Empirical Studies of Regulated Industries-Accomplishment Based Renewal

弗兰克·沃拉克 目前，世界各国正在对电信、电力、供水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，人们采取了许多非常不同的战略。 关于网络产业私有化和重组的最佳机制缺乏共识，部分原因是经济学界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。 本研究的目的是得出必要的实证方法，并进行必要的数据分析，以达成共识的私有化和重组这些行业的最佳过程。 本研究有三个主要目标：（1）扩展一套实证方法，可用于分析管制行业中的企业和消费者行为;（2）开发和实施管制对企业行为影响的实证模型;（3）应用这些方法和其他方法来确定应如何进行重组，以实现消费者利益的最大化。 本研究将利用这些新的实证方法，对电信、电力、自来水和邮政等服务业的运营进行分析。 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其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，扩大技术的适用范围，分析消费者需求与零消费的一些商品。 在电信服务需求中适当考虑零消费是必要的，因为许多家庭不消费任何特定的电信服务。 例如本地和长途电话服务以及有线电视服务。 在分析家庭需求时出现的另一个常见问题是缺乏关于单个家庭所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，以将以家庭特征为条件的价格估计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。 对电力工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作情况，以确定所谓“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和诺德联营（北欧电力市场）是需要分析的市场之一。 本研究将制定和估计的结构计量经济学模型的投标行为的两个大生产商在英格兰和威尔士市场，以恢复估计每个公司的基本成本函数。 然后，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设定的价格的影响。 邮政递送服务研究关注的是由于这种商品的相对价格的变化和替代技术的日益可用而引起的家庭一级需求模式的变化。 拟议的工作将打破替代的规模远离邮政递送服务，由于具体的竞争技术，如电子邮件和传真机。 这项工作还将开发其他经济计量方法，用于分析不经常购买的产品的需求。 这项工作的最后一个方面将研究如何恢复邮政递送服务的生产结构和USPS全要素生产率的增长率，以说明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.