The Future of Retail Energy Markets

Catherine Waddams Price

The Energy Journal, 2008, vol. 29, issue 2_suppl, 125-148

Abstract: Britain was one of the first countries to introduce competition to retail energy markets in 1998; after a decade of choice, around half of its residential consumers have switched supplier. This paper presents evidence on consumer and supplier behaviour over the decade since the markets were opened to assess the success of the ‘experience’ to date. The early debate about the value of extending choice to householders, in which David Newbery was amongst those who expressed doubts, remains to be resolved in an era of rising costs and increasing politicisation. “While Britain has coped very well with wholesale market power, ending the domestic franchise and removing regulation from the retail supply margin has exposed households to considerable increases in those margins, as switching costs appear significant, and vertically integrated companies have been effective in exploiting their power.†David Newbery, Market Design, EPRG working paper 0515 p.9, 2005

Keywords: Retail energy markets; Electricity; compettion; residential consumer behavior; energy supplier behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol29-NoSI2-7 (text/html)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:enejou:v:29:y:2008:i:2_suppl:p:125-148

DOI: 10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol29-NoSI2-7

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Energy Journal
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().