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on Regulation |
| By: | Michael G Pollitt; Marta Moretto Terribile |
| Keywords: | Zonal pricing, electricity markets, congestion management, bidding zones |
| JEL: | L94 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg2515 |
| By: | Crémer, Jacques |
| Date: | 2025–07–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:130643 |
| By: | Bontems, Philippe; Calmette, Marie-Françoise; Martimort, David |
| Abstract: | Motivated by the forthcoming terminations of most highways concessions in France, we propose a versatile model of dynamic regulation and contract renewals that describes a long-term relationship between the public authority and an incumbent operator with private information about its costs that may face potential entrants. We discuss various issues including the nature of discriminatory biases towards entrants, their consequences on investments, the public or private nature of the management of concessions, the role of the operator's financial constraints, the consequences of allotments. So doing, we isolate a few principles that should guide policy-makers when deciding upon concession renewals. |
| Keywords: | Procurement; concession contracts; contract renewal; highways; transportation;; auctions; asymmetric information |
| JEL: | D82 D86 L51 L91 L98 |
| Date: | 2025–07–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:130653 |
| By: | Benjamin S. Kay; Marco Migueis |
| Abstract: | Ex-ante cost-benefit analyses and other impact assessments are now a standard part of the rulemaking process. Yet some important effects of regulation are difficult—or impossible—to assess before a rule takes effect. In such cases, ex-post (or retrospective) evaluation, conducted after a rule is in effect, offers an opportunity to measure real-world outcomes that could not reliably be predicted in advance. |
| Date: | 2025–06–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfn:2025-06-26-1 |
| By: | Gauci, Ian |
| Abstract: | Disclosure Statement: The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. ABSTRACT This article critiques the European Union’s regulatory approach to decentralised finance (DeFi), which transposes traditional institutional oversight frameworks onto systems with fundamentally different architectures. DeFi protocols are non-custodial, pseudonymous, composable, and autonomously executed, making classical regulatory approaches structurally incompatible. Legal systems assuming identity, hierarchy, and discretionary control prove inadequate for supervising systems designed to eliminate such centralisation. Drawing on EU constitutional principles, regulatory theory, and jurisprudence, this article develops a dual-layer oversight model using Malta as a case study. The framework proposes licensing fiduciary conduct under the Malta Financial Services Authority while providing infrastructure assurance through the Malta Digital Innovation Authority. This model anchors accountability to proximity rather than legal fiction, and to function rather than form, offering a scalable solution respecting EU subsidiarity principles. Keywords: Decentralised Finance, Financial Regulation, European Union, Malta, Blockchain, Smart Contracts |
| Date: | 2025–06–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:lawarc:8nkqg_v1 |
| By: | Miguel Martinez Rodriguez; Chi Kong Chyong; Timothy Fitzgerald; Miguel Vazquez Martínez |
| Keywords: | Hydrogen infrastructure, pipeline regulation, third-party access (TPA), unbundling, market design |
| JEL: | L95 L51 Q48 Q42 D47 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg2514 |
| By: | Ambec, Stefan; Crampes, Claude; Lamp, Stefan |
| Abstract: | The energy transition requires significant investment in intermittent renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power. New generation capacities are generally procured through fixed price contracts, such as power purchase agreements and contracts for difference, or feed-in tariffs. With these designs, renewable technologies are selected based on their generation, regardless of their adequacy with demand and supply by other technologies. We show that fixed-price contracts implement the optimal portfolio of renewable technologies if the price is adjusted with a technology-specific bonus-malus system that depends on the correlation between renewable energy production and the wholesale electricity price. We estimate the bonus-malus for solar and wind power in California, France, Germany, and Spain and decompose it to identify the key market factors driving the adjustment. We argue that the bonus-malus measures the cost of integrating intermittent generation into the energy mix. Therefore, it should be added to the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) to obtain the cost of generating an additional megawatt-hour with a specific renewable technology. |
| Keywords: | Electricity market; levelized cost of energy; climate change; intermittent renewable energy; feed-in tariff; power purchase agreement; contract for difference. |
| JEL: | D47 L23 Q41 Q48 |
| Date: | 2025–07–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:130654 |
| By: | Namockel, Nils (Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln (EWI)) |
| Abstract: | Within the transition to climate-neutral energy systems, hydrogen has the potential to support decarbonization of multiple sectors. Just like in electricity markets, volatility in hydrogen supply and process-specific demand may lead to volatile prices in a hydrogen market. This volatility may affect the interplay of hydrogen and electricity markets, which remains insufficiently explored. This study investigates fundamental price formation mechanisms for hydrogen and electricity, emphasizing their mutual dependencies, volatility, and the impact of short-term system conditions such as weather and demand variability. Additionally, it explores how these dynamics respond to variations in system conőgurations. Using the European energy system model DIMENSION, enhanced to incorporate detailed hydrogen supply and demand options including storage, cross-border trade, and updated import cost data, this study derives shadow prices as the basis for the subsequent statistical analysis. Results show that hydrogen and electricity prices are governed by short-term interactions. While electricity price formation can be well explained by renewable generation and demand, hydrogen prices emerge to be more structurally driven. Storage dynamics and cross-border trade moderate hydrogen price formation next to electrolysis. Strong price coupling between the hydrogen and electricity market likely occurs under low residual load conditions dominated by electrolysis, whereas decoupling arises during high residual load situations dominated by storage discharge. The electricity-to-hydrogen price ratio averages 0.56, lower than previous estimates, primarily due to the consideration of inflexible hydrogen imports and infrastructure constraints. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that short-term price signals alone may be insufficient for investment recovery, highlighting the need for complementary market mechanisms to develop a liquid hydrogen market. |
| Keywords: | Hydrogen; Electricity; Energy system modeling; Price formation; Climate neutrality |
| JEL: | C61 D47 Q21 Q41 Q48 |
| Date: | 2025–06–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:ewikln:2025_006 |
| By: | Qiuyu Lu (Ph.D. in Economics, Graduate School of Economics, the University of Osaka); Noriaki Matsushima (Osaka School of International Public Policy, the University of Osaka); Shiva Shekhar (Tilburg School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University) |
| Abstract: | This study explores the welfare impact of personalized pricing for consumers in a duopolistic two-sided market, with consumers single-homing and developers affiliating with a platform according to their outside option. Personalized pricing, which is private in nature, cannot influence expectations regarding the network sizes, inducing the platforms to offer lower participation fees for developers. Those lower fees increase network benefits for consumers, allowing the platforms to exploit these benefits through personalized pricing. Personalized prices are higher when the network value for developers is high, benefiting competing platforms at the expense of consumers. These findings offer policy insights on personalized pricing. |
| Keywords: | Personalized pricing, Uniform prices, Two-sided market, Content developers |
| JEL: | L13 D43 M21 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osp:wpaper:25e003 |
| By: | Bos, Iwan; Cesi, Berardino; Marini, Marco A. |
| Abstract: | This note examines cartel stability in a vertically differentiated duopoly with quality-anchored buyers. It is shown that such buyers are a facilitating factor for collusion. |
| Keywords: | Captive Consumers, Cartel Stability, Collusion, Quality-Anchored Buyers, Ver- tical Product Differentiation. |
| JEL: | C7 C71 C72 D4 D43 L1 L13 |
| Date: | 2025–06–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:125064 |
| By: | Jihwan Do (Yonsei University); Jeanine Miklos-Thal (University of Rochester) |
| Abstract: | The cloud services industry, which is currently dominated by a few large providers, has come under scrutiny from antitrust authorities worldwide. One concern is that "egress fees"—charges for transferring data out of a provider's cloud-could harm competition and welfare by discouraging multi-clouding, whereby a user combines services from several providers. Motivated by this policy concern, we analyze the effects of banning price discrimination against multi-stop shoppers in a market where multi-product firms sell complementary goods to buyers with elastic demands, and multi-stop shoppers impose higher service costs than one-stop shoppers. We find that if buyers are locked into a specific product combination, then a ban on price discrimination against multi-stop shoppers raises social welfare for a wide range of demand functions. If product choices are endogenous and buyers' product preferences are weak, however, then a ban on price discrimination tends to harm social welfare. |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yon:wpaper:2025rwp-250 |
| By: | McLaughlin, Eoin; Moro, Mirko; de Vries, Frans P. |
| Abstract: | The regulatory shift by competition and antitrust authorities, allowing limited industry collusion in sustainability-related investments to align markets with broader environmental and social objectives, suggests a re-evaluation of competition as a mechanism for promoting collective welfare. Drawing on Adam Smith's classical works as presented in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, this paper explores this issue through a historical lens while at the same time showing how this innately connects to the established literature on sustainable development, in particular justice and inclusive wealth. Combined, we discuss the role of modern competition policy in adjudicating and evaluating trade-offs in societies' overall welfare function that comprises negative externalities and natural capital. |
| Keywords: | Wealth of Nations, Justice, Investment collusion, Antitrust, Sustainable development |
| JEL: | B21 D63 K21 L41 Q01 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hwuaef:320415 |
| By: | Juan Ortner (Boston University); Sylvain Chassang (Princeton University); Kei Kawai (University of California Berkeley and& University of Tokyo); Jun Nakabayashi (Kyoto University) |
| Abstract: | Auctioneers suspecting bidder collusion often lack the formal evidence needed for legal recourse. A practical alternative is to design auctions that hinder collusion. Since Abreu et al. (1986), economic theory has emphasized imperfect monitoring as a constraint on collusion, but evidence remains scarce on whether: (i) information frictions meaningfully limit real-world collusion; and (ii) auctioneers can effectively exploit these frictions. Indeed, transparency concerns prevent the introduction of explicit randomness in auction design. We make progress on this issue by studying the impact of subjective scoring in auctions run by Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation. The adoption of scoring auctions significantly reduced winning bids in ways inconsistent with competition. Model-based inference suggests that the cartel’s dynamic obedience constraints were binding and tightened by imperfect monitoring. Subjective scoring can successfully leverage imperfect monitoring frictions to reduce the scope of collusion. |
| Keywords: | procurement, scoring, cartel discipline, imperfect monitoring |
| JEL: | D44 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:342 |
| By: | Bonnamy, Céleste |
| Abstract: | The 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market represents an intriguing departure from the anticipated path of liberalisation in public policy. While it includes provisions seemingly aligned with the liberalisation of the Digital Single Market by relaxing digital copyright enforcement, it also introduces mechanisms that bolster digital copyright protection, signalling a shift towards market regulation. This paper explores why and how Jean-Claude Juncker’s European Commission proposed a directive featuring robust regulatory elements despite initial promises of copyright deregulation within the Digital Single Market. Combining insights from political economy and political sociology, I examine the concept of ‘political work’ as the practice of promoting, defending, and implementing a choice of public action. Within this framework, I identify a managerial dimension of political work involving political practices that influence the institutional structure and management of public action. Utilising a qualitative methodology involving twelve in-depth interviews with Commission officials conducted between 2018 and 2021, alongside document analysis, I demonstrate how Jean-Claude Juncker and his cabinet’s managerial political work, encompassing organisational reforms within the Commission, played a pivotal role in steering the proposed policy towards regulation. |
| Date: | 2023–11–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:3v7qe_v1 |
| By: | Philipp Strack (Yale University); Kai Hao Yang (Yale University) |
| Abstract: | A monopolist offers personalized prices to consumers with unit demand, heterogeneous values, and idiosyncratic costs, who differ in a protected characteristic, such as race or gender. The seller is subject to a non-discrimination constraint: consumers with the same cost, but different characteristics must face identical prices. Such constraints arise in regulated markets like credit or insurance. The setting reduces to an optimal transport, and we characterize the optimal pricing rule. Under this rule, consumers may retain surplus, and either group may benefit. Strengthening the constraint to cover transaction prices redistributes surplus, harming the low-value group and benefiting the high-value group. |
| Date: | 2025–06–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2447 |