A sizable literature has grown up in recent years focusing on two-sided markets in which economies of scale combined with complementarities between a platform and its associated ‘software’ or ‘services’ can generate indirect network effects (that is positive feedback between the number...

Practising is a matter of increasing the reliability of ones skills rather than relying on a tool or a strike of genius to get it right. Once perfection has been achieved the individual will aim for higher quality since the effort is more likely to be worthwhile. Furthermore because the returns...

Corporate managers and executive compensation in many industries place significant emphasis on measures of firm size, such as sales revenue or market share. Such objectives have an important yet thus far unquantified impact on market performance. With n symmetric firms, equilibrium welfare...

Corporate managers and executive compensation in many industries place significant emphasis on measures of firm size, such as sales revenue or market share. Such objectives have an important - yet thus far unquantifed - impact on market performance. With n symmetric firms, equilibrium welfare...

What would happen if firms could collusively choose cost of transport (inconvenience) in Hotelling's spatial model? This paper endogenises inconvenience in a three stage game, where firms choose locations, the inconvenience, and finally compete in price, on the assumption of a common reservation...

This paper examines generators’ incentives to exercise market power and the strategies they would follow if all electricity supplies were traded in an hourly-unregulated spot market. The industry is modelled as a Cournot duopoly with a competitive fringe; particular care is given to the hydro...

In order to overcome the incentive of excessive maintenance reductions and insufficient network investments in incentive regulation of electricity distribution companies, regulators throughout Europe have started regulating quality of service in the energy sector. In this paper, we discuss the...

There is a public perception that electricity liberalisation is the major cause of recent electricity blackouts. This is reflected in the newspaper reporting of blackouts. By contrast, it was not listed as a cause in any official investigation reports. In this paper, we examine the common causes...

The literature on informational cascades and herding theory has for a decade focused on the externality and suboptimal outcomes generated from decision-making when spaces are coarser than private information spaces. Much of the output has therefore been positive, not normative. This paper...

Quality of service has emerged as an important issue in post-reform regulation of electricity distribution networks. Regulators have employed partial incentive schemes to promote cost saving, investment efficiency, and service quality. This paper presents a quality-incorporated benchmarking...