Although market power in permit markets has been examined in some detail following the seminal work of Hahn (1984), the effect of free allocation on price manipulation with market power in both output and permit market has not specifically been addressed. I show that in this case, the threshold...

In this paper we estimate the increase in the market share of ENERGY STAR-qualified appliances that can be attributed to targetted cash rebates offered by utility companies. To estimate the impact of these incentives we use the variation in timing and size of the utility rebates across the US...

This study presents an empirical analysis of the cost efficiency of a sample of Swiss multi-utilities operating in the distribution of electricity, natural gas and water. The multi-utilities that operate in different sectors are characterized by a strong unobserved heterogeneity. Therefore the...

This paper explores the economies of scale and scope in the electricity, gas and water utilities. These issues have a crucial importance in the actual policy debates about unbundling the integrated utilities into separate entities, a policy which has often been supported by the ongoing reforms...

The deregulation of the electricity industry is currently on the political agenda in many countries. In most countries, the deregulation of the sector is combined with a (re-) regulation of the electricity networks in most of the countries. In this paper, we analyze the costs structure of 59...

To correct market failures due to the presence of negative externalities associated with energy consumption, governments have adopted a variety of policies, including taxes, subsidies, regulations and standards, and information-based policies. For example, labels that clearly convey energy...

Climate physics predicts that the intensity of natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change. One of the biggest challenges for economic modeling is the inherent uncertainty of climate events, which crucially affects consumption, investment, and abatement decisions. We...

We study the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on optimum growth and environmental policy by using an expansion-in-varieties growth model with polluting non-renewable resources. Climate change harms the capital stock. Our main contribution is to introduce and extensively explore the naturally...

There is widespread concern that an international agreement on stringent climate policies will not be reached because it would imply too high costs for fast growing economies like China. To quantify these costs we develop a general equilibrium model with fully endogenous growth. The framework...

We evaluate incentives for residential energy upgrades in Italy using data from an original survey of Italian homeowners. In this paper, attention is restricted to heating system replacements, and to the effect of monetary and non-monetary incentives on the propensity to replace the heating...