Public Utility Regulation and Bond Ratings

John P Formby, Banamber Mishra and Paul D Thistle

Public Choice, 1995, vol. 84, issue 1-2, 119-36

Abstract: This paper investigates the extent to which political factors, which vary across state Public Utility Commissions, affect electric utility bond ratings. The paper focuses on the effects of the commissioner selection method (election or appointment) and other politically determined variables on bond ratings of privately owned and regulated electric utilities. The paper develops a generalization of ordered logit that allows the latent risk measure to have a skewed and thick-tailed distribution. The distributional assumption underlying the standard logit model is strongly rejected. Empirically, both political variables and financial variables are determinants of electric utility bond ratings, and election of the PUC has a strong negative effect on bond ratings. Copyright 1995 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:kap:pubcho:v:84:y:1995:i:1-2:p:119-36

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().