We discuss the lessons that can be gleaned from the experience with electricity restructuring to date. The gains from restructuring are most likely to occur through improvement in the efficiency and prudency of long-term investment, but these benefits will be very difficult to measure. Though restructuring could have near term benefits in the efficiency of production and consumption, concerns with the efficiency of decentralized dispatch and the exercise of market power make it at least as likely that restructuring will not benefit society in the short run. We argue that electricity is especially vulnerable to the exercise of market power, even by firms with relatively small market shares, so there will be continued need for regulatory oversight in these markets, at least until there is much more real-time demand responsiveness. Thus, restructuring in electricity markets is not now, and is unlikely to be, synonymous with deregulation.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)