authors.elsevier.com/a/1dTvUW3fcodIWBrehm, Paul and Zhang, Yiyuan. "Market Organization and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from the Texas Electricity Market", Energy Economics 101 (2021): 105359
[Published Version] [Working Paper Version]
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of market organization on efficiency and emissions in wholesale electricity markets. Taking advantage of Texas’ transition from a decentralized bilateral trading market to a centralized auction market, we find that information aggregation has a positive effect on market efficiency that dominates any change in market power incentives. Specifically, we show that in the nine months following the transition, high-cost generators are displaced by low-cost generators in production, leading to annual cost savings of ~$59 million relative to the counterfactual. Although the centralized market reduces generation costs, it also has an unintended effect on pollution emissions. For moderate marginal damage estimates, we find the increase in external costs of emissions completely offsets the productive efficiency gain.