Governance transformations through regulations in the electricity sector: the Dutch case

Albert Jolink and Eva Niesten

International Review of Applied Economics, 2008, vol. 22, issue 4, 499-508

Abstract: The liberalization and re-regulation of the European electricity industries have been driven by the European Commission's attempt to create one internal competitive electricity market. The European electricity directives require the vertical separation of the European electricity firms to enable the introduction of market forms of governance. Transaction cost economics argues for the efficiency of vertical integration in this industry on the basis of the attributes of the transactions that are characterized by a great degree of asset-specificity and uncertainty. This paper poses the questions whether regulation has led to the prospected outcome of governance transformations to the market and whether and how the attributes of transactions adapt to the altered forms of governance. We answer these questions by analyzing the empirics of the Dutch electricity industry. We found that the market forms of governance did not emerge, the attributes of the transactions are relatively inert and that regulation at most has led to second-best governance solutions.

Keywords: regulation; transaction cost economics; liberalization; electricity industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02692170802137695 (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:taf:irapec:v:22:y:2008:i:4:p:499-508

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIRA20

DOI: 10.1080/02692170802137695

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Applied Economics is currently edited by Professor Malcolm Sawyer

More articles in International Review of Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().