This paper argues in favour of principle-based securities regulation for Canada. The author examines the current state of Canadian securities regulation and why change is needed. The author then examines the characteristics of principle-based regulation and contrasts it against rule-based regulation while exposing the advantages and disadvantages of both regulatory models. In proposing a principle-based model for Canadian securities regulation, the author looks to the use of this type of regulation in the capital markets of certain Canadian provinces, the United States and the United Kingdom and then examines certain attributes of Canadian capital markets that have to be considered in the application of principle-based securities regulation to Canada. In supporting principle-based regulation as the modern form of securities regulation, the author discusses lessons learned from the global financial crisis and how those lessons can be applied in the promotion of principle-based securities regulation for Canada.

The popularity of Farmers’ markets is on the rise; in Canada there are 425 farmers’ markets, with over 130 in Ontario alone (Feagan, Morris, & Krug, 2004). Farmers’ markets provide high quality, local produce and are often considered an environmentally sustainable food practice (Taxel, 2003; King 2008). United States studies have scrutinized farmers’ markets as exclusionary white spaces that are not equitably accessible, but similar Canadian studies are rare. A case study at the Wychwood Artscape Barns, located in an economically and culturally diverse neighbourhood, in Toronto Ontario has been conducted. Demographics surveys of patrons were compared with existing demographic data; interviews were conducted to discover who shops at the market and for what reasons; results were analyzed using whiteness theory. Results were consistent with U.S. studies – Wychwood Farmers’ Market patrons were white, high income,individuals with university educations; these individuals shop at the market disproportionally to the demographic data.

This paper argues in favour of principle-based securities regulation for Canada. The author examines the current state of Canadian securities regulation and why change is needed. The author then examines the characteristics of principle-based regulation and contrasts it against rule-based regulation while exposing the advantages and disadvantages of both regulatory models. In proposing a principle-based model for Canadian securities regulation, the author looks to the use of this type of regulation in the capital markets of certain Canadian provinces, the United States and the United Kingdom and then examines certain attributes of Canadian capital markets that have to be considered in the application of principle-based securities regulation to Canada. In supporting principle-based regulation as the modern form of securities regulation, the author discusses lessons learned from the global financial crisis and how those lessons can be applied in the promotion of principle-based securities regulation for Canada.

Although human capital investment is often proposed as a solution to improve the labour market prospects of individuals who reach adulthood without obtaining a post-secondary credential, little is known about whether skills upgrading actually pays off. Using three national cross-sectional surveys on adult education as well as longitudinal data from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (1992-2005), I analyze how returning to school affects the earnings trajectories of men and women who enter the labour force with low levels of initial education. There are two major findings related to the earnings and advancement question. First, although both Canadian and American adults with low levels of initial education are significantly less likely than their more educated counterparts to participate in education and training, when they do participate, they are more likely to report it helped them increase their earnings. Second, these perceived gains are matched by substantial gains in actual earning growth. While the opportunity cost of returning to school is quite high – returnees experience a sharp drop in annual earnings during the years while they are in school – for both women and men, this investment yields a significant increase in earnings in the post schooling period. In addition, I address the question of why – if the earnings gains are so substantial – do so few less educated adults return to school? There are three key findings related to the participation question. First, even after accounting for a rich set of covariates, the effects of family of origin socio-economic status on educational attainment persist over the life course. Second, despite these enduring effects, current family and labour market dynamics matter as well. Consistent with the human capital model, I find evidence that, educationally disadvantaged individuals return to school to improve their labour market prospects. Taken together these results demonstrate that at least for some educationally disadvantaged adults, human capital investment is an effective strategy for labour market advancement. This conclusion challenges the standard ‘cumulative disadvantage’ view of adult education as simply another mechanism that serves to reproduce inequality.

Title:  Brand Brazil – A study on brand equity in an emerging market  Authors:  Anders Andersson & Jonathan Karlsson  Subject:  Bachelor thesis in marketing, 15 credits  Keywords:  Brand equity, Emerging markets, Brand awareness, Brand associations, Perceived quality, Brand loyalty  Purpose:  The purpose of this thesis is to gain deeper understanding of how a company operating on an emerging market can work with brand equity, and what benefits it provides to the brand owner.  Theoretical framework:  The chapter begins with a description of brand equity to be further decomposed to its four dimensions; brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, brand loyalty  Methodology:  A qualitative research method with a deductive approach is conducted, where interviews with Brand/Marketing coordinators for the Brazilian subsidiaries of Volkswagen, Toyota and General Motors, are performed.  Empirical framework:  The chapter presents performed interviews that are supposed to describe our case studies’ work and benefits from brand equity.  Conclusion:  This study shows that companies operating on an emerging market are working actively with brand equity, often in accordance with theory. The companies also experience positive effects from increased brand equity. / Titel:  Brand Brazil – En studie om brand equity på en emerging market  Författare:  Anders Andersson & Jonathan Karlsson  Ämne:  Kandidatuppsats i marknadsföring, 15 hp  Nyckelord:  Brand equity, Emerging markets, Märkeskännedom, Märkesassociationer, Upplevd kvalitet, Märkeslojalitet  Syfte:  Syftet med uppsatsen är att få ökad förståelse för hur företag verksamma på en emerging market kan arbeta med brand equity, samt vilken nytta det ger varumärkesinnehavaren.  Teoretisk referensram:  Kapitlet inleds med en beskrivning av brand equity för att sedan brytas ner i de fyra dimensionerna; märkeskännedom, märkesassociationer, upplevd kvalitet och märkeslojalitet.  Metod:  En kvalitativ studie med deduktiv ansats där Brand/Marketing coordinators för de brasilianska dotterbolagen till Volkswagen, Toyota och General Motors är intervjuade.  Empiri:  I empirikapitlet presenteras genomförda intervjuer vilka är tänkta att beskriva respektive fallföretags arbete och nytta av brand equity.  Slutsatser:  I denna undersökning framgår att företag verksamma på en emerging market arbetar aktivt med brand equity, ofta i enlighet med teori. Dessutom upplever företagen positiva effekter av ökad brand equity.

Many researchers have contributed to the field of international purchasing; but there are no consistent findings to illustrate particular connections within the field. This particular research studies the ways that two Iranian producers of polymer piping systems handle international purchasing in current complex Iranian economic circumstances. By going beyond macroeconomic theories of international trade and using three-factor model of international industrial purchasing this particular study aims to reveal how international industrial purchasing is handled by Iranian producers of polymer piping systems under current Iranian economic and politic circumstances. A case study approach employing face-to-face semi-structured interview method is designed. A set of interview questionnaires was designed to gather empirical qualitative and quantitative data. A narrative analysis was then conducted to lead the discussions and to draw conclusions. The results of the study show that international purchasing in both firms is influenced by internal factors including attitudes and competence as well as external factors including market conditions and regulations. The levels to which the first three mentioned factors influence international purchasing varies between the studied firms; but regulations have similar effects on the ways the studied firms handle international purchasing. Also, the modified three-factor model is perfectly applicable to the studied cases under current circumstances of Iranian economy.

Esta tesis analiza temas de distribución de la renta y desarrollo económico en economías caracterizadas por imperfecciones en el mercado de capitales.El primer capitulo estudia temas de distribución de la renta. La mayoría de la literatura en ese campo a sido desarrollada bajo el supuesto que IMC (esto es imperfecciones en el mercado de capitales) son exógenas. La teoría convencional es que es muy poco probable que los individuos mas pobres puedan invertir porque tomar dinero a préstamo es muy caro en presencia de asimetrías informativas. Consecuentemente, los individuos más pobres no invertirán y sus futuras generaciones permanecerán pobres. Basado en esta línea de pensamiento esta literatura concluye que IMC exógenas producen mayor desigualdad y menor movilidad intergeneracional. Contrariamente as estos análisis este artículo argumenta que cuando las IMC se endogenizan la movilidad intergeneracional aumentará entre los pobres e inteligentes individuos. En mi modelo existe un problema de selección adversa entre el prestamista y el prestatario, pues los bancos no saben la habilidad del prestatario. En este contexto los bancos ofrecen un menú de contratos que satisface la condición de auto-selección. En equilibrio bancos diferencian entre agentes forzando a los más inteligentes a invertir en educación más de lo óptimo. De esta forma el agente menos inteligente no se hace pasar por el agente más inteligente. Estos últimos obtienen más educación de la que ellos desean, aumentando movilidad intergeneracional y la acumulación de capital humano, que son mayores que en el mundo con información perfecta.Los resultados más importantes de este paper son los siguientes: cuando se endogenizan las imperfecciones del mercado de capitales obtenemos que IMC aumentan movilidad intergeneracional y aumenta el número de gente educados en el estado estacionario. Al estudiar desigualdad en renta, yo encuentro que los resultados son ambiguos. Por un lado el número de gente con rentas muy bajas ha disminuido. Por otro lado la clase media de prestatarios inteligentes tienen una renta menor.Una de las cuestiones más importantes que se hacen los economistas es porqué países pobres usan sus recursos de forma ineficiente. En el segundo capítulo nosotros (Andrés Erosa y yo) proponemos una teoría donde IMC son el origen de las diferencias en TFP entre países. En nuestra teoría los empresarios tienen información privada sobre la productividad de su tecnología. Nosotros estudiamos cómo el contrato, descrito como la habilidad de hacer respetar el contrato, afecta la provisión de incentivos, y por tanto, y de repartir los recursos entre los empresarios. Nosotros estudiamos un modelo de crecimiento donde los empresarios están dotados de una tecnología para producir un bien intermedio que es el input de la producción final de bienes. Los empresarios necesitan financiación externa para producir. Esta financiación externa está limitada por dos problemas: Primero, la productividad no es observable para los prestamistas. Segundo, los empresarios pueden pagar, como máximo, una fracción de la producción. Asumimos que los países difieren en su capacidad de hacer respetar los contratos. Demostramos que, en la presencia de asimetrías de información, países con baja capacidad de hacer respetar los contratos utilizan tecnologías ineficientes en equilibrio y es caracterizada por diferencias en productividad entre países. Nuestra teoría sugiere que los empresarios tienen intereses en mantener en status quo con baja capacidad de hacer cumplir los contratos y esto hace posible que los empresarios extraigan rentas de los servicios que contratan. Nuestra teoría tiene implicaciones sobre la distribución de los recursos entre sectores. En fin nuestra teoría implica que la tasa de impuestos sobre la renta puede ser mala para la actividad económica sobre todo cuando los mercados de capitales son imperfectos. / This dissertation analyzes income distribution and economic development issues in macroeconomies with financial frictions. Chapter 1 focuses on income distribution issues. Most of the existing literature in this area has been developed under the assumption that CMI are exogenous. Their conventional view is that since becoming borrower is expensive under high imperfections in the capital markets, poor agents are less likely to make investment decisions. As a consequence their future generations will remain poor. Based on this thought these branch of the literature conclude that exogenous CMI lead to higher inequality and lower mobility. In contrast to these analyses this paper argues that when we endogenize CMI, intergenerational mobility may be promoted among poor and talented agents. In my model there is an adverse selection problem between borrowers and banks, since banks cannot identify borrowers' ability. In this context banks offer a menu of contracts that satisfy the self-selection mechanism. In equilibrium banks differentiate between agents by forcing talented borrowers to make an investment in human capital larger than they would in the first best world. In this way low ability individuals do not pose as high ability ones. Talented children from poor families get educated even more than they wish, so that both income mobility and human capital accumulation are larger than in the first best world. The major results of this paper might be summarized as follows: when we endogenize imperfections in the capital market we obtain that CMI promotes intergenerational mobility and increases the number of educated people in the steady state. When we study inequality of wealth, we find that there are opposite effects making inequality unambiguos. On the one hand there is a small number of people in the lower bound of the wealth distribution. On the other hand the middle class of clever borrowers have a lower wealth. One of the most important research questions faced by economist is why poor countries use productive resources inefficiently. In the second chapter of the thesis we propose a theory where capital market imperfections are at the origin of cross-country TFP differences. In our theory entrepreneurs have private information about the multifactor productivity of their technology. We study how the contracting environment, as described by the ability to enforce contracts, affects the provision of incentives and, thus, resource allocation to and across entrepreneurs. We develop a growth model where entrepreneurs are endowed with a technology to produce an intermediate good that is an input in the production of final goods. Entrepreneurs need external funds in order to operate their technology. External financing is complicated by two problems: First, the productivity of the entrepreneurial technology can not be observed by lenders. Second, entrepreneurs can commit to pay, at most, a fraction of the output. We assume that countries differ in the ability to enforce loans contracts. We show that, in the presence of asymmetric information, countries with low enforcement use inefficient technologies in equilibrium and are characterized by differences in productivity across industries. Our theory also suggests that entrepreneurs have a vested interest in maintaining a status quo with low enforcement since it allows them to extract rents from the factor services they hire. Our theory has implications for the allocation of resources across industries that differ in their needs of external funds and provide some insights into why poor countries face large differences in productivity across sectors. Our theory also implies that income taxation can be more detrimental for economic activity when capital markets are imperfect.

La posada en marxa del Mercat Ibèric de l'Electricitat va introduir al sector elèctric espanyol un seguit de nous mecanismes de participació que han forçat els agents a renovar les seves polítiques de gestió. D'aquesta nova situació sorgeix l'oportunitat d'estudiar noves estratègies d'oferta a curt termini per a companyies de generació price-taker que participin diàriament al Mercat Ibèric de l'Electricitat. Aquestes estratègies se centraran al mercat diari, ja que és aquí on es negocia un 80% de l'electricitat que es consumeix diàriament a Espanya i on s'integren gran part de la resta de mecanismes de participació. La liberalització dels mercats elèctrics obre a noves tècniques d'optimització els problemes clàssics de gestió de l'energia. En particular, atesa la incertesa que l'existència del mercat ocasiona als preus, les tècniques de programació estocàstiques es converteixen en la forma més natural per abordar aquests problemes. Als mercats elèctrics el preu es fixa horàriament com a resultat d'un procés de casació , és a dir que quan l'agent ha d'efectuar la seva oferta desconeix el preu al qual li vindrà remunerada l'energia. Aquesta incertesa fa imprescindible l'ús de tècniques estadístiques per obtenir informació del mercat i introduir-la als models d'optimització. En aquest aspecte, una de les contribucions d'aquesta tesi és l'estudi dels preus del mercat de l'electricitat a Espanya i el seu modelat mitjançant models factorials. D'altra banda, s'hi es descriuen els nous mecanismes presents al Mercat Ibèric de l'Electricitat que afecten directament la producció física de les unitats. En particular, s'inclou el modelat detallat dels contractes de futurs físics i bilaterals i de la seva inclusió a l'oferta del mercat diari per part de les companyies de generació. Als models presentats, es tenen en compte explícitament les regles del mercat, així com les clàssiques restriccions d'operació de les unitats, tant tèrmiques com de cicle combinat. A més, es deriva i es demostra l'expressió de la funció d'oferta. Per tant, els models construïts són una eina per decidir l'assignació de les unitats, la generació dels contractes de futurs físics i bilaterals a través seu i l'oferta òptima d'una companyia de generació. Un cop s'han cobert aquests objectius, es presenta una millora dels models mitjançant la inclusió de la seqüència de mercats de molt curt termini per tal de modelar la influència que tenen en l'oferta al mercat diari. Aquests mercats es casen just abans i durant el dia en què l'energia ha de ser consumida, i això permetrà veure com la possibilitat d'augmentar els beneficis participant-hi afecta directament les estratègies d'oferta òptima del mercat diari. Els models presentats en aquest treball han estat provats amb dades reals provinents del Mercat Ibèric de l'Electricitat i d'una companyia de generació que hi opera. Els resultats obtinguts són adequats i es discuteixen al llarg del document / La puesta en marcha del Mercado Ibérico de la Electricidad introdujo en el sector eléctrico español una serie de nuevos mecanismos de participación que han forzado a los agentes a renovar sus políticas de gestión. De esta nueva situación surge la oportunidad de estudiar nuevas estrategias de oferta para las compañías de generación. Esta tesis se enmarca en las estrategias de oferta a corto plazo para compañías de generación price-taker que participen diariamente en el Mercado Ibérico de la Electricidad. Estas estrategias se centraran en el mercado diario ya que es donde se negocia un 80% de la electricidad consumida diariamente en España y es donde se integran gran parte del resto de los mecanismos de participación. La liberalización de los mercados eléctricos permite aplicar nuevas técnicas de optimización a los problemas clásicos de gestión de la energía. En concreto, dada la incertidumbre en el precio existente en el mercado, las técnicas de programación estocástica se convierten en la forma más natural para abordar estos problemas. En los mercados eléctricos el precio se fija horariamente como resultado de un proceso de casación, es decir, cuando el agente debe efectuar sus ofertas desconoce el precio al que la energía le será pagada. Esta incertidumbre hace imprescindible el uso de técnicas estadísticas para obtener información del mercado e introducirla en los modelos de optimización. En este aspecto, una de las contribuciones de esta tesis es el estudio del precio de la electricidad en España y su modelado mediante modelos factoriales. Se describen los nuevos mecanismos presentes en el Mercado Ibérico de la Electricidad que afectan directamente a la producción física de las unidades. En particular, se incluye una modelización detallada de los contratos de futuros físicos y bilaterales y su inclusión en la oferta enviada al mercado diario por las compañías de generación. En los modelos presentados se tiene en cuenta explícitamente las reglas del mercado así como las clásicas restricciones de operación de las unidades, tanto térmicas como de ciclo combinado. La expresión de la función de oferta óptima se deriva y se demuestra. Por lo tanto, los modelos construidos son una herramienta para decidir la asignación de unidades, la generación de los contratos de futuros físicos y bilaterales a través de ellas y la oferta óptima de una compañía de generación. Una vez alcanzados estos objetivos, se presenta una mejora del modelo con la inclusión de la secuencia de mercados de muy corto plazo. El objetivo es modelar la influencia que esta tiene en la oferta al mercado diario. Estos mercados se casan justo antes y durante el día en el que la energía va a ser consumida y se verá cómo la posibilidad de aumentar los beneficios participando en ellos afecta a las estrategias de oferta óptima del mercado diario. Los modelos presentados en este trabajo se han probado con datos reales procedentes del Mercado Ibérico de la Electricidad y de una compañía de generación que opera en él. Los resultados obtenidos son adecuados y se discuten a lo largo del documento. / The start-up of the Iberian Electricity Market introduced a set of new mechanisms in the Spanish electricity sector that forced the agents participating in the market to change their management policies. This situation created a great opportunity for studying the bidding strategies of the generation companies in this new framework. This thesis focuses on the short-term bidding strategies of a price-taker generation company that bids daily in the Iberian Electricity Market. We will center our bidding strategies on the day-ahead market because 80% of the electricity that is consumed daily in Spain is negotiated there and also because it is the market where the new mechanisms are integrated. The liberalization of the electricity markets opens the classical problems of energy management to new optimization approaches. Specifically, because of the uncertainty that the market produces in the prices, the stochastic programming techniques have become the most natural way to deal with these problems. Notice that, in deregulated electricity markets the price is hourly fixed through a market clearing procedure, so when the agent must bid its energy it is unaware of the price at which it will be paid. This uncertainty makes it essential to use some statistic techniques in order to obtain the information coming from the markets and to introduce it in the optimization models in a suitable way. In this aspect, one of the main contributions of this thesis has been the study the Spanish electricity price time series and its modeling by means of factor models. In this thesis, the new mechanism introduced by the Iberian Market that affects the physical operation of the units is described. In particular, it considers in great detail the inclusion of the physical futures contracts and the bilateral contracts into the day-ahead market bid of the generation companies. The rules of the market operator have been explicitly taken into account within the mathematical models, along with all the classical operational constraints that affect the thermal and combined cycle units. The expression of the optimal bidding functions are derived and proved. Therefore, the models built in this thesis provide the generation company with the economic dispatch of the committed futures and bilateral contracts, the unit commitment of the units and the optimal bidding strategies for the generation company. Once these main objectives were fulfilled, we improved the previous models with an approach to the modeling of the influence that the sequence of very short markets have on optimal day-ahead bidding. These markets are cleared just before and during the day in which the electricity will be consumed and the opportunity to obtain benefits from them changes the optimal day-ahead bidding strategies of the generation company, as it will be shown in this thesis. The entire models presented in this work have been tested using real data from a generation company and Spanish electricity prices. Suitable results have been obtained and discussed.

Large--scale distributed environments can be seen as a conflict between the selfish aims of the participants and the group welfare of the population as a whole. In order to regulate the behavior of the participants it is often necessary to introduce mechanisms that provide incentives and stimulate cooperative behavior in order to mitigate for the resultant potentially undesirable availability outcomes which could arise from individual actions.The history of economics contains a wide variety of incentive patterns for cooperation. In this thesis, we adopt bartering incentive pattern as an attractive foundation for a simple and robust form of exchange to re-allocate resources. While bartering is arguably the world's oldest form of trade, there are still many instances where it surprises us. The success and survivability of the barter mechanisms adds to its attractiveness as a model to study.In this thesis we have derived three relevant scenarios where a bartering approach is applied. Starting from a common model of bartering: - We show the price to be paid for dealing with selfish agents in a bartering environment, as well as the impact on performance parameters such as topology and disclosed information.- We show how agents, by means of bartering, can achieve gains in goods without altruistic agents needing to be present.- We apply a bartering--based approach to a real application, the directory services.The core of this research is the analysis of bartering in the Internet Age. In previous times, usually economies dominated by bartering have suffered from high transaction costs (i.e. the improbability of the wants, needs that cause a transaction occurring at the same time and place). Nowadays, the world has a global system of interconnected computer networks called Internet. This interconnected world has the ability to overcome many challenges of the previous times. This thesis analysis the oldest system of trade within the context of this new paradigm. In this thesis we aim is to show thatbartering has a great potential, but there are many challenges that can affect the realistic application of bartering that should be studied.The purpose of this thesis has been to investigate resource allocation using bartering mechanism, with particular emphasis on applications in largescale distributed systems without the presence of altruistic participants in the environment.Throughout the research presented in this thesis we have contributed evidence that supports the leitmotif that best summarizes our work: investigation interactions amongst selfish, rational, and autonomous agents with incomplete information, each seeking to maximize its expected utility by means of bartering. We concentrate on three scenarios: one theoretical, a case of use, and finally a real application. All of these scenarios are used for evaluating bartering. Each scenario starts from a common origin, but each of them have their own unique features.The final conclusion is that bartering is still relevant in the modern world.

The deregulation of energy markets around the world, including power markets has changed the way operating assets in these markets are managed. Independent power asset owners and even utilities operating in these markets no longer operate their assets based on the cost of service approach that prevailed under regulation. Just as in other competitive markets, the objectives of asset owners in power markets revolve around maximizing profit for their shareholders. To this end, financial valuation of physical assets in power markets should incorporate different strategies that are used by asset operators to maximize profit. A lot of observed strategies in power markets are driven by a number of factors, the key among which are: • asset operators are no longer obligated to supply service or manage their assets in certain prescribed ways, rather they have rights to operate, within applicable market rules, using techniques that maximize their profits, • revenues are driven by uncertain market factors, including power price, cost and/or availability of fuel stock and technical uncertainties, and • power assets have physical operating and equipment constraints and limits. Having flexibilties (“options”) to optimize their assets (inline with shareholders’ objectives), rational asset managers react strategically to gradual arrival of information , given applicable equipment constraints, by revising previous decisions in such a way that only optimal (or near optimal) decisions are implemented. As a result, the appropriate approach to valuing power assets in competitive markets must account for managerial flexibilities or “real options” in the presence of uncertainties and technical constraints. The focus of this work is to develop a robust valuation framework for physical power assets operating in competitive markets such as peaking or mid-merit thermal power plants and baseload power plants. The goal is to develop a modeling framework that can be adapted to different energy assets with different types of operating flexibilities and technical constraints and which can be employed for various purposes such as capital budgeting, business planning, risk management and strategic bidding planning among others. The valuation framework must also be able to capture the reality of power market rules and opportunities, as well as technical constraints of different assets. The modeling framework developed conceptualizes operating flexibilities of power assets as “switching options’ whereby the asset operator decides at every decision point whether to switch from one operating mode to another mutually exclusive mode, within the limits of the equipment constraints of the asset. As a current decision to switch operating modes (in the face of current realization of relevant uncertainty factors) may affect future operating flexibilities of the asset and hence cash flows , a dynamic optimization framework is employed. The developed framework accounts for the uncertain nature of key value drivers by representing them with appropriate stochastic processes. Specifically, the framework developed conceptualizes the operation of a power asset as a multi-stage decision making problem where the operator has to make a decision at every stage to alter operating mode given currently available information about key value drivers. The problem is then solved dynamically by decomposing it into a series of two-stage sub-problems according to Bellman’s optimality principle. The solution algorithm employed is the Least Squares Monte Carlo (LSM) method. The developed valuation framework was adapted for a gas-fired thermal power plant, a peaking hydroelectric power plant and a baseload power plant. This work built on previously published real options valuation methodologies for gas-fired thermal power plants by factoring in uncertainty from gas supply/consumption imbalance which is usually faced by gas-fired power generators. This source of uncertainty which has yet to be addressed in the literature, in the context of real options valuation, arises because of mismatch between natural gas and electricity wholesale markets. Natural gas markets in North America operate on a day-ahead basis while power plants are dispatched in real time. Inability of a power generator to match its gas supply and consumption in real time, leading to unauthorized gas over-run or under-run, attracts penalty charges from the gas supplier to the extent that the generator can not manage the imbalance through other means. A savvy gas-fired power plant operator will factor in the potential costs of gas imbalance into its operating strategies resulting in optimal operating decisions that may be different from when gas-imbalance is not considered. By considering an illustrative power plant operating in Ontario, we show effects of gas-imbalance on dispatch strategies on a daily cycling operation basis and the resulting impact on net revenue. Results show that a gas-fired power plant is over-valued by ignoring the impacts of gas imbalance on valuation. Similarly, we employ the developed valuation framework to value a peaking hydroelectric power plant. This application also builds on previous real options valuation work for peaking hydroelectric power plants by considering their operations in a joint energy and ancillary services market. Specifically, the valuation model is developed to capture the value of a peaking power plant whose owner has the flexibility to participate in a joint operating reserve market and an energy market, which is currently the case in the Ontario wholesale power market. The model factors in water inflow uncertainty into the reservoir forebay of a hydroelectric facility and also considers uncertain energy and operating reserve prices. The switching options considered include (i) a joint energy and operating reserve bid (ii) an energy only bid and (iii) a do nothing (idle) strategy. Being an energy limited power plant, by doing nothing at a decision interval, the power asset operator is able to time-shift scarce water for use at a future period when market situations are expected to be better. An illustrative example considered shows the impact of the different value drivers on the plant’s value and dispatch strategies. Results show that by ignoring the flexibility of the asset owner to participate in an operating reserve market, a peaking hydroelectric power plant is undervalued. Finally, the developed valuation framework was employed to optimize life-cycle management decisions of a baseload power plant, such as a nuclear power plant. The applicability of real-options framework to the operations of baseload power plants has not attracted much attention in the literature given their inflexibility with respect to short-term operation. However, owners of baseload power plants, such as nuclear plants, have the right to optimize scheduling and spending of life cycle management projects such as preventative maintenance and equipment inspection. Given uncertainty of long-term value drivers, including power prices, equipment performance and the relationship between current life cycle spending and future equipment degradation, optimization is carried out with the objective of minimizing overall life-cycle related costs. These life-cycle costs include (i) lost revenue during planned and unplanned outages (ii) potential costs of future equipment degradation due to inadequate preventative maintenance and (iii) the direct costs of implementing the life-cycle projects. The switching options in this context include the option to shutdown the power plant in order to execute a given preventative maintenance and inspection project and the option to keep the option “alive” by choosing to delay a planned life-cycle activity. Results of an illustrative example analyzed show that the flexibility of the asset owner to delay spending or to suspend it entirely affects the asset’s value accordingly and should be factored into valuation. Applications can be found for the developed framework and models in different areas important to firms operating in competitive energy markets. These areas include capital budgeting, trading, risk management, business planning and strategic/tactitcal bidding among others.