From 1992 to 2002, major expansions of the Argentine electricity transmission sector depended on users proposing, voting and paying for such expansions, which were then put out to competitive tender. Commentators hold this novel policy to have been unsuccessful, mainly on the ground that it...

Demsetz (1968) advocated competitive bidding as a replacement for natural monopoly regulation. Williamson (1976) and Goldberg (1976) argued that these problems of natural monopoly regulation are inherent in long-term investment under uncertainty, and that both long- and short-term franchising...

Joskow, P. and others propose that, with the opening of retail electricity markets, distribution utilities should be required to enable residential customers to buy at (averaged) wholesale spot market prices. They argue that retail electricity competitors should concentrate on value-added...

This paper supplements analyses of Argentine transmission expansions at the federal level by looking at experience in Buenos Aires province. A Regional Electricity Forum of distribution companies has drawn up and begun to implement a ten-year transmission expansion plan. Contrary to previous...

Concern over mobile termination charges under Calling Party Pays (CPP) has led to severe price controls on termination charges. These are of limited effectiveness in aligning termination charges with costs, net welfare gains from controls are small and costs of setting controls are high....

In many countries there is widespread concern at the level of mobile termination charges. This is attributable to the bottleneck monopoly created by the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle. It has led to increasingly severe price controls on termination charges. Regulatory experience in the three...

This article examines the experience in the United Kingdom with the regulation of privatized monopolies. Its conclusions are (1) that there are significant differences between RPI - X (or price-cap) and U.S. rate-of-return regulation, which provides greater scope for bargaining in the former...

Discussion of airport pricing policy has largely centered on the problem of congestion, but at most airports congestion is negligible. In the present paper we explore the implications of an alternative pricing philosophy where the common costs of runway construction are shared among the...