Essays on Electricity Markets : Information and Trading

Abstract: This thesis consists of four essays examining the functioning of electricity markets. The first article builds on a game-theoretical model, the three other articles discuss empirically the link between information and price formation process.Comparison of congestion management techniques: Nodal, zonal and discriminatory pricing, compares different market designs used to handle congestion in electricity transmission networks.Market-specific news and its impact on forward premia on electricity markets is an empirical analysis of the impact messages informing about sudden events affecting the power market have on price differences between the day-ahead and the intra-day Nordic electricity market.Strategic withholding through production failures, studies a previously unexamined way through which electricity producers can withhold capacity in order to increase prices on the Nordic electricity market and verifies whether the decision to stop production and inform about a sudden failure is based on economic incentives or rather is a result of a technical problem.Private and public information on the Nordic intra-day electricity market is an investigation of how traders on the Nordic intra-day electricity market react to public news about sudden failures on the power grid and whether they use private information about forthcoming outages in trading.