This paper uses the framework in Wolak (2003a,b and 2007) and data on half-hourly offer curves and market-clearing prices and quantities from the New Zealand wholesale electricity market over the period January 1, 2001 to June 30, 2007 to characterize how the four large suppliers in this...

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...

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...

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...

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...

W e present a method for decomposing wholesale electricity payments into production costs, inframarginal competitive rents, and payments resulting from the exercise of market power. Using data from June 1998 to October 2000 in California, we find significant departures from competitive pricing...

The traditional approach to demand response of paying for a customer's electricity consumption reductions relative to an administratively set baseline is currently being advocated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) as a way to foster the participation of final consumers in formal...

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...