In this paper we present an international cross-country benchmarking analysis for utility regulation of France and Germany, the two largest electricity distribution countries in Europe. We examine the relative performance of 99 French and 77 German distribution companies operating within two...

We revisit key elements of European power market design with respect to both short term operation and longer-term investment and re-investment choices. For short term markets, the European policy debate focuses on the definition of common interfaces, like for example gate closure time. We argue...

This paper presents an application of a mechanism that provides incentives to promote transmission network expansion in the area of the US electric system known as PJM. The applied mechanism combines the merchant and regulatory approaches to attract investment into transmission grids. It is...

Electricity transmission pricing and transmission grid expansion have received increasing regulatory and analytical attention in recent years. Since electricity transmission is a very special service with unusual characteristics, such as loop flows, the approaches have been largely tailor-made...

We apply a merchant transmission model to the trilateral market coupling (TLC) arrangement among the Netherlands, Belgium and France as a generic example, and note that it can be applied to any general market splitting or coupling of Europe's different national power markets. In this merchant...

The objective of this paper is to develop a model to determine the price formation of wholesale electricity markets. For that purpose, we model wholesale electricity prices depending on the prices of fuels (coal and natural gas) and of CO2 emission allowances using a Markov Switching Regression....

This paper provides a productivity analysis of German electricity distribution companies. It addresses both traditional issues in electricity sector benchmarking, such as the role of scale effects and optimal utility size, as well as new evidence specific to the situation in Germany. Regarding...

Under perfect competition on the output market, first best technology subsidies in the presence of learning by doing are justified by knowledge spill overs that are not accounted for by individual companies. First best output subsidies are thus depending directly on the learning effects and are,...

In January 2009 Germany introduced incentive regulation for the electricity distribution sector based on results obtained from econometric and nonparametric benchmarking analysis. One main problem for the regulator in assigning the relative efficiency scores are unobserved firm-specific factors...

This paper analyzes the process of power utility re-regulation in Eastern Europe and the CIS during the decade of systemic transformation (1990-1999); in particular, it explores reasons why early attempts to introduce competition-oriented reform models have not succeeded. We discuss advantages...