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The Journal of Business ceased publication with the November 2006 issue
(Volume 79, Number 6).

May 2006

Volume 79, Number 3
(The Journal of Business, 2006, vol. 79, no. 3)
0021-9398/2006/7903-0008$10.00
DOI: 10.1086/500675

Understanding the Fine Structure of Electricity Prices*

Hélyette Geman

Birkbeck, University of London and ESSEC Business School

Andrea Roncoroni

ESSEC Business School

This paper analyzes the special features of electricity spot prices derived from the physics of this commodity and from the economics of supply and demand in a market pool. Besides mean reversion, a property they share with other commodities, power prices exhibit the unique feature of spikes in trajectories. We introduce a class of discontinuous processes exhibiting a “jump‐reversion” component to properly represent these sharp upward moves shortly followed by drops of similar magnitude. Our approach allows to capture—for the first time to our knowledge—both the trajectorial and the statistical properties of electricity pool prices. The quality of the fitting is illustrated on a database of major U.S. power markets.

Cited by

Jan Seifert, Marliese Uhrig-Homburg. (2007) Modelling jumps in electricity prices: theory and empirical evidence. Review of Derivatives Research 10:1, 59-85
Online publication date: 1-Feb-2007.
CrossRef
Ross Baldick, Sergey Kolos, Stathis Tompaidis. (2006) Interruptible Electricity Contracts from an Electricity Retailer's Point of View: Valuation and Optimal Interruption. Operations Research 54:4, 627-642
Online publication date: 1-Aug-2006.
CrossRef
  • Both authors wish to thank Alexander Eydeland, Valentine Genon‐Catalot, the editor (Albert Madansky), and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper. Any remaining errors are our own. The work was financially supported by CERESSEC. Contact the corresponding author, Hélyette Geman, at and the coauthor, Andrea Roncoroni, at .

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