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Strategic Withholding through Production Failures

Author

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  • Fogelberg, Sara

    (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))

  • Lazarczyk, Ewa

    (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence indicates that electricity producers use production failures to disguise strategic reductions of capacity in order to influence prices, but systematic evidence is lacking. We use a quasi-experimental set up and data from the Swedish energy market to examine such behavior. In a market without strategic withholding, the decision of reporting a failure should be independent of the market price. We show that marginal producers in fact base their decision to report a failure in part on prices, which indicates that failures are a result of economic incentives as well as of technical problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Fogelberg, Sara & Lazarczyk, Ewa, 2014. "Strategic Withholding through Production Failures," Working Paper Series 1015, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1015
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Kwoka & Vladlena Sabodash, 2011. "Price Spikes in Energy Markets: “Business by Usual Methods” or Strategic Withholding?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 38(3), pages 285-310, May.
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    6. Richard Green, 2004. "Did English Generators Play Cournot? Capacity withholding in the Electricity Pool," Working Papers 0410, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
    7. Hjalmarsson, Erik, 2000. "Nord Pool: A Power Market Without Market Power," Working Papers in Economics 28, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. David BENATIA & Etienne BILLETTE de VILLEMEUR, 2019. "Strategic Reneging in Sequential Imperfect Markets," Working Papers 2019-19, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    2. Arina Nikandrova & Jevgenijs Steinbuks, 2017. "Contracting for the second best in dysfunctional electricity markets," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 41-71, February.
    3. Bataille, Marc & Bodnar, Olivia & Steinmetz, Alexander & Thorwarth, Susanne, 2019. "Screening instruments for monitoring market power — The Return on Withholding Capacity Index (RWC)," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 227-237.
    4. Leonardo Madio & Aldo Pignataro, 2022. "Collusion sustainability with a capacity constrained firm," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0295, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    5. Erik Lundin, 2021. "Market Power and Joint Ownership: Evidence from Nuclear Plants in Sweden," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 485-536, September.
    6. Bergler, Julian & Heim, Sven & Hüschelrath, Kai, 2017. "Strategic capacity withholding through failures in the German-Austrian electricity market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 210-221.
    7. Lundin, Erik & Tangerås, Thomas P., 2020. "Cournot competition in wholesale electricity markets: The Nordic power exchange, Nord Pool," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    8. Farzad Hassanzadeh Moghimi & Yihsu Chen & Afzal S. Siddiqui, 2023. "Flexible supply meets flexible demand: prosumer impact on strategic hydro operations," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 1-35, December.
    9. Leonardo Madio & Aldo Pignataro, 2022. "Collusion Sustainability with a Capacity Constrained Firm," CESifo Working Paper Series 10170, CESifo.
    10. Bataille, Marc & Bodnar, Olivia & Steinmetz, Alexander & Thorwarth, Susanne, 2019. "Screening instruments for monitoring market power: The return on withholding capacity index (RWC)," DICE Discussion Papers 311, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electricity markets; Urgent Market Messages (UMMs); Unplanned failures;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L49 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Other
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities

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