Ownership and Performance in a Lightly Regulated Environment

Michael E. Bradbury and Jill Hooks

Australian Accounting Review, 2015, vol. 25, issue 1, 100-112

Abstract: type="main">

This article examines the relation between ownership and performance for New Zealand electricity lines firms over the period 1998 to 2006. The sample is of interest because it represents all firms within a single product industry (local electricity distribution), which is a natural monopoly subject to a light-handed regulatory regime. Thus we are able to examine the theories of ownership on performance, while controlling for regulation, industry, product market competition, accounting methods and other factors that might impact profitability, such as network reliability and network density. The results suggest that listed firms have similar profitability to council-owned firms and both listed and council-owned firms outperform trust-owned firms. The likely reason for the poorer performance of trust-owned firms is that they have different agency costs than listed and council-owned firms and the trustees have lower responsibility than directors. Hence, they have lower incentives to be profitable.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/auar.12042 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:ausact:v:25:y:2015:i:1:p:100-112

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1035-6908

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Accounting Review is currently edited by Linda M. English

More articles in Australian Accounting Review from CPA Australia
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().