Over the last two decades, a series of European regulatory reforms have prompted the emergence of a collectionof day-ahead wholesale markets for natural gas, the so-called ”gas hubs”, that turned out to become an importantsource of gas procurement as the previously monopolized industry structure gradually became more fragmented(Miriello and Polo, 2015). By construction, the functioning of these markets is thus closely affected by thedetailed balancing rules used by the Transmission System Operator (TSO). Despite the recent harmonization ofthe balancing procedures imposed by the European Commission, market analysts recurrently point importantdifferences in the perceived degree of trading liquidity observed at the European gas hubs (Heather and Petrovich,2017). A fundamental public policy issue is, thus, whether the current market design generates transparent spotprices that reflect the market participation of all the concerned agents: suppliers, trading firms and consumers.
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