Matti Liski from the Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki is this year’s laureate of the Felix Höffler Memorial Lecture. The Finnish professor of economics was honored in Cologne on February 14 and lectured at Cologne University on regulating energy markets in times of crisis. Liski is an expert in applied microeconomics, both theoretical and empirical, industrial organization, public policy, energy markets, and climate change.
During his talk, he distinguished between short-term shocks, such as those in Texas two years ago, and longer-term phenomena, such as the European gas crisis in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Liski’s research shows that electricity demand does not respond adequately to price signals because of long-term tariffs. It is, therefore, optimal to implement dynamic price caps, Liski said. The rationing of electricity demand would flank the price caps. He said that even if rationing is low for all consumption, the price of electricity can be lowered, creating welfare gains.
EWI hosts the annual “Felix Höffler Memorial Lecture” in honor of former EWI Director Felix Höffler. Höffler, a Professor of Economics at the University of Cologne and Director of EWI from 2011, passed away on February 4, 2019, after a long and severe illness. As the internationalization of the Institute and the promotion of doctoral students were particularly important to him, internationally renowned experts from the field of economics will give the keynote speech and engage in professional exchange with the postgraduate researchers at EWI during their stay.
The previous winners of the Felix Höffler Memorial Lecture were Shmuel S. Oren from the University of California at Berkeley and Richard Green, Professor at Imperial College London.
