Regulating Infrastructure: Monopoly, Contracts and Discretion - Softcover

Jose A. Gomes-Ibanez

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674022386 ISBN 13: 9780674022386

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2006

Synopsis

In the 1980s and '90s, many countries turned to the private sector to provide infrastructure and utilities, with the idea that market-based incentives would control costs and improve the quality of essential services. But subsequent debacles raised troubling questions about privatization. This book addresses one of the most vexing of these.

About this title

Review:

Regulating Infrastructure: Monopoly, Contracts, and Discretion is a book that merges the modern economics of the firm with traditional regulatory concerns in an original and provocative way. It is a valuable contribution to the literature that should be read by anyone concerned with redefining regulation for the new century.--Michael E. Levine, Yale Law School

Gómez-Ibáñez uses a rich set of case studies to analyse how and why...different institutional designs are chosen and reformed. The author's range is exceptionally wide: Sri Lanka, the U.S., Britain and Argentina; he tackles telecommunications, railroads, airlines, electricity, buses and water; and spans time periods from the 1950s to today. The result is a remarkable array of examples, information and analyses. In explaining institutional design, he offers a series of fascinating arguments using opportunism and transaction-cost analysis as a starting point rather than as a constraining simplifying theme.-- (06/11/2004)

Synopsis:

In the 1980s and '90s, many countries turned to the private sector to provide infrastructure and utilities, such as gas, telephones, and highways - with the idea that market-based incentives would control costs and improve the quality of essential services. But subsequent debacles including the collapse of California's wholesale electricity market and the bankruptcy of Britain's largest railroad company have raised troubling questions about privatization. This book addresses one of the most vexing of these: how can government fairly and effectively regulate "natural monopolies" - those infrastructure and utility services whose technologies make competition impractical?

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0674022386
• ISBN 13: 9780674022386
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448