Do You Pay a Fair Price for Electricity? Consumers’ Satisfaction and Utility Reform in the EU

The research question addressed by this paper is a simple one: are European consumers happy with the price they pay for electricity supply services after two decades of reforms? We focus on self-assessed consumers’ satisfaction as reported in three waves of Eurobarometer survey, 2000-2002-2004, conditioning on a set of indicators of public ownership, vertical integration and entry regulation across the EU-15. Our results do not support a systematic association between consumers’ satisfaction and the reform package. These results, which have been extensively tested for robustness, raise various concerns about the way the reform processes have been undertaken and provides some warnings about possible effects on public support for utility reforms