The Effect of Deregulation on Firm Leverage and Strategic Behavior: Evidence from U.S. Electricity Industry

An-Sing Chen () and Pham Tuan Anh ()
Additional contact information
An-Sing Chen: National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
Pham Tuan Anh: National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan and Nguyen Tat Thanh University, Vietnam

Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), 2019, vol. 69, issue 5, 489-507

Abstract: We examine the relationship between financial leverage, competition, and the strategic behavior of U.S. electricity firms under the dynamic GMM model framework. The GMM provides a framework to address the endogeneity in the leverage-competition relationship. We find that electricity deregulation induces private firms to increase financial leverage. Large and small levered firms exhibit different behaviors under the higher competitive conditions resulting from deregulation exogenous shocks. Highly levered large firms apply aggressive strategies through increasing the investment activities but slightly decreasing their retail prices, resulting in lower profit margins but drastically gaining more market share. On the other hand, small firms with higher leverage follow survival strategies to maintain their customer base at the expense of profit margins by investing more and charging higher prices after deregulation.

Keywords: electricity deregulation; financial leverage; competitive level; market shares; strategic behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 C58 D22 G30 O51 Q40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journal.fsv.cuni.cz/mag/article/show/id/1445 (application/pdf)

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:fau:fauart:v:69:y:2019:i:5:p:489-507

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver) from Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Natalie Svarcova ().