In 2016, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that “weak customer response” enabled incumbent UK energy retailers to set higher and discriminatory prices to residential customers. The CMA estimated the associated higher prices constituted a customer detriment in the range £1.4 bn to £2 bn per year. Although the CMA recommended against a price cap on most domestic energy tariffs, the size of the detriment and public concern about “rip-off energy tariffs” nonetheless led the Government to impose a price cap as from January 2019. This paper examines the CMA’s calculation of customer detriment and suggests that it is inconsistent with CMA Guidelines and unprecedented with respect to its nature, magnitude and policy impact. Alternative more realistic calculations suggest that any detriment would have been nearly an order of magnitude lower, so that a price cap was inappropriate. This raises a number of questions about the CMA’s approach.

中文翻译：

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CMA对英国零售能源市场中客户损害的评估

2016年，英国竞争与市场管理局（CMA）发现，“疲弱的客户反应”使现有的英国能源零售商为住宅客户设定了较高且具有歧视性的价格。CMA估计，相关的较高价格对客户造成的损害每年在14亿英镑至20亿英镑之间。尽管CMA反对对大多数国内能源关税设置价格上限，但损害的程度和公众对“偷运能源关税”的关注导致政府自2019年1月起实施价格上限。本文研究了CMA的计算损害客户的利益，并表明这与CMA准则不一致就其性质，规模和政策影响而言，这是前所未有的。其他更现实的计算表明，任何损害都会降低近一个数量级，因此价格上限是不合适的。这引发了有关CMA方法的许多问题。