Swapping Generators' Assets: Market Salvation or Wishful Thinking?

Swapping Generators’ Assets: Market Salvation or Wishful Thinking?

The idea of rearranging generation assets amongst firms to improve competition has once again surfaced in a recent report on improvements to the New Zealand Electricity Market. We show with examples that rearranging assets, either with asset divestiture to a new firm, or asset swaps between existing firms, may actually reduce competition in electricity markets. Our examples emphasize features t...

Surrogate endpoints: wishful thinking or reality?

Wishful Thinking

and we will write to you when there is a bed available yes I know it's painful, and six months is a long time to wait, but I am afraid we have already lost two wards this year because of the cuts. Mrs Thatcher keeps taking money away from us to spend on Trident Missiles Yes I wish you would write to your Member of Parliament about it. Hello Sister, is it tea time yet? Sister: Not yet I'm afraid...

Wishful Thinking

An experiment tested whether and in what circumstances people are more likely to believe an event simply because it makes them better off. Subjects observed a financial asset’s historical price chart, and received both an accuracy bonus for predicting the price at some future point, and an unconditional award that was either increasing or decreasing in this price. Despite incentives for hedging...

Protection from Wishful Thinking

ONE OF THE thorny problems of software development is accurately assessing progress and the cost remaining to completion. Without a good sense of where the project is and how far it still has to go, it’s just not possible to consistently manage people and resources well. And miscommunicating progress to stakeholders is among the surest ways to lose trust and buy-in. Despite a plethora of techno...