The Politics of Government Pricing: Political Influences on Rate Structures of Publicly‐owned Electric Utilities

John P. Blair

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1976, vol. 35, issue 1, 31-36

Abstract: Abstract. Although theoretical analysis of publicly‐owned enterprises is rapidly evolving into a well established body of literature, parallel empirical work is scarce. A major cause of this imbalance is the difficulty of quantifying theoretically important concepts such as political influence or political power. The purpose of this paper is to narrow the gap in the literature by statistically testing the role of political forces in determining the price structure in the case of publicly‐owned electric utilities (POEUs). The price differential between residential and commercial users is examined. Variables reflecting the relative political influence of the customer groups are discussed and their strength as determinants of the rate structure is tested. The findings are consistent with theoretical expectations; the higher the gain from favoring one group relative to the other, the greater the variance in price between groups.

Date: 1976
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.1976.tb01209.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:35:y:1976:i:1:p:31-36

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0002-9246

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Economics and Sociology is currently edited by Laurence S. Moss

More articles in American Journal of Economics and Sociology from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().