Regulation of Utility Industries in the United States

This book consists of three studies. The firstevaluates the impact of regulation on natural gasprices. Consumer choice plans are estimated tolower prices greatly, by bringing competition tomarkets with smaller consumers. Prices fall evenbefore deregulation as utilities build consumerloyalty and fight competition. Sliding scale planslower small-consumer prices while raising industrialprices. Price caps lead to overall higher prices,with unclear ranking across consumer classes. Thesecond study assesses damages caused by SO2concentrations under three policies leading to sameaggregate emissions: caps, tax & tradable permits.Regional concentrations are found to vary acrosspolicies. This variation translates into differentlosses for each state and, nationwide, todifferences of hundreds of millions of dollars. Capsyield the lowest total damages, outperforming taxes& permits by $452m. Caps favor southern states,where they deliver $840m lower damages than theother policies, while they deliver $390m higherdamages in the north. The third study verifies theseresults under alternative assumptions on the impactof SO2 on health.

Autorentext

Vladimir Hlasny is an assistant professor of economics at Ewha Womans University, Seoul (Korea). His research centers on industrial organization, regulation of utility markets and environmental regulation. He holds a doctorate in economics from Michigan State University.

Klappentext
This book consists of three studies. The first evaluates the impact of regulation on natural gas prices. Consumer choice plans are estimated to lower prices greatly, by bringing competition to markets with smaller consumers. Prices fall even before deregulation as utilities build consumer loyalty and fight competition. Sliding scale plans lower small-consumer prices while raising industrial prices. Price caps lead to overall higher prices, with unclear ranking across consumer classes. The second study assesses damages caused by SO2 concentrations under three policies leading to same aggregate emissions: caps, tax & tradable permits. Regional concentrations are found to vary across policies. This variation translates into different losses for each state and, nationwide, to differences of hundreds of millions of dollars. Caps yield the lowest total damages, outperforming taxes & permits by $452m. Caps favor southern states, where they deliver $840m lower damages than the other policies, while they deliver $390m higher damages in the north. The third study verifies these results under alternative assumptions on the impact of SO2 on health.