Is majority opinion a better guide to action than a minority view? This paper demonstrates that a direct application of rational herding theory to this novel area can produce a surprisingly counter-intuitive result: given (i) the minority has a clear conformist view and (ii) decision-makers...

This paper describes a simple extension of popular tests of equality of hazard rates in a two-sample or k-sample setup to a situation where the covariate under study is continuous. In other words, we test the null hypothesis that the hazard does not depend on the value of the covariate against...

This paper presents a canonical, econometric model of contagion and investigates the conditions under which contagion can be distinguished from inter-dependence. In a two-country (market) set-up it is shown that for a range of fundamentals the solution is not unique, and for sufficiently large...

Firms exit through the mutually precluding events of bankruptcy and acquisition. We use a competing risks hazard regression model to identify the characteristics leading to each of these two outcomes using over thirty years of data on US and UK quoted firms. We find evidence about the way in...

The risk premium is affected by loss aversion and probability distortions as well as utility curvature. We introduce two variants - the total risk premium relative to objective expected value, and the subjective risk premium relative to perceived expected value. Approximate solutions for each...

Numerical models for electricity markets are frequently used to inform and support decisions. How robust are the results? Three research groups used the same, realistic data set for generators, demand and transmission network as input for their numerical models. The results coincide when...

Electricity generators can raise the price of power by withholding their plant from the market. We discuss two ways in which this could have affected prices in the England and Wales Pool. Withholding low-cost capacity that should be generating will raise energy prices but make the pattern of...

Quality of service has emerged as an important issue in post-reform regulation of electricity distribution networks. Regulators have employed partial incentive schemes to promote cost saving, investment efficiency, and service quality. This paper presents a quality-incorporated benchmarking...

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....

We describe Amartya Sen's Capability Approach to welfare evaluation in the language of standard welfare economics, and assess to what extent it provides a genuine alternative for individual welfare measurement and policy evaluation. We review the nascent empirical literature on the capability...