Catherine Waddams (formerly Price) is a member of the Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) and Emeritus Professor in Norwich Business School, which she joined in 2000. She was director of CCP until July 2011. From 1995 to 2000 she was founding Director of the Centre for Management under Regulation and Professor in Warwick Business School, and prior to that senior lecturer in economics at the University of Leicester. She has held visiting positions at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge.

Her research interests are in the area of Industrial Organization, and she has published widely on privatization, regulation and the introduction of competition, especially in energy markets. She is particularly interested in the distributional impact of regulatory reform, and consumer choice in newly opened markets, both in the UK and elsewhere.

She is a  Non Executive Director of the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat). and a member of the expert advisor panels of the UK Regulators Network and of Which?’.  From 2001 to 2009 she was a part-time member of the UK Competition Commission.

Catherine's research interests are in the area of Industrial Organization, and she has published widely on privatization, regulation and the introduction of competition, especially in energy markets. She is particularly interested in the distributional impact of regulatory reform, and consumer choice in newly opened markets, both in the UK and elsewhere.

Selected Recent Publications

Consumer Choice and Industrial Policy: a study of UK Energy Markets (with Monica Giulietti and Mike Waterson), The Economic Journal, 115(506), pp 949–968, October 2005

Introducing competition and deregulating the British domestic energy markets: a legal and economic discussion (with Michael Harker), Journal of Business Law, pp 244-268, May 2007

Measuring Potential Gains from Mergers among Electricity Distribution Companies in Turkey using a Non-Parametric Model (with Necmiddin Bagdadioglu and Thomas Weyman-Jones), The Energy Journal, 28(2), pp 83-110, 2007

Does Ownership Unbundling Matter? Evidence from UK Energy Markets (with Steve Davies), Intereconomics, 42(6),  297-301, November/December 2007

Service Quality in Regulated Monopolies (with Bitten Brigham and Lin Fitzgerald), Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 79(2), pp 197-225, 2008

The Future of Retail Energy Markets, The Energy Journal, special edition in honour of David Newbery, 125-147, 2008

The Impact of Electricity Market Reform on Consumers (with Khac Pham), Utilities Policy, special edition on reform in South East Europe, 17, 1,  43-48, 2009

Competition Remedies in Consumer Markets (with Luke Garrod, Morten Hviid and Graham Loomes), Loyola Consumer Law Review, 21, 4, 439-495, 2009

Do Consumers Switch to the Best Supplier? (with Chris M. Wilson),  Oxford Economic Papers, 62: 647-668, 2010

Innovation and regulation in energy supply (with Elizabeth Hooper), Economic Affairs, 2, June, 13-20, 2010

Objective and Subjective Measures of Fuel Poverty (with Karl Brazier and Wenjia Wang), Energy Policy, 49, 33-39, 2012

Non-discrimination clauses in the retail energy Sector (with Morten Hviid), in The Economic Journal, 122, F236-252, 2012

Nonlinear Pricing and Tariff Differentiation: Evidence from the British Electricity Market (with Stephen Davies and Chris M. Wilson) The Energy Journal, 35, 1, 57-77, 2014

Well-functioning markets in retail energy (with Morten Hviid), European Competition Journal, 10, 1, 167-179, 2014.  

Customer Involvement: Frontier or Smokescreen?, The Network Industries Quarterly, vol 16, no 1, 2014

Non-discrimination clauses: their effect on GB Retail Energy Prices 2005-2013 (with Minyan Zhu), The Energy Journal, 37, 2, pp 111-132, 2016

Empirical Evidence of Consumer Response in Regulated Markets (with Minyan Zhu), Journal of Competition Law and Economics, 12, 1, pp 113-149, 2016

Back to the future? Regulating Residential energy Markets, Journal of the Economics of Business, 25:1, 147-155, DOI: 10.1080/13571516.2017.1402469, 2018

Consumer behaviours in the British retail electricity market (with Miguel Flores), The Energy Journal, 39, 4, 153-179, 2018.

Switching Energy Suppliers: It’s Not All About the Money (with David Deller, Monica Giulietti, Graham Loomes, Anna Moniche and Joo Young Jeon), The Energy Journal, 42, 3, 95-120, 2021 (forthcoming)

Current working papers

Energy Affordability in the UK: Corrected Energy Expenditure Shares 1992-2014 (with David Deller) Working Paper 18-8: FULL PAPER 18-8 |

Comparing English Fuel Poverty Rates: Reported vs Modelled Expenditure (with David Deller) Working Paper 18-11: 

A Postcode Lottery: Regional Electricity Price Variations for Inactive Consumers (with David Deller and Glen Turner) Working Paper 18-10 FULL PAPER 18-10

Selected books and reports

Affording Gas and Electricity: Self disconnection and rationing by prepayment and low income credit consumers and Company attitudes to social action (with Dudley Cooke, Alessandra Ferrari, Monica Giulietti and Diane Sharratt), Electricity Association, March 2001

Utility Privatisation and Regulation: A Fair Deal for Consumers? (co-editor with Cecilia Ugaz) and author of two chapters: UK Utility Reform, Distributional Implications and Government Reform (with Alison Young); and Access by the Poor in Latin America’s Utility Reform: Subsidies and Service Obligations (with O. Chisari and A. Estache), Edward Elgar, 2003

Assessing the Effectiveness of Potential Remedies in Consumer Markets, a report for the Office of Fair Trading (with Luke Garrod, Morten Hviid and Graham Loomes), 2008

Benchmarking the Performance of the UK framework supporting consumer empowerment through comparison against relevant international comparator countries, a report for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (with Michael Harker, Pinar Akman, Liza Lovdahl Gormsen and Judith Mehta), 2008

Consumer Choice in the Water Sector (with Kerry Clayton), published by Ofwat as part of their Future Regulation project, 2010 http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/publications/commissioned/rpt_com_1010fplchoice.pdf 

Benefits and costs of introducing tariff choice in uncontested markets – A Report for Ofwat (with Kerry Clayton and Catherine Webster), published by Ofwat October 2011, http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/future/monopolies/fpl/rpt_com20111012ccp_tariff.pdf

Public Service Obligations and Competition (with Michael Harker and Antje Kreutzmann) Centre on Regulation in Europe, 2013 http://www.cerre.eu/publications/public-service-obligations-and-competition#sthash.7hKrTQSr.dpuf

Criteria to define essential telecoms services - Literature review (with Richard Cadman, Michael Harker and Antje Kreutzmann-Gallasch), a report for Ofcom. 2013http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/affordability/Ofcom_Lit_Review.pdf

Who Switched at The Big Switch and Why? (with David Deller, Monica Giulietti, Joo Young Jeon, Graham Loomes and Ana Moniche) 2014 http://competitionpolicy.ac.uk/documents/8158338/8194340/Big+Switch+-+Results.pdf/2e01588d-6564-4e28-b06d-233eaad389c4

The Affordability of Utilities in the EU (with David Deller), Centre on Regulation in Europe Report, October 2015, http://competitionpolicy.ac.uk/documents/8158338/11137336/C+Waddams+%26+D+Deller+-+Affordability+Report+October+2015.pdf/6f344e11-e756-40fa-9218-e081cfd8f6fc