IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v72y2018icp365-375.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer electricity and gas prices across Australian capital cities: Structural breaks, effects of policy reforms and interstate differences

Author

Listed:
  • Valadkhani, Abbas
  • Nguyen, Jeremy
  • Smyth, Russell

Abstract

We detect, and analyze, the most significant structural changes in the quarterly growth rate of consumer electricity and gas prices in Australia and estimate their corresponding seasonal effects. To do so, we apply the general modelling framework of the Bai-Perron breaking regression to all available quarterly data for capital cities, individually, and Australia as a whole (1989Q3–2017Q2). Retail energy prices in most Australian states were deregulated in the 2000s. We find that increases in average quarterly growth rates of electricity and gas prices consistently occurred in the third (September) quarter, and find very few instances of increases in any other quarters of the year. In the post-deregulation period, price increases are significantly higher than in the pre-deregulation era. Results for some capital cities are stark: in Perth, third-quarter growth in electricity prices has been five times higher after the structural break. In Australia, as a whole, third-quarter growth in gas prices has been three times higher after the structural break. We discuss several possible explanations for energy price rises in the period since deregulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Valadkhani, Abbas & Nguyen, Jeremy & Smyth, Russell, 2018. "Consumer electricity and gas prices across Australian capital cities: Structural breaks, effects of policy reforms and interstate differences," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 365-375.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:72:y:2018:i:c:p:365-375
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2018.04.038
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988318301634
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2018.04.038?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Salim, Ruhul & Yao, Yao & Chen, George S., 2017. "Does human capital matter for energy consumption in China?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 49-59.
    2. Craig, J. Dean, 2016. "Motivations for market restructuring: Evidence from U.S. electricity deregulation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 162-167.
    3. Salim, Ruhul A. & Hassan, Kamrul & Shafiei, Sahar, 2014. "Renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and economic activities: Further evidence from OECD countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 350-360.
    4. Mohitosh Kejriwal & Pierre Perron, 2010. "A sequential procedure to determine the number of breaks in trend with an integrated or stationary noise component," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 305-328, September.
    5. Graham, Paul W. & Brinsmead, Thomas & Hatfield-Dodds, Steve, 2015. "Australian retail electricity prices: Can we avoid repeating the rising trend of the past?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 456-469.
    6. Severin Borenstein & James Bushnell, 2015. "The US Electricity Industry After 20 Years of Restructuring," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 437-463, August.
    7. Stephen Davies, Catherine Waddams Price, and Chris M. Wilson, 2014. "Nonlinear Pricing and Tariff Differentiation: Evidence from the British Electricity Market," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    8. Elliott, Graham & Rothenberg, Thomas J & Stock, James H, 1996. "Efficient Tests for an Autoregressive Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 813-836, July.
    9. Filippini, Massimo & Wetzel, Heike, 2014. "The impact of ownership unbundling on cost efficiency: Empirical evidence from the New Zealand electricity distribution sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 412-418.
    10. Paul Nillesen & Michael Pollitt, 2011. "Ownership Unbundling in Electricity Distribution: Empirical Evidence from New Zealand," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 38(1), pages 61-93, January.
    11. Finn Roar Aune & Rolf Golombek & Sverre Kittelsen & Knut Einar Rosendahl, 2004. "Liberalizing the energy markets of Western Europe - a computable equilibrium model approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(19), pages 2137-2149.
    12. Tim Nelson & Simon Kelley & Fiona Orton & Paul Simshauser, 2010. "Delayed Carbon Policy Certainty and Electricity Prices in Australia," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 29(4), pages 446-465, December.
    13. Ajayi, Victor & Weyman-Jones, Thomas & Glass, Anthony, 2017. "Cost efficiency and electricity market structure: A case study of OECD countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 283-291.
    14. M. Pollitt, 2004. "Electricity reform in Chile. Lessons for developing countries," Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, Intersentia, vol. 5(3), pages 221-263, September.
    15. Bell, William Paul & Wild, Phillip & Foster, John & Hewson, Michael, 2017. "Revitalising the wind power induced merit order effect to reduce wholesale and retail electricity prices in Australia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 224-241.
    16. Simshauser, Paul & Whish-Wilson, Patrick, 2017. "Price discrimination in Australia's retail electricity markets: An analysis of Victoria & Southeast Queensland," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 92-103.
    17. Rabindra Nepal & Antonio Carvalho & John Foster, 2016. "Revisiting electricity liberalization and quality of service: empirical evidence from New Zealand," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(25), pages 2309-2320, May.
    18. Rinaldo Brau & Raffaele Doronzo & Carlo V. Fiorio & Massimo Florio, 2010. "EU Gas Industry Reforms and Consumers' Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 167-182.
    19. Yoon, Kyung Hwan & Ratti, Ronald A., 2011. "Energy price uncertainty, energy intensity and firm investment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 67-78, January.
    20. Giulietti, Monica & Grossi, Luigi & Waterson, Michael, 2010. "Price transmission in the UK electricity market: Was NETA beneficial?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 1165-1174, September.
    21. Lee, Yen-Hsien & Hu, Hsu-Ning & Chiou, Jer-Shiou, 2010. "Jump dynamics with structural breaks for crude oil prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 343-350, March.
    22. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    23. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Lee, Jun-De, 2009. "Energy prices, multiple structural breaks, and efficient market hypothesis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 86(4), pages 466-479, April.
    24. Perron, Pierre, 1997. "Further evidence on breaking trend functions in macroeconomic variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 355-385, October.
    25. Noguera, José, 2013. "Oil prices: Breaks and trends," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 60-67.
    26. Sun, Jingwei & Shi, Wendong, 2015. "Breaks, trends, and unit roots in spot prices for crude oil and petroleum products," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 169-177.
    27. Perron, Pierre & Yabu, Tomoyoshi, 2009. "Testing for Shifts in Trend With an Integrated or Stationary Noise Component," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(3), pages 369-396.
    28. Apergis, Nicholas & Lau, Marco Chi Keung, 2015. "Structural breaks and electricity prices: Further evidence on the role of climate policy uncertainties in the Australian electricity market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(PA), pages 176-182.
    29. Worthington, Andrew & Kay-Spratley, Adam & Higgs, Helen, 2005. "Transmission of prices and price volatility in Australian electricity spot markets: a multivariate GARCH analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 337-350, March.
    30. Cotton, Deborah & De Mello, Lurion, 2014. "Econometric analysis of Australian emissions markets and electricity prices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 475-485.
    31. Catherine Waddams Price & Minyan Zhu, 2016. "Non-discrimination Clauses: Their Effect on British Retail Energy Prices," The Energy Journal, , vol. 37(2), pages 111-132, April.
    32. Fan Zhang, 2015. "Energy Price Reform and Household Welfare: The Case of Turkey," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    33. Razeghi, Ghazal & Shaffer, Brendan & Samuelsen, Scott, 2017. "Impact of electricity deregulation in the state of California," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 105-115.
    34. Kuo S. Huang & Sophia Wu Huang, 2012. "Consumer welfare effects of increased food and energy prices," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(19), pages 2527-2536, July.
    35. Nelson, Tim & Kelley, Simon & Orton, Fiona, 2012. "A literature review of economic studies on carbon pricing and Australian wholesale electricity markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 217-224.
    36. Apergis, Nicholas & Baruník, Jozef & Lau, Marco Chi Keung, 2017. "Good volatility, bad volatility: What drives the asymmetric connectedness of Australian electricity markets?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 108-115.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Prakash, Kushneel & Munyanyi, Musharavati Ephraim, 2021. "Energy poverty and obesity," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    2. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell, 2020. "Ethnic diversity, energy poverty and the mediating role of trust: Evidence from household panel data for Australia11We thank two referees for constructive comments. This article uses unit record data ," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    3. Johnstone, David & Havyatt, David, 2022. "Sophistry and high electricity prices in Australia," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    4. Ciarreta, Aitor & Pizarro-Irizar, Cristina & Zarraga, Ainhoa, 2020. "Renewable energy regulation and structural breaks: An empirical analysis of Spanish electricity price volatility," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    5. Valadkhani, Abbas & Smyth, Russell & Nguyen, Jeremy, 2019. "Effects of primary energy consumption on CO2 emissions under optimal thresholds: Evidence from sixty countries over the last half century," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 680-690.
    6. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell & Farrell, Lisa, 2020. "Fuel poverty and subjective wellbeing," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    7. Khezr, Peyman & Nepal, Rabindra, 2021. "On the viability of energy-capacity markets under decreasing marginal costs," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    8. Ivanovski, Kris & Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell, 2018. "A club convergence analysis of per capita energy consumption across Australian regions and sectors," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 519-531.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vasudeva N. R. Murthy & Natalya Ketenci, 2017. "Is technology still a major driver of health expenditure in the United States? Evidence from cointegration analysis with multiple structural breaks," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 29-50, March.
    2. Emanuele Russo & Neil Foster-McGregor, 2022. "Characterizing growth instability: new evidence on unit roots and structural breaks in countries’ long run trajectories," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 713-756, April.
    3. Vicente Esteve & Manuel Navarro-Ibáñez & María A. Prats, 2013. "The present value model of US stock prices revisited: long-run evidence with structural breaks, 1871-2010," Working Papers 04/13, Instituto Universitario de Análisis Económico y Social.
    4. Vicente Esteve & Manuel Navarro-Ibáñez & María A. Prats, 2013. "The present value model of U.S. stock prices revisited: long-run evidence with structural breaks, 1871-2010," Working Papers 1305, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    5. Mishra, Vinod & Smyth, Russell, 2017. "Conditional convergence in Australia's energy consumption at the sector level," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 396-403.
    6. Mohitosh Kejriwal & Claude Lopez, 2013. "Unit Roots, Level Shifts, and Trend Breaks in Per Capita Output: A Robust Evaluation," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(8), pages 892-927, November.
    7. Niels Haldrup & Robinson Kruse & Timo Teräsvirta & Rasmus T. Varneskov, 2013. "Unit roots, non-linearities and structural breaks," Chapters, in: Nigar Hashimzade & Michael A. Thornton (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Macroeconomics, chapter 4, pages 61-94, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Mariam Camarero & Alejandro Muñoz & Cecilio Tamarit, 2021. "50 Years of Capital Mobility in the Eurozone: Breaking the Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 32(5), pages 867-905, November.
    9. Harvey, David I. & Leybourne, Stephen J. & Taylor, A.M. Robert, 2012. "Unit root testing under a local break in trend," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 167(1), pages 140-167.
    10. Ketenci, Natalya, 2015. "Capital mobility in Russia," Russian Journal of Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 386-403.
    11. Noguera, José, 2013. "Oil prices: Breaks and trends," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 60-67.
    12. Sun, Jingwei & Shi, Wendong, 2015. "Breaks, trends, and unit roots in spot prices for crude oil and petroleum products," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 169-177.
    13. Natalya Ketenci & Vasudeva N. R. Murthy, 2018. "Some determinants of life expectancy in the United States: results from cointegration tests under structural breaks," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 42(3), pages 508-525, July.
    14. Apergis, Nicholas & Lau, Marco Chi Keung, 2015. "Structural breaks and electricity prices: Further evidence on the role of climate policy uncertainties in the Australian electricity market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(PA), pages 176-182.
    15. Apergis, Nicholas & Gozgor, Giray & Lau, Chi Keung Marco & Wang, Shixuan, 2019. "Decoding the Australian electricity market: New evidence from three-regime hidden semi-Markov model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 129-142.
    16. Natalya Ketenci, 2016. "The bilateral trade flows of the EU in the presence of structural breaks," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 1369-1398, December.
    17. Addison, Tony & Ghoshray, Atanu, 2023. "Discerning trends in international metal prices in the presence of nonstationary volatility," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    18. Lin, Zhibin & You, Kefei & Lau, Chi Keung & Demir, Ender, 2019. "Segmenting global tourism markets: A panel club convergence approach," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 165-185.
    19. Marcos Sanso-Navarro & María Vera-Cabello, 2020. "Income Inequality and Persistence Changes," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(2), pages 495-511, November.
    20. Presno, María José & Landajo, Manuel & Fernández, Paula, 2012. "Non-renewable resource prices. A robust evaluation from the stationarity perspective," MPRA Paper 42523, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electricity price; Gas price; Consumer energy prices; Structural break; Australia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:72:y:2018:i:c:p:365-375. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.