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Supply Function Equilibria: Step Functions and Continuous Representations

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Author Info
Holmberg, Pär () (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))
Newbery, David (Faculty of Economics)
Ralph, Daniel (Judge Business School)
Abstract

In most wholesale electricity markets generators must submit step-function offers of supply to a uniform price auction, and the market is cleared at the price of the most expensive offer needed to meet realised demand. Such markets can most elegantly be modelled as the pure-strategy, Nash Equilibrium of continuous supply functions, in which each supplier has a unique profit maximising choice of supply function given the choices of other suppliers. Critics argue that the discreteness and discontinuity of the required steps can rule out pure-strategy equilibria and may result in price instability. This paper argues that if prices must be selected from a finite set the resulting step function converges to the continuous supply function as the number of steps increases, reconciling the apparently very disparate approaches to modelling electricity markets.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Research Institute of Industrial Economics in its series Working Paper Series with number 788.

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Length: 48 pages
Date of creation: 29 Jan 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0788

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Related research
Keywords: Auctions; Supply Function Equilibria; Convergence of Step-Functions; Electricity Markets;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods and Programming - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Auctions
L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities

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This page was last updated on 2009-11-6.


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