News of Center for Operations Research and Econometrics

CORE DP 2026 / 10

Center for Operations Research and Econometrics — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:19:03 +0200

The Electricity Forward Premium: Renewable Energy Sources and Skewness Preferences / Dongchen He, Ronald Huisman, Bert Willems

> There is mixed empirical evidence on the premiums that explain electricity forward prices. We argue that the growth of electricity supplied by renewable energy sources and the preference for skewness may provide an explanation. We extend an existing equilibrium model by incorporating these features. The model predicts that the influence of spot price variance and skewness on forward prices is undetermined, reconciling mixed empirical findings. Moreover, we find additional premiums related to the covariance and coskewness of renewable supply and spot prices, that explain the forward premium. We provide empirical support using data from the German power market.

CORE DP 2026 / 09

Center for Operations Research and Econometrics — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:23:59 +0200

Shopping Versus Shipping: A Spatial Competition Theory of E-commerce / Toshitaka Gokan, Jacques-François Thisse, Xiwei Zhu

> Online retailers compete not only on price but also on delivery performance, making logistics a central issue in the structure of the retail industry. Online retailers may choose either a uniform delivered price or location-specific delivered prices, whereas offline retailers rely on uniform mill pricing. Using a game-theoretic model that incorporates shopping costs, shipping costs, distaste costs, and consumer taste heterogeneity, we characterize the equilibrium structure of the retail industry. The existence of equilibrium critically depends on the degree of taste heterogeneity. An offline retailer chooses to move online when distaste or shipping costs are sufficiently low. However, firms become trapped in a Prisonerís Dilemma when both adopt uniform delivered pricing. When both firms operate as e-retailers, they engage in a Game of Chicken and soften price competition by adopting di§erent pricing formats. We also describe the evolution of the retail industry from conventional retailing to personalized pricing as distaste and shipping costs decline.

CORE DP 2026 / 08

Center for Operations Research and Econometrics — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:08:48 +0200

Childhood, Well-Being and Fairness / Marie-Louise Leroux, Pierre Pestieau, Gregory Ponthiere

> This paper examines the design of optimal family policies when children have unequal needs (in terms of material goods and parental time), leading to heterogeneous preferences, and have parents with unequal degrees of altruism. We examine the issue of interpersonal well-being comparisons between children by means of consumption-equivalent and time-equivalent indexes, and show that the conditions of existence of these equivalents - as well as their rankings across children - differ across the metric used. We also examine well-being comparisons across parents who differ in their childrenís preferences and in their altruism. Then, we derive the constrained egalitarian social optimum (where only childrenís well-being levels are equalized) and the double egalitarian social optimum (where both childrenís and parentsíwell-being are equalized). It is shown that the optimal allocation and the optimal family policy vary with the metric used for the measurement of childrenís well-being.

CORE DP 2026 / 07

Center for Operations Research and Econometrics — Tue, 19 May 2026 08:43:15 +0200

The Visibility Premium: Article Order and Citations / Chun Chee Kok, Francesco Lippi, Sascha O. Becker

> We exploit a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of the order in which articles appear within a journal issue on citations. Using data on 1,456 articles published in the Economic Journal between 2010 and 2024, we find that articles appearing earlier in an issue receive substantially more citations throughout the sample period. Articles ranked 7-9 receive 20% fewer two-year citations than those ranked 1-3, with effects growing to 28% over five years. Between December 2015 and February 2025, the journal switched from chronological to alphabetical ordering, allowing us to disentangle rank (visibility) effects from alphabetical (name) effects. Analysis of views and downloads confirms a visibility mechanism, with important implications for editorial practices.

Chaire pension - 22 mai 2026

Center for Operations Research and Econometrics — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:30:14 +0200

22/05/2026 - 10h30 - AGORA 13

Pensions des Administrations Provinciales et Locales :
contractuels versus statutaires

Lieu: AGORA 13

Orateurs:

- Anna Queck (UCLouvain/ CORE)- Synthèse des recherches

- Jean Hindriks (UCLouvain/CORE) -
Le compte pension et la pension Arizona

Pour vous inscrire aux sessions merci de compléter ce formulaire.