This study aims to contribute investigating the difficulties to reap the intended benefits from liberalization and regulatory reforms of network industries. This issue is tackled through the 'theoretical lenses' of new institutional economics, in particular by applying the Institutional Analysis...

In 1994, the Italian Parliament passed a reform which aimed to radically change the economic regulatory institutions of the water sector in the country. The implementation of the reform, which lasted about twelve years, resulted in a new regulatory regime which combined selected features of...

Within the field of regulation policy and politics, scholarly works have widely examined policy cycles to liberalize, re-regulate and privatize large-scale infrastructure-based public service industries. Relatively little attention has been placed, however, on the jagged and ineffectual...

This study aims to contribute investigating the difficulties to reap the intended benefits of policy reforms to liberalize and re-regulate network industries. This issue is tackled through the 'theoretical lenses' of new institutional economics, in particular by following the Institutional...

This study aims to contribute investigating the difficulties to reap the intended benefits from liberalization and regulatory reforms of network industries. This issue is tackled through the 'theoretical lenses' of new institutional economics, in particular by applying the Institutional Analysis...

Regulatory reforms are often made and implemented with the aim to introduce some competitive mechanisms in infrastructure industries which were previously regulated through public ownership. The impact of these reforms on the organisation and behaviour of infrastructure industries, however, may...

The global experience with economic regulation shows that many industries which are subjected to economic regulation are characterised by persistent monopolistic features in at least some of the industry segments. Under such conditions, one or a few firms generally retain a monopolistic or...

So far relatively few studies have explicitly addressed the issue of how are regulatory reforms implemented (Gönenç et al., 2001; Eisner, 2004; Durant, 1984; Hanf, 1982). In particular, little attention has been placed so far on how the multi-level governance systems – as the institutional and polity...

Water infrastructure regulatory systems are occasionally characterised by the combination of selected features of alternative models of regulation, such as public ownership, discretionary regulation, and franchise regulation. Issues arise regarding why these combined or 'hybrid' systems appear,...