Restructuring electricity markets has enabled wholesalers to exercise market power. Using a common method of measuring competitive behavior in these markets, several studies have found substantial inefficiencies. This method overstates actual welfare loss by ignoring production constraints that...

This paper examines vertical arrangements in electricity markets. Vertically integrated wholesalers, or those with long-term contracts, have less incentive to raise wholesale prices when retail prices are determined beforehand. For three restructured markets, we simulate prices that define...

In many countries, unreliable inputs, particularly those lacking storage, can significantly limit a firm's productivity. In the case of an increasing frequency of blackouts, a firm may change factor shares in a number of ways. It may decide to self generate electricity, to purchase intermediate...

This paper explores firms' response to regulatory enforcement. New Source Review, a provision of the Clean Air Act, imposes stringent emissions limitations on significantly modified older power plants. In 1999, the EPA sued owners of 46 plants for NSR violations. We study how electricity...

We determine the change in air pollution damages from U.S. power plant emissions over 2010 to 2017. Annual damages fell from $245 billion to $133 billion over this period, with most of the decline occurring in the East. Decomposition shows that changes in emissions rates reduced damages by $63...

This paper examines how much carbon emissions from the electricity industry would decrease in response to a carbon price. We show how both carbon prices and cheap natural gas reduce, in a nearly identical manner, the historic cost advantage of coal-fired power plants. The shale revolution has...

Real-time pricing (RTP) of electricity would improve allocative efficiency and limit wholesalers' market power. Conventional wisdom claims that RTP provides additional environmental benefits. This paper argues that RTP will reduce the variance, both within- and across-days, in the quantity of...