Promoting competition among electricity producers is crucial for ensuring allocative efficiency and lower electricity prices. In this paper, I empirically examine the electricity market of England and Wales in order to analyze to what extent the regulatory reforms were successful in promoting...

In this paper, I investigate the effect of the takeover of a Slovak petroleum firm on its price setting mechanism. In particular, I tested the changes in the reaction of output (fuel) price on input (dollar and crude oil) prices and competitors' prices (approximated by the reference Commodity...

Theory and empirics suggest that by curbing competition, incumbent electricity companies which used to be and here are referred to as Vertically Integrated Utilities (VIUs), can increase their profitability through combined ownership of generation and transmission and/or distribution networks....

In the EU electricity industry, many Vertically Integrated Utilities (VIUs) have ownership both of electricity generators and of transmission, hence VIU-owned or allied generators often are bidders in auctions for VIU-owned transmission. In Van Koten (2006) I show that welfare suffers and the...

When a bidder (referred to as the privileged bidder) is residual claimant to a part of the revenue from an auction with two bidders whose valuations are independently and identically distributed, bidding incentives are changed. Specifically, the privileged bidder will bid more aggressively to...

Promoting competition among electricity producers is primarily targeted at ensuring low electricity prices for consumers. Producers could, however, withhold part of production facilities (i.e., apply a capacity cutting strategy) and thereby push more expensive production facilities to satisfy...

We try to better understand the comparative advantages of structural and behavioral remedies of deregulation in electricity markets, an eminent policy issue for which the experimental evidence is scant and problematic. Specifically, we investigate theoretically and experimentally the effects on...

Price fluctuations that partially comove with demand are a specific feature inherent to liberalized electricity markets. The regulatory authority in Great Britain, however, believed that sometimes electricity prices were significantly higher than what was expected and, therefore, introduced...

We propose a computational model to study (the evolution of) post-secondary education. “Consumers” who differ in quality shop around for desirable colleges or universities. “Firms” that differ in quality signal the availability of their services to desirable students. As long as they...

This paper analyzes the effects of ownership structure on corporate environmental performance and examines the link between financial performance to environmental performance in a transition economy. In particular, it analyzes these ownership effects and this performance link using an unbalanced...