The major difficulties in assessing market power in electricity wholesale spot markets mean that great weight should be placed upon assessing market outcomes against the fundamental determinants of supply demand and competition. In this spirit we study whether the New Zealand market has been a...

An increasing number of researchers attempt to model the behavior of electricity spot prices using statistical models commonly used to model financial asset prices. In this paper we reveal properties of electricity spot prices which such models cannot capture. Using six years of half-hourly...

Steen Videbeck presented a half day seminar in September 2003, Measuring and developing the performance of New Zealand's power market.

"Market power in electricity wholesale spot markets is more likely if there is market segmentation. We show that principal component analysis is a natural tool for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of the presence of local markets. We study whether the New Zealand market has been a...

In 1988 the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission gave permission for the University of Iowa to begin operating the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM) thus ushering in the world's first information market (sometimes called a prediction market). Similar markets have subsequently appeared at the...

The last thirty years have witnessed a fundamental change in the regulation of infrastructure industries. Whereas firms were subject to rate of return regulation and protected from entry in the past now they face various forms of incentive regulation competition is actively promoted by many...

Generators supplying electricity markets are subject to volatile input and output prices and uncertain fuel availability. Price-risk may be hedged to a considerable extent but fuel-risk - water flows in the case of hydro and gas availability in the case of thermal plants - may not be. We show...

Cooperatives and mutual organisational forms arise for reasons which include contracting problems between parties. Economic literature suggests a variety of allocated inefficiencies implied by these forms that largely have their origins in poor investment decisions. We demonstrate that a...

Graeme Guthrie and Steen Videbeck presented, Is New Zealand One Market or Many? Implications for Locational Portfolios at an ISCR half day seminar in September 2003.