The 3 Rs: Regulation, risk and responsibility in British utilities since 1945

Martin Chick

Business History, 2011, vol. 53, issue 5, 747-760

Abstract: Before privatisation, required rates of return and test discount rates were being applied to utility and other nationalised industries. One effect of this new approach was to promote more marginal-cost based tariffs which could fall particularly heavily on low-income groups. This trend was reinforced by privatisation which, when accompanied by market liberalisation, increased uncertainty about the likely returns on capital investment projects. Both of these issues, the treatment of poverty and coping with uncertainty, were of long-standing concern to the Austrian school of economics. Where Austrian economists differed from liberalising governments was in their locating of responsibility.

Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2011.599593

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