The Price of Choice: Examining Equity and Market Failure in Deregulated Electricity Markets

A Lehigh University-led research team investigates why consumer choice in electricity markets often costs more and who pays the highest price.

When consumers in Pennsylvania receive unsolicited calls, door-to-door visits, or mailers from retail electricity suppliers, they face a decision that most are ill-equipped to make wisely. A growing body of research from a team of scholars at Lehigh University and The Ohio State University suggests that often switching from a regulated utility to a competitive supplier costs them money.

Samantha Fox, assistant professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lehigh University, is leading the social analysis component of a multidisciplinary project examining the equity, justice, and efficiency implications of retail electric deregulation. The project spans the Lehigh Valley and several small Ohio cities and brings together researchers from Lehigh’s Colleges of Arts and Sciences and the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University.

“Together we’re able to be greater than the sum of our parts,” Fox says of the collaboration, which pairs her ethnographic and community-engagement methods with the econometric analysis led by Alberto Lamadrid, professor of economics in Lehigh’s College of Business.

Read the full story on CAS News.