New England is at the leading edge of an energy transition in which natural gas is playing an increasingly important role in the US electricity generation mix. In recent years, the region’s wholesale natural gas and electricity markets have experienced severe, simultaneous price spikes. While...

New England is at the leading edge of an energy transition in which natural gas is playing an increasingly important role in the US electricity generation mix. In recent years, the region's wholesale natural gas and electricity markets have experienced severe, simultaneous price spikes. While...

The South African liquid fuels industry is a significant part of the economy. Historically, government policy focused on import substitution industrialization to support industry margins. This approach is called into question by the 2006 shift from net exports to imports and by inflated...

The dominant focus of much policy attention of late has been on the suitability of electricity market reform carried out under the ‘standard' or prescriptive approach – the end point of which is market liberalization – for the integration of intermittent renewables. There is now a growing...

Many countries have liberalized their residential electricity markets or are considering to do so. Liberalization provides consumers with more freedom of choice but also leads to higher choice complexity as consumers face a much larger number of different electricity contracts to choose from. We...

This paper assesses the impact of product market deregulation in upstream sectors on the productivity growth of firms in downstream sectors (i.e. those firms using the output of the reformed sectors as inputs in their production process). Relying on a firm level database for the period 2004-2014...

We study the effect of bank merger deregulation on market structure and wages in the banking industry. We show that state deregulation of bank mergers and acquisitions increased the market share of large, multi-state banks and lowered wages for bank workers by up to 8 percentage points, with...

In the European Union, energy markets are increasingly being liberalized. A case in point is the European natural gas industry. The general expectation is that more competition will lead to lower prices and higher volumes, and hence higher welfare. This paper indicates that this might not happen...

This study provides a detailed and easy-to read overview of the railway liberalisation in Belgium and the three neighbouring countries. The European Union's liberalisation Directives are often complex and are implemented in very specific ways in the different Member States. The analysis goes...

In the European Union, energy markets are increasingly being liberalized. A case in point is the European natural gas industry. The general expectation is that more competition will lead to lower prices and higher volumes, and hence higher welfare. This paper indicates that this might not happen...