Covering issues such as deregulation, privatization, organizational reforms, and competition policy, Regulatory Reform of Public Utilities provides a comprehensive summary of regulatory reforms in Japanese public utility industries. Fumitoshi Mizutani expertly explores the main regulatory structures and regulatory reforms in eight Japanese public utility industries: electric power, gas utility, water supply, railways, local bus, postal services, telecommunications, and broadcasting. There are also separate chapters on yardstick regulation, universal service obligations, privatization and structural reforms, and private sector involvement Ð all important issues in Japanese regulatory reform. This unique study reveals that regulatory reform in Japan has distinctive features. It seeks to fill the information gap and widen understanding in the international community in relation to the Japanese experience with regulation and reform of public utility industries. This informative book will prove invaluable to postgraduate students, policymakers, and researchers in fields such as regulation, empirical industrial organization, and public policy.

Report on the significance, direction, and means of reform in regulatory regimes in member countries. Contents: 1. Why reform regulations? 2. Effects of regulatory reform 3. Supporting public policy goals 4. Strategies for successful reform.

This timely study evaluates four generic proposals for allowing free market forces toreplace government regulation in the electric power industry and concludes that none of thederegulation alternatives considered represents a panacea for the performance failures associatedwith things as they are now. It proposes a balanced program of regulatory reform and deregulationthat promises to improve industry performance in the short run, resolve uncertainties about thecosts and benefits of deregulation, and positions the industry for more extensive deregulation inthe long run should interim experimentation with deregulation, structural, and regulatory reformsmake it desirable.The book integrates modern microeconomic theory with a comprehensive analysis ofthe economic, technical, and institutional characteristics of modern electrical power systems. Itemphasizes that casual analogies to successful deregulation efforts in other sectors of the economyare an inadequate and potentially misleading basis for public policy in the electric power industry,which has economic and technical characteristics that are quite different from those in otherderegulated industries.Paul L. Joskow is Professor of Economics at MIT, author of ControllingHospital Costs (MIT Press 1981) and coauthor with Martin L. Baughman and Dilip P. Kamat of ElectricPower in the United States (MIT Press 1979). Richard Schmalensee, also at MIT, is Professor ofApplied Economics, author of The Economics of Advertising and The Control of Natural Monopolies, andeditor of The MIT Press Series, Regulation of Economic Activity.

During the 1990s, a new paradigm for power sector reform was put forward emphasizing the restructuring of utilities, the creation of regulators, the participation of the private sector, and the establishment of competitive power markets. Twenty-five years later, only a handful of developing countries have fully implemented these Washington Consensus policies. Across the developing world, reforms were adopted rather selectively, resulting in a hybrid model, in which elements of market orientation coexist with continued state dominance of the sector. This book aims to revisit and refresh thinking on power sector reform approaches for developing countries. The approach relies heavily on evidence from the past, drawing both on broad global trends and deep case material from 15 developing countries. It is also forward looking, considering the implications of new social and environmental policy goals, as well as the emerging technological disruptions. A nuanced picture emerges. Although regulation has been widely adopted, practice often falls well short of theory, and cost recovery remains an elusive goal. The private sector has financed a substantial expansion of generation capacity; yet, its contribution to power distribution has been much more limited, with efficiency levels that can sometimes be matched by well-governed public utilities. Restructuring and liberalization have been beneficial in a handful of larger middle-income nations but have proved too complex for most countries to implement. Based on these findings, the report points to three major policy implications. First, reform efforts need to be shaped by the political and economic context of the country. The 1990s reform model was most successful in countries that had reached certain minimum conditions of power sector development and offered a supportive political environment. Second, countries found alternative institutional pathways to achieving good power sector outcomes, making a case for greater pluralism. Among the top performers, some pursued the full set of market-oriented reforms, while others retained a more important role for the state. Third, reform efforts should be driven and tailored to desired policy outcomes and less preoccupied with following a predetermined process, particularly since the twenty-first-century century agenda has added decarbonization and universal access to power sector outcomes. The Washington Consensus reforms, while supportive of the twenty-first-century century agenda, will not be able to deliver on them alone and will require complementary policy measures