Unbundling and Productivity in the Electricity Generation Sector
14.01.2020
WIFO Research Seminar with Philipp Steinbrunner from the University of Turin
What are the impacts of different types of unbundling on productivity in the electricity generation sector? Philipp
Steinbrunner from the University of Turin spoke about this on 9 January 2020 at the WIFO Research Seminar. The commentary
was contributed by WIFO scientific consultant Kurt Kratena.
Further information about Philipp Steinbrunner can be found here.
WIFO Research Seminar, Österreichisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Wien, 09.01.2020
Online since: 18.12.2019 0:00
The European electricity directives mainly focusing on Unbundling are the most important tools of electricity market regulation.
Therefore, the core of these directives aiming to facilitate the market entry in the stage of generation by splitting up vertically
integrated firms into independent parts is an application of the Unbundling approach. Using a dataset containing firm-level
data on firms operating in 12 European countries from 2005 to 2014, this study provides an econometric analysis to understand
the effects of the implementation of the third directive (2009/72/EG) on the productivity of electricity generators. The overall
results show that the effect depends on the regulatory closeness of the regimes before and after the implementation. In particular,
moving from Legal Unbundling to Ownership Unbundling is associated with significant increases in productivity and competition.
