IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-01737570.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Regulatory behaviour under threat of court reversal: Theory and evidence from the Swedish electricity market

Author

Listed:
  • Magnus Söderberg

    (CERNA i3 - Centre d'économie industrielle i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, SDU - University of Southern Denmark)

  • Flavio Menezes

    (UQ [All campuses : Brisbane, Dutton Park Gatton, Herston, St Lucia and other locations] - The University of Queensland)

  • Miguel Santolino

    (University of Barcelona)

Abstract

This paper investigates how regulators influence outcomes in regulated markets when their decisions are subject to the threat of court review. We develop a theoretical model that provides a number of behavioural implications when (i) all regulators' dislike having their decisions overturned by courts, (ii) inexperienced regulators care more about not having their decisions overturned than experienced regulators, and (iii) experienced regulators also care about consumer surplus. The theoretical implications are tested using a database of Swedish regulatory decisions from the electricity distribution sector. We provide empirical evidence that inexperienced regulators are more likely to set higher regulated prices than experienced regulators, and as the complexity of the case increases, there are on average more overturned decisions and higher prices for inexperienced regulators. The links between experience, complexity and regulatory outcomes are both statistically and economically significant. Simulations show that if those decisions that were not appealed had been appealed, then the court would have lowered the prices by 10% on average.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Magnus Söderberg & Flavio Menezes & Miguel Santolino, 2018. "Regulatory behaviour under threat of court reversal: Theory and evidence from the Swedish electricity market," Post-Print hal-01737570, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01737570
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2018.03.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2003. "The Rise of the Regulatory State," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 401-425, June.
    2. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    3. Shleifer, Andrei, 2012. "The Failure of Judges and the Rise of Regulators," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262016958, December.
    4. Lucas W. Davis & Erich Muehlegger, 2010. "Do Americans consume too little natural gas? An empirical test of marginal cost pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(4), pages 791-810, December.
    5. Reb, Jochen & Connolly, Terry, 2009. "Myopic regret avoidance: Feedback avoidance and learning in repeated decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 182-189, July.
    6. Canice Prendergast, 2007. "The Motivation and Bias of Bureaucrats," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 180-196, March.
    7. Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2008. "Judicial Fact Discretion," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 1-35, January.
    8. George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, 1984. "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, January.
    9. Robert Breunig & Flavio M. Menezes, 2012. "Testing Regulatory Consistency," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(1), pages 60-74, January.
    10. Ludivine Garside & Paul A. Grout & Anna Zalewska, 2013. "Does Experience Make You ‘Tougher’? Evidence From Competition Law," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 474-490, May.
    11. Richard A. Posner, 1974. "Theories of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 5(2), pages 335-358, Autumn.
    12. Robert Breunig & Jeremy Hornby & Scott Stacey & Flavio Menezes, 2006. "Price Regulation in Australia: How Consistent Has It Been?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(256), pages 67-76, March.
    13. Peltzman, Sam, 1976. "Toward a More General Theory of Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 211-240, August.
    14. Erin B. Kaheny & Susan Brodie Haire & Sara C. Benesh, 2008. "Change over Tenure: Voting, Variance, and Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 490-503, July.
    15. Russell Smyth & Magnus Söderberg, 2010. "Public interest versus regulatory capture in the Swedish electricity market," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 292-312, December.
    16. Christopher R. Knittel, 2003. "Market Structure and the Pricing of Electricity and Natural Gas," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 167-191, June.
    17. Paul Simshauser, 2014. "From First Place to Last: The National Electricity Market's Policy-Induced ‘Energy Market Death Spiral’," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 47(4), pages 540-562, December.
    18. Camerer, Colin & Weigelt, Keith, 1988. "Experimental Tests of a Sequential Equilibrium Reputation Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(1), pages 1-36, January.
    19. Reb, Jochen & Connolly, Terry, 2009. "Erratum to "Myopic regret avoidance: Feedback avoidance and learning in repeated decision making" [Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 109 (2009) 182-189]," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 65-65, September.
    20. Rui J. P. De Figueiredo & Geoff Edwards, 2007. "Does Private Money Buy Public Policy? Campaign Contributions and Regulatory Outcomes in Telecommunications," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 547-576, September.
    21. Mountain, Bruce & Littlechild, Stephen, 2010. "Comparing electricity distribution network revenues and costs in New South Wales, Great Britain and Victoria," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5770-5782, October.
    22. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    23. Austin Nichols & Mark E Schaffer, 2007. "Clustered standard errors in Stata," United Kingdom Stata Users' Group Meetings 2007 07, Stata Users Group.
    24. Clare Leaver, 2009. "Bureaucratic Minimal Squawk Behavior: Theory and Evidence from Regulatory Agencies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 572-607, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roy Gava, 2022. "Challenging the regulators: Enforcement and appeals in financial regulation," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(4), pages 1265-1282, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Flavio Menezes & Magnus Söderberg & Miguel Santolino, 2012. "Regulatory behaviour under threat of court reversal," Discussion Papers Series 472, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    2. Simshauser, Paul & Akimov, Alexandr, 2019. "Regulated electricity networks, investment mistakes in retrospect and stranded assets under uncertainty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 117-133.
    3. Antonio Estache & Liam Wren-Lewis, 2011. "Anti-Corruption Policy in Theories of Sector Regulation," Chapters, in: Susan Rose-Ackerman & Tina Søreide (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, Volume Two, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Francesc Trillas Jané, 2016. "Behavioral Regulatory Agencies," Working Papers wpdea1606, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    5. Mountain, Bruce R., 2019. "Ownership, regulation, and financial disparity: The case of electricity distribution in Australia," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Rod Tyers, 2015. "Service Oligopolies and Australia's Economy-Wide Performance," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 48(4), pages 333-356, December.
    7. Jiang, Haiyan & Hu, Yuanyuan & Zhang, Honghui & Zhou, Donghua, 2018. "Benefits of Downward Earnings Management and Political Connection: Evidence from Government Subsidy and Market Pricing," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 255-273.
    8. Anna Dimitrova, 2021. "Captured Energy Market Operation and Liberalization Efforts," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 7, pages 19-31.
    9. Simshauser, P., 2020. "Merchant utilities and boundaries of the firm: vertical integration in energy-only markets," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2039, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Rafael Di Tella & Robert MacCulloch, 2009. "Why Doesn't Capitalism Flow to Poor Countries?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(1 (Spring), pages 285-332.
    11. Carrión-Flores, Carmen E. & Innes, Robert & Sam, Abdoul G., 2013. "Do voluntary pollution reduction programs (VPRs) spur or deter environmental innovation? Evidence from 33/50," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 444-459.
    12. Ujhelyi, Gergely, 2017. "A köztisztviselői törvények hatása a kormányzati kiadásokra [The effects of civil-service legislation on government spending]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 885-914.
    13. Djankov, Simeon & Glaeser, Edward & La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "The new comparative economics," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 595-619, December.
    14. Alejandro Castaneda, 2020. "Cronies, Rents, and Import Licenses: Non-tariff Trade Controls throughout Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) in Mexico," Tiempo y Economía, Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, vol. 7(2), pages 90-118, July.
    15. Connelly, J. Thomas & Limpaphayom, Piman & Nguyen, Hien T. & Tran, Thanh D., 2017. "A tale of two cities: Economic development, corporate governance and firm value in Vietnam," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 102-123.
    16. Fumitoshi Mizutani & Eri Nakamura, 2019. "Regulation, public interest, and private interest: an empirical investigation of firms in Japan," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1433-1454, April.
    17. Petar Stankov, 2017. "Economic Freedom and Welfare Before and After the Crisis," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-62497-6, September.
    18. Pirrong, Stephen Craig, 1995. "The Self-Regulation of Commodity Exchanges: The Case of Market Manipulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(1), pages 141-206, April.
    19. Briglauer, Wolfgang & Camarda, Enrico Maria & Vogelsang, Ingo, 2019. "Path dependencies versus efficiencies in regulation: Evidence from “old” and “new” broadband markets in the EU," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(8), pages 1-1.
    20. Contractor, Farok J. & Dangol, Ramesh & Nuruzzaman, N. & Raghunath, S., 2020. "How do country regulations and business environment impact foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows?," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(2).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • C34 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01737570. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.