The Trade-off Between Static and Dynamic Efficiency in Electricity Markets - A Cross Country Study

This paper is the first to explicitly test for the presence of a trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency in a regulated industry, the electricity industry. We show for 16 European countries over the period 1998-2007 that higher electricity end-user prices in a country subsequently lead to higher investments in the capital stock, i.e. in generation, distribution and transmission assets. Moreover, there is a trade-off between vertical economies and competition. Ownership unbundling and forced access to the incumbent transmission grid increase competition but come at the cost of lost vertical economies. Generally, we find that regulation that affect only the market like the establishment of a wholesale market or free choice of suppliers increase investment activity via spurring competition. Regulation, however, that adversely affects the incumbent directly, like ownership unbundling, decreases aggregate investment spending. (author's abstract)Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economic

Preventing Innovative Cooperations: The Legal Exemptions Unintended Side Effect

In 2004, European competition law had been faced with considerable changes due to the introduction of the new Council Regulation No. 1/2003. One of the major renewals was the replacement of the centralized notification system for inter-company cooperations in favor of a so-called legal exemption system. We analyze the implications of this reform on the agreements firms implement. In contrast to previous research we focus on the reform’s impact on especially welfare enhancing, namely innovative agreements. We show that the law’s intention to reduce the incentive to establish illegal cartels will be reached. However, by the same mechanism, also highly innovative cooperations might be prevented. To avoid this unintended effect, we conclude that only fines but not the monitoring activities should be increased in order to deter illegal but not innovative agreements.competition policy, competition law enforcement, legal exemption system

Theory of Storage: An Empirical Assessment of the European Natural Gas Market

We analyze the relation between European natural gas storage facilities and price patterns at major trading points, considering the theory of storage to derive a testable hypothesis imposed by the non-arbitrage condition. To model the efficiency of the natural gas market, we apply two indirect tests absent the scarcity of European inventory data. We find that operators of storage facilities realize seasonal arbitrage profits, and that market performance overall is substantially distinct from the competitive benchmark.Storage, energy commodity, natural gas, convenience yield

Predictive Performance and Bias - Evidence from Natural Gas Markets

This paper sheds light on the differences and similarities in natural gas trading at the National Balancing Point in the UK and the Henry Hub located in the US. For this, we analyze traders' expectations and implement a mechanical forecasting model that allows traders to predict future spot prices. Based on this, we compute the deviations between expected and realized spot prices and analyze possible reasons and dependencies with other market variables. Overall, the mechanical predictor performs well, but a small forecast error remains which can not be characterized by the explanatory variables included

Internal capital markets and bank holding company efficiency

Bank Holding Companies and in particular their internal capital markets have been widely discussed in recent financial literature. The financial crisis especially brought regulatory intervention in financial markets into question. Empirical evidence suggests that bank holding companies have clear preferences for double leverage, which are not based on unambiguous and explicit economic foundations. In this article, we analyze the effects of equity, debt and double leverage on the efficiency of bank holding companies. We show that Bank Holding Company efficiency is negatively affected by equity financing from parents to subsidiaries and this effect is even more pronounced in case of double leveraging. Our findings indicate that further measures from regulators are necessary in order to prevent inefficient financing via double leverage, which may be used to circumvent regulatory capital requirements

Markowitz Revisited: Social Portfolio Engineering

In recent years socially responsible investing has become an increasingly more popular subject with both private and institutional investors. At the same time, a number of scientific papers have been published on socially responsible investments (SRIs), covering a broad range of topics, from what actually defines SRIs to the financial performance of SRI funds in contrast to non-SRI funds. In this paper, we revisit Markowitz' Portfolio Selection Theory and propose a modification allowing to incorporate not only asset-specific return and risk but also a social responsibility measure into the investment decision making process. Together with a risk-free asset, this results in a three-dimensional capital allocation plane that allows investors to custom-tailor their asset allocations and incorporate all personal preferences regarding return, risk and social responsibility. We apply the model to a set of over 6,231 international stocks and find that investors opting to maximize the social impact of their investments do indeed face a statistically significant decrease in expected returns. However, the social responsibility/risk-optimal portfolio yields a statistically significant higher social responsibility rating than the return/risk-optimal portfolio

Reflection on Robotic Intelligence

This paper reflects on the development or robots, both their physical shape as well as their intelligence. The later strongly depends on the progress made in the artificial intelligence (AI) community which does not yet provide the models and tools necessary to create intelligent robots. It is time for robot developers to take this matter into their own hands and build embodied intelligence

The Value and Risk Implications of Grid Expansion Investments

In this article, we look at a model with (independent) system operator who faces stochastic but growing transmission demand and a penalty if frequency is not balanced. In this set up, we derive an optimal grid expansion investment strategy and analyze its value and risk implications. It turns out that the firm value is strictly concave in the level of transmission demand. Firm value, however, increases with optimal investment for any level of demand. Moreover, firm risk is decreasing in the level of demand and higher when the firm has an investment option. The risk increase corresponds to the exercise of the call option and is stronger, the closer the firm approaches its exercise trigger. (author's abstract)Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economic

The Impact of Different Unbundling Scenarios on Concentration and Wholesale Prices in Energy Markets

A recent highly disputed subject of regulating energy markets in Europe is the unbundling of vertically integrated down- and upstream firms. While legal unbundling is already implemented in most countries and indisputable in its necessity for approaching regulatory aims, continuative models as ownership unbundling or the alternative of an independent system operator are still ambiguous. Hence, this article contributes to the economic analyses of identifying the differences of separate types of unbundling. Via simulation, we find that legal unbundling brings about the lowest prices in a market under Cournot competition. Moreover, under Bertrand competition, no differences between legal unbundling and ownership unbundling can be identified. (author's abstract)Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economic