The electricity industry in most developed countries has been restructured over recent decades with the aim of improving both service quality and firms’ performance. Regulated segments (e.g. transmission) still provide the infrastructure for the competitive segments and represent a notable...

In this paper we advocate using the latent class model (LCM) approach to control for technological differences in traditional efficiency analysis of regulated electricity networks. Our proposal relies on the fact that latent class models are designed to cluster firms by uncovering differences in...

This paper quantitatively explores high-level links between power sector reforms and wider institutional reforms in the economy for a set of 27 diverse countries in rapid political and economic transition since 1990. Panel-data econometrics based on bias corrected dynamic fixed effect analysis...

A sustainable energy policy needs to balance between the reduction of carbon emissions and protection of vulnerable households and avoid a widening of the existing "energy gap" among the consumers. This study investigates energy spending for different consumer groups, in particular focussing on...

Electricity distribution networks are capital intensive systems and timely investments are crucial for long-term reliability of their service. In coming years, in the UK, and elsewhere in Europe, many networks are in need of extensive investments in their aging assets. Also, aspects of energy...

This paper assesses the electricity sector reforms across small power systems while citing Nepal as an example. The on-going political instability and increasing electricity demand make power sector reform in Nepal and similar small systems a more complex process. As international reform...

Interconnections can be an effective way to increase competition in wholesale electricity markets in particular for smaller markets with few actors. This paper quantitatively examines the potentials for interconnections in the Irish Single Electricity Market (SEM). We use a time-varying Kalman...

Incentive regulation and efficiency analysis of network utilities often need to take the effect of important external factors, such as the weather conditions, into account. This paper presents a method for estimating the effect of weather conditions on the costs of electricity distribution...

Since the 1990s, efficiency and benchmarking analysis has increasingly been used in network utilities research and regulation. A recurrent concern is the effect of environmental factors that are beyond the influence of firms (observable heterogeneity) and factors that are not identifiable...

The main aim of this paper is to develop an econometric approach to estimation of marginal costs of improving quality of service. We implement this methodology by way of applying it to the case of the UK electricity distribution networks. The estimated marginal costs allow us to shed light on...