Public Utility Regulation

Public Utility Characteristics of Railways in India

To serve Indian economy railways carry different category of freight traffics like coal, iron ore, food grains, steel, fertilizer and mineral oil, etc. Dispersal of some of these freights is limited compared to other traffics which ambit of outreach is quite large. Food grains and fertilizers are such freights which reach wider section of population, transporting thereby railways carry off its ...

Regulation and Administered Contracts Revisited: Lessons from Transaction-Cost Economics for Public Utility Regulation 1

This article reexamines the administered contracts approach to regulation in light of recent empirical research that establishes the importance of transaction-costs in the organizational choice and design decisions. After reviewing the fundamentals of transaction cost reasoning and the franchise bidding-versus-regulation debate, the study surveys the empirical literature on franchise bidding, c...

Public Utility Commission Regulation and Cost- Effectiveness of Title IV: Lessons for CAIR

Paul M. Sotkiewicz is the Director of Energy Studies at the Public Utility Research Center (PURC), University of Florida. Prior to joining PURC in 2000, he served from 1998 to 2000 as an Economist at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the Office of Economic Policy and later on the staff of the Chief Economic Advisor where he conducted research and analysis on market design issues and w...

The Fairness Criterion in Public Utility Regulation : Does Fairness Still Matter ?

The concept of "fairness" is deeply rooted in the 120-year history of public utility regulation in the United States. Indeed, the word "fair" appears in numerous regulatory concepts and propositions, for example, a fair rate of return, fair value, fair and reasonable rates, and full and fair evidentiary hearings. Also, the idea that utilities should be compensated for and recover only those cap...

The Effect of Rate-of-Return Regulation on Public Utility Pricing