Renewable energies: The whys and the why-nots

Energías Renovables: Por Qué Sí y Por Qué No (Renewable Energies: The whys and the why-nots), by Juan Delgado.

PAPELES DE ECONOMÍA ESPAÑOLA. El sector energético español; (2013), nº 134

Renewable energies are meant to play a leading role in climate policies. All EU member states have put in place policies to promote renewable energies. However, the multiplicity of objectives and the poor design of such mechanisms have limited their impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For a proper design of renewables policies, we first need to identify the market failure we are trying to solve. In the case of renewables, greenhouse gas emissions are the «big failure» and technology externalities help to solve such failure.

The state of EU integration

Home Bias and Market Integration in the EU, by Narcissa Balta and Juan Delgado

CESIFO Economic Studies, (2009); vol. 55(1), pp. 110-144.

The Single Market has been one of the core policies of the European Union. Twenty years after the launch of the Single Market Programme national borders still matter in Europe and consumption baskets and investment portfolios of EU countries still contain a predominant share of home products and equity. This article evaluates the success of integration policies in the European Union by assessing the magnitude and evolution of home bias across Europe in goods and services markets and in equity portfolio holdings. There are large differences in the degree of home bias across European countries. More worrisome is the home bias in goods and services that has barely changed in recent years. This might indicate that traditional integration policies are no longer effective and need to be transformed to continue delivering.

Why Spain needs to restructure its services industry

¿Por qué es necesaria la reforma del sector servicios? (Why is it necessary to restructure the services sector?), by Juan Delgado

Cuadernos de Información Económica: Crisis Borrascosas, no. 209, pags. 29-33, marzo/abril 2009.

Europe has made in recent decades a great effort to liberalize its product markets. The flagships of this initiative were the Single Market Program launched in the eighties with the aim of eliminating barriers to free movement of capital, people, goods and services, and the recent Services Directive focussed in the liberalization of services. Despite these initiatives, the growth of EU economies, and in particular, the contribution of the services sector, has been generally lower than in the US. In the last decade, productivity in the US has grown faster than in the EU, mainly driven by the productivity of the services industry.

In Spain, productivity barely increased in the last decade and the services sector contribution to productivity growth has been close to nothing. The reform of the services industy in order to remove barriers to entry and restrictions that prevent its proper functioning is necessary to improve the competitiveness of the Spanish economy.

Competition and security of supply in energy markets: How real is the conflict?

Obstáculos a un mercado europeo de electricidad: el conflicto entre liberalización, seguridad de suministro y libertad de control corporativo (Obstacles to a European power market: the conflict between liberalisation, security of supply and freedom of corporate control), by Paulina Beato and Juan Delgado

Published in Tratado de Regulación del Sector Eléctrico (F. Becker, L. M. Cazorla Prieto, J. Martínez Simancas and J. M. Sala Arquer, eds.). Aranzadi. December 2008

In the last two decades there has been substantial progress in the creation of a European single market and currency area. The process of creating a single market has been uneven in different industries. Power markets are an example of low integration. One of the obstacles to integration is the national character of security of supply policies. This chapter advocates for a “europeanisation” of security of supply policies in order to promote cross-border competition and facilitate the creation of a true European power market.

EU Single Market review

The blurred frontier of single market policies, by Juan Delgado

Public Affairs News (PAN), Slovenian EU Presidency Guide.

Juan Delgado writes that policies aiming to deepen the single market can no longer constitute an independent branch of the policy agenda but should be an integral part of any national and European policy.

What is behind the services directive?

The Economics of the Services Directive, by Juan Delgado.

Contratto e Impresa Europa, n. 2, July-December, (2007).

In this paper for Contratto e Impresa, Juan Delgado describes the economic rationale underlying the Services Directive and its potential economic impact. Europe’s services sector is far from reaching its full potential. The Single Market Programme has been effective in removing obstacles to the cross border movement of goods and capital but the services sector has not received much attention. This has resulted in most services being regulated locally and services markets becoming more fragmented.

Climate change and the competitiveness of Europe

Why Europe is not carbon competitive, by Juan Delgado

Bruegel Policy Brief. www.bruegel.org. Issue 2007/04, 2007.

Contrary to what is generally pictured, this policy brief shows that when considering the export mix, Europe is more vulnerable to carbon pricing schemes than other countries and regions. Europe specialises more than its main global competitors in industries with relatively high carbon emissions, such as minerals and chemicals, rather than in high-tech industries and services. This would have a real effect on Europe’s competitiveness in a world regulated by carbon pricing schemes such as the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme – even if other blocs apply them as the EU does.

Is the EU single market making progress?

Single Market Trails Home Bias, by Juan Delgado

Bruegel Policy Brief. www.bruegel.org. Issue 2006/04, 2006.

Juan Delgado explores the degree of “home bias” in the goods and services markets, and in equity investment, in Europe. He measures home bias against different benchmarks in order to determine whether the single market programme has had an observable impact on reducing home bias in Europe. He draws interesting policy conclusions from the results.

Opening Europe’s services industry

The European Services Directive, by Juan Delgado

U.S.-Europe Analysis Series. The Brookings Institution. April 2006.

It is a truism that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one. Europe’s controversial Services Directive has arguably fallen into this trap. When it was passed on February 16, 2006 by the European Parliament, angry trade unionists gathered at the doors of the Parliament, protesting that the parliament had gone too far. Frustrated supporters of liberalization, for their part, dismissed it as a watered-down version of the original proposal that would do little to advance the goal of a single market for services in Europe.

And finally, the services directive

El tortuoso camino de la directiva de servicios, by Juan Delgado

Cinco Días

The Bolkestein directive, which aims to remove barriers to the provision of services in the EU, has been surrounded by controversy. The author addresses a fundamental topic: The heterogeneous excessive regulation across different EU Member States.