Privately-owned utilities in 19th century Western Australia

Malcolm Abbott

Utilities Policy, 2023, vol. 84, issue C

Abstract: The issue of whether network-based public utilities should be government or privately owned has been debated in most countries. The Australian experience is interesting as the various states of that country have seen different shifts in ownership over time. The shift towards government control of the utilities in the state of Western Australia took place at a comparatively later date than in the other Australian states. In this paper, the issue of why private entities initially dominated the utility sector in Western Australia is examined. The state's small size, low income, and Crown colony status, consequently limited ability to borrow, were all found to have contributed.

Keywords: Public utilities; Private ownership; Government ownership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L92 L94 L95 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957178723001303
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:juipol:v:84:y:2023:i:c:s0957178723001303

DOI: 10.1016/j.jup.2023.101618

Access Statistics for this article

Utilities Policy is currently edited by Beecher, Janice

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