Deregulation, vertical unbundling and the performance of China's large coal-fired power plants

Xiaoli Zhao and Chunbo Ma ()

Energy Economics, 2013, vol. 40, issue C, 474-483

Abstract: In 2003, China's integrated electricity utility – the State Power Corporation (SPC) – was unbundled and dismantled into five generation groups and two grid companies in an effort to increase competition and improve efficiency. In this paper, we study the impact of this deregulation reform on the operational efficiency for a balanced panel of 34 large power plants for the period 1997–2010. We find that on average these power plants have converged to the technological frontier over the sample period. Controlling for substantial heterogeneity in the technical profile, we also find that the unbundling reform has boosted productivity of China's large thermal power plants; however, the presumably differential impacts of the reform on the previously SPC-managed power plants and the independent power producers in our sample are insignificant.

Keywords: Efficiency; Deregulation; China; Electricity reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 L11 L51 L94 L98 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014098831300176X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: China’s Electricity Market Reform and Power Plants Efficiency (2011)
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:eee:eneeco:v:40:y:2013:i:c:p:474-483

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2013.08.003

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().