Long-term contracts for electricity can counter market power and reduce prices in short-term markets. If electricity …-term prices would allow rivals to buy on the spot market and undercut them. Could this lead to less contracting and higher prices …? This paper combines a model of electricity retailing and a Cournot model of competition in the wholesale markets to …

In an attempt to reduce high electricity prices in England and Wales the government has reduced concentration among … generators and introduced New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA). Econometric analysis on monthly data from April 1996 to … margin were chiefly responsible for the fall in prices. If generators had been tacitly colluding before NETA, however, the …

In England and Wales, wholesale electricity is sold in a spot market partly covered by long-term contracts which hedge … the spot price. Two dominant conventional generators can raise spot prices to undesirable levels, which is profitable in … the absence of contracts. If fully hedged, however, the generators lose their incentive to raise prices above marginal …

The paper surveys the literature and publicly available information on market power monitoring in electricity wholesale …