This paper is the first in a symposium of papers that examine the 2009 report by Frank Wolak into the New Zealand electricity market. The Wolak report concluded that there had been a cumulative total of NZ$4.3 billion of overcharging in the New Zealand wholesale market over a period of seven...

This paper is the second in a symposium of papers that examine the 2009 report by Frank Wolak into the New Zealand electricity market. In this paper, we discuss the Report's measures of the ability and incentives of generators to exercise unilateral market power. We show that the construction...

Modelling price formation in electricity markets is a notoriously difficult process, due to physical constraints on electricity generation and transmission, and the potential for market power. This difficulty has inspired the recent development of bottom-up agent-based algorithmic learning...

The recent Wolak report on the New Zealand electricity market found evidence of substantial market power. The report, an empirical one, was heavily criticised on several aspects of its methodology. We investigate market power in the New Zealand Electricity Market during 2006 and 2008 using an...

New technologies allow perfect detection of environmental violations at near-zero marginal cost, but take-up is low. We conducted a field experiment to evaluate enforcement of water conservation rules with smart meters in Fresno, CA. Households were randomly assigned combinations of enforcement...

This paper discusses the desirability of government-legislated job security. Job security may be beneficial to employed workers, but it can also impose a cost on unemployed workers by lowering labour market turnover and thereby increasing the average duration of unemployment spells. This...

A recent paper has suggested a reason why there might be a lasting trade-off between inflation and unemployment at low inflation rates. This has led some economists to recommend that Canada increase its inflation rate. The idea underlying this view is that, because firms are reluctant to cut...