As soon as international financial markets felt reassured in 2003 by the surprisingly neoliberal orientation of President Lula’s government, the ‘spot-the-new-Latin-tiger’ financial brigade became dazzled by Brazil — they just couldn’t have enough of it. So much so, that they had...

There has been a wide discussion on the different properties between carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes and hybrid instruments such as cap-and-trade schemes with price floors and ceilings. There has been less discussion on the incentives to investment that each of these instruments may provide....

Starting from the perspective of heterodox Keynesian-Minskyian-Kindlebergian financial economics, this paper begins by highlighting a number of mechanisms that contributed to the current financial crisis. These include excess liquidity, income polarisation, conflicts between financial and...

Driven by fear of underinvestment in network assets, merchant investment in electricity transmission networks (MTI) is now legally allowed. Given that MTI is a real possibility, regulators face a new set of questions. After classifying different types of MTI, the paper raises and analyses...

This paper explores the increasing private involvement in social infrastructure projects in the UK since 1979. It begins by reviewing the effect of privatisation on the quantity of investment undertaken by the utility sector. The evidence is consistent with the view that the private sector is...

Short-term auctions for access to entry terminals of the British gas-network appear to successfully allocate scarce resources and capture scarcity rent. Now long-term auctions are being introduced to guide future capacity expansion decisions. In our model the fraction of rights issued in the...

In summer 2005, the German telecommunication incumbent Deutsche Telekom announced its plans to build a new broadband fibre optics network. Deutsche Telekom decided as precondition for this new network not to be regulated with respect to pricing and third party access. To develop a regulator's...