Empirical Studies of Regulated Industries-Accomplishment Based Renewal

目前，世界各国都在对电信、电力、水务和邮政等网络行业进行重组和私有化。虽然提高这些行业的运营效率是共同的目标，但为了实现这一共同目标，采取了许多截然不同的战略。对网络产业私有化和重组的最佳机制缺乏共识，部分原因是经济学专业内部对网络产业的生产和需求结构以及监管过程对企业行为的影响缺乏共识。这项研究的目的是得出必要的经验方法，并进行必要的数据分析，以便就这些行业私有化和重组的最佳进程达成共识。这项研究有三个主要目标：(1)扩展可用于分析受管制行业的企业和消费者行为的经验方法集；(2)开发和实施监管对企业行为影响的经验模型；(3)应用这些方法和其他方法来确定应该如何进行重组，以实现消费者的最大利益。这项工作将使用这些新的经验方法来分析电信、电力、水递送和邮政递送服务行业的运营。电信研究的重点将是家庭一级对电信服务的需求，而不是总需求；这一分析很重要，因为关于最佳结构调整的辩论往往侧重于它对老年人和穷人等特定人口群体的影响。我的研究将开发和实施应用计量经济学方法，扩大在某些商品零消费的情况下分析消费者需求的技术的适用范围。在电信服务需求中适当地计算零消费是必要的，因为许多家庭不消费任何一种特定的电信服务。例如本地和长途电话服务，以及有线电视服务。在分析家庭一级的需求时出现的另一个普遍问题是，缺乏关于个别家庭面临的具体价格的信息。因此，这项工作还将开发和实施技术，以便根据家庭特征将估计的价格分布纳入家庭一级的需求估计。这使我们能够更准确地确定拟议的电信政策变化对消费和消费者福利的影响。对电力行业的研究将分析世界各地几个重组后的电力市场的实际运行情况，以确定所谓的“竞争性”电力市场的设计对价格的影响。英格兰和威尔士电力市场以及北欧电力市场(Nord Pool)都在需要分析的市场之列。本研究将构建和估计英格兰和威尔士市场上两大生产商竞价行为的结构计量经济学模型，以恢复对每个公司潜在成本函数的估计。然后，这些成本函数估计值将被用来确定替代市场规则和结构对市场制定的价格的影响。邮递服务研究关注的是由于这种物品的相对价格的变化和替代技术的增加而引起的家庭一级需求的变化模式。拟议的工作将打破由于特定的竞争技术，如电子邮件和传真机，取代邮政递送服务的维度。这项工作还将开发用于分析不常购买产品的需求的替代计量经济学方法。这项工作的最后几个方面将研究如何恢复邮政递送服务的生产结构和美国邮政全要素生产率的增长率，以考虑到邮政费率制定过程的影响。

Wolak, Frank Abstract Currently, network industries such as telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery are being re-structured and privatized in countries all over the world. Although the desire to improve the efficiency of operation of these industries is the common goal, many very different strategies are pursued in an attempt to achieve this common goal. The lack of consensus about the optimal mechanism for privatization and re-structuring of network industries is in part a result of the absence of a consensus within the economics profession about the structure of production and demand in network industries and the impact of the regulatory process on firm behavior. The purpose of this research is to derive the necessary empirical methods and undertake the data analysis required to move to a consensus on the optimal process for privatizing and re-structuring these industries. This research has to three major goals: (1) to expand the set of empirical methods available to analyze firm and consumer behavior in regulated industries; (2) to develop and implement empirical models of the impact of regulation on firm behavior; (3) to apply these and other methodologies to determine how restructuring should take place to achieve the maximum benefits to consumers. This work will analyze the operation of the telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services industries using these new empirical methodologies. The telecommunications research will focus on household-level demand for telecommunications services rather than aggregate demand; this analysis is important because the debate over optimal re-structuring often focuses on its impact on specific demographic groups such as the elderly and poor. My research will develop and implement applied econometric methodologies which expand the range of applicability of techniques for analyzing consumer demand with zero consumption of some goods. Properly accounting for zero consumption in the demand for telecommunications services is necessary because many households do not consume any of a particular telecommunications service. Examples include local and long-distance telephone service and cable television service. Another common problem which arises in the analysis of household-level demand is the lack of information on the specific prices faced by an individual household. Hence, this work will also develop and implement techniques for incorporating estimated distributions of prices, conditional on household characteristics, into the household-level demand estimation. This allows us to more accurately determine the consumption and consumer welfare implications of proposed telecommunications policy changes. The research on the electricity industry will analyze the actual operation of several restructured electricity markets around the world to determine the impact of the design of a so-called `competitive` electricity market on prices. The England and Wales electricity market and Nord Pool (the Nordic Power Market) are among the markets to be analyzed. This research will formulate and estimate a structural econometric model of bidding behavior by the two large producers in the England and Wales market in order to recover estimates of each firm's underlying cost function. These cost function estimates will then be used to determine the impact of alternative market rules and structures on the prices set by the market. The postal delivery services research is concerned with the changing pattern of household-level demand due to changes in the relative price of this good and the increasing availability of substitute technologies. The proposed work will break out the dimensions of the substitution away from postal delivery services due to the specific competing technologies, such as e-mail and FAX machines. This work will also develop alternative econometric methods for analyzing the demand for infrequently purchased products. The final aspects of this work will study how to recover the structure of production of postal delivery services and the rate of growth of USPS total factor productivity in a manner that accounts for the impact of the postal rate-setting process.