This paper argues that wives in developing countries use domestic labour as a tool to incentivise husbands, especially when they lack power and cannot credibly threaten divorce. In Malawi, husbands often supplement farm income with wage labour. In our model, this creates moral hazard: husbands...

The framework proposed by Ofgem, OFT and CMA invokes a well-functioning market, but the Competition Commission has not always used such a concept, and when it has done so it has been problematic. Here, the well-functioning market is Ofgem's vision of a successful market, not anchored in any...

Efficiency and productivity analysis is a central concept in incentive-based regulation of network utilities. However, the efficiency measures obtained from benchmarking predominantly reflect short term performance and hence, provide only a snapshot of the firm's path towards its long run...

The incentive regulation of costs related to physical and cyber security in electricity networks is an important but relatively unexplored and ambiguous issue. These costs can be part of a cost efficiency benchmarking or alternatively dealt separately. This paper discusses the issues and...

This study explores and quantifies the benefits of connecting more distributed generation (with and without the use of smart connections) across different parties (Distribution Network Operators, wider society and generators). Different connection scenarios are proposed (with partial and full...

Since 2008 UK energy regulator Ofgem has imposed increasingly severe restrictions on suppliers to the domestic (residential) retail market. Initially, non-discrimination conditions aimed to “remove unfair price differentials”, particularly between suppliers’ prices between regions,...

We explore the different competitive mechanisms applied by electric utilities from the USA in promoting cost-effective Distribution Generation (DG) resources and the challenges that they face due to the increase in DG connections. Case studies from California, Oregon, Colorado and New York are...

The European Commission’s Target Electricity Model aims to integrate EU electricity markets. This paper estimates the potential benefit to the EU of coupling interconnectors to increase the efficiency of trading day-ahead, intra-day and sharing balancing services efficiently across borders....

On both sides of the Atlantic the regulation of gas transmission networks has undergone major changes since the early 1990’s. Whereas in the US the long-standing regime of cost-plus regulation was complemented by increasing pipe-to-pipe competition, most European countries moved towards...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the lessons from the recent history of telecoms deregulation for the electricity (and by implication heat) network regulation. We do this in the context of Ofgem’s RPIX@ 20 Review of energy regulation in the UK, which considers whether RPI-X based price...