PROPERTY-RIGHTS VERSUS PUBLIC SPIRIT - OWNERSHIP AND EFFICIENCY OF UNITED-STATES ELECTRIC UTILITIES PRIOR TO RATE-OF-RETURN REGULATION

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: HAUSMAN, WJ; NEUFELD, JL
• 署名单位: University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Greensboro
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.2307/2109565
• 发表日期: 1991-08
• 页码: 414-423
• 关键词: performance; objectives; PRIVATE

摘要

For over a century American economists have been engaged in a vigorous theoretical and empirical debate over the economic performance of publicly-owned versus privately-owned electric utilities. We review the historical debate and use micro data collected by the U.S. Commissioner of Labor in 1897/98 to construct efficiency measures based on a non-parametric frontier production function. Since this is prior to state rate-of-return regulation, regulatory effects do not confound the analysis. We find that publicly-owned electric utilities were significantly more efficient than their privately-owned counterparts.