Predicting Market Power in Wholesale Electricity Markets

David M Newbery ()

No 2009/03, RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute

Abstract: The traditional measure of market power is the HHI, which gives implausible results given the low elasticity of demand in electricity spot markets, unless it is adapted to take account of contracting. In its place the Residual Supply Index has been proposed as a more suitable index to measure potential market power in electricity markets, notably in California and more recently in the EU Sector Inquiry. The paper investigates its value in identifying the ability of firms to raise prices in an electricity market with contracts and capacity constraints and find that it is most useful for the case of a single dominant supplier, or with a natural extension, for the case of a symmetric oligoply. Estimates from the Sector Inquiry seem to fit this case better than might be expected, but suggests an alternative defintion of the RSI defined over flexible output that should give a more reliable relationship.

Keywords: Residual Supply Index; Cournot equilibrium; Lerner Index; electricity markets; market power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 K21 L94 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ene, nep-ind, nep-law and nep-mic
Date: 2009-02-02

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/1814/10620 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Predicting Market Power in Wholesale Electricity Markets (2009)
Working Paper: Predicting market power in wholesale electricity markets (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rsc:rsceui:2009/03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute
Address: Convento, Via delle Fontanelle, 19, 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Italy
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Jacqueline Gordon ().