IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/enejou/v20y1999i4p65-88.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Market Power in Electricity Markets: Beyond Concentration Measures

Author

Listed:
  • Severin Borenstein
  • James Bushnell
  • Christopher R. Knittel

Abstract

The wave of electricity market restructuring both within the United States and abroad has brought the issue of horizontal market power to the forefront of energy policy. Traditionally, estimation and prediction of market power has relied heavily on concentration measures. In this paper, we discuss the weaknesses of concentration measures as a viable measure of market power in the electricity industry, and we propose an alternative method based oil market simulations that take advantage of existing plant level data. We discuss results from previous studies the authors have performed, and present new results that allow for the detection of threshold demand levels where market power is likely to be a problem. In addition, we analyze the impact of that recent divestitures in the California electricity market will have on estimated market power. We close with a discussion of the policy implications of the results.

Suggested Citation

  • Severin Borenstein & James Bushnell & Christopher R. Knittel, 1999. "Market Power in Electricity Markets: Beyond Concentration Measures," The Energy Journal, , vol. 20(4), pages 65-88, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:20:y:1999:i:4:p:65-88
    DOI: 10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol20-No4-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol20-No4-3
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol20-No4-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    2. Shmuel S. Oren, 1997. "Economic Inefficiency of Passive Transmission Rights in Congested Electricity Systems with Competitive Generation," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 63-83.
    3. Bergman, Lars & Andersson, Bo, 1995. "Market Structure and the Price of Electricity: An ex ante Analysis of the deregulated Swedish Electricity Market," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 47, Stockholm School of Economics.
    4. Bo Andersson & Lars Bergman, 1995. "Market Structure and the Price of Electricity: An Ex Ante Analysis of the Deregulated Swedish Electricity Market," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 97-110.
    5. Yves Smeers, 1997. "Computable Equilibrium Models and the Restructuring of the European Electricity and Gas Markets," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 1-31.
    6. Aleksandr Rudkevich & Max Duckworth & Richard Rosen, 1998. "Modeling Electricity Pricing in a Deregulated Generation Industry: The Potential for Oligopoly Pricing in a Poolco," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 19-48.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hirth, Lion & Khanna, Tarun M. & Ruhnau, Oliver, 2024. "How aggregate electricity demand responds to hourly wholesale price fluctuations," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    2. Adelowo, Jacqueline & Bohland, Moritz, 2024. "Redesigning automated market power mitigation in electricity markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sulamaa, Pekka, . "Essays in Deregulated Finnish and Nordic Electricity Markets," ETLA A, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, number 34, June.
    2. Rajnish Kamat & Shmuel Oren, 2004. "Two-settlement Systems for Electricity Markets under Network Uncertainty and Market Power," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 5-37, January.
    3. Ventosa, Mariano & Baillo, Alvaro & Ramos, Andres & Rivier, Michel, 2005. "Electricity market modeling trends," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 897-913, May.
    4. Berry, Carolyn A. & Hobbs, Benjamin F. & Meroney, William A. & O'Neill, Richard P. & StewartJr, William R., 1999. "Understanding how market power can arise in network competition: a game theoretic approach," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 139-158, September.
    5. Sorgard, Lars, 1997. "Domestic merger policy in an international oligopoly: The Nordic market for electricity," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 239-253, May.
    6. Paizs, László & Mészáros, Mátyás Tamás, 2003. "Piachatalmi problémák modellezése a dereguláció utáni magyar áramtermelő piacon [Modelling problems of market power on the Hungarian electricity-generation market after deregulation]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 735-764.
    7. Maria Kopsakangas-Savolainen, 2003. "Quantity versus Price Competition in the Deregulated Finnish Electricity Markets," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 51-60, Autumn.
    8. Karsten Neuhoff, 2003. "Integrating Transmission and Energy Markets Mitigates Market Power," Working Papers EP17, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    9. Caner zdurak & Veysel Ulusoy, 2017. "Impact of Vertical Integration on Electricity Prices in TurkeyImpact of Vertical Integration on Electricity Prices in Turkey," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 7(3), pages 256-267.
    10. Hjalmarsson, Erik, 2000. "Nord Pool: A Power Market Without Market Power," Working Papers in Economics 28, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    11. Paul Twomey & Richard Green & Karsten Neuhoff & David Newbery, 2005. "A Review of the Monitoring of Market Power: The Possible Roles of TSOs in Monitoring for Market Power Issues in Congested Transmission Systems," Working Papers 0502, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
    12. Edward J. Anderson & Xinmin Hu, 2008. "Finding Supply Function Equilibria with Asymmetric Firms," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(3), pages 697-711, June.
    13. Gal, Nurit & Milstein, Irena & Tishler, Asher & Woo, C.K., 2019. "Investment in electricity capacity under fuel cost uncertainty: Dual-fuel and a mix of single-fuel technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 518-532.
    14. Ibrahim Abada & Andreas Ehrenmann, 2018. "A New Game Theoretical Approach for Modeling Export Energy Markets Equilibria," The Energy Journal, , vol. 39(5), pages 55-84, September.
    15. Bowei Guo & Giorgio Castagneto Gissey, 2019. "Cost Pass-through in the British Wholesale Electricity Market: Implications of Brexit and the ETS reform," Working Papers EPRG1937, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    16. Amundsen, Eirik S. & Nesse, Arvid & Tjotta, Sigve, 1999. "Deregulation of the Nordic power market and environmental policy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 417-434, October.
    17. Pär Holmberg & Andy Philpott, 2014. "Supply function equilibria in transportation networks," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1421, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    18. Bert Willems, 2002. "Modeling Cournot Competition in an Electricity Market with Transmission Constraints," The Energy Journal, , vol. 23(3), pages 95-125, July.
    19. Paul Joskow & Jean Tirole, 2005. "Merchant Transmission Investment," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 233-264, June.
    20. Joskow, Paul L & Tirole, Jean, 1999. "Transmission Rights and Market Power on Electric Power Networks I: Financial Rights," CEPR Discussion Papers 2093, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:20:y:1999:i:4:p:65-88. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.