apply a discrete choice experiment at Waikīkī Beach on Oʻahu with mixed logit and latent class models to evaluate recreationists’ willingness to pay for changes in beach width and water clarity as well as the preferences for… Read More
Open Access Renewable Resources, Urban Unemployment, and the Resolution of Dual Institutional Failures November 16, 2021 This paper investigates how poverty reduction and natural resource preservation can be simultaneously achieved in a small open dual economy with urban wage rigidity, open access rural resources, and rural-urban migration. An increase in the export tax rate on the rural resource good increases urban unemployment in both the short run and the long run with resource… Read More
You can’t always get what you want: Protectionist policies with the transport sector October 1, 2021 This paper incorporates key stylized facts about the transport sector into the conventional international oligopoly model and explores how protectionist policies perform differently when transport costs are endogenous and subject to the backhaul problem (i.e., the imbalance of shipping volume in outgoing and incoming routes). A country’s protectionist policies, which benefit domestic firms and harm foreign firms in the… Read More
Solar panels on roof What do families in Hawaiʻi use electricity for? September 29, 2021 By Nori Tarui and Pratistha Gyawali CDA Project Dashboard IntroductionThe dashboard illustrates Hawaiʻi’s residential electricity usage based on the 2019 Residential Energy Use Survey, a residential appliance saturation survey conducted by Hawaiian Electric Company. UHERO applied the conditional demand analysis (CDA), which is a statistical method to estimate average annual consumption associated with each appliance… Read More
The Effects of Utility Revenue Decoupling on Electricity Prices September 1, 2021 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… Read More
Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on global fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions May 1, 2021 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… Read More
UHERO’s Nori Tarui giving the Keynote Speech at the Society for Environmental and Economic Studies 2020 Annual Conference (in Japanese). October 5, 2020 Read More
What goes around comes around: Export-enhancing effects of import-tariff reductions September 1, 2020 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… Read More
Webinar: “How to Control Hawaii’s Coronavirus Epidemic and Bring Back the Economy: The Next Steps” (in Japanese, by Nori Tarui) May 2, 2020 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). https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7FcaKuh7RV2ZYqAlQ4nIZA Read More
Revenue Decoupling for Electric Utilities: Impacts on Prices and Welfare November 19, 2018 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… Read More