New bulletins for September

Our latest batch of bulletins for 2003 is now available to download, and covers a wide range of topics. Power play reports on an unusual development for Frontier. Earlier this year we made a public forecast of electricity market prices in the UK. Whilst we generally dislike forecasts we couldn't help note how many commentators seemed to believe that rock-bottom prices would last for ever (and almost every generator looked to be on the verge of bankruptcy). Our belief in markets, along with some sophisticated game-theory techniques, resulted in a what appeared a bold forecast at the time. Four months on and prices have climbed to reflect forecast shortages. Our bold forecast is now almost conventional wisdom.Advanced booking is less about forecasting existing trends, more about new business opportunities opened up by liberalisation. For many years, airlines have employed sophisticated pricing strategies whilst train operators have been constrained by regulation. The SRA's recent changes to rules governing fare structures create opportunities for "yield management" techniques to be applied in the rail sector. We discuss some of the lessons from airline experience, and some of the pitfalls in applying them without sufficient thought about how trains might be different.The other two bulletins look at specific issues within our competition and regulation practices. A different remedy describes an unusual merger in the pharmaceutical industry, which may have implications for other markers where the main purchaser is the government. Wired for experience, based on work we completed for the UK energy regulator, OFGEM, describes some failures of the existing network regulation regime, and sketches some possible solutions, many of which OFGEM is now developing.