Trouble in Market Paradise: Development of the Regional Transmission Operator

Regional transmission organizations (RTOs) have evolved from “power pool” arrangements between utilities to complex organizations that operate a region’s transmission system and power markets. These RTOs are administered with only peripheral public input. This paper reflects on how RTOs, as a result, have developed very complex market structures that few can or do understand. An RTO’s capacity construct is used to illustrate the point of this complexity and ad hoc nature. The paper also discusses reforms that are needed to align the RTOs behavior with Harry M. Trebing’s public interest regulatory philosophy.     

Economics,Ethics, and the Long Arc of Public Utilities: A Paper in Honor of Harry M. Trebing

Harry M. Trebing has made substantial contributions to the understanding of social control of economic enterprise, particularly in the regulation of public utilities. Imbued with institutional economic ways of knowing, he sustained the construct of progressive-era public interest regulation during a period of neoclassical economic assault on regulatory institutions.     

PRIVATIZATION OF THE UK'S PUBLIC UTILITIES: THE BIRTH OF THE POLICY 1979–1984

The Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s privatized large numbers of state industries. Yet the privatization of the public utilities was not on the political agenda at the time of the May 1979 General Election or during the early months of the first Thatcher government. Privatization of the public utilities was considered both economically unattractive and beyond practical politics. This study details how and why the sale of the public utilities became government policy by the mid‐1980s. In explaining the change two particular developments are singled out. The first involved a commissioned study by the Central Policy Review Staff of the Cabinet Office on whether monopolies could be privatized and the public interest protected. The second was the financing needs of BT at a time of strict controls on public borrowing.     

政治关联与城市公用事业民营企业成长 ——基于首家公交民营企业案例研究

在转型期的中国，政治关联是影响民营企业进入城市公用事业的关键因素。本文采用案例研究的方法，选取我国首家进入城市公交行业的民营企业作为研究对象，探索研究了该企业成长过程中的政治关联的变化及其对企业成长的影响。研究发现，首先，对于一个企业而言，政治关联来源可以分为三个层面：关键政府官员的扶持、企业家政治身份、企业家以外的高管团队成员政治身份。其中，对于政府主导型政治关联民营企业，关键政府官员的扶持对企业成长起决定性作用，而企业家和高管团队成员的政治身份对企业成长并没有显著影响。其次，政治关联对民营企业成长具有“双刃剑”的作用--驱动作用和约束作用。驱动作用主要表现在企业政治关联有利于其突破政府管制型壁垒和获得政府补助，从而分别促进企业进入公用事业和成长，约束作用主要表现在企业政治关联会导致民营企业非相关多元化、增加政治风险，从而抑制企业成长。     

意大利应对老龄化问题的对策及其启示

在全球老龄化的趋势下，意大利也面临着老龄化严重问题，其老龄化率居欧洲各国之首。意大利在应对老龄化方面采取了一些积极的具体做法，积累了经验，如，改革养老金制度，出台灵活的就业市场政策以及提供老年职业培训等。目前，我国也正面临着老龄化问题的严峻挑战，意大利的做法和经验可为我国决策者提供参考。     

A model of liability dollarization and myopic governments

Abstract

Liability dollarization of the domestic banking system represents a source of vulnerability for emerging market countries. The root cause is a lack of faith in the domestic currency, which ultimately stems from the belief that the government will not follow policies that promote long-run currency stability. This paper presents a model in which government myopia determines the unofficial dollarization of bank credit. Specifically, myopic politicians will choose low interest rates to expand short-run output in order to get re-elected, but this choice has the long-run consequence of increasing dollar lending. Increased liability dollarization is shown to force the hand of future decision-makers into choosing fixed exchange rates because of the fear that large depreciations will destroy balance sheets. The results imply that institutional reforms are necessary to reverse liability dollarization.     

Philippine Infrastructure and Connectivity: Challenges and Reforms

The Philippines has performed creditably well in the past few years. Ensuring better infrastructure and connectivity is crucial in attaining inclusive growth. This will require substantial investments in infrastructure. Various reforms to address the infrastructure lack were implemented but there is scope for more reforms: improving fiscal space, reforming budgetary processes, improving public‐private partnerships (PPPs) and the regulatory environment, and better policy coordination to address problems of connectivity and infrastructure. The Philippines has to continuously improve the governance framework, ensure stability and predictability of policies and regulations. Better coordination among a diverse set of governmental infrastructure bodies, and also between government and the private sector is needed to address infrastructure bottlenecks.     

The Reform of Local Public Utilities in Italy

The Italian system of local public utilities has recently undergone an important reform process. The first round of reforms, introduced in the 1990s, represented a remarkable change in the social welfare function with regard to the management of local public utilities. The legislation was specifically designed to cut costs and reduce deficits. A second round of reforms, required by European directives, started around the mid-1990s. Several laws were passed introducing important innovations and regulating specific sectors: public transport; electricity; and gas. Article 35 of the 2002 Financial Law was the final step in a comprehensive reform of the whole local public utility sector. The main innovations of the Financial Law concerns liberalization. Article 35 states that the general rule for awarding service provision contracts is competitive tendering; the rationale is obviously that of competition for the market. The general rule as expressed by Article 35 is nevertheless limited during the transition period. In the long run, competitive tendering will become the normal way of awarding contracts for local public utility provision. Even if there are doubts that full competition will be introduced into the sector, liberalization does appear to be having an effect, forcing many local public utilities to become more efficient. The changes introduced have brought about a better and a more efficient system with a greater number of large size enterprises and on the average a more active management.
In the future, the liberalization process may come to a standstill due to an insufficient number of competitors. Strong public administrations are therefore needed to prevent opportunistic behaviour by private firms.     

Democratic institutions and regulatory reforms

We use a sample of 144 countries over the period 2003–2013 to investigate the link between democratic institutions and regulatory reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reform, as politicians embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. On the other hand, authoritarian regimes may not worry as much about public opinion and could undertake reforms that are painful in the short run but bring long-term benefits. We test these alternative hypotheses, using data on regulatory reforms from the World Bank’s Doing Business database. The results provide mixed support for the hypothesis that democracy is good for regulatory reforms. We also show that regulatory reforms are more likely just after parliamentary elections in poor and middle-income countries.     

Institutionalizing “the Public Interest” in Public Utility Regulation: Harry M. Trebing and the Second Wave of Reform

John R. Commons and colleagues established the basic model for independent public utility regulation in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, based on documented market and public interest failures. After limited success and repeated failures in the implementation of regulation, Harry M. Trebing and others at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the late 1960s and 1970s revised and strengthened the model as well as the implementation capabilities of regulators, based on the regulatory weaknesses and unique opportunities for reform in the telecommunication industry. This model was then adapted to improve the regulation of other public utilities. Whereas the new model has also had limited success, the experience accumulated through it has prepared the ground for an inevitable third wave of regulatory reform.     

Universal service obligations in LDCs: The effect of uniform pricing on infrastructure access

This paper develops a model to analyze the impacts of asymmetric information on optimal universal service policy in the public utilities of developing countries. Optimal universal service policy is implemented using two regulatory instruments: pricing and network investment. Under discriminatory pricing asymmetric information leads to a higher price and smaller network in the rural area than under full information. Under uniform pricing the price is also lower but the network is even smaller. In addition, under both pricing regimes not only the firm but also taxpayers have incentives to collude with the regulator.     

Competition and Public Service Obligations: Regulatory Rules and Industries Games

The introduction of competition in regulated industries may have positive or negative side-effects on the provision of collective goods or services. The paper shows that these effects are closely related to two associated elements: the industrial strategies developed by utilities and the regulatory environment within which they operate. Regulatory rules and corporate strategies influence the treatment of public service obligations. This raises a major issue regarding the regulation of public utilities. To reduce the drawbacks of the introduction of competition, it is necessary to set regulatory rules that allow the implementation of market configurations enabling public utilities to follow a public service orientation rather than a pure market-based approach.     

VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL ECONOMIES IN THE ELECTRIC UTILITY INDUSTRY: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

ABSTRACT ** :  The empirical literature on the cost structure of the electric utility industry traditionally focused on the measurement of specific technological properties: 1) scale economies in generation or distribution; 2) multi-product (or horizontal) scope economies at one particular stage; 3) multi-stage (or vertical) scope economies. By adopting an integrated approach, which simultaneously considers both horizontal and vertical aspects of the technology, we find the presence, on a sample of Italian electric utilities, of both vertical integration gains and horizontal scope economies at the downstream stage. In the light of recent regulatory reforms aiming at restructuring European electricity markets, our findings have important policy implications as for the proper configuration of the industry. Moreover, this methodology can be usefully applied to the study of the production structure of other public network utilities involved in similar vertical and horizontal reorganization processes.     

How to reform China’s fiscal system?

ABSTRACT

As the population aging, China’s government expenditures, including general fiscal expenditure, healthcare and social security expenditure, will grow more rapidly than government revenues, tending to elevate government debt. Local governments undertake overwhelming 85% of total general fiscal revenue and are responsible for healthcare and social security, and their debt has been growing. Fiscal reforms are imperative, including tax reforms, the structure of government spending reforms, social security reforms, healthcare reforms, local public finance reforms, and central and local government’s fiscal relationship reforms. This paper will explore the fiscal challenges China faces and discuss how to reform the fiscal system to cope with these challenges.     

Optimal taxation and discount rate for public investment in a growth setting

This paper studies the optimal policy of a government which maximizes intertemporal social welfare using such instruments as taxes on interest income and wages, and debt in conjunction with public investment. In doing so, it has to face a decentralized economy where in each generation individuals and firms are free to maximize their own objectives subject to their own private constraints. The welfare function is a sum of discounted generational utilities and its maximization is handled by using dynamic programming. From the first order conditions so derived, it appears that an optimal policy of taxation and public capital accumulation is that which sets the tax rates according to Ramsey's optimal taxation structure and which equates the rate of return on public investment to the rate of social time preference.     

Capacity,sustainability, and the community benefits of municipal utility ownership in the United States

ABSTRACT

Most literature on utility sustainability focuses on internal operations; this misses the role that utilities could play within a community. This study measures the impact of municipal ownership of water and electric utilities on the sustainability policymaking of local governments. I find that municipalities with government-owned water utilities adopt more sustainability measures than those with investor-owned service. Similarly, municipally-owned electric utilities have higher levels of energy sustainability in the community, but not in government operations. The utilities provide fiscal and technical capacity to municipalities. Interdepartmental coordination also strongly predicts sustainability policymaking. This study brings potential community benefits to the discussion of private investment in public service delivery.     

中国城市公共事业外部制度创新研究

中国城市公共事业无论是在理论上还是在外部制度安排上,都仍游离于市场经济体制之外.如何通过理论创新与制度创新,打破政府及公共部门对城市公共事业的行政性垄断,将城市公共事业真正融入到市场经济体制之中,改善城市公共事业投资及生产经营的外部制度环境,提高城市公共事业经营效率,仍是理论研究和制度实践亟待解决的重要课题.     

美英对公用事业的管制

本文简要地介绍了美国和英国对公用事业实行管制的由来、做法和经验。作者指出．由于生用事业的自然垄断性质及其与公共福利密切相关的缘故，使得美英两国在公用事业各部门建立了管制体系。实践表明，管制既有利于保障公众福利，又有利于改善公用事业的经营管理。他们的经验可为中国改革公用事业的管理体制提供有益的参考。     

事业单位分类改革之辨析

从公共服务的视角来看,我国的事业单位改革实质上意味着对政府直接生产公共服务的方式进行调整。我们理解的事业单位分类改革不是简单的对号入座,将各种事业单位按照服务性质的不同分别转化成相应的社会主体,而是从总体上强调鼓励企业、非营利部门参与公共服务的具体生产,改变政府作为单一生产方的局面,在政府作为公共服务提供方的前提下形成一种多元竞争的格局,从而确保公共服务的质与量。     

Welfare Analysis of a Fiscal Reconstruction Policy in an Overlapping Generations Economy with Public Investment

Constructing an endogenously growing overlapping generations model with public investment, we examine the welfare effects of a fiscal reconstruction policy. In this paper we define a fiscal reconstruction policy as a policy where the government reduces its spending level without changing the tax revenue and allocates the surplus of the revenue to redeem public debt. We show that if government spending is not productive it is possible that a fiscal reconstruction policy improves the utilities of both the current and future generations, while if government spending is productive it can harm the utilities of both generations. Received February 26, 2002; revised version received July 8, 2002 Published online: February 17, 2003