This paper shows that generators exercised increasing market power in the England and Wales wholesale electricity market in the second half of the 1990s despite declining market concentration. It examines whether this was consistent with static, non-cooperative oligopoly models, which are widely...

The paper surveys the literature and publicly available information on market power monitoring in electricity wholesale markets. After briefly reviewing definitions, strategies and methods of mitigating market power we examine the various methods of detecting market power that have been employed...

Following the liberalisation of the electricity industry since the early 1990s, many sector regulators have recognised the potential for cost efficiency improvement in the networks through incentive regulation aided by benchmarking and productivity analysis. This approach has often resulted in...

Investment in electricity networks, as regulated natural monopolies, is among the highest regulatory and energy policy priorities. Given the large scale of required investments in the coming years, impelled by the need for decarbonising the electricity sector, identifying investment drivers of...

The need for investment in capital intensive electricity networks is on the rise in many countries. A major advantage of distributed resources is their potential for deferring investments in distribution network capacity. However, utilizing the full benefits of these resources requires...

Efficiency and productivity analysis is a central concept in incentive-based regulation of network utilities. However, the efficiency measures obtained from benchmarking predominantly reflect short term performance and hence, provide only a snapshot of the firm's path towards its long run...

Since the early 1980’s, many countries have implemented electricity sector reform, many of which have bundled generation, transmission, distribution and supply activities, and have introduced competition in generation and supply. An increasing number of countries are also adopting incentive...

Ohio allows communities to vote to aggregate the loads of individual consumers (unless they opt out) in order to seek a competitive energy supplier. Over 200 communities have voted to do this for electricity. By 2004 residential switching reached 69% in Cleveland territory (95% from municipal...

This paper explores the empirical effects of competition on technical efficiency in the context of electricity industry restructuring. Restructuring programs adopted by many U.S. states made utilities residual claimants to cost savings and increased their exposure to competitive markets. We...

In 2003, the UK `liberalised' its telephone directory enquiries service with the aim of introducing competition so as to improve quality and lower costs. Unfortunately the results did not match expectations. Proliferation of numbers led to consumer confusion and high price firms with no...