IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vuw/vuwcsr/18953.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ownership vs. Regulation in Electricity Reform: The Role of Governance

Author

Listed:
  • Meade, Richard

Abstract

Electricity reform typically involves little regard to the possibility that customerownership might substitute for the "protections" of state ownership or for investor ownership under regulatory safeguards where market power is a concern. Recognising that regulation is itself costly and that market contracting ownership and regulation are partly substitutable forms of governance this paper argues that state ownership of natural monopolies in electricity distribution (and transmission) is inefficient. Unregulatedcustomer ownership of these activities is superior better aligning monopolist and customer incentives at lower cost. Even unregulated investor ownership of distribution is predicted to better balance the costs of market contracting ownership and regulation than does state ownership. Regulation of customer owned distribution (and transmission) is also shown to be inefficient imposing regulatory costs without compensatory gains. Examples of widespread customer ownership of distribution in New Zealand and of distribution and sometimes transmission in the US illustrates how such ownership has evolved as an effective substitute for regulation. Policy implications are drawn.

Suggested Citation

  • Meade, Richard, 2005. "Ownership vs. Regulation in Electricity Reform: The Role of Governance," Working Paper Series 18953, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    • Handle: RePEc:vuw:vuwcsr:18953
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/18953
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. ., 2001. "Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking," Chapters, in: Islamic Banking, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1998. "Cooperatives vs. outside ownership," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19360, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1991. "Privatization and Incentives," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 84-105, Special I.
    4. Helm, Dieter, 1994. "British Utility Regulation: Theory, Practice, and Reform," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 10(3), pages 17-39, Autumn.
    5. Tirole, Jean, 2001. "Corporate Governance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 1-35, January.
    6. Karpoff, Jonathan M. & Rice, Edward M., 1989. "Organizational form, share transferability, and firm performance : Evidence from the ANCSA corporations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 69-105, September.
    7. Evans, Lewis & Meade, Richard, 2001. "Economic Analysis of Financial Transmission Rights (FTRs) with Specific Reference to the Transpower Proposal for New Zealand," Working Paper Series 3902, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    8. Joskow, Paul L. & Rose, Nancy L., 1989. "The effects of economic regulation," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 25, pages 1449-1506, Elsevier.
    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. de Hauteclocque, Adrien & Rious, Vincent, 2011. "Reconsidering the European regulation of merchant transmission investment in light of the third energy package: The role of dominant generators," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7068-7077.
    2. David Zetland, 2013. "Water managers are selfish like us," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 14, pages 407-433, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    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. repec:vuw:vuwscr:18953 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Meade, Richard, 2005. "Ownership vs Regulation in Electricity Reform: The Role of Governance," Working Paper Series 3809, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    3. Charlotte Ostergaard & Ibolya Schindele & Bent Vale, 2016. "Social Capital and the Viability of Stakeholder-Oriented Firms: Evidence from Savings Banks," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(5), pages 1673-1718.
    4. Jiao Ji & Oleksandr Talavera & Shuxing Yin, 2018. "The Hidden Information Content: Evidence from the Tone of Independent Director Reports," Working Papers 2018-28, Swansea University, School of Management.
    5. Alexandra ZBUCHEA & Florina PÎNZARU, 2017. "Tailoring CSR Strategy to Company Size?," Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, College of Management, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, vol. 5(3), pages 415-437, September.
    6. Teresa Chu & In-Mu Haw & Simon S. M. Ho & Xu Zhang, 2020. "Labor protection, ownership concentration, and cost of equity capital: international evidence," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1351-1387, May.
    7. Nicos A. Scordis & Yoshihiko Suzawa & Astrid Zwick & Lucia Ruckner, 2014. "Principles for Sustainable Insurance: Risk Management and Value," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 17(2), pages 265-276, September.
    8. Anagnostopoulou, Seraina C. & Tsekrekos, Andrianos E. & Voulgaris, Georgios, 2021. "Accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(4).
    9. Mao-Chang Wang & Chin-Ying Yang, 2019. "Analysing the traceability system in herbal product industry by game theory," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 65(2), pages 74-81.
    10. Ding, Wenzhi & Levine, Ross & Lin, Chen & Xie, Wensi, 2021. "Corporate immunity to the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 802-830.
    11. Mishael Milaković & Simone Alfarano & Thomas Lux, 2010. "The small core of the German corporate board network," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 201-215, June.
    12. Danni Chen & Xue Chen & Huiying Sun, 2023. "Does corporate social responsibility protect shareholder value from the shock of COVID‐19? Evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(3), pages 3077-3094, September.
    13. Peter H. Egger & Christian Keuschnigg, 2017. "Access to credit and comparative advantage," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 481-505, May.
    14. Hui Fu & Jun Yang & Yunbi An, 2019. "Contracts for venture capital financing with double-sided moral hazard," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 129-144, June.
    15. Hiroshige Tanaka, 2020. "Chinese sustainable framework in the digitalized global communities," International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 327-336, August.
    16. Neil Conway & Simon Deakin & Suzanne Konzelmann & Héloïse Petit & Antoine Rebérioux & Frank Wilkinson, 2008. "The Influence of Stock Market Listing on Human Resource Management: Evidence for France and Britain," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 631-673, December.
    17. Drobetz, W. & Momtaz, Paul P., 2020. "Antitakeover Provisions and Firm Value: New Evidence from the M&A Market," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    18. Tracy Artiach & Darren Lee & David Nelson & Julie Walker, 2010. "The determinants of corporate sustainability performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 50(1), pages 31-51, March.
    19. Ni, Xiaoran & Song, Wei & Yao, Jiaquan, 2020. "Stakeholder orientation and corporate payout policy: Insights from state legal shocks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    20. Jos Bijman & Markus Hanisch & Ger Sangen, 2014. "Shifting Control? The Change of Internal Governance in Agricultural Cooperatives in the EU," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 85(4), pages 641-661, December.
    21. Yi, Yuyang & Zhang, Zongyi & Xiang, Cheng, 2022. "The value of CSR during the COVID-19 crisis: Evidence from Chinese firms," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:vuw:vuwcsr:18953. 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: Library Technology Services (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fcvuwnz.html .

    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.