The German energy transition massively alters the market structure of electricity supply and forces incumbent electric utilities to rethink their business strategies. We analyze three main developments that undermine the former market dominance of the “Big 4” incumbents in Germany. First,...

This paper examines the effects of various price-cap rules on peakload pricing. The issue recently gains practical importance in regulated network industries. The formal approach reveals that efficiency properties of various price-cap rules are, notwithstanding some problems, fairly good. A...

This paper explores the relation between the regulation of monopolistic upstream prices and the incentives of a vertically integrated input monopolist to discriminate third parties on the downstream market. Currently, this is an issue in network industries like telecommunications, electricity...

Despite monopolistic networks and in contrast to all other EUmember states, the electricity supply industry in Germany is not ex ante regulated. Control of the sector is left to the cartel agency, which can apply the essential- facilities doctrine as an ex-post instrument. This paper analyses...