Appropriately designed Product Market Regulation (PMR) is essential to enhance productivity, boost economic growth and increase welfare. Regulation is needed to address market failures and guarantee the health and safety of consumers. However, by limiting the entry and expansion of firms, a too...

The main purpose of this survey paper is to consider the attempts that have been made to apply economic theory and empirical methods to the analysis of electricity markets, and to evaluate them in light of theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. We describe the key features of the...

Price spikes are of particular importance due to their severe impacts on consumers, businesses and industry. They constitute a major source of price risk to market participants, e.g., electricity retailers with commitments to meet customers' daily electricity demands. To those trading in several...

Australia's national electricity market (NEM) is national in name only. It is eight years since the NEM commenced and the objective of a fully competitive market has not been reached. The NEM's structural characteristics, shaped strongly although not exclusively by its evolving regulatory...

Fuel price caps are one of the potential regulatory tools for controlling wholesale electricity prices when fuel prices are volatile. In this paper, we introduce a theoretical model to study the effects of such caps on firms’ bidding behavior and clearing prices in spot market auctions. We...

This is study of the determinants of ULP and diesel price level and volatility in Western Australia. It draws on Western Australian FuelWatch fuel prices and Australian Tax Office post code level data over the period from 2002 to 2012. As might be expected, crude oil price and distance to the BP...

The OECD Growth Study and other empirical work have shown that the strength of competition in product markets plays an important role in the economic growth process as well as contributing to a more efficient allocation of resources in a static sense. More intense competition is likely to...

This paper examines the concept of sustainable development and the need to consider its ‘three pillars' – the social, economic and environmental impacts as one interrelated concept - the triple bottom line (TBL). The rationale of the TBL is that no single influence can exist in isolation for...