Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, Volume 13 (2012), No. 1 101 BOOK REVIEWS J.M. Glachant, D. Finon and A. de Hauteclocque (eds.), Competition, Contracts and Electricity Markets: A New Perspective. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2011 Te electricity sector is confronted with the pressing need to attract massive investments in order to secure long-term electricity supply and move towards more sustainable and climate-friendly patterns. In accordance with the liberalized electricity market paradigm, free market prices are expected to stimulate sufcient investments to meet the challenges that the sector is facing. Te European Union endorsed this paradigm and recognized it as a cornerstone of the internal electricity market. In practice, however, the success of the liberalization model in attracting sufcient and adequate investments has proved to be controversial. Analysts regularly express concerns about the ability of liberalized electricity markets to efectively provide the right incentives to private investors and achieve the objectives of secure, sustainable, and competitive electricity supply. Given the urgent necessity to deliver investments to meet the energy security and climate change challenges of the 21 st century, scholarly contributions on potential adjustments and alternatives to the liberalization model are highly needed. Competition, Contracts and Electricity Markets: A New Perspective contributes to the electricity market literature by providing a multidisciplinary analysis of the issue of long-term contracts and vertical integration (production-supply) in liberalized electricity markets. Te book gathers high-level experts that approach long-term contracts and vertical integration from an economic, political and legal perspective. Edited by Glachant, Finon, and De Hauteclocque, it is the second publication of the Loyola de Palacio series on European Energy Policy with Edward Elgar – also edited by Glachant. Te frst part of the book provides an analysis of the efciency of long-term contracts in contributing to the objectives of European energy policy, and in particular in attracting the adequate investments in electricity production capacity. With the exception of Brunekreef’s contribution on network issues, somewhat out of line with the topic of the chapter and the book (as the author himself acknowledges), the chapters focus on how to deliver the optimal fuel mix in the electricity sector. Te authors criticize the capacity of competitive markets to achieve this optimal mix in practice and argue in favor of long-term contracts to generate the necessary capital intensive investments that the electricity sector requires. Boucher and Smeers challenge the liberalized market paradigm endorsed by the European Commission by analyzing whether competition could guarantee security