This paper discusses the policy issues facing the country of Sno TomJ e PrRncipe, a small island country in the Gulf of Guinea, given the discovery and imminent exploitation of large reserves of oil in its territorial waters. While presenting huge opportunities, the history of other African...

This paper analyzes the impact of an ethanol import tariff in conjunction with a consumption mandate and tax credit. A tax credit alone acts as a subsidy to ethanol producers, equally benefiting exporters like Brazil. If an import tariff is imposed to offset the tax credit, world prices of...

Angola is more dependent on oil than any other country in Sub Saharan Africa and most other countries as well, apart from a handful of OPEC members. Contributing half or more of GDP, oil revenues condition and distort every other macroeconomic variable in the country, a situation that has...

The analysis finds that if high industrial prices for electricity induce industrial customers to leave the regulated grid for self-generation or contracts with IPPs, this raises rates for those remaining on the system and reduces quantities purchased. It is assumed that lower industrial sector...

The oil of the Persian Gulf has been of considerable interest to oil companies and Western governments (and to Russia) for more than a century. Remaining global conventional crude oil resources are on the order of 3 trillion barrels, with more than 50% of that amount in the Persian Gulf. Since...

This paper discusses the current status of the Angolan macroeconomy, with a particular focus on the role of oil income both now and in the future. Emphasis is placed on the distortions that can result from large inflows of foreign exchange both in terms of the real exchange rate and also in...

An option-pricing model is developed to rank investments that might improve water quality. The model presumes that two investment options exist that have the potential to alter the stochastic drift of a pollutant. The investments have capital and operating costs and are irreversible once...

Earlier research has shown that adding wind capacity to a network can lower the total annual operating cost of meeting a given pattern of loads by displacing conventional generation. At the same time, the variability of wind generation and the need for higher levels of reserve generating...

This paper reviews the evolution of the global oil market from the mid 20th century onwards. We analyze the unique “target price” framework brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in the mid 1980s. Over the 19 years of its life, this framework had been responsible for providing the world with...

A combination of higher oil production as well as higher oil prices is creating oil revenue windfalls for some Sub Saharan African countries. If well managed, these revenues have the potential to reduce poverty and bridge the development gap; if not they could lead to Dutch disease and an...