IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/13507.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Vertical Arrangements, Market Structure, and Competition An Analysis of Restructured U.S. Electricity Markets

Author

Listed:
  • James B. Bushnell
  • Erin T. Mansur
  • Celeste Saravia

Abstract

This paper examines vertical arrangements in electricity markets. Vertically integrated wholesalers, or those with long-term contracts, have less incentive to raise wholesale prices when retail prices are determined beforehand. For three restructured markets, we simulate prices that define bounds on static oligopoly equilibria. Our findings suggest that vertical arrangements dramatically affect estimated market outcomes. Had regulators impeded vertical arrangements (as in California), our simulations imply vastly higher prices than observed and production inefficiencies costing over 45 percent of those production costs with vertical arrangements. We conclude that horizontal market structure accurately predicts market performance only when accounting for vertical structure.

Suggested Citation

  • James B. Bushnell & Erin T. Mansur & Celeste Saravia, 2007. "Vertical Arrangements, Market Structure, and Competition An Analysis of Restructured U.S. Electricity Markets," NBER Working Papers 13507, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13507
    Note: EEE IO
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13507.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Allaz Blaise & Vila Jean-Luc, 1993. "Cournot Competition, Forward Markets and Efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 1-16, February.
    2. Rey, Patrick & Tirole, Jean, 2007. "A Primer on Foreclosure," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 33, pages 2145-2220, Elsevier.
    3. Charles D. Kolstad & Lars Mathiesen, 1991. "Computing Cournot-Nash Equilibria," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 39(5), pages 739-748, October.
    4. Green, Richard J & Newbery, David M, 1992. "Competition in the British Electricity Spot Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 929-953, October.
    5. repec:bla:jindec:v:47:y:1999:i:1:p:107-24 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Fabra, Natalia & Toro, Juan, 2005. "Price wars and collusion in the Spanish electricity market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(3-4), pages 155-181, April.
    7. Liski, Matti & Montero, Juan-Pablo, 2006. "Forward trading and collusion in oligopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 212-230, November.
    8. James Bushnell, 2007. "Oligopoly equilibria in electricity contract markets," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 225-245, December.
    9. Erin T. Mansur, 2008. "Measuring Welfare in Restructured Electricity Markets," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 369-386, May.
    10. Severin Borenstein & James Bushnell & Christopher R. Knittel, 1999. "Market Power in Electricity Markets: Beyond Concentration Measures," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 65-88.
    11. Mansur, Erin T, 2007. "Upstream Competition and Vertical Integration in Electricity Markets," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(1), pages 125-156, February.
    12. Richard Green, 1999. "The Electricity Contract Market in England and Wales," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 107-124, March.
    13. Catherine D. Wolfram, 1999. "Measuring Duopoly Power in the British Electricity Spot Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 805-826, September.
    14. Steven L. Puller, 2007. "Pricing and Firm Conduct in California's Deregulated Electricity Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 75-87, February.
    15. Blaise Allaz & Jean-Luc Vila, 1993. "Cournot Competition, Forward Markets and Efficiency," Post-Print hal-00511806, HAL.
    16. Murphy, Kevin M & Topel, Robert H, 2002. "Estimation and Inference in Two-Step Econometric Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 88-97, January.
    17. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    18. repec:rus:hseeco:210193 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Klemperer, Paul D & Meyer, Margaret A, 1989. "Supply Function Equilibria in Oligopoly under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1243-1277, November.
    20. Paul L. Joskow, 2003. "The Difficult Transition to Competitive Electricity Markets in the U.S," Working Papers 0308, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
    21. Bushnell, James, 2003. "A Mixed Complementarity Model of Hydro-Thermal Competition in the Western U.S," Staff General Research Papers Archive 13144, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    22. Richard Schmalensee & Bennett W. Golub, 1984. "Estimating Effective Concentration in Deregulated Wholesale Electricity Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(1), pages 12-26, Spring.
    23. Davidson, Russell & MacKinnon, James G., 1993. "Estimation and Inference in Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195060119.
    24. Borenstein, Severin & Bushnell, James & Kahn, Edward & Stoft, Steven, 1995. "Market power in California electricity markets," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 5(3-4), pages 219-236.
    25. Bushnell, James & Wolfram, Catherine, 2008. "Electricity Markets," Staff General Research Papers Archive 31547, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    26. Bushnell, James, 2004. "California's electricity crisis: a market apart?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1045-1052, June.
    27. Krattenmaker, Thomas G & Salop, Steven C, 1986. "Competition and Cooperation in the Market for Exclusionary Rights," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 109-113, May.
    28. Frank Wolak, 2000. "An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Hedge Contracts on Bidding Behavior in a Competitive Electricity Market," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 1-39.
    29. Mahenc, P. & Salanie, F., 2004. "Softening competition through forward trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 282-293, June.
    30. 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)

    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. Daron Acemoglu, Ali Kakhbod, and Asuman Ozdaglar, 2017. "Competition in Electricity Markets with Renewable Energy Sources," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(KAPSARC S).
    2. Fabra, Natalia & de Frutos, Maria-Angeles, 2008. "On the Impact of Forward Contract Obligations in Multi-Unit Auctions," CEPR Discussion Papers 6756, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. David P. Brown & Andrew Eckert, 2018. "Analyzing the Impact of Electricity Market Structure Changes and Mergers: The Importance of Forward Commitments," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(1), pages 101-137, February.
    4. Dressler, Luisa, 2016. "Support schemes for renewable electricity in the European Union: Producer strategies and competition," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 186-196.
    5. Holmberg, Pär & Newbery, David, 2010. "The supply function equilibrium and its policy implications for wholesale electricity auctions," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 209-226, December.
    6. de Frutos, María-Ángeles & Fabra, Natalia, 2012. "How to allocate forward contracts: The case of electricity markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 451-469.
    7. James Bushnell, 2007. "Oligopoly equilibria in electricity contract markets," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 225-245, December.
    8. Twomey, P. & Green, R. & Neuhoff, K. & Newbery, D., 2005. "A Review of the Monitoring of Market Power The Possible Roles of TSOs in Monitoring for Market Power Issues in Congested Transmission Systems," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0504, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    9. Albert Banal-Estañol & Augusto Rupérez Micola, 2009. "Composition of Electricity Generation Portfolios, Pivotal Dynamics, and Market Prices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(11), pages 1813-1831, November.
    10. Baldursson , Fridrik M. & von der Fehr, Nils-Henrik, 2007. "Vertical Integration and Long-Term Contracts in Risky Markets," Memorandum 01/2007, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    11. Erin T. Mansur, 2008. "Measuring Welfare in Restructured Electricity Markets," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 369-386, May.
    12. Brown, David P. & Eckert, Andrew & Silveira, Douglas, 2023. "Screening for collusion in wholesale electricity markets: A literature review," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    13. Aitor Ciarreta & María Espinosa, 2010. "Market power in the Spanish electricity auction," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 42-69, February.
    14. Jordi Brandts & Paul Pezanis‐Christou & Arthur Schram, 2008. "Competition with forward contracts: a laboratory analysis motivated by electricity market design," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(525), pages 192-214, January.
    15. Van Moer, Geert, 2019. "Electricity market competition when forward contracts are pairwise efficient," MPRA Paper 96660, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. van Eijkel, Remco & Kuper, Gerard H. & Moraga-González, José L., 2016. "Do firms sell forward for strategic reasons? An application to the wholesale market for natural gas," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-35.
    17. Rubin, Ofir David, 2010. "Equilibrium pricing in electricity markets with wind power," ISU General Staff Papers 201001010800002361, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    18. David P. Brown & Andrew Eckert, 2017. "Electricity market mergers with endogenous forward contracting," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 269-310, June.
    19. Rubin, Ofir D. & Babcock, Bruce A., 2011. "A novel approach for modeling deregulated electricity markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 2711-2721, May.
    20. Di Cosmo, Valeria & Lynch, Muireann Á., 2016. "Competition and the single electricity market: Which lessons for Ireland?," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 40-47.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:13507. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.