Welfare effects of vertical integration in energy distribution

This paper analyses the welfare effects of vertical integration of networks and trade in energy markets. Vertical integration reduces the effect of double marginalisation, thus increasing welfare. On the other hand, vertical integration hinders equal competition, rendering the vertically integrated supplier a competitive advantage. We find that the net effect of vertical integration is beneficial to welfare if firms are symmetric, but the effect is ambiguous in the probably more relevant situation where the non-network firm has a cost advantage.

Public and private roles in road infrastructure: an exploration of market failure, public instruments and government failure

Starting with a 'greenfield' situation, we discuss reasons for market failure in road infrastructure provision. We show why it may not be optimal from a welfare perspective to leave road provision fully to the market and government intervention in this sector can improve welfare. Government intervention comes in different forms, such as financial intervention (taxation, subsidies), regulation (price, quality, environmental), and public provision of roads or road services. The analysis of the literature regarding government instruments allows us to establish a correspondence between different forms of market failure and instruments. Several case studies of particular road infrastructure projects are included to illustrate the use of government instruments.

End user prices in liberalised energy markets

As European energy markets move towards deregulation, energy prices shift from classic ‘cost plus' prices towards market prices. Read also the accompanying press release .We develop a model for the retail and wholesale energy markets in Europe, based on Bertrand competition in a two part pricing structure with switching costs. We use the model to forecast end user electricity and natural gas prices and find that the introduction of competition in energy retail and wholesale markets will decrease standing charges, lowering total costs for energy users. A larger number of entrants, a cost advantage for one of the suppliers, or lower switching costs reduces standing charges further.

Vertical separation of the energy-distribution industry; an assessment of several options for unbundling

The Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs has proposed to replace the currently implemented structure of legal unbundling of the energy distribution industry by ownership unbundling. In this study we analyse the costs and benefits of this proposal. We compare the proposal�to the current situation and to two alternative options that strengthen legal unbundling. We identify four mutually-related categories of benefits: better performance of networks, more efficient regulation, improved effectiveness of competition, and benefits of privatisation; and three categories of costs: one-off transaction costs, loss of economies of scope and the risk of less investment in generation. The analysis highlights that the benefits depend on the future development in small-scale generation and on allocation of the management of transmission networks. Mainly because of the uncertainty about the future role of small-scale generation and the uncertainty about the magnitude of the one-off transaction costs related to cross-border leases, the net welfare effect of ownership unbundling at the distribution level is ambiguous. We identify an alternative route for achieving some of the benefits considered.

The Elmar model: output and capacity in imperfectly competitive electricity markets

With the ongoing liberalization and integration of European energy markets and the increasing worries about security of supply, the need for thorough economic analysis of electricity markets is growing. Elmar is a model for the European electricity market, taking into account imperfect competition through conjectural variations, as well as imperfect international competition due to import capacity restrictions. The model distinguishes between competition on the output market and competition in capacity investments. We find that the least competitive of these determines wholesale prices.

The impact of competition on productive efficiency in European railways

This paper empirically explores the relationship between competition design and productive efficiency in the railway industry. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to construct efficiency scores, and explain these scores, using variables reflecting institutional factors and competition design. Our results suggest that competitive tendering improves productive efficiency, which is in line with economic intuition as well as with expectations on the design of competition. We also find that free entry lowers productive efficiency. A possible explanation for this result is that free entry may disable railway operators to reap economies of density. Our final result is that more autonomy of management lowers productive efficiency. Most of the incumbent railway companies are state owned and do not face any competitive pressure. As a consequence, increased independence without sufficient competition and adequate regulation may deteriorate incentives for productive efficiency.

"An Analysis of Airport Pricing and Regulation in the Presence of Competition Between Full Service Airlines and Low Cost Carriers"

Despite the airport privatization and deregulation trend in recent years, whether or not the privatized or commercialized airports should be left unregulated is still an open question. Related to this issue, one question that has received a very little attention to date is if and how pricing behavior of unregulated airports affect downstream airline competition, especially the competition between airlines offering differentiated services such as the case of full service airlines (FSA) vis-a-vis low cost carriers (LCC). If the upstream monopoly (airport) hinders downstream (airline) competition, the welfare effects of the upstream unregulated monopoly may be much larger than initially suspected. This aspect of airport pricing has not been formally incorporated in the debate on airport price regulation. In this paper, we study a duopoly model to capture the differential competitive effects of changing airport user charges on FSAs and LCCs. By making reasonable assumptions on differential price elasticities, unit costs and competitive behavior as manifested by firmspecific conduct parameters, we perform numerical simulations to measure differential effects on an FSA and an LCC of increasing airside user charge by an unregulated upstream monopolist airport. Our analytical and numerical results suggest existence of the asymmetric effects of an airport's monopoly pricing on LCC and FSA. That is, LCCs suffer more from an identical cost increase than FSAs and are, therefore, more vulnerable to monopolistic pricing practices of an unregulated airport. This implies that unregulated airport pricing would reduce the extent of competition in downstream airline markets, and thus, cause a further detrimental effect on welfare over and above the first-order dead weight loss of airport's monopolistic pricing. Considering that LCCs have brought considerable reduction of average fares and the associated welfare gains, it is important for the governments to take into account of these asymmetric effects of increasing airport user charges on FSAs and LCCs when they consider the form and extent of regulation or deregulation. Although our model and simulation work deal specifically with the effect of airport pricing on downstream airline markets, our framework of analysis may be applicable to analysis of any policy affecting costs of FSAs and LCCs including security levies as well as potentially adaptable to other upstream-downstream industry cases.

Energy policies and risks on energy markets; a cost-benefit analysis

The key question dealt with in this report is whether and how governments should be involved in taking measures regarding security of energy supply. In order to answer this question, we developed a framework for cost-benefit analysis and applied this framework to a number of policy options. Read also the press release and accompanying�document ' Increasing the reliability of electricity production: a cost-benefit analysis '. The options chosen vary from government investments in strategic oil stocks to financial incentives for consumers to reduce their consumption of electricity. The set of options comprises several types of governmental action, including subsidies, regulation and government investments. Moreover, the selection includes measures meant to address risks on all three major energy markets: oil, natural gas, and electricity. The general picture following from the cases studied is that security of supply measures are hardly ever beneficial to welfare: benefits of policy measures do generally not outweigh costs. From an economic point of view, therefore, it would be often wiser to accept consequences of supply disruptions than to pursue security of supply at any cost. This implies that governments should exercise caution in imposing measures regarding security of supply. If serious market failure is detected, careful attention should be paid to the design of the corrective measure. Establishing and maintaining well-functioning markets appears to be an efficient approach in realising a secure supply of energy. That approach would include removal of entry barriers, securing equal access to essential facilities and increasing transparency of markets.

Pricing of imperfect substitutes:The next flight is not the same flight

We investigate how airfares respond to changes in the fare of adjacent flights. Using a fixed effects regression on fares from Amsterdam to Geneva, we find flights that only differ in departure times to be weak substitutes. Fare-to-fare elasticities for imperfect substitute flights of different airlines are even smaller, implying weak competition between airlines on this specific route. If our findings hold for other routes as well, this will have implications for the analysis of price dispersion in civil aviation. It would imply that demand shocks for individual flights have small effects on prices of other flights. Demand volatility would then be likely to affect price dispersion on a route level and should be considered when analyzing price dispersion

Agent-Based Spatial Competition

ABSTRACT Equilibrium in the Hotelling model of spatial competition is guaranteed if the distribution of consumers is log concave. In the real world, nothing guarantees such a log concave distribution however, rendering the analytical model unable to provide a primer as to what one might expect from empirical applications. We develop an agent-based model of spatial competition that is capable of reproducing the results of the analytical model and also provides meaningful results for some cases where the distribution of consumers is not log concave. Using numerous simulations, on randomly drawn distributions, we derive equilibrium locations and prices and test for uniqueness. Moreover, we check whether the relationships between characteristics of the distribution (e.g. concentration, skewness) and outcomes are consistent with the analytical model