Conference Agenda

We study equilibrium contract adoption in retail electricity markets in which consumers differ in their willingness to pay over time and can choose between a fixed-price contract (FP) and real-time pricing contract (RTP). Self-selection alters the consumption profile and, in turn, the cost of serving FP customers, creating an adverse-selection channel with endogenous costs. In a competitive retail segment, this channel unravels the FP contract: any private retailer that attracts FP customers is left with a pool that is too costly to serve at break-even. Under a regulated monopoly offering the FP contract, contract choice instead disciplines pricing: the monopoly internalizes consumer sorting to the RTP contract and may cut its price to retain low-cost customers. This pricing response can increase inefficient peak consumption and reduce welfare relative to a benchmark without an RTP contract. We characterize the monopoly’s pricing rule, show how consumer heterogeneity governs the strength of the sorting incentive, and discuss regulatory instruments (two-part tariffs and loss-financing rules) that mitigate the welfare cost of opt-in RTP contracts.

When demand aggregates both price-sensitive and price-insensitive behaviors, uniform pricing becomes a deficient market design that generates negative surplus during extreme-price events. We develop a price-control mechanism that efficiently resolves the tradeoff between protecting consumers and limiting rents. The mechanism implements a dynamic price cap that responds to demand adjustments and induces truthful supply through incentive payments. In a quantitative application to the French wholesale electricity market during the 2022–2023 energy crisis, the mechanism would have lowered expected procurement costs by roughly €200 billion, about two-thirds of total projected costs in this central scenario.

Is working from home (WFH) good for the environment? The rise of remote work has

raised questions about its environmental and urban impacts. While reduced commuting

can lower emissions, increased residential energy use and shifts in spatial patterns complicate its overall effects. In this paper, we develop a quantitative spatial model of Swedish cities incorporating sector-specific remote work adoption, commuting modes, and residential choices. We find that remote work leads to reductions in aggregate emissions,

primarily driven by decreased commuting, even though trip distances become longer.

Emissions from floorspace increase overall, as residential emissions rise—both due to

larger houses and the additional dedicated space required for WFH. Although emissions

from commercial floorspace decline, these reductions are smaller than the increases in

emissions from residential floorspace. Overall, the decrease in commuting-related emissions dominates, and WFH leads to a net reduction in 𝐶𝑂2 emissions.

Building energy codes are a central tool for reducing residential greenhouse gas emissions, yet most evaluations focus only on energy savings in newly constructed homes. This paper shows that such policies induce important housing- and land-market adjustments with first-order welfare implications. Using a monocentric city model with durable housing, we demonstrate that policies increasing non-land construction costs reduce both construction and demolition, extending the lifetime of existing housing. We test these predictions using quasi-experimental variation from the staggered implementation of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in Belgium. Difference-in-differences estimates reveal large declines in construction and demolition, alongside increased sales of existing homes and a contraction in land markets. While energy use in the new housing stock falls substantially these gains are partly offset by consumer surplus losses, energy leakage to the existing stock, and windfall losses for landowners. Accounting for these general-equilibrium effects is crucial for assessing the cost-effectiveness of building energy codes.