The Case for a Discriminatory Pricing Rule in Competitive Electricity Pools

We present a multi-unit common value auction model with capacity constraints which ensure the participants face a residual market. We show that a discriminatory auction performs better than a uniform one when such constraints are present. We then look at a more explicit model of electricity pools and show that the preferred uniform pricing rule can lead to equilibria that are even worse than the basic model suggests. We show that a discriminatory auction would lead to relatively more competitive prices.