The Unsustainable Costs of Partial Deregulation
ISBN-10: 0300121288
ISBN-13: 9780300121285
$65.00
Book Specs
Binding
Trade Cloth
Publisher
Yale University Press
Published on
Jul 28, 2007
Edition
1st Edition
Dimensions
6.13x0.69x9.25 Inches
Weight
1.00 Pounds
About the Book
Three decades ago, federal policymakers-Republicans and Democrats-embarked on a general strategy of deregulation. In the electricity, gas delivery, and telecommunications industries, the strategy called for restructuring to separate production from transmission and distribution, followed by elimination of price controls. The expected results were lower prices and increased quality, reliability, and scope of services. Paul W. MacAvoy, an economist with forty years of experience in the regulatory field, here assesses the results and concludes that deregulation has failed to achieve any of these goals in any of these industries.
MacAvoy shows that we now have only partial deregulation, a mixture of oligopoly structure with direct price control. He explores why this system leads to volatile and high prices, reduced investment, and low profitability, and what policy actions can be implemented to address these problems.