Like in the film Field of Dreams, the sentence “if you build it, he will come” also applies in power systems. In this sense, if a transmission planner suggests building some lines in anticipation of generation capacity investments, then it can induce generation companies to invest in a more...

Forecasts of crude oil prices' volatility are important inputs to many decision making processes in application areas such as macroeconomic policy making, risk management, options pricing, and portfolio management. Despite the fact that a large number of forecasting models have been designed to...

Policy makers in a number of countries have proposed or are considering proposing CO2 emission standards for new fossil fuel-fired power plants. The proposed standards require coal-fired power plants to have approximately the same carbon emissions as an uncontrolled natural gas-fired power...

Pricing rules in wholesale electricity markets are usually classified around two major groups, namely linear (aka non-discriminatory) and non-linear (aka discriminatory). As well known, the major difference lies on the way non-convexities are considered in the computation of market prices.

This paper analyses whether prices and trade-flows in the international market for metallurgical coals were subject to non-competitive conduct in the period 2008 to 2010. To do so, I develop mathematical programming models – a Stackelberg model, two varieties of a Cournot model, and a perfect...

This paper is the first to explicitly test for the presence of a trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency and a trade-off between vertical economies and competition in a regulated industry, the electricity industry. We show for 16 European countries over the period 1998–2008 that higher...

Large public investments in clean energy technology arguably constitute an industrial policy. One rationale points to market failures that have not been corrected by other policies, most notably greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on oil. Another inspiration for clean energy policy reflects...

Electricity distribution network is a prime example of a natural local monopoly. In many countries, electricity distribution is regulated by the government. Many regulators apply frontier estimation techniques such as data envelopment analysis (DEA) or stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) as an...

This paper investigates the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of China's generation plants, based on the third industrial census data and the first economic census data. Partial factor productivity (PFP) analysis indicates that the productivity improvements in labor...

We show that gasoline retailer profits heavily depend on the direction of wholesale cost movements. Using a unique, firm-level, proprietary sample of 121 U.S. gasoline retailers collectively operating over 4500 stores, we find that it tends to be only in months when wholesale prices are...