Accounting for network operators' heterogeneity is of crucial importance for regulators. In contrast to observed heterogeneity, the consideration of unobserved differences is far more challenging. Most estimation models try to account for unobserved factors that impact the network operators'...

The European electricity market design is based on zonal markets with uniform prices. Locational price signals within these zones - necessary to ensure long-term efficiency - are not provided. Specifically, if intra-zonal congestion occurs due to missing grid expansion, the market design is...

In liberalized power systems, generation and transmission services are unbundled, but remain tightly interlinked. Congestion management in the transmission network is of crucial importance for the efficiency of these inter-linkages. Different regulatory designs have been suggested, analyzed and...

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...

Reviewing the development of network access charges in the German electricity market since 2002 reveals significant variation. While some firms continually increased or decreased their access charges, a variety of firms exhibited discontinuous behavior with price changes in both directions. From...