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I'm going to assume you are asking in good faith. From wikipedia: "A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in

I'm going to assume you are asking in good faith. From wikipedia: "A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another" In this specific case where the firm is publishing research they have funded, there are essentially two interests or activities at play: A. research to determine the extent of solar panel installation performance or lack thereof B. selling financial products based on performance Since interest B would be negatively impacted by a certain outcome from interest A (a finding that solar installation performance is optimal, in this case), that implies the firm's performance of activity A may have been affected in order to reduce negative impact to the firm overall. We see this a lot in industry-funded research. Its not unusual. For example, recently a lot of airlines have funded studies about Covid19 spread in airplane cabins. To be published in a reputable journal, researchers are compelled to declare these interests in the cover page of their papers. Also, a good journalist will state this somewhere in their piece (normally at the top or the bottom, conventionally in italics). To your point about competition and rates, that is really not any part of conventions on declaring interest conflicts in academic research but I'll entertain an argument about it here because I don't think the market forces are as strong as you imply. The idea that a product will be priced perfectly simply does not apply in a niche market such as this. When you are selling a niche product, the market will not be deep enough to force firms into the behaviour you are describing. This already applies to things as widely held as flood insurance where the market is so shallow, that the federal government has to intervene to make it viable. Solar PV Installation performance insurance (not to mention options) is extremely niche.

tantalor 5y ago
Great points, thank you for going into detail. I think "conflict of interest" is frequently misused. I was taught it describes situations where one's professional/ethical/legal obligations are opposed, such as an attorney representing competing clients, or a board member approving a contract with a company he is an investor in. I realize this is a semantic point. In this case, I don't think kWh Analytics has any professional obligation to a standard of science or journalism, so there's no conflict.
- jnmandal 5y ago
  Yeah I see your point, and I dont think its semantics actually. You would be right to delineate between a legal notion which could imply some kind of tort or liability versus just a generic issue which is merely cautionary. In this case the authors probably have the latter but not the former (they're not doing anything wrong legally). "Conflict of interest" is definitely the kind of phrase which has a context-specific definition, so I think semantics is probably more important here than it might normally be. FWIW, I re-read my above comment and I think came off more hostile than I intended. Your point about pricing insurance is a really interesting one and I think a lot of other commentators had good takes. Specifically, someone mentioned how information asymmetry benefits insurers which is worth considering too.

tantalor 5y ago

Great points, thank you for going into detail. I think "conflict of interest" is frequently misused. I was taught it describes situations where one's professional/ethical/legal obligations are opposed, such as an attorney representing competing clients, or a board member approving a contract with a company he is an investor in. I realize this is a semantic point. In this case, I don't think kWh Analytics has any professional obligation to a standard of science or journalism, so there's no conflict.

jnmandal 5y ago
Yeah I see your point, and I dont think its semantics actually. You would be right to delineate between a legal notion which could imply some kind of tort or liability versus just a generic issue which is merely cautionary. In this case the authors probably have the latter but not the former (they're not doing anything wrong legally). "Conflict of interest" is definitely the kind of phrase which has a context-specific definition, so I think semantics is probably more important here than it might normally be. FWIW, I re-read my above comment and I think came off more hostile than I intended. Your point about pricing insurance is a really interesting one and I think a lot of other commentators had good takes. Specifically, someone mentioned how information asymmetry benefits insurers which is worth considering too.