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Investment Incentives and Auction Design in Electricity Markets

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  • Von der Fehr, Nils-Henrik M.
  • Fabra, Natalia
  • de Frutos, Maria-Angeles

Abstract

Motivated by the regulatory debate in electricity markets, we seek to understand how market design affects market performance through its impact on investment incentives. For this purpose, we study a two-stage game in which firms choose their capacities under demand uncertainty prior to bidding into the spot market. We analyse a number of different market design elements, including (i) two commonly used auction formats, the uniform-price and discriminatory auctions, (ii) price-caps and (iii) bid duration. We find that, although the discriminatory auction tends to lower prices, this does not imply that investment incentives at the margin are poorer; indeed, under reasonable assumptions on the shape of the demand distribution, the discriminatory auction induces (weakly) stronger investment incentives than the uniform-price format.

Suggested Citation

  • Von der Fehr, Nils-Henrik M. & Fabra, Natalia & de Frutos, Maria-Angeles, 2008. "Investment Incentives and Auction Design in Electricity Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 6626, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6626
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Sakellaris, Kostis, 2010. "Modeling Electricity Markets as Two-Stage Capacity Constrained Price Competition Games under Uncertainty," MPRA Paper 23317, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Andreas Ehrenmann & Yves Smeers, 2011. "Generation Capacity Expansion in a Risky Environment: A Stochastic Equilibrium Analysis," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(6), pages 1332-1346, December.
    3. Marx, Leslie M. & Shaffer, Greg, 2010. "Break-up fees and bargaining power in sequential contracting," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 451-463, September.
    4. Frederic Murphy & Yves Smeers, 2010. "On the Impact of Forward Markets on Investments in Oligopolistic Markets with Reference to Electricity," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(3), pages 515-528, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market design; Uniform price and discriminatory auctions; investment; Electricity; Regulatory reform;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities

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