nep-reg New Economics Papers
on Regulation
Issue of 2026–05–18
seventeen papers chosen by
Christopher Decker, Oxford University


  1. Competition, contracts and auctions for renewable electricity support: competition for the market but not yet in the market By Richard Green; David Newbery
  2. Advancing Competition Policy in the Digital Gatekeeper Era – A Tribute to Heike Schweitzer By Jens-Uwe Franck; Martin Peitz
  3. BigTech in Financial Services: Emerging Regulatory Considerations By International Monetary Fund
  4. Californians spend less on electricity than Texans despite higher prices By Cameron Barrett
  5. Batteries, solar help keep the lights on in Texas but more needed By Garrett Golding; Reid Taylor
  6. Solar, battery capacity saved the Texas grid last summer; an uncertain future awaits By Garrett Golding
  7. Regulating Physicians’ Prices in the Presence of Health Platforms By Chiara Canta; Leonardo Madio; Andrea Mantovani; Carlo Reggiani
  8. Modeling Stochastic Multi-Agent Interaction in Intraday Battery Energy Storage Dispatch with Market Power By Ruimeng Hu; Mike Ludkovski; Hezhong Zhang
  9. Asymmetric Adaptation to Heat and Energy Poverty By Adriana Camacho; Leonardo Gasparini; Luis Laguinge; Jorge Puig; Hernán Winkler
  10. Environmental permits, regulatory burden, and firm outcomes By Namrata Kala; Muhammad Haseeb; James Fenske
  11. Expiring solar tax credits shine a light on benefit inequities By Cameron Barrett
  12. Sent in Ten Seconds: Early Evidence on the Impact of the EU Instant Payments Regulation in Luxembourg By John Theal
  13. Utility-scale solar shines in Texas despite tariffs, federal policy changes By Cameron Barrett; Kunal Patel; Michael D. Plante
  14. When Regulation Reshapes Markets: The Migration of Corporate Lending: A speech at the Hoover Institution Annual Monetary Policy Conference, Stanford, California., May 8, 2026 By Michelle W. Bowman
  15. AI, Central Planning, and Hayek's Knowledge Problem: Why "The Use of Knowledge in Society" Survives the Age of Artificial Intelligence By Heng-fu Zou
  16. The European approach to artificial intelligence policymaking By Rodriguez Müller Paula; André Antoine-alexandre; Tangi Luca; Jugel Laura; Schade Sven; Sanchez Ignacio; De Longueville Bertrand; Gomez Emilia; Fernandez Llorca David
  17. Advancing AI adoption in EU public administrations: Future directions and opportunities under the Apply AI Strategy By Tangi Luca; Rodriguez Müller Paula; Schade Sven; André Antoine-alexandre; Combetto Marco; Daoud Melhem

  1. By: Richard Green; David Newbery
    Keywords: Renewable electricity support schemes, auctions, curtailment, locational pricing
    JEL: L94 Q28 Q42 Q48
    Date: 2026–03
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg2607
  2. By: Jens-Uwe Franck; Martin Peitz
    Abstract: This contribution examines Heike Schweitzer’s role as a competition policy analyst and adviser in the formative phase of European competition policy towards digital platforms. It situates her work in this context and develops a conceptual framework that captures the challenges of analysis under conditions of uncertainty and dynamic market developments. Through a selective analysis of four key reports, the article reconstructs central analytical approaches and policy proposals, identifies characteristic features of a “Heike Schweitzer approach”, and assesses its influence on subsequent regulatory developments, in particular the Digital Markets Act and section 19a of the German Competition Act.
    Keywords: antitrust law, digital platform, Digital Markets Act, German competition law, platform regulation
    JEL: K21 K23 K20
    Date: 2026–05
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_745
  3. By: International Monetary Fund
    Abstract: This is an abstract.
    Date: 2026–05–07
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imftnm:2026/999
  4. By: Cameron Barrett
    Abstract: Retail electricity rates are higher in California than Texas, but electricity cost accounts for a lower share of household budgets in California.
    Keywords: California; electricity prices; Texas
    Date: 2026–04–14
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:d00001:103083
  5. By: Garrett Golding; Reid Taylor
    Abstract: Many Texas residents remain skeptical about the reliability of the electric grid since massive dayslong outages in February 2021. Notably, the power supply situation has since improved, with capacity added over the past two years, primarily from solar and a tripling of battery storage capacity.
    Keywords: batteries; electricity; energy; solar; Texas
    Date: 2025–11–04
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:d00001:102075
  6. By: Garrett Golding
    Abstract: As ERCOT forecasts accelerated load growth due to anticipated data center construction and electrification trends, the current generation mix and market design should garner increased scrutiny.
    Keywords: electricity; solar; batteries; Texas
    Date: 2025–01–14
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:d00001:99476
  7. By: Chiara Canta; Leonardo Madio; Andrea Mantovani; Carlo Reggiani
    Abstract: Online platforms connecting physicians and patients are increasingly common and often operate in heavily regulated contexts. We consider a platform that provides cost-reducing services for physicians and quality-enhancing services for patients. The platform also improves the matching between patients and physicians, thereby increasing competition among the latter. When prices are unregulated, physicians charge different prices online and offline, yet not all join the platform, which is suboptimal in terms of social welfare. The platform may also under- or over-invest in the quality level offered to patients, making their participation suboptimal as well. We then analyze price regulation. Under a single regulated price for medical visits, regardless of the booking channel, all physicians join the platform. However, the first-best allocation cannot be implemented: patient participation remains inefficiently low because patients do not internalize the platform’s cost-reducing effect. In contrast, allowing two regulated prices, one for offline visits and one for platform bookings, restores the first best. Overall, our findings suggest that an optimal pricing or reimbursement mechanism should differentiate across booking channels.
    Keywords: healthcare online platforms, price regulation, patient-physician matching
    JEL: I11 I18 L51 H75
    Date: 2026
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12646
  8. By: Ruimeng Hu; Mike Ludkovski; Hezhong Zhang
    Abstract: We develop a stochastic game-theoretic model for intraday dispatch of grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESSs). We assume that each BESS operator competitively manages her state-of-charge to maximize energy arbitrage revenues, driven by the endogenized electricity price that depends on the sum of the charging rates. We characterize the Nash equilibrium of the resulting finite-player linear-quadratic differential game with a shared stochastic driver, obtaining semi-explicit representations of equilibrium feedback controls and equilibrium prices both in the general heterogeneous and the simplified homogeneous BESS setting, via a system of Riccati equations. We then analyze competitive effects, including the marginal externality of additional BESS entering the market, the benefit of coordination and the corresponding market power of large operators, and supply effects from hybrid-type BESSs. We further study the asymptotic regime as the number of agents grows large. Our model provides a quantitative testbed to study the impact of decentralized BESS deployment on the grid and the resulting reduction in daily price spreads.
    Date: 2026–05
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.01178
  9. By: Adriana Camacho (CAF); Leonardo Gasparini (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP & CONICET); Luis Laguinge (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP & CONICET); Jorge Puig (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP); Hernán Winkler (World Bank)
    Abstract: We study the responses of household electricity consumption to temperature changes, focusing on asymmetries between welfare deciles. Our analysis exploits a unique panel dataset for Peru that links household survey microdata with repeated administrative records on energy use and local temperature. Using fixed-effects models, we estimate how electricity consumption varies with temperature, highlighting the unequal capacity of households across income deciles to adapt to climate change. Based on this evidence, we propose and implement a novel measure of adaptive energy poverty, which captures households’ ability to respond to rising ambient temperatures through increased electricity consumption.
    JEL: I31 Q41 Q54
    Date: 2026–05
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0372
  10. By: Namrata Kala; Muhammad Haseeb; James Fenske
    Abstract: Effective regulatory design requires an understanding of how regulatory burden affects regulated entities. Using novel data on all applications for environmental permits in five Indian states and a natural experiment, we estimate how regulatory burden of environmental permitting affects firms. Difference-in-difference estimates show that deregulation induces smaller firms to enter and increases entry. Standard data sources would miss these substantial effects, underscoring the importance of collecting data across the firm size distribution. We also use full texts of permit certificates to create novel measures of regulatory burden. Firms in industries with reduced regulations face fewer, less stringent, permit conditions.
    Date: 2026–01–30
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:uobdis:26/827
  11. By: Cameron Barrett
    Abstract: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a broad package of federal spending and tax policies signed into law in July 2025, spells trouble for the residential solar industry.
    Keywords: energy; solar; tax credits
    Date: 2025–11–20
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:d00001:102178
  12. By: John Theal
    Abstract: This paper provides an empirical assessment of the impact of the European Union’s Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) on the use of instant credit transfers in Luxembourg. Using monthly payment service provider (PSP)-level data on customer credit transfers sent between 2022 and 2025, the analysis examines whether the IPR affected sending behaviour following its entry into force in January 2025 and ahead of the October 2025 mandatory sending deadline. The empirical strategy combines difference-in-differences and dynamic event-study models with complementary approaches, including an interrupted time series and a Generalized Synthetic Control Method. Payment institutions and electronic money institutionsare used as a control group. Between January and October, PSPs subject to the October IPR deadline show an immediate and statistically significant increase in the share of instant credit transfers sent, rising from roughly 0.8-1 percentage point in early 2025 to about 1.5-2 percentage points by late 2025. These effects correspond to several hundred thousand additional instant credit transfers per month due to the IPR, suggesting early operational adjustment and accelerated adoption of instant payments among PSPs in Luxembourg.
    Keywords: retail payments, instant payments, panel study, event study, difference in differences, generalized synthetic control
    JEL: C14 C44 E42 E58 G21 L86
    Date: 2026–04
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bcl:bclwop:bclwp208
  13. By: Cameron Barrett; Kunal Patel; Michael D. Plante
    Abstract: Texas is now the top state for utility-scale solar power generation capacity. However, developers of new solar projects face a changing operating environment, one lacking strong federal policy support but also featuring cost-boosting tariffs on imported solar module components.
    Keywords: solar; Texas
    Date: 2026–02–03
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:d00001:102573
  14. By: Michelle W. Bowman
    Date: 2026–05–08
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgsq:103242
  15. By: Heng-fu Zou (The World Bank, Washington, D. C., 20433, USA)
    Abstract: This paper reassesses F. A.Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" in light of the rise of artificial intelligence. AI substantially strengthens the case for certain forms of planning by expanding data collection, prediction, codification, monitoring, logistics optimization, and hierarchical coordination. Recent arguments by Acemoglu and by Brynjolfsson and Hitzig suggest that AI may reduce the informational advantage of local actors, enlarge the effcient scale of firms, and revive some forms of algorithmic or AI-assisted planning. The paper argues, however, that AI does not fundamentally invalidate Hayek's knowledge problem. Hayek's central claim was not merely that planners lack computing power, but that economically relevant knowledge is dispersed, tacit, contextual, incentive-laden, forward-looking, and often generated only through decentralized action. AI can process data, but data are not identical to knowledge; AI can predict, but prediction is not discovery; AI can simulate prices, but simulated prices are not market prices generated by property, exchange, competition, profit, and loss The paper further argues that comprehensive AI planning raises serious problems of truthful revelation, metric gaming, surveillance, political power, and objective-function selection. AI may improve planning within firms, platforms, and governments, but such planning works best when embedded in a competitive, price-guided, polycentric market order. The conclusion is not anti-AI but anti-monopoly over social knowledge: AI should augment decentralized discovery rather than replace it with centralized control.
    Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Hayek; knowledge problem; socialist calcula tion debate; central planning; market prices; tacit knowledge; dispersed knowledge; entrepreneurship; economic calculation; algorithmic governance; surveillance; firms; platforms; Coase; Mises; polycentric order.
    JEL: B25 B31 B53 D46 D80 D83 D85 L14 L16 L22 L23 O31 O33 P11 P16 P21 P51 P52
    Date: 2025–04
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:808
  16. By: Rodriguez Müller Paula (European Commission - JRC); André Antoine-alexandre; Tangi Luca (European Commission - JRC); Jugel Laura; Schade Sven (European Commission - JRC); Sanchez Ignacio (European Commission - JRC); De Longueville Bertrand (European Commission - JRC); Gomez Emilia (European Commission - JRC); Fernandez Llorca David (European Commission - JRC)
    Abstract: Today, the EU's approach has reached a consolidated status, characterised by a comprehensive governance framework and a set of concrete instruments covering regulation, capability-building and AI adoption. This brief traces the path that led here, and the balance between fostering excellence and ensuring trust that has shaped it throughout. Through a chronological lens, it identifies three main phases – exploration, transition, and maturation - that together explain the EU's approach to AI policy and the EU responses to emerging and disruptive innovations.
    Date: 2026–04
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc146313
  17. By: Tangi Luca (European Commission - JRC); Rodriguez Müller Paula (European Commission - JRC); Schade Sven (European Commission - JRC); André Antoine-alexandre; Combetto Marco; Daoud Melhem
    Abstract: This report examines future pathways for advancing the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in public administrations, building on the policy direction outlined in the European Commission’s Apply AI strategy (COM(2025) 723), adopted on 8 October 2025, with the aim of accelerating AI adoption across Europe. Public administrations play, and will continue to play, a strategic role in the European Union’s efforts to foster AI adoption across the EU. The Apply AI strategy recognises the public sector as a key domain for the effective adoption of AI. In this context, public administrations are encouraged to introduce AI strategically into their operations, while carefully assessing its benefits and associated risks. The report contextualises and offers advice on implementing the directives set out in the Apply AI strategy, presenting an AI adoption framework structured around three core activities: anchoring AI adoption in EU policies, regulations and principles; adapting the capabilities of public administrations; and applying AI in high-impact domains where it creates public value, supported by a prior assessment of real-world needs and continuous monitoring of impact and risks. Furthermore, the report provides insights and recommendations for EU Member States and public administrations, outlining a structured and forward-looking approach to leveraging AI for efficient, trustworthy and people-centric public administration.
    Date: 2026–04
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc143539

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