The elegant economic picture of rational consumers achieving Pareto optimality through trade in decentralized self-organized markets is blurred by market imperfections and choices inconsistent with consumer self-interest. Behavioral economics has documented these errors in choice, and considered...

A key feature of many regulatory reviews is determination of the amount of expenditure that should be reflected in the revenue requirement for a service provider. An increasingly important driver in determining the appropriate level of this expenditure is the desired level of service quality and...

We evaluate a utility-sponsored conservation program in which commercial and industrial customers received cash rebates for installing energy-saving devices. Our analysis indicates: 1.(1) Customers who asked to be audited (as opposed to a utility representative initiating the audit) had a...

Because utilities bill their residential and commercial customers by cycle on each working day of the month, the calculation of weather variables to associate with monthly sales data is complicated. We examined three different methods of calculating weather variables. 1.(1) For a utility that...