New approaches to regulating utilities

The importance of an adequate normative framework in Public Service Enterprises is crucial when the management of failures of governmental institutions have been derived in schemes of corporatisation, privatization and promotion of the competitive forces, all of which do not guarantee economic success by themselves. On these grounds, the basic regulation goals, price control and competence, are being approached. To star with the institucional problem of regulation and the search of an equilibrium between incentives and directives are studied. Afterwards, the implications of price control (price cap), price schemes growing worldwide and recently applied in Colombia, and the implementation of alternatives inside the same trend are analyzed. At the same time, we keep dealing with the entrance problem, the potential competence and disputable markets in order to offer policy recommendations to the regulatory institutions.