Competition and the Regulation of Utilities

Download or read book Competition and the Regulation of Utilities written by Michael A. Crew and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: companies to diversify may outweigh the costs of doing so, and that some traditional regulatory concerns may be excessively restrictive. The papers by Hillman, Harris, and Jang and Norsworthy, while all relating to individual industries, have lessons for other regulated industries. Hillman's paper, "Oil Pipeline Rates: A Case for Yardstick Regulation," deals with the important topic of yardstick regulation for oil pipelines. While his application is highly specific, the potential application of yardstick regulation goes beyond oil pipelines. He reviews the evolution in the law regulating oil pipelines. While showing that some progress has been made in introducing economic efficiency considerations into regulation, he provides a careful critique of the operation of existing regulation and suggests an alternative based upon a yardstick approach. His approach seeks to use competitive market prices as the yardstick, with administration of price discrimination limited to dealing with possible "favoritism" to subsidiaries and affiliates. "Telecommunications Services as a Strategic Industry: Implications for United States Public Policy" by Harris and "Productivity Growth and Technical Change in the United States Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturing Industries" by Jang and Norsworthy provide important insights for telecommunications.