Incentive Regulation and Efficient Pricing

Abstract ** :  One objective of introducing incentive regulation to the newly privatized UK utilities over the past 20 years was to encourage efficient pricing structures. Caps have been imposed on average price levels, giving firms freedom to rebalance amongst prices within the basket. We test how firms have responded to the incentives within such discretion through an extensive review of the relative prices charged within UK price capped industries. We find surprisingly little response to these incentives, suggesting that strategic behaviour dominates short‐term profit incentives even after the introduction or threat of competition .     

Utility Regulation and Risk Allocation: The Roles of Marginal Cost Pricing and Futures Markets

The effects on consumer welfare of requiring a utility facing cost or demand risk to use either a fixed retail price or marginal cost pricing are assessed. With marginal cost pricing and cost volatility an efficient futures market allows consumer welfare to be at least as high in every state as with the fixed price. With demand risk marginal cost pricing can benefit the consumer in every state without harming the firm if the profit difference is transferred to the consumer. A futures market can act as a partial replacement for the transfer.     

Regulation and Access Pricing: Comparison of Regulated Regimes

The statutory duties of regulators of British utilities include both the encouragement of competition and protection of consumers (through price caps). Competition depends on the terms on which new entrants can gain access to the monopolist's network. Where the incumbent in the retail market also owns the network, the regulator may determine prices in the capped and access markets separately or may make the price cap explicitly dependent on entry in the uncapped market. Contrary to the received wisdom that access charges should be separately regulated we show that higher welfare can be obtained in some circumstances by allowing the incumbent to determine access charges. This is achieved by permitting the incumbent to choose from a menu of retail prices which the regulator makes conditional on the extent of entry in the retail market.     

公用事业民营化与政府规制

本文以H市Y区管道燃气民营化为个案,分析了我国公用事业民营化过程中政府规制的需要。通过分析表明,公用事业民营化并不意味着不需要政府规制,而是要根据公用事业的自然垄断特性,调整政府规制的范围和内容。并且,政府规制框架的确立应该尽可能先于公用事业民营化的实践。这对处于起步阶段的我国公用事业民营化将有所裨益。     

UK Utility Regulation: Licences, Commitment and Judicial Review

Abstract ** :  This paper analyses critically the claim made by Levy and Spiller that, in the context of UK utility regulation, licences operate as a 'technology of commitment'. The functional logic of delegation which underpins much principal–agent analyses is discussed, together with the credibility problem emerging from a divergence between a principal's long‐term and short‐term policies. Levy and Spiller contend that the UK has a successful model of utility regulation in part because of the use of licences which restrict the regulator from deviating from the broad substantive principles settled at the time of vesting. This contention is examined through the detailed consideration of five judicial review cases which have cast light on how, and to what extent, the licences restrict regulatory discretion .     

骨干员工报酬的效用分析和行为选择

因委托代理关系的存在而产生的激励问题一直是理论界和实业界关注的焦点,但绝大多数成果是关于经营管理者的激励。一般效用模型为骨干员工的行为选择提供了理论分析框架,针对性的协调物质报酬和精神报酬激励强度,是缓解“二级代理矛盾”的手段之一。     

A Welfare Analysis of Local Franchise and Other Types of Regulation: Evidence from the Cable TV Industry

By examining both price and the level of quality, this paper empirically determines the welfare implications of local franchise and other types of regulation that existed in the cable TV industry prior to federal deregulation (1987). Contrary to the popular belief that price regulation was effective but also lowered the quality of service, I find that prices were lower and the levels of service (measured by the number of imported distant channels and cable networks) were higher than the monopolistic ones. The paper also reveals some significant differences in the welfare improvements under the alternative regulatory regimes.     

Valuing Local Environmental Amenity with Discrete Choice Experiments: Spatial Scope Sensitivity and Heterogeneous Marginal Utility of Income

Using discrete choice experiments we examine preferences for the spatial provision of local environmental improvements in the context of regeneration policies. Amenities we consider are: improvements to areas of open space, recreation facilities and other public spaces; street cleanliness; restoration of derelict properties; and the provision of paths dedicated to cycling and walking. We include the spatial scope of the policy as an attribute, making the trade-off between environmental amenity and its spatial provision explicit. We employ a novel estimator for average willingness to pay (WTP) for mixed logit models with a random cost coefficient, which is robust to the presence of price insensitive respondents and performs well relative to mixed logit estimation in WTP space. We find that the spatial scope of the policy affects both the intensity and heterogeneity of preferences, and that these effects are of statistical and economic significance.     

Privatization and Utility Regulation in Developing Countries: the Lessons So Far

The privatization of utilities has grown in developing countries in recent years. Privatization transactions for the utilities sector have accounted for over a third of all sales in developing countries since 1988. The introduction of privatization has not necessarily meant more competition. Consequently, utility privatization has led in many cases to the creation of regulatory structures that aim to protect consumers from monopoly abuse and to provide incentives to firms to maintain efficiency. Case studies drawing on examples from the telecommunications, electricity and water sectors indicate that creating effective regulation and a competitive environment is a difficult and slow process. The cases have shown that regulation rather than privatization achieved the largest gains. Similarly, although the variety of regulatory measures that have been introduced have made a difference, the most tangible benefits, particularly to consumers, result from the establishment of competition. The case studies have shown that privatization has preceded the development of effective regulation and competition. The development of regulatory structures is constrained by the capacity of governments to enforce regulatory rules and monitor contracts. Fostering conditions that encourage competition and lessen anti-competitive behaviour by incumbents is a beneficial but slow process.     

滞留成本、竞争性定价歧视和定价机制选择

在很多市场环境下,消费者重复消费同一种商品会产生效用折扣或者消费者喜欢尝试不同的商品特性,因此消费者追求消费多样化,重复消费同一种商品会产生滞留成本。文章采用两期动态博弈框架,研究滞留成本的存在对于企业竞争性歧视定价行为和市场绩效的影响,此后又进一步研究了企业的定价机制选择问题。文章的研究结果表明:(1)在歧视定价机制下,企业会奖励忠诚的消费者,即企业会对重复购买自己产品的消费者(忠诚消费者)给予价格优惠,而对新顾客索取高价;(2)与统一定价相比,歧视性定价降低了企业利润和社会福利,增加了消费者剩余;(3)当企业可以在歧视定价和统一定价两种机制之间进行选择时,每个企业选择歧视性定价机制是均衡结果。     

Incentive Regulation and Competition in Public Utility Markets: A 20-Year Perspective

Over the last 20 years, incentives in general and price caps in particular have breathed new life into public utility regulation. Price caps successfully combine incentives for cost reduction with incentives for more efficient pricing. These properties also facilitate opening public utility sectors to competition. Relatively tight price caps likely imply the right amount of competition, when the underlying natural market structure is unknown. While price caps make a regulated incumbent competitively more aggressive, this aggression is likely to improve on the unregulated outcome. Potentially anticompetitive behavior by the incumbent has led to regulation of essential inputs on the basis of benchmarked costs. Benchmarked costs should evolve into price caps for essential inputs and eventually lead to partial deregulation of end-user prices.     

城市公共服务市场化与定价管制

投资博弈模型表明,在城市公共服务产品的价格无法预知的条件下,只有给投资商预定的利润率才能吸引资本进入,而预定的利润率却进一步降低了成本激励.基础设施供给厂商和规制者合谋的子博弈完美纳什均衡表明,预定的投资收益率管制并非激励相客机制,直接管制定价反映出城市公共服务产品产业的低效率、高成本、高价格状态,远远偏离于政府管制的消费者福利最优化的初衷.     

Charity auctions with multiple goods: Bidding behavior and revenue

In a charity auction with multiple goods, we show that the highest-losing bid uniform price auction revenue dominates its lowest-winning bid counterpart. Only in the highest-losing bid uniform price auction is bidding independent of the number of goods and players and revenue increasing in the number of goods.     

Deriving and Testing Efficient Estimates of WTP Distributions in Destination Choice Models

Estimation of welfare measures is often a dominant driver in the empirical literature on nonmarket valuation. To this end, qualitative choice models based on random utility theory have been widely employed in outdoor recreation studies. A frequent goal of applied studies has been the estimation of welfare changes associated with site attribute changes at recreation sites in order to inform regulatory policy and resource management. We review the evolution of the methodology of random utility theory in this field with a focus on taste heterogeneity models and then focus on the recent proposal of specifying utility in the WTP-space (Train K, Weeks M (2005) Discrete choice models in preference space and willing-to-pay space. In: Scarpa R, Alberini A (eds) Applications of simulation methods in environmental and resource economics, chapter 1. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 1–16). Our empirical application is on outdoor alpine recreation data. We emphasize the efficiency and direct testing that using the maximum simulated likelihood estimator affords to practitioners using the WTP-space approach, and illustrate these with examples.     

有限理性监管、初步询价和IPO定价效率

在询价机制中加入初步询价阶段是我国累计投标询价机制区别于国际通行做法的主要特征。作为定价源头,初步询价为定价提供了最重要信息。本文从询价规则本身合理性出发,研究了初步询价在定价程序中的关键作用。研究发现,监管者的有限理性导致询价规则本身存在缺陷;由初步询价得到的初始价格区间主要受到询价家数、筹资额和市场整体回报影响,研究结果不同于成熟市场的结论;由于询价规则存在歧视性分配机制缺失、发行价受到控制和初步询价报价无有效约束等缺陷,初步询价没有改善定价效率。     

环境风险规制政策选择及其对我国的启示

环境规制是控制全球环境问题的重要手段之一.文章从环境风险规制研究现状出发,通过对环境博弈主体的分析,探讨环境规制政策工具的选择,并在对我国环境规制现状分析的基础上,总结对我国环境风险规制的启示.     

Strategic Choice of the Price Structure and Entry Deterrence Under Price Cap Regulation

This paper shows that a price‐capped firm under the threat of entry in some of the markets it serves can strategically manipulate its price structure to deter entry. In doing so, the regulated firm uses the price cap constraint as a commitment device to an aggressive pricing behaviour in case of entry. A (dynamic) price cap generally entails that the prices allowed today are a function of the previous‐period prices and that the tighter is the constraint on each price, the larger is the quantity sold of this good in the previous period. Hence, the regulated firm may strategically choose its price structure before entry to place a tighter regulatory control on the prices set in the (potentially) competitive markets and to make it optimal to charge in these markets – in case of entry – prices so low that entry is unprofitable.     

人民币汇率波动与名义利率调控模式选择

目前,随着贸易保护主义强势复兴和美联储加息窗口的不断迫近,中国货币政策调控难度显著加大。特别是在面对当前经济和汇率的协同下行压力时,利率的调整方向亟待阐明。有鉴于此,构建了一个刻画利率与汇率联动机制的经验方程,随后采用时变系数状态空间模型对其进行估计,从而为阐释利率与汇率间的联动机制提供了经验解释。研究表明:首先,利率与汇率间的关联机制并非一成不变,其中,当人民币币值存在趋势性变化苗头时,中央银行将采取利率顺向操作以降低币值变化的时间成本,而在正常情况下,其通常将采取逆向操作来稳定币值;其次,现阶段中央银行稳定币值的政策意愿依旧明显,这说明人民币仍不具备长期贬值的趋势和苗头;最后,近期利率阶段性下行主要是受到产出和通胀持续低迷的牵拉,这意味着维持国内经济平稳增长,坚守不发生系统性紧缩风险的底线仍是货币政策调控的首要任务。