This study develops and structurally estimates a model of household and electric utility behavior to describe how the low access rates and high connection charges that are common in the Sub-Saharan Africa region arise from regulated electricity tariffs being set too low. As a result, the...

In January 2008, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research hosted a workshop on addressing recent legislation creating a “cap-and-trade” system. Four key issues: (1) linking the California market to other GHG markets and control policies, including those in other states, Europe, and...

Low quality infrastructure is a major barrier to economic advancement in developing countries. This paper develops an empirical framework to explain the persistence of this problem as the result of a targeted program of utility subsidies. I estimate a structural model of household demand for...

Electricity and water are often subsidized in developing countries to increase their affordability for low-income households. Ideally, such subsidies would create sufficient demand in poor neighborhoods to encourage private investment in their infrastructure. Instead, many regions receiving...

Effective competition in wholesale electricity markets is the cornerstone of the deregulation of the electricity generation industry. We examine the degree of competition in the California wholesale electricity market during June-November 1998 by comparing the market prices with estimates of the...

this paper identifies the major political and economic constraints that impact the demand-side of electricity industry re-structuring processes. These constraints have been a major barrier to implementing effective restructuring processes in many countries, particularly those in the developing...

In electricity, “downstream†CO2 regulation requires retail suppliers to buy energy from a mix of sources so that their weighted emissions satisfy a standard. It has been argued that such “load-based†regulation would solve emissions leakage, cost consumers less, and provide...