Empirical Studies of Regulated Industries-Accomplishment Based Renewal

监管行业的实证研究——基于成就的更新

• 批准号: 9618228
• 负责人: Frank Wolak
• 金额: $ 21.26万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1997
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1997-03-15 至 2001-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9618228&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Empirical; Studies; Regulated; Industries; Accomplishment

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.

摘要目前，世界各国的电信、电力、供水和邮政等网络行业正在进行重组和私有化。虽然希望提高这些行业的运作效率是共同的目标，但为了实现这一共同目标，采取了许多非常不同的战略。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，以便就这些工业私有化和改组的最佳过程达成共识。本研究有三个主要目标：(1)扩展可用于分析受监管行业中企业和消费者行为的实证方法；(2)开发和实施监管对企业行为影响的实证模型；(3)运用这些方法和其他方法来确定如何进行重组，以实现消费者的最大利益。这项工作将使用这些新的实证方法分析电信、电力、水交付和邮政交付服务行业的运作。电讯研究将集中于电讯服务的家庭需求，而非总需求；这一分析很重要，因为关于最佳结构调整的争论往往集中在其对特定人口群体（如老年人和穷人）的影响上。我的研究将开发和实施应用计量经济学方法，扩大技术的适用性范围，以分析某些商品零消费的消费者需求。对电信服务需求中的零消费进行适当核算是必要的，因为许多家庭不消费任何一种特定的电信服务。例子包括本地和长途电话服务以及有线电视服务。在分析家庭一级需求时出现的另一个普遍问题是缺乏关于个别家庭所面临的具体价格的资料。因此，这项工作还将发展和实施一些技术，将以家庭特征为条件的估计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讯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电力市场的实际运作，以确定所谓的“竞争性”电力市场的设计对价格的影响。要分析的市场包括英格兰和威尔士电力市场以及北池（北欧电力市场）。本研究将制定和估计英格兰和威尔士市场上两个大型生产商的投标行为的结构性计量经济学模型，以恢复对每个公司潜在成本函数的估计。这些成本函数估计将用于确定替代市场规则和结构对市场定价的影响。邮政递送服务的研究涉及由于这种商品的相对价格的变化和替代技术的日益可用性而引起的家庭一级需求模式的变化。所建议的工作将分解出由于特定的竞争技术（如电子邮件和传真机）而取代邮政递送服务的维度。这项工作还将开发替代计量经济学方法来分析不经常购买的产品的需求。这项工作的最后方面将研究如何恢复邮政交付服务的生产结构和美国邮政全要素生产率的增长率，以一种考虑邮政费率设定过程影响的方式。