Reviewing the development of network access charges in the German electricity market since 2002 reveals significant variation. While some firms continually increased or decreased their access charges, a variety of firms exhibited discontinuous behavior with price changes in both directions. From...

Seit der Deregulierung des deutschen Strommarktes im Jahre 1998 werden die Netznutzungsentgelte durch Verhandlungen zwischen den Energieerzeugern und den industriellen Nutzern festgelegt. Da die Stromnetze als nicht-bestreitbare natürliche Monopolisten anzusehen sind, können die Netzbetreiber...

The European Commission has intensively discussed the mandatory separation of natural gas transmission from production and services. However, economic theory is ambiguous on the price effects of vertical separation. In this paper, we empirically analyse the effect of ownership unbundling of gas...