The convergence of digital and distributed energy resource (DER) innovation is creating the potential for a more decentralized electricity distribution system, including local energy markets (LEMs) for local coordination of consumption and production. Using market processes to coordinate...

The platform economy reflects the business model of some of the largest and fastest-growing firms in the economy. Platform business models emerge and thrive because of the potential profit in taking advantage of transactions cost reductions to connect people for mutual benefit, and this value...

Recent innovations in smart grid and distributed energy technologies, innovations in solar industry financial and business models, and utility concerns about their financial viability in the face of such innovations, motivate our analysis of the regulatory institutions and their features that...

Digital technologies from outside the electricity industry are prompting changes in both regulatory institutions and electric utility business models, leading to the disaggregation or unbundling of historically vertically integrated electricity firms in some jurisdictions and not others, and...

Digital technology platforms have transformed the modern economy, disrupting existing industries and creating new ones. In this paper I synthesize Austrian capital theory with general systems theory to analyze why these digital platforms have had such a large and relatively rapid impact. In...

The 1850s witnessed one of the earliest American history. During the decade the proportion of individuals receiving public assistance -- increased from 5.8 in 1850 to 10.2 in 1860, an increase of 76 percent. Previous attempts to explain the increase in antebellum pauperism have been hampered by...

In this paper we report the findings of an experiment that examines the effects of automated mitigation procedures (AMP) on capacity investment prices of suppliers in a wholesale electricity market. Specifically, in a 2 x 2 design we examine the effects of strong and weak market power incentives...

Incumbent vertical market power in deregulating markets can be anticompetitive, as seen in the current process of retail electricity restructuring. This paper uses the AT&T antitrust case’s Bell Doctrine precedent of “quarantine the monopoly” as a case study in incumbent vertical market...

It is time to stop regulating the electricity industry as if it were a natural monopoly. Technology has moved on and competition must not be discouraged by regulation. Competition is not only necessary for lower prices to consumers: the particular technological developments that have taken place...