In this paper prepared for the Miller Upton Forum on the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, Kiesling asks why in this digital age the basic technology supporting the production and distribution of electric power has changed so little since the industry’s birth in the early twentieth century....

In August 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new policy – the Affordable Clean Energy rule – to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing coal-fired electric generating units and power plants. The new rule establishes emissions guidelines, including...

This paper presents and analyzes the results of a recent field experiment in which residential electricity customers in Washington State with price-responsive in-home devices could use those devices to change their electricity consumption autonomously. Doing so also required an important...

Incumbent vertical market power in deregulating markets can be anticompetitive, as seen in the current process of retail electricity restructuring. This paper uses the AT&T antitrust case’s Bell Doctrine precedent of “quarantine the monopoly” as a case study in incumbent vertical market...

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith asserts that humans have an innate interest in the fortunes of other people and desire for sympathy with others. In Smith’s theory, sympathy is an imperfectly reflected combination of emotion and judgment when one observes someone (the agent) in a...

We compare a carbon tax and a cap and trade mechanism in their propensity to induce carbon-reducing technological adoption, when investments are undertaken under uncertainty. In our setting, risk-neutral firms affect the variance and the correlation of the shocks they are exposed to through...

We study optimal cartel prices in a two-sided market. We present a simple model showing that prices above the two-sided monopoly price may prevail on one side of a two-sided market as a means to enhance the sustainability of the cartel. We prove that in such a case a higher benefit from the...