Accounting For Infrastructure Regulation

This title provides a practical guide for regulators, policy-makers, and utility managers for establishing regulatory accounts that can be the cornerstone for better, more complete, and more reliable information. It sets out the essential accounting features of regulatory accounts and provides practical guidance on controversial areas such as cost allocation, asset valuation, and depreciation. It emphasizes the essential requirements for consistency with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Annotation This book provides practical guidelines and options for infrastructure reform that result in access and affordability for the poor. It includes a new model for reform that consists of three main components - policies, regulation, and provision which when properly balanced minimize the risks associated with reform.

An economic analysis of what distributed ledgers can do, examining key components and discussing applications in both developed and emerging market economies. Distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to transform economic organization and financial structure. In this book, Robert Townsend steps back from the hype and controversy surrounding DLT (and the related, but not synonymous, innovations of blockchain and Bitcoin) to offer an economic analysis of what distributed ledgers can do. Townsend examines the key components of distributed ledgers, discussing, evaluating, and illustrating each in the context of historical and contemporary economics, and reviewing featured applications in both developed economies and emerging-market countries.

More than 200 new infrastructure regulators have been created around the world in the last 15 years. They were established to encourage clear and sustainable long-term economic and legal commitments by governments and investors to encourage new investment to benefit existing and new customers. There is now considerable evidence that both investors and consumers-the two groups that were supposed to have benefited from these new regulatory systems-have often been disappointed with their performance. The fundamental premise of this book is that regulatory systems can be successfully reformed only if there are independent, objective and public evaluations of their performance. Just as one goes to a medical doctor for a regular health checkup, it is clear that infrastructure regulation would also benefit from periodic checkups. This book provides a general framework as well as detailed practical guidance on how to perform such "regulatory checkups."

Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.

Financial regulation has entered into a new era, as many foundational economic theories and policies supporting the existing infrastructure have been and are being questioned following the financial crisis. Goodhart et al’s seminal monograph "Financial Regulation: Why, How and Where Now?" (Routledge:1998) took stock of the extent of financial innovation and the maturity of the financial services industry at that time, and mapped out a new regulatory roadmap. This book offers a timely exploration of the "Why, How and Where Now" of financial regulation in the aftermath of the crisis in order to map out the future trajectory of financial regulation in an age where financial stability is being emphasised as a key regulatory objective. The book is split into four sections: the objectives and regulatory landscape of financial regulation; the regulatory regime for investor protection; the regulatory regime for financial institutional safety and soundness; and macro-prudential regulation. The discussion ranges from theoretical and policy perspectives to comprehensive and critical consideration of financial regulation in the specifics. The focus of the book is on the substantive regulation of the UK and the EU, as critical examination is made of the unravelling and the future of financial regulation with comparative insights offered where relevant especially from the US. Running throughout the book is consideration of the relationship between financial regulation, financial stability and the responsibility of various actors in governance. This book offers an important contribution to continuing reflections on the role of financial regulation, market discipline and corporate responsibility in the financial sector, and upon the roles of regulatory authorities, markets and firms in ensuring the financial health and security of all in the future.