Paper short abstract:

In this globalized world, energy interdependence requires effective governance.Existing literature argues that over reliance on free markets or governance alone cannot ensure sustainable energy security. Therefore, this paper investigates the role of market governance in ensuring energy security.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of market governance on energy security utilizing a cross-country panel data set controlling for country-specific macro-economic, social and geographical factors. It uses the energy security index for 71 countries based on the dimensions of availability, accessibility, affordability, acceptability and efficiency from 2008 to 2013 to carry out a cross-country empirical investigation of the impact of market governance on energy security controlling for country specific macro-economic, social and geographical factors. The theoretical underpinning of the paper comes from Chang and Koh (2012), which, while studying the context of Japan, theorizes that by implementing appropriate principles of market governance can result in greater energy security despite an absence of high energy reserves.This attributes to its pro-energy policies and proper balancing of market governance thus enabling government to further improve its energy sector. Therefore, it can be argued that unequal structures in context of macro-economic, social and geographical factors cause variation in market governance and ultimately on the energy security. Using panel data, the study applies regression techniques to fill in an important gap in the existing literature on energy security, and provides an empirical investigation into the relationship between energy security and market governance while controlling for macro economic, social and geographical factors.