Successes And Failures In Regulating And Deregulating Utilities

This book is the latest annual review of utility regulation and deregulation, published in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs and the London Business School

This timely study evaluates four generic proposals for allowing free market forces to replace government regulation in the electric power industry and concludes that none of the deregulation alternatives considered represents a panacea for the performance failures associated with things as they are now. It proposes a balanced program of regulatory reform and deregulation that promises to improve industry performance in the short run, resolve uncertainties about the costs and benefits of deregulation, and positions the industry for more extensive deregulation in the long run should interim experimentation with deregulation, structural, and regulatory reforms make it desirable. The book integrates modern microeconomic theory with a comprehensive analysis of the economic, technical, and institutional characteristics of modern electrical power systems. It emphasizes that casual analogies to successful deregulation efforts in other sectors of the economy are an inadequate and potentially misleading basis for public policy in the electric power industry, which has economic and technical characteristics that are quite different from those in other deregulated industries. Paul L. Joskow is Professor of Economics at MIT, author of Controlling Hospital Costs(MIT Press 1981) and coauthor with Martin L. Baughman and Dilip P. Kamat of Electric Power in the United States(MIT Press 1979). Richard Schmalensee, also at MIT, is Professor of Applied Economics, author of The Economics of Advertising and The Control of Natural Monopolies, and editor of The MIT Press Series, Regulation of Economic Activity.

The book is written by a group of academic researchers and practitioners and, as such, provides insightful analyses from both theoretical as well as practical perspectives. It will be of value to policymakers, industry stakeholders, and regulators who are interested in utility regulation and policies to foster a competitive market environment. International Energy Law and Taxation Review Governments, Competition and Utility Regulation continues the series of annual books, published in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs and the London Business School, which critically reviews the state of utility regulation and competition policy. The book contains incisive chapters on competition policy and trade, antitrust and consumer welfare, merger control and efficiency, emissions trading, Ofcom and convergence, energy regulation and competition, regulating the London Underground, the future of water regulation and European merger control. Chapters on each topic are followed by comments from regulators, competition authority chairmen and other experts in the relevant fields. The book provides analysis of and commentaries on the most significant developments in regulation and competition policy, drawing on experiences in Britain, the United States and the European Union, as well as in international trade negotiations. It will be of value to practitioners, policymakers and academics who are concerned with regulation, deregulation and policies to promote competition.

The electricity market has experienced enormous setbacks in delivering on the promise of deregulation. In theory, deregulating the electricity market would increase the efficiency of the industry by producing electricity at lower costs and passing those cost savings on to customers. As Electricity Deregulation shows, successful deregulation is possible, although it is by no means a hands-off process—in fact, it requires a substantial amount of design and regulatory oversight. This collection brings together leading experts from academia, government, and big business to discuss the lessons learned from experiences such as California's market meltdown as well as the ill-conceived policy choices that contributed to those failures. More importantly, the essays that comprise Electricity Deregulation offer a number of innovative prescriptions for the successful design of deregulated electricity markets. Written with economists and professionals associated with each of the network industries in mind, this comprehensive volume provides a timely and astute deliberation on the many risks and rewards of electricity deregulation.