This paper uses a new model of a competitive electricity market to investigate the role of storage in markets dominated by hydro generation. Competition amongst generators leads to an endogenous shadow price of stored water, which facilitates the efficient intra-day and inter-season substitution...

We show that regulators' price-setting, rate base, and allowed rate of return decisions are inextricably linked. Once regulators switch from traditional rate of return regulation, the irreversibility of much infrastructure investment significantly alters the results of the usual approach to...

The major diffculties in assessing market power in electricity wholesale spot markets mean that great weight should be placed upon assessing market outcomes against the fundamental determinants of supply, demand and competition. In this spirit we study whether the New Zealand market has been a...

Cooperative and mutual organisational forms arise for reasons that include contracting problems between parties. Economic literature suggests a variety of allocative inefficiencies implied by these forms that largely have their origins in poor investment decisions. We demonstrate that a...

Incentive regulation allows decentralised decision-making under regulatory parameters set on the basis of industry characteristics. When there is uncertainty, sunk costs, and flexibility in the timing of investment a monopoly will invest later than is socially desirable because it garners only a...

This paper shows how scale economies affect welfare-maximizing regulation and regulated firms' investment behavior. Price-regulated firms take less advantage of scale economies than social planners, with greater investment distortions for greater economies of scale. Price caps should be below...