By the year 1996, about one-quarter of Britain's electricity will be generated from gas, compared to zero in 1992, displacing coal. This switch is required by 2000 to meet the EC and UN mandated sulfur emissions limits, but was advanced by the imperfect market created by privatisation. This...

Privatization was intended to make the English bulk electricity market sufficiently competitive to avoid the need for regulation, but two generators set the spot price over 90% of the time though they supply less than 60% of total electricity generated. Their market power depends on their share...

Britain was the exemplar of electricity market reform, demonstrating the importance of ownership unbundling and workable competition in generation and supply. Privatisation created de facto duopolies that supported increasing price-cost margins and induced excessive (English) entry....

Ghana's cocoa production has declined in the past 25 years from half the world market share to about one tenth of the market. This has been partly due to policies that overvalued the domestic currency and heavily taxed cocoa exports. This study addresses the dilemma Ghana's government faces: how...

The UK Road Fund was set up in 1921 and financed by earmarked taxes, but was unsuccessful as a form of road finance and abandoned in 1937. The paper examines why earmarking failed and what problems arise for replacing road taxes by hypothecated road charges. These charges would need to be...

Non-uniform indirect taxes treat equals and those unequal differently (horizontal inequity and vertical redistribution). Horizontal inequity is caused by taste differences among similar households, but some excises are designed to reflect social, not revealed, preferences. We apply two...

The European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) limits CO_2 emissions from covered sectors, especially electricity (accounting for about 56%). At EUR 44 billion per annum. the ETS is the largest emissions trading system ever, 40 times larger than US programmes. The article demonstrates that fixing...