Price responsiveness is argued to be one important factor determining the possibility for a natural monopoly such as a district heating company to exercise its monopoly power. Increased price responsiveness, measured, for example, by the own price elasticity, reduces monopoly power, as consumers increasingly reduce demand as a response to a price increase. However, consumers in single houses having individual metering have presumably higher price responsiveness compared to consumers in residential buildings using collective metering. One major question raised in this paper is thus whether single houses show larger price responsiveness compared to residential buildings. Using cross-sectional data for 187 networks in Sweden for the year 2007 indicates that even if single houses have higher price responsiveness, district heating reveals in general a very inelastic behavior.

China's increased participation in the global market for iron ore has had tremendous impacts of various kinds. The ore has changed routes and destinations. In 2010, China had reached a point at which it alone accounted for over 50% of the global trade of iron ore. These large changes are unavoidably mirrored in the price that rose dramatically following the Chinese increased demand for iron ore. It was only Brazil and Australia that responded with higher production, an increased production that in no way did cover the increased demand from China. As Australia and Brazil increased their respective export to China, they both reduced their export to almost every other country such as the US, Germany and France who all have reduced their steel production. Other exporting countries like India, Canada and Sweden could not respond fast enough to the demand increase since these countries did not have the ability to adjust their respective production in the immediate and short run. These countries have, as a consequence, gained economic rent due to higher prices and are expected to reinvest in order to increase production in the near future.

This article considers two coarse measures applicable to antitrust policy: one of market concentration, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and one of market dominance, threshold value. Calculations of threshold value are compared to HHI values to determine when thresholds might be of specific use in merger cases. Many scenarios which satisfy the threshold conditions (indicating a dominant firm exists) are consistent with high HHI numbers such that current US Department of Justice and European Commission guidelines (based on HHIs) for merger concerns will have been met. It is suggested as a rule of thumb that HHIs be used as necessary conditions and threshold value be considered sufficient conditions for further case review.

This short article presents and describes a transition from "traditional" teaching with knowledge transferred from the teacher to the students in a classroom to a peer-to-peer situation in which the students, with different support, learn from each other. The process and results are encouraging and the peer-to-peer approach will be used and developed further in economics courses.

This report is a country by country assessment of the supports and barriers for district heating and the subsequent effects they have on the sector nationally. This is an analysis of information gathered by the national partners of this project from 10 or more experts and combined with the extensive knowledge and experience of the 14 national partners. These reports can be found on the web in Country by Country database and should be consulted when further information on a specific country is desired (ecoheat4.eu/en/Country-by-Country-DB).

En låg prisrespons hos konsumenter är en av förutsättningarna för ett naturligt monopol, som ett fjärrvärmeföretag, skall kunna utnyttja sin monopolställning. Fjärrvärme säljs företrädesvis för uppvärmning till flerbostadshus och småhus där småhusen har individuell mätning av förbrukningen medan flerbostadshusen har kollektiv mätning av förbrukningen. En grundläggande hypotes i denna studie är att småhusägare har en högre användarflexibilitet än konsumenter i ett flerbostadshus. I analysen används tvärsnittsdata för 187 fjärrvärmeverk i Sverige för året 2007 och resultatet indikerar att småhusägaren uppvisar en tydligt högre priselasticitet jämfört med flerbostadshuset. Analysen visar dessutom att varje ytterligare småhus som kopplas på i fjärrvärmenätet genererar en resultatminskning medan varje ytterligare flerbostadshus genererar en tydlig uppgång av rörelseresultatet för fjärrvärmeföretaget på orten.

Internet based auctions have become popular and has become a forum for both rational and emotional driven decisions to buy or not to buy. This study focus the analysis on if and to what extent the auction time might influence the final, price winning, bid. The auctions showed a relative value increase as the time frame for the auction decreased. At the same time there was no significant difference between the numbers of bids in short relative the long auctions that could explain the increase in value. The result is discussed in terms of how time might influence, positively or negatively, economic rationality.

The paper argues for and defines a locked-in consumer as a consumer that is involuntary locked into one system in spite of an economic incentive to change. A locked-in consumer is therefore not seen as a loyal consumer but instead is assumed to be loyal to a system in spite an obvious economic gain of switching. Being defined as a natural monopoly in its technique, district heating has long been criticized for its eventual abuse of this monopoly position. Therefore, assuming well functioning ex-ante competition, the study calculates switching costs for switching from district heating to pellet burners or heat pumps. The analysis show that there exist relatively substantial benefits of switching from district heating to pellet burning or heat pumps, especially in residential urban areas. With limited available relevant markets, district heating being the only alternative, this negative switching cost cannot be capitalized and represents, in the assumed absence of loyal customers, a lock-in effect. The result indicates that we cannot reject the idea that the district heating plants serving residential areas inStockholm misuse their dominant position resulting in a reduction of the social welfare.

Internetbaserade auktioner har letat sig in i ”folkhemmet”. Auktionerna har också blivit ett forum för rationellt såväl som emotionellt drivna köpbeslut. I denna studie analyseras huruvida auktionstiden (119 auktioner; 58 presentkort och 61 konsertbiljetter) är en prispåverkande faktor. Auktionerna visade en relativ värdestegring (slutbudet dividerat med det begärda priset) när tidsra­men för auktionen krympte. Samtidigt fanns det inte någon signifikant skill­nad mellan antalet bud i långa respektive korta auktioner som kunde förklara värdestegringen. Resultaten diskuteras mot en bakgrund av hur tid bidrar till, alternativt, motverkar ekonomisk rationalitet.

This paper studies different concentration and dominance measures using structural indexes used to initially screen the competitive situation in a market. The Nordic and Swedish electricity markets are used as the empirical cases. Market concentration issues in the Nordic electricity market in general and in Sweden in particular have been, at least in initial screenings, approached by the Herfindahl–Hirsch- man Index (HHI). This article uses an alternative measure to HHI, which is based on market shares of the two largest firms in the market. The results shows that only the Swedish wholesale market has a firm that can be regarded as dominant, but only during very short periods. The results from a hypothetical merger between the second and third largest company in the Swedish wholesale market shows that when the dominant position of the largest firm is reduced, by increasing the size of the second largest firm, the threshold value indicates that competition actually will increase (contradicting to the HHI).