Incentive regulation and efficiency analysis of network utilities often need to take the effect of important external factors, such as the weather conditions, into account. This paper presents a method for estimating the effect of weather conditions on the costs of electricity distribution...

Since the 1990s, efficiency and benchmarking analysis has increasingly been used in network utilities research and regulation. A recurrent concern is the effect of environmental factors that are beyond the influence of firms (observable heterogeneity) and factors that are not identifiable...

This paper considers the impact of reviewers on the sale of a product of unknown quality. Sales occur simultaneously after an initial review by an unbiased, pessimistic or optimistic reviewer and we examine the impact on sales in each case. We find that counter-intuitively a pessimistic reviewer...

In recent years, a number of empirical studies and energy regulators have applied benchmarking techniques to measure the efficiency and performance of network utilities. An important issue has been the extent to which such results are influenced by contextual factors. Among these, weather...

The standard simple sequential herding model is altered to allow a firm with a new product to have it reviewed publicly before launch. Reviewers are either inherently pessimistic, optimistic or unbiased. We find the counter-intuitive result that a firm with a good product will prefer a...

In order to overcome the incentive of excessive maintenance reductions and insufficient network investments in incentive regulation of electricity distribution companies, regulators throughout Europe have started regulating quality of service in the energy sector. In this paper, we discuss the...

A sizable literature has grown up in recent years focusing on two-sided markets in which economies of scale combined with complementarities between a platform and its associated ‘software’ or ‘services’ can generate indirect network effects (that is positive feedback between the number...

Practising is a matter of increasing the reliability of ones skills rather than relying on a tool or a strike of genius to get it right. Once perfection has been achieved the individual will aim for higher quality since the effort is more likely to be worthwhile. Furthermore because the returns...

There is a public perception that electricity liberalisation is the major cause of recent electricity blackouts. This is reflected in the newspaper reporting of blackouts. By contrast, it was not listed as a cause in any official investigation reports. In this paper, we examine the common causes...

The literature on informational cascades and herding theory has for a decade focused on the externality and suboptimal outcomes generated from decision-making when spaces are coarser than private information spaces. Much of the output has therefore been positive, not normative. This paper...