This paper investigates the benefits of a merger when goods are complements and firms behave in a Cournot manner both in a theoretical model as well as in a real-world application. In a setting of two complementary duopolies a merger between two firms each producing one of the goods always...

Supply shocks in the global gas market might aff ect countries diff erently since the market is regionally interlinked but not perfectly integrated. Additionally, high supply side concentration might expose countries to market power in different ways. To evaluate the strategic position of...

A model of the global gas market is presented which in its basic version optimises the future development of production, transport and storage capacities as well as the actual gas ows around the world assuming perfect competition. Besides the transport of natural gas via pipelines also the...

In the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, German nuclear policy has been reconsidered. This paper demonstrates the economic effects of an accelerated nuclear phase-out on the German electricity generation sector. <p> A detailed optimization model for European electricity markets is...</p>

In this study, we address a major problem in the measurement of firm performance and the regulation of natural monopolies, namely the intertemporal character of long-term investment decisions. In specific, we focus on the impact of adjustment costs of investments on estimates of firms' technical...

We examine the effect of energy prices and technological knowledge on innovation in green energy technologies. In doing so, we consider both demand-pull effects, which induce innovative activity by increasing the expected value of innovations, and technology-push effects, which drive innovative...

The German Energiewende’s potential effects on the reliability of electricity supply as well as the corresponding economic consequences have recently entered both the political and scientific debate. However, empirical evidence of power outage costs in Germany is rather scarce. Following a...

Several countries around the world have introduced reforms to the electric power sector. One important element of these reforms is the introduction of an unbundling process, i.e., the separation of the competitive activities of supply and production from the monopole activity of transmission and...

Since the 1990s, efficiency and benchmarking analysis has increasingly been used in network utilities research and regulation. A recurrent concern is the effect of environmental factors that are beyond the influence of firms (observable heterogeneity) and factors that are not identifiable...

In the last decades transport activities persistently increased in the EU27 and were strongly coupled to growth in GDP. Like most production processes, they are inevitably linked with the generation of environmentally hazardous by-products, such as CO2 emissions. This leads to the question of...