Price-cap versus rate-of-return regulation

Rate-of-return regulation has been criticized for providing inappropriate incentives to regulated firms and for being costly to administer. An alternative is price-cap regulation, by which ceilings (caps), based on indices of price and technological change are imposed, below which the regulated firm has full pricing freedom. The differences and similarities of the two are reviewed herein in the light of recent literature. In practice, price-cap is not distinct from rate-of-return regulation. Especially for the multiproduct firm, information requirements—the ultimate source of problems with rate-of-return regulation—are comparables. Price-cap regulation fails to address the real regulatory issue of whether an industry is, in whole or in part, a natural monopoly.     

Price-cap regulation and market definition

One of the merits claimed for certain types of price-cap regulation is the possible long-run convergence of the prices of multi-product firms to Ramsey prices. Typically such regulated firms define commodities by such devices as dividing the day into discrete periods, customers into age-groups, distances into ranges, and so on. Allowing that such division is endogenous throws doubt on the ability of Laspeyre quantity-based price-caps to encourage an efficient market definition and hence to generate an efficient price structure.     

The impact of carbon cap and trade regulation on congested electricity market equilibrium

Greenhouse gas regulation aimed at limiting the carbon emissions from the electric power industry will affect system operations and market outcomes. The impact and the efficacy of the regulatory policy depend on interactions of demand elasticity, transmission network, market structure, and strategic behavior of generators. This paper develops an equilibrium model of an oligopoly electricity market in conjunction with a cap-and-trade policy to study such interactions. We study their potential impacts on market and environmental outcomes which are demonstrated through a small network test case and a reduced WECC 225-bus model with a detailed representation of the California market. The results show that market structure and congestion can have a significant impact on the market performance and the environmental outcomes of the regulation while the interactions of such factors can lead to unintended consequences.     

Core equivalence with congested public goods

Summary This paper examines a model of an infinite production economy with a finite number of types of agents andsemi- public goods, which are subjected to crowding and exclusion. The utility of an agent depends not only on the vector of public commodities produced by the coalition to which she belongs, but also on the mass of agents of her type who are the members of this coalition. The main purpose of the paper is to derive necessary and sufficient conditions on the local degrees of congestion which would guarantee the equivalence between the core and the set of equal treatment Lindahl equilibria. We prove that this equivalence holdsif and only if there are constant returns to group size for each type of agents. It implies that linearity of each agent's congestion function with respect to the mass of the agents of her own type is necessary for the core equivalence to hold.The final version of this paper was written while Shlomo Weber was visiting the Technical University of Dresden as the Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are grateful to Peter Meyer, Nicholas Yannelis and the anonymous referees for useful remarks and suggestions.     

Sequential peak-load pricing: the case of airports and airlines

Abstract.  We investigate airport peak-load pricing using a vertical structure of airport and airlines. We find that a profit-maximizing airport would charge higher peak and off-peak runway prices and a higher peak/off-peak price differential than a public airport. Consequently, airport privatization would lead to both fewer total passengers and fewer passengers in the peak period. Although peak-travelling passengers benefit from fewer delays, this low level of peak congestion is not efficient, suggesting that airport privatization cannot be judged based on its effect on congestion alone. We also examine pricing behaviour of a public airport constrained to charge a time independent price.     

Choice of routes in congested traffic networks: Experimental tests of the Braess Paradox

The Braess Paradox consists of showing that, in equilibrium, adding a new link that connects two routes running between a common origin and common destination may raise the travel cost for each network user. We report the results of two experiments designed to study whether the paradox is behaviorally realized in two simulated traffic networks that differ from each other in their topology. Both experiments include relatively large groups of participants who independently and repeatedly choose travel routes in one of two types of traffic networks, one with the added links and the other without them. Our results reject the hypothesis that the paradox is of marginal value and its force diminishes with experience. Rather, they strongly support the alternative hypothesis that with experience in traversing the networks financially motivated players converge to choosing the equilibrium routes in the network with added capacity despite sustaining a sharp decline in earnings.     

Regulation, privatization, and airport charges: panel data evidence from European airports

This paper examines the determinants of airport aeronautical charges by employing a unique panel dataset covering sixty-one European airports over an eighteen-year period. We are able to extend the literature on the role of airports as an essential element in transport infrastructure by offering the first analysis of the impact of different regulatory policies and privatization on airport charges in a panel data setting where fixed effects can be employed to mitigate endogeneity concerns. Our main empirical results indicate that aeronautical charges are lower at airports when single-till regulation is employed, when airports are privatized, and??tentatively??when ex post price regulation is applied. Furthermore, hub airports generally set higher aeronautical charges, and it appears that price-cap regulation and the presence of nearby airports do not affect aeronautical charges.     

Reluctant regulation

We study the effect of state ownership on the market-to-book ratios of publicly traded European utilities from 1994 to 2005. We find that when the company is subject to independent regulation, state ownership seems positively associated with firm value. This relation tends to appear in countries where weak checks and balances and political fragmentation do not constrain the power of the executive. Our results suggest that, where political institutions are weak, politicians may influence regulatory agencies in order to benefit state-owned firms.     

Guaranteed return regulation: a case study of regulation of water in California

Price cap regulation (PCR) arose out of dissatisfaction with rate-of-return regulation (ROR). In energy and water there has been a move away from PCR into an extended form of ROR, referred to as guaranteed return regulation (GRR). It is employed to implement policies that legislators are unwilling to apply by transparent methods, namely taxation, but willing to apply opaquely through the regulatory process. GRR does not promote efficiency and, as the California experience shows, the guarantees it provides are limited. Its success in California has been mixed and it should be considered to be a work in progress and open to improvements, some of which are outlined.     

Cartelization by regulation

This paper formalizes and studies the argument of cartelization of industries through captured agencies. An agency can affect entry by a producer of a differentiated commodity in the market of a regulated natural monopoly through the manipulation of information it produces about the benefit of entry. Entry may be socially efficient because it enhances product diversity, or inefficient because it creates a duplication of fixed costs. We first show that because of informational asymmetries the agency will tend to prohibit entry. However with a rational political principal, the threat of regulatory capture increases the likelihood of entry. The effect of regulatory capture on incentives in the natural monopoly is also studied and the results are discussed and extended in various ways.     

为宏观调控正名

宏观调控是现代市场经济中一个具有特定内涵的经济范畴,而不是泛指政府对涉及全局经济问题的干预。由于市场经济体制的不完善,我国在进行宏观调控时还不得不暂时采取某些计划体制下的政策和手段,但是,要认清这些非市场运作的局限性和过渡性,更不能因此而修改宏观调控概念,如把宏观调控等同于政府干预,认为宏观调控应包括结构调整,应包括对企业或行业的“有保有压”等。     

Dynamic pollution regulation

This paper examines pollution regulation in a dynamic setting with complete information. We show that tradeable pollution permits may not achieve the social optimum even when the permit market is perfectly competitive. The reason is that the optimal tradeable permits regulation will typically be time inconsistent. We then show that pollution taxes can achieve the first best and are time consistent.We thank Claudio Mezzetti, Wally Oates, and Paul Rhode for helpful comments. The last two authors thank the National Science Foundation for financial support.     

A model of sliding-scale regulation

Price caps, while widely touted, are less commonly implemented. Most incentive schemes involve profit sharing and are, thus, variants of sliding-scale regulation. I show that, relative to price caps, some degree of profit sharing always increases expected welfare. Numerical simulations show that welfare may be enhanced by large amounts of profit sharing and by granting the firm a greater share of gains than of losses. Simulations also suggest profit sharing is most beneficial when the firm's initial cost is high and cost-reducing innovations are difficult to achieve but offer the potential for substantial savings.This paper has benefitted from the comments of Mark Bagnoli, Jim Burgess, Michael Crew, Steve Hackett, Paul Kleindorfer, Michael Riordan, Ted Stefos, Ingo Vogelsang, Dennis Weisman, two anonymous referees, and workshop participants at the First Annual Northeastern Health Economics Conference, the Fourth Annual Health Economics Conference, GTE, Indiana University, the Rutgers Advanced Workshop in Regulation and Public Utility Economics, and the 20th Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. Financial support from the Management Science Group of the Department of Veterans Affairs and from Indiana University is gratefully acknowledged.     

Optimal regulation of lumpy investments

We study optimal timing of regulated investment in a real options setting, in which the regulated monopolist has private information on investment costs. In solving the ensuing agency problem, the regulator trades off investment timing inefficiency against the dead-weight loss arising from high price caps. We show that optimal regulation is implemented by a price cap that decreases as a function of the monopolist’s chosen investment time.     

A model of incentive regulation

A method of incentive regulation is presented. The regulatory agency sets a‘fair rate of return’ which is used to determine a ‘target’ profit for the regulated firm. If the firm's actual profit differs from the target profit, it retains a fraction of the excess (or absorbs a fraction of the deficit). This feature of the system provides a strong incentive for efficient operation. Properties of the incentive system are explored and problems of implementation are briefly examined.     

The perils of privacy regulation

Advocates of digital privacy law believe it is necessary to correct failures in the market for digital privacy. Though legislators allegedly craft digital privacy regulation to protect consumers, some advocates have understated the dangers that digital privacy law may engender. This paper provides evidence for Kirzner’s “perils of regulation” in the digital privacy arena. The regulatory process fails to simulate the market process, stifles entrepreneurial discovery, and creates opportunities for superfluous discovery. My research suggests that policy-makers should consider a more holistic accounting of the costs before imposing additional digital privacy regulation.