Electricity prices as signals for the evaluation of reforms: an empirical analysis of four European countries

Massimo Florio

Departmental Working Papers from Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano

Abstract: The paper considers price trends as signals for the evaluation of reforms leading to ownership or market structure changes in public services. In order to do so, we focus on a specific example: electricity prices in four countries, namely UK, France, Germany and Italy. We consider that these countries offer a natural experiment in different patterns of public/privateownership and liberalisation of electricity industry. We use price changes as a signal and observe that there is no clear dominance of one pattern in terms of welfare change for the representative consumer. This conclusion tends to reject the widely held idea that one specific "orthodox" pattern should bepreferred: privatisation with liberalisation and vertical disintegration. The empirical evidence does not sustain any strong claim of superiority of such a pattern.

Keywords: Electricity Industry; Tariffs; Public Services; Utilities Reforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L33 L43 L94 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec
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Related works:
Journal Article: Electricity Prices as Signals for the Evaluation of Reforms: An Empirical Analysis of Four European Countries (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2003-14

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