Under what conditions does cost-of-service regulation lead firms to distort costs? This paper analyzes changes in fuel …-level legislation that ended cost-of-service regulation among investor-owned electric utilities in the late 1990s. I construct a … status. Using a matched difference-in-difference estimation strategy to account for confounding shipping costs, I find the …

following state-level legislation that ended cost-of-service regulation of electricity generation. I find that deregulated … techniques relative to matched plants that were not subject to any regulatory change. Deregulation also led to a shift toward …