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Rate-of-return Regulation
Rate-of-return regulation is a system for setting the prices charged by government-regulated monopolies, such as public utilities. Its main premise is that monopolies must charge the same price that would ideally prevail in a perfectly competitive market, equal to the efficient costs of production, plus a market-determined rate of return on capital. Rate-of-return regulation has been criticized because it encourages cost-padding and because if the rate is set too high, it encourages regulated firms to adopt capital-labor ratios that are too high. That is known as the Averch–Johnson effect, or simply "gold-plating." Under rate-of-return regulation, regulated monopolies have no incentive to minimize their capital purchases, since prices are set equal to their costs of production. Rate-of-return regulation was dominant in the US for a number of years in the government regulation of utility companies and other natural monopolies. Such companies, if not regulated, could easily charge f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Utility
A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies. Public utilities are meant to supply goods/services that are considered essential; water, gas, electricity, telephone, and other communication systems represent much of the public utility market. The transmission lines used in the transportation of electricity, or natural gas pipelines, have natural monopoly characteristics. If the infrastructure already exists in a given area, minimal benefit is gained through competing. In other words, these industries are characterized by ''economies of scale'' in production. There are many different types of public utilities. Some, especially large companies, offer multiple products, such as electricity and natu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Averch–Johnson Effect
The Averch–Johnson effect is the tendency of Monopoly#Government-granted monopoly, regulated companies to engage in excessive amounts of capital accumulation in order to expand the volume of their profits. If companies' profits to Financial capital, capital ratio is regulated at a certain percentage then there is a strong incentive for companies to over-invest in order to increase profits overall. This investment goes beyond any optimal efficiency point for capital that the company may have calculated as higher profit is almost always desired over and above efficiency. Excessive capital accumulation under rate-of-return regulation is informally known as gold plating. Mathematical derivation Suppose that a regulated firm wishes to maximize its profit:\pi = R(K,L) - wL - rKwhere R(K,L) is the revenue function, K is the firm's capital stock, L is the firm's labor stock, w is the wage rate, and r is the cost of capital. The firm's profit is constrained such that:\sigma = where \sigm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |