This article examines imperfectly competitive investment in electric power generation in the presence of congestion on the transmission grid. Under simple yet realistic assumptions, it precisely derives the technology mix as a function of the capacity of the transmission interconnection. In...

This article is the first to examine electric power producers' investment decisions when com- petition is imperfect and the transmission grid congested. This analysis yields numerous original insights. First, congestion on the grid is transient, and may disappear when demand is highest. Second,...

Many developing countries are unable to provide their industrial sector with reliable electric power and many enterprises have to contend with insufficient and unreliable electricity supply. Because of these constraints, enterprises often opt for self-generation even though it is widely...

The main goal of this study is to demonstrate the existence of a significant empirical link between infrastructure and financial sectors reforms the effects of which are reflected in infrastructure sectors performance. This paper reports on the findings of an exploration of this issue for the...

This article formally analyzes the causes of underinvestment in electric power generation, and the various corrective market designs that have been proposed and implemented. It yields four main analytical findings. First, using a simple numerical example, (a linear demand function, calibrated on...

TThis paper seeks to assess the extent to which a country’s overall level of development and that of its financial sector, in particular, are factors that attract private capital into infrastructure projects. The authors investigate these effects in a 1990–2007 dataset on the power sector in...

The advent of "smart meters" will make possible Real Time Pricing of electricity: customers will face and react to wholesale spot prices, thus consumption of electric power will be aligned with its opportunity cost. This article determines the marginal value of a fraction of demand (or a...

Price caps are often used by policy makers to "regulate markets". Previous analyses have focussed on the "supply side" impact of these caps, and derived the optimal price cap, which maximizes investment and welfare. This article expands the analysis to include the "demand side" impact of price...

Weitzman (1998, 2001) proposed a simple “gamma discounting” method to characterize the term structure of discount rates today from the sole distribution of future spot interest rates. This rule which justifies using a smaller discount rate for longer maturities is now used for long-term...

Using the Chakravorty et al. (2006) ceiling model, we characterize the optimal consumption paths of three energy resources: dirty oil, which is non-renewable and carbon emitting; clean oil, which is also non-renewable but carbon-free thanks to an abatement technology, and solar energy, which is...