This paper analyzes a modified yardstick competition mechanism (MYC), where the yardstick employed consists of a tariff basket and total costs. This mechanism has a significant information advantage: the regulator ʺonlyʺ needs to observe total costs and output of all firms. The modified...

We analyze the properties of progressive water tariffs that are often applied in the sector in the form of discretely increasing block tariffs (IBT). We are particularly interested in water tarification in a poverty context where a subsistence level of water has to be allocated to each...

This paper compares the outcomes of corporate self-regulation and traditional ex-ante regulation of network access to monopolistic bottlenecks. In the model of self-regulation, the domestic gas supplier and network owner and the monopsonistic gas customer fix quantities and the network access...

This paper applies a microeconomic-based stylized model to identify the optimal modal split of water supply infrastructure in regions of the Global South against the background of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 6. We assume a linear city, with some plausible assumptions on income and...

Many developing countries around the world apply progressive water tariffs, often structured in the form of discretely increasing block tariffs (IBTs). These tariffs have been criticized in the welfare economic literature due to their perceived inefficiency: many of the prices charged under IBTs...

Our paper deals with modeling the effects of introducing a market-based tool for improving end-users' efficiency in an energy market which is already regulated through a cap-and-trade system for green house gas emissions and a quota system meant to improve competitiveness of energy produced...

This papers studies the effects on service quality and consumer surplus of a minimum price which is fixed by a bureaucratic non-monopolistic professional association. It shows that the price floor set by a Niskanen-type professional assocation will maximize consumer surplus only if consumers...

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic severallayer model of European gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European...

In this paper, we present a nonparametric comparative efficiency analysis of 179 communal public transport bus companies in Germany (1990-2004). We apply both deterministic data envelopment analysis (DEA) and bootstrapping to test the robustness of our estimates and to test the hypothesis of...

In this paper, we analyze structural changes in long-term contracts in the international trade of natural gas. Using a unique data set of 262 long-term contracts between natural gas producers and importers, we estimate the impact of different institutional, structural and technical variables on...