Regulierung in vertikal verknüpften Märkten : Maximieren diskriminierungsfreie kostenorientierte Netznutzungsentgelte die gesellschaftliche Wohlfahrt?

The purpose of the paper is to derive the welfare implications of a regulation of access charges for electricity grids taking the costs of transmission as a benchmark. It shows that a cost-based regulation is second-best optimal only if the incumbent is much more efficient in the downstream market than a downstream entrant. In all other cases an access charge deviating from the transmission costs is second-best optimal. There is no simple and generally applicable rule for the determination of second-best optimal access charges.