Quality of service (QoS) is of major economic significance in natural monopoly infrastructure industries. In this article, we present an efficiency analysis of electricity distribution networks from seven European countries. We apply the stochastic frontier analysis method to multi-output...

The energy market liberalisation process in Europe is increasingly focused on electricity market integration and related cross border issues. This signals that the liberalisation of national electricity markets is now closer to the long-term objective of a single European energy market. The...

On both sides of the Atlantic, the regulation of gas transmission networks has undergone major changes since the early 1990s. Whereas in the US, the long-standing regime of cost-plus regulation was complemented by increasing pipe-to-pipe competition, most European countries moved towards...

Electricity sector reforms across the world have led to a search for innovative approaches to regulation that promote efficiency in the natural monopoly distribution networks and reduce their service charges. To this aim, a number of countries have adopted incentive regulation models based on...

In recent years, the security of energy supplies has re-emerged as a central issue in the energy policy arena in the UK and elsewhere. This re-emergence takes place against a backdrop of increased liberalisation of the energy markets, so that security of supply needs to be revisited within this...