In the last two decades, more than half of the countries in the world have introduced a reform process in their power industries and billions of dollars have been spent on liberalizing electricity markets around the world. This thesis presents a doctoral research concerned with the cross-country...

Public infrastructure services have been subject to dramatic regulatory reform since the 1980s in the European Union, particularly privatization, at the national level, and increased liberalization and deregulation, via the Single Market Programme. Despite this ambitious reform programme, there...

This essay concerns the ways in which public services – particularly household services such as communications, energy, water and transportation – have been regulated and deregulated, and analyses what consequences this has for users and citizens. Much of the deregulation of public services...

The European Commission has formally recognised that adequate provision of basic household services, including energy, communications, water and transport, is key to ensuring equity, social cohesion and solidarity. Yet little research has been done on the impact of the reform of these services...

We present a hybrid mechanism application for the electrical system network expansion in Mexico, United States and Canada. The application is based on redefining the transmission output in terms of "point-to-point" transactions or financial transmission rights (FTRs); rebalancing the fixed and...

This paper presents an application of a mechanism that provides incentives to promote transmission network expansion in the electricity system of the Ontario province. Such a mechanism combines a merchant approach with a regulatory approach. It is based on the rebalancing of a two-part tariff...

In recent years, the European telecommunications market has witnessed major developments, with rapid expansion in access to telecommunications networks and a surge in the number of available services and applications. While many factors have contributed to the transformation of the...

Electric and natural gas are the two major sources of energy for residents of Washington State. Several states have adopted a policy whereby utility companies decide on the choice of mixes of resources by incorporating cost effectiveness, conservation and externalities. Externalities could...

We show that project evaluation should be based on free cash flows at nominal prices. We present a case where the results from the constant price method are biased upwards and there is a risk to accept bad projects. It is a widespread practice to evaluate projects at constant prices. With an...

Building on a framework that assesses the attractiveness of ‘political markets’ – where firms transact over public policies with government policy-makers – we develop hypotheses regarding the success or performance of firms’ nonmarket strategies. We propose that the ability of firms to...