Non-discrimination clauses: their effect on British retail energy prices

Waddams Price, C. and Zhu, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6687-3267 (2016) Non-discrimination clauses: their effect on British retail energy prices. The Energy Journal, 37 (2). ISSN 1944-9089 doi: 10.5547/01956574.37.2.cpri

Abstract/Summary

UK governments and the energy regulator have shown increasing concern about the health of competition in the residential energy market, following their pioneering deregulation at the end of the last century. We identify the effects of introducing the non-discrimination clauses in 2009, a major regulatory intervention and the first since deregulation. We explore the effect of this intervention on the price movements of the six major players, and find that the nature of competition in the industry has changed, with less effective rivalry between the regional incumbents and large regional competitors following the intervention; companies seem to have ‘retreated’ to their home regions, leaving a market where pricing behaviour resembles more closely a duopoly between British Gas and the regional incumbent.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/69059
Identification Number/DOI	10.5547/01956574.37.2.cpri
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Economics
Publisher	International Association for Energy Economics
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