Scholar's Award: Economics, Politics, and the Design of Electricity Markets

项目概述拟议的研究包括对美国解除管制的电力市场的设计和实施中政治竞争和经济知识的相互关系的研究。因此，它将在经济学的表现和市场制度建设的更古老和更广泛的经济社会学的文献之间架起一座桥梁。通过多种方法的结合，本研究将通过分析经济学家在各自领域的工作来重建现有电力市场的设计过程，即电力放松管制的政治领域，然后考虑在这两个领域形成的政治联盟。新电力市场的最终配置将与这一科学和政治进程同时相关。将确定参与电力市场设计领域的经济学家，并收集他们的科学地位、机构配置、与政府和私营部门客户的关系等数据，以便将他们置于该领域的整体结构中。在这些人中，大约有30-40人将接受开放式面试，涉及他们的职业生涯以及他们对电力市场设计的关键争议的立场。数据也将收集在这一领域的市场设计的政治，通过确定主要利益相关的有组织的代表，收集第一手和第二手的材料，并采访来自行业，政府和消费者团体的关键人物。更广泛的影响本研究将通过将近几十年来普遍存在于市场式放松管制中的对经济专家作用的认识整合到对市场制度构建的社会学理解中，为科学和技术研究以及经济社会学的一般知识做出贡献。

Project SummaryThe proposed research consists of a study of the interrelation of political competition andeconomic knowledge in the design and implementation of deregulated electricity marketsin the U.S. INTELLECTUAL MERIT It will therefore bridge the literature on the performativity of economics and the older and broader economic sociology of the construction of market institutions.Using a combination of methods, the research will reconstruct the process by whichexisting electricity markets were designed by analyzing the work of economists withintheir field, the field of politics over electricity deregulation, and then considering thepolitical coalitions that are formed across these two domains. The eventual configurationof the new electricity markets will be related to this simultaneously scientific andpolitical process. Economists involved in the area of the design of electricity marketswill be identified, and data will be collected on their scientific standing, institutionallocation, ties to government and private-sector clients, in order to locate them in anoverall structure of this field. Of these, roughly 30-40 will be subjects of open-endedinterviews dealing with their professional careers and their stances on the keycontroversies of the design of electricity markets. Data will also be collected on thepolitics of market design in this area, by identifying organized representatives of themajor interests involved, collecting primary and secondary materials on them, andinterviewing key players from industry, government, and consumer groups. BROADER IMPACTS The research will contribute to general knowledge in science and technology studies, aswell as economic sociology, by integrating an awareness of the role of economic experts,pervasive in the market-style deregulation of recent decades, into the sociologicalunderstanding of the construction of market institutions.