Testing the regulatory threat hypothesis: Evidence from Sweden

Petyo Bonev, Matthieu Glachant and Magnus Söderberg

Resource and Energy Economics, 2020, vol. 62, issue C

Abstract: This study examines whether threat of stricter regulation influences the pricing behavior of firms. Using data on unregulated Swedish local district heating monopolists, we measure the threat level by the number of customer complaints about prices received by a national board. Exploiting a natural experiment, we find that firms reduce prices when customer complaints increase.

Keywords: Regulatory threat; Monopoly; price setting; spatial interaction; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L12 L43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0928765520300889
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Testing the regulatory threat hypothesis: Evidence from Sweden (2020)
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:resene:v:62:y:2020:i:c:s0928765520300889

DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2020.101182

Access Statistics for this article

Resource and Energy Economics is currently edited by J. F. Shogren and S. Smulders

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