Coal consumption and production have sharply declined in recent years in the U.S., despite political support. Reasons are mostly unfavorable economic conditions for coal, including competition from natural gas and renewables in the power sector, as well as an aging coal- fired power plant fleet....

An influential literature posits that introducing market mechanisms to price-regulated industries generates substantial long-run efficiency benefits by removing the incentive to over-invest in capital. The coal storage behavior of U.S. power plants is an ideal setting to empirically assess this...