EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Utility price regulation and time inconsistency: comparisons with monetary policy

Paul Levine (), Jon Stern and Francesc Trillas

Oxford Economic Papers, 2005, vol. 57, issue 3, 447-478

Abstract: We examine the hold-up problem of price regulation and compare it with the monetary policy credibility problem. For both, reputational solutions are possible provided that the policymaker is sufficiently far-sighted, but the hold-up problem in regulation turns out to be more serious than the inflation bias problem in monetary policy. Even with far-sighted regulators, a reputational equilibrium with optimal investment is undermined if capital depreciates slowly and consumer demand increases slowly. These results make the Rogoff-delegation solution to the regulatory commitment problem especially attractive. The paper concludes with a short discussion linking these results to the empirical literature on utility regulatory regimes. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpi021 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:oxecpp:v:57:y:2005:i:3:p:447-478

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:57:y:2005:i:3:p:447-478