Integrating the power sector in India: Reflections and suggestions
Abstract The historical development of the power generation industry in India shows a steady trend towards complete integration: ‘… The aim is to connect all the power-regions by the end of the Seventh Plan. The desirability of having a single organization to own and to operate the essential elements of the national grid needs to be urgently considered …’ ([4], p 335). This paper seeks to verify the actual desirability of integration, through economic as well as technical aspects; and to emphasize the deviations induced by a strengthened concentration and suggest corrective directions to a second-best equilibrium.
Dual v uniform prices — an application
Abstract The economic literature on non-linear pricing schemes mainly considers the case where average price decreases with quantity — indeed this pricing strategy is often referred to, especially by firms displaying non-convex production sets. However, such a price schedule seems inadequate to cope with the ‘endowments’ of most developing countries, viz severe income inequalities and binding capacity constraints. Thus, we design here an increasing-blocks tariff and show, as an illustration, how it can improve the distribution pattern of low-voltage electricity in India without depressing the producer's profit. Shadow income transfers automatically flow within the sector, without requiring the heavy informational and operational background necessary for lump-sum transfers, as advocated by second-best theory.
Chemosymbiotic bivalves and stable carbon isotopes indicate hydrocarbon seepage at four unusual Cenozoic fossil localities
Four unusual Cenozoic fossil localities are identified here as ancient hydrocarbon seep sites using palaeontological, petrological, and stable carbon isotope data. Late Eocene carbonate-cemented sandstone bodies in the Wagonwheel Mountains in California were previously suspected to represent ancient hydrocarbon seep sites, but the relatively high δ13Ccarbonate values (−12.2 to −5.0‰) suggest oil rather than methane seepage. The Oligocene fauna of the Elmira asphalt mine, Cuba, was previously interpreted as a mix of freshwater and marine taxa, but all species are here identified as belonging to marine groups, including the bivalve families Lucinidae and Vesicomyidae, whose extant members live largely in symbiosis with chemoautotrophic endosymbionts. A carbonate concretion from this site showed δ13Ccarbonate values as low as −32.2‰, which most likely indicates methane seepage. A previously unpublished Oligocene fossil locality in Atlantico, northern Colombia, is dominated by large solemyid, mytilid, lucinid, and vesicomyid bivalves, which most likely lived with chemotrophic endosymbionts. Seepage of biogenic methane without a significant contribution of thermogenic methane is indicated by δ13Ccarbonate values as low as −51.3‰. We confirm that the Pleurophopsis-dominated sites of the Heath Shale and Lomitos Chert in northern Peru are ancient seep sites, although the previous identification of Pleurophopsis peruviana as a vesicomyid is doubtful.