Price-Cost Margins and Profit Rates in New Zealand Electricity Distribution Networks Since 1994: the Cost of Light Handed Regulation

From 1994 to 2003, New Zealands corporatized electricity lines networks operated with no industry regulator, but under the spotlight of mandatory information disclosure. As a result there exists a large body of detailed, audited and publicly available accounting data on the financial performance of these businesses. Using that data, this paper finds that price-cost margins have widened substantially since deregulation. We estimate the extent to which light-handed regulation has allowed profits to exceed the levels which would have been acceptable under the old rate-of-return regulatory framework, and find that the answer is about $200 million per year, on an ongoing basis.We thank colleagues at Victoria University, and two anonymous referees for this journal, for constructive comments on this paper. Any remaining errors are entirely our responsibility.JEL classification: D21; K23; L11; L43; L51     

Why Punish? Social reciprocity and the enforcement of prosocial norms

Recently economists have become interested in why people who face social dilemmas in the experimental lab use the seemingly incredible threat of punishment to deter free riding. Three theories with evolutionary microfoundations have been developed to explain punishment. We survey these theories and use behavioral data from surveys and experiments to show that the theory called social reciprocity in which people punish norm violators indiscriminately explains punishment best.JEL Classification: C91, C92, D64, H41 Correspondence to: Jeffrey P. CarpenterWe thank Carolyn Craven, Corinna Noelke and two referees for comments, and Middlebury College for financial assistance. In addition, Carpenter acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation (SES-CAREER 0092953).     

Toward a Phylogenetic Reconstruction of Organizational Life

Synopsis Classification is an important activity that facilitates theory development in many academic disciplines. Scholars in fields such as organizational science, management science and economics and have long recognized that classification offers an approach for ordering and understanding the diversity of organizational taxa (groups of one or more similar organizational entities). However, even the most prominent organizational classifications have limited utility, as they tend to be shaped by a specific research bias, inadequate units of analysis and a standard neoclassical economic view that does not naturally accommodate the disequilibrium dynamics of modern competition. The result is a relatively large number of individual and unconnected organizational classifications, which tend to ignore the processes of change responsible for organizational diversity. Collectively they fail to provide any sort of universal system for ordering, compiling and presenting knowledge on organizational diversity. This paper has two purposes. First, it reviews the general status of the major theoretical approaches to biological and organizational classification and compares the methods and resulting classifications derived from each approach. Definitions of key terms and a discussion on the three principal schools of biological classification (evolutionary systematics, phenetics and cladistics) are included in this review. Second, this paper aims to encourage critical thinking and debate about the use of the cladistic classification approach for inferring and representing the historical relationships underpinning organizational diversity. This involves examining the feasibility of applying the logic of common ancestry to populations of organizations. Consequently, this paper is exploratory and preparatory in style, with illustrations and assertions concerning the study and classification of organizational diversity.     

The Effect of Respondent Experience/Knowledge in the Elicitation of Contingent Values: An Investigation of Convergent Validity,Procedural Invariance and Reliability

Tests of convergent validity and procedural invariance were used to investigate whether individuals lacking direct experience with a commodity can provide valid responses to contingent-valuation questions eliciting ex post use values. Convergent validity between samples with and without experience was shown to hold for dichotomous-choice responses, but not for open-ended responses.     

Strategic Firm Behavior Under Average-Revenue-Lagged Regulation

Price caps have been shown to have incentive properties superior to traditional rate of return regulation. Average-revenue-lagged regulation (ARL) is attractive in that steady-state prices are known to be efficient. We show that the ARL scheme can be manipulated by the firm so as to yield the unregulated global profit maximum. While tests exist that can provide the regulator with evidence of this strategic behavior, we also demonstrate that the unregulated global profit maximum will not be attainable if Laspeyres (L) regulation is employed.Jel classification: L43, L51I would like to thank Michael Crew and an anonymous referee for their extremely helpful suggestions.     

OPPORTUNISTIC MATCHING IN THE HOUSING MARKET*

We construct a model of the housing market in which agents differ in their flow values while searching. Agents enter the market relaxed (with high flow values) but move to a desperate state (low flow values) at a Poisson rate if they have not already transacted. We characterize the equilibrium steady‐state matching pattern and the joint distribution of price and time to sale (for sellers). The expected price conditional on time to sale falls with time spent on the market, whereas the conditional variance of price first rises and then falls with time on the market.     

Politically stable pay-as-you-go pension systems: When the social-insurance budget is too small in a democracy

The essay analyzes in an overlapping-generations model, to which extent a pay-as-you-go pension system will be the outcome of majority voting, given specific institutional set-ups. Clearly, the vote of an active person depends on his expectations about how the present decision (i.e., his contribution) is linked to the future (i.e., his benefits), when he will be retired. In the paper we employ the assumption of a basic social contract where each active voter's future benefits are positively related to his contributions. It is shown that in this framework a steady-state with a positive (though lower than optimal) level of the pension system exists, even if a new majority decision about the system takes place every period.     

Industrial distributors: Can they survive in the new economy?

As e-commerce evolves and gains power in the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, what lies ahead for the industrial distributor? The fundamental issue from the distributor's point of view is how to compete more effectively and profitably, given the changing business environment of the new economy. This paper reviews the literature on the distributor's role and relationships and introduces a conceptual model of distributor viability. The model identifies sources of value that distributors offer to manufacturers and customers, including customer relationship management (CRM), production and operations management (POM), and knowledge management (KM). The paper explores the managerial implications of distributor relationships and sources of value. This provides the foundation for better understanding of the viability of industrial distributors in the new economy.     

中国金融控股集团发展：分业还是混业？

中国的金融控股集团可界定为跨业经营,再加上金融企业资产的弱专用性,因此现有金融管理体制下存在金融控股集团发展的空间。但本文分析认为金融控股集团的经营前景不能确定,应积极、审慎地发展。