Ehson Shirazi

Ehson is an economist at Frontier Economics, and leads our office in Singapore. He specialises in the application of economics to regulation, competition, and policy matters. His experience includes advising government and corporate clients in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, across a range of industries including energy, transport, telecommunications, and water.

Economic regulation

Ehson has extensive experience on the development and application of regulatory frameworks for critical infrastructure. He advises on the principles of best practice regulation, asset valuation, expenditure forecasting, cost of capital, regulatory depreciation, incentive mechanisms and tariff design.

Examples include:

• Supporting regulators in designing and implementing frameworks to determine regulated prices and revenues (e.g., advising the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM, formerly MAVCOM) on the determination of regulated aviation service charges in Malaysia, advising the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore on a framework for regulating the provision of submarine cable landing services in Singapore).
• Supporting regulated businesses design and prepare price submissions to regulators, including developing regulatory strategies, drafting regulatory submissions, and regulatory modelling (e.g., Gas Malaysia Distribution, Sydney Desalination Plant, and nbn Co).
• Preparing analysis for regulated businesses to support their regulatory submissions, including demand forecasts, business cases to support capital expenditure, and expert reports on the regulated rate of return.

Energy market modelling

Ehson has also been involved in the development and application of Frontier Economics’ proprietary energy market model, energy42, to energy markets in South East Asia. energy42 is an integrated electricity, natural gas and hydrogen investment model which simultaneously optimises investment and dispatch in production, storage and transmission across each sector. It can model scenarios to find the optimal investment outputs, revenues and prices to inform future policy and investment decisions. He has used energy42 to model energy market outcomes in Singapore’s electricity market.

Policy advice

Ehson provides advice to governments and government-linked bodies on policy design, evaluation and implementation.

Examples include:

• Assistance on managing the cost of transitioning to greater renewable energy in Singapore, including analysis for the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Singapore that supported the development of the Future Energy Fund.
• Analysis of proposed reforms to the Heavy Vehicle National Law in Australia (e.g., on provisions for managing driver fatigue).
• Advice to the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore on policies that would be required to facilitate an efficient, safe and secure roll-out of autonomous last mile delivery services in Singapore.

Merger and competition analysis

Ehson also advises on competition matters including merger clearance processes and allegations of anti-competitive conduct. He has advised and prepared expert reports for submission to competition regulators across the Asia Pacific, including the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and the New Zealand Commerce Commission.

Examples include:

• Advising on network and spectrum sharing arrangements, mergers between mobile operators, and acquisitions of mobile and fixed fibre assets.
• Analysis of competition issues in other sectors such as aviation, ports, ride sharing, cinemas, E-commerce platforms, financial services, steel, and industrial gases.

Commercial and advisory

Ehson provides due diligence support to investors in energy infrastructure, including electricity transmission and distribution assets, and gas pipelines. This has included advice on regulatory and market arrangements, preparation of demand forecasts, advice on the energy transition and its implications, and forecasts of cost of capital. He has also assisted in developing comprehensive due diligence reports to support business transactions and valuations.

We work as one team across the world

In Asia-Pacific, we do this from offices in Australia and Singapore. We work as a single team with expertise and people brought together as required by the problem we are solving for our clients. Reach out to any of our economists and consultants to find out how we can help you.