Financial convergence or decoupling in electricity and energy Markets? a dynamic study of OECD, Latin America and Asian countries

Abstract

The motivation for this theoretical paper is to “shed further light” on electricity market liberalisation. The major influences on electricity prices in each country are local supply and demand conditions, which include costs of renewables and/or regulatory effects on pricing. This also includes effects of public or private monopoly pricing. However, many countries from a representative sample of groups of economies, show long-term equilibrium relationships in their electricity and energy stock market sectors. In these countries in the short-term, exogeneity lies with the energy sectors in the EMU, the UK, New Zealand, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Thailand. In the cases of the US and India the electricity markets are exogenous, which is probably due to the sheer size of those markets. Where there is evidence of cointegration the nexus between electricity and energy sectors remains and the strength of this relationship is indicative of greater progress in electricity market liberalisation. This is because their electricity prices are influenced to a significant degree by global fossil fuel supply costs. In those cases domestic factors such as cost of regulatory environments are less important.