IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/regeco/v46y2014i1p112-121.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Crew
  • Rami Kahlon

Abstract

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. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Crew & Rami Kahlon, 2014. "Guaranteed return regulation: a case study of regulation of water in California," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 112-121, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:regeco:v:46:y:2014:i:1:p:112-121
    DOI: 10.1007/s11149-014-9249-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11149-014-9249-8
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11149-014-9249-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Broer & Gijsbert Zwart, 2013. "Optimal regulation of lumpy investments," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 177-196, October.
    2. Richard A. Posner, 1971. "Taxation by Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 22-50, Spring.
    3. David Sappington, 2005. "Regulating Service Quality: A Survey," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 123-154, November.
    4. Leon Chu & David Sappington, 2013. "Motivating energy suppliers to promote energy conservation," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 229-247, June.
    5. Timothy Brennan, 2010. "Decoupling in electric utilities," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 49-69, August.
    6. David Sappington & Dennis Weisman, 2010. "Price cap regulation: what have we learned from 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry?," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 227-257, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roger Buckland & Julian Williams & Janice Beecher, 2015. "Risk and regulation in water utilities: a cross-country comparison of evidence from the CAPM," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 117-145, April.
    2. David E. M. Sappington & Dennis L. Weisman, 2016. "The disparate adoption of price cap regulation in the U.S. telecommunications and electricity sectors," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 250-264, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul L. Joskow, 2024. "The Expansion of Incentive (Performance-Based) Regulation of Electricity Distribution and Transmission in the United States," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 65(2), pages 455-503, September.
    2. David E. M. Sappington & Dennis L. Weisman, 2016. "The disparate adoption of price cap regulation in the U.S. telecommunications and electricity sectors," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 250-264, April.
    3. Abrardi, Laura & Cambini, Carlo, 2015. "Tariff regulation with energy efficiency goals," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 122-131.
    4. Dennis L. Weisman, 2019. "The power of regulatory regimes reexamined," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 125-148, December.
    5. Datta, Souvik, 2019. "Decoupling and demand-side management: Evidence from the US electric industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 175-184.
    6. David E. M. Sappington & Dennis L. Weisman, 2024. "40 Years of Incentive Regulation: What Have We Learned, and What Questions Remain?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 65(2), pages 361-373, September.
    7. Cave, Martin, 2024. "Incentive regulation: expectations, surprises, and the road forward," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 124579, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Arlan Brucal & Nori Tarui, 2018. "Revenue Decoupling for Electric Utilities: Impacts on Prices and Welfare," Working Papers 201814, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    9. David E. M. Sappington & Dennis L. Weisman, 2021. "Vertical Merger Policy: Special Considerations in Regulated Industries," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 59(2), pages 393-407, September.
    10. David Sappington & Dennis Weisman, 2012. "Regulating regulators in transitionally competitive markets," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 19-40, February.
    11. Flavio Menezes & Joisa Dutra & Xuemei Zheng, 2013. "Energy Efficiency and Price Regulation," Discussion Papers Series 495, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    12. Brennan, Timothy J., 2013. "Holding Distribution Utilities Liable for Outage Costs: An Economic Look," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-16, Resources for the Future.
    13. Brown, David P. & Sappington, David E. M., 2023. "Designing Incentive Regulation in the Electricity Sector," Working Papers 2023-10, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    14. David P. Brown & David E. M. Sappington, 2017. "Optimal policies to promote efficient distributed generation of electricity," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 159-188, October.
    15. Dennis L. Weisman, 2023. "Measuring the Power of Regulatory Regimes," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 62(1), pages 19-32, February.
    16. Gerlach, Heiko & Zheng, Xuemei, 2018. "Preferences for green electricity, investment and regulatory incentives," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 430-441.
    17. Christopher Decker, 2016. "Regulating networks in decline," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 344-370, June.
    18. Joisa Dutra, Flavio M. Menezes, and Xuemei Zheng, 2016. "Price Regulation and the Incentives to Pursue Energy Efficiency by Minimizing Network Losses," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4).
    19. Marques, Vítor & Bento, Nuno & Costa, Paulo Moisés, 2014. "The “Smart Paradox”: Stimulate the deployment of smart grids with effective regulatory instruments," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 96-103.
    20. Nori Tarui, 2017. "Electric utility regulation under enhanced renewable energy integration and distributed generation," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 19(3), pages 503-518, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:regeco:v:46:y:2014:i:1:p:112-121. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.