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La autonomía de los entes reguladores argentinos: Agua y cloacas, gas natural, energía eléctrica y telecomunicaciones

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  • Santiago Urbiztondo
  • Fernando Navajas
  • Daniel Artana

Abstract

Este trabajo presenta un análisis de las relaciones entre el diseño de los Entes Reguladores, el contexto económico en el cual éstos actúan, y la existencia o no de algún tipo de sesgo en sus decisiones. Con ese fin, se examina la ocurrencia o no de distintos factores que se han identificado en el paradigma "principal-agente" tal como éste se aplica a las instituciones políticas en la nueva teoría positiva de la regulación, en cinco casos concretos de la experiencia argentina reciente: los Entes Reguladores de Agua y Cloacas de Buenos Aires, de Transmisión y Distribución de Gas Natural y Energía Eléctrica, y de Telecomunicaciones. Entre los aspectos de diseño, por ejemplo, se considera la composición, estabilidad, financiamiento, supervisión y atribuciones de los Entes, mientras que en lo referido al contexto se analiza el número de empresas reguladas, el grado de competencia entre éstas, la visibilidad de las decisiones del regulador, etc. El número de decisiones regulatorias considerado es relativamente escaso, razón por la cual los resultados obtenidos sólo deben considerarse como preliminares. Las conclusiones que se obtienen de este estudio son que en aquellos casos donde tanto el diseño como el contexto actúan en el mismo sentido, generando el mismo tipo de hipótesis sobre la tendencia en el accionar del regulador, la evidencia observada no contradice lo esperado, y muy por el contrario, tiende a confirmar las hipótesis postuladas. Esto ocurre en los casos de Energía Eléctrica, Gas Natural y Agua y Saneamiento: en los dos primeros, sus decisiones aparecen insesgadas o levemente "oportunistas", mientras que en el último ocurre lo contrario. En el caso de telecomunicaciones, ciertos aspectos del contexto tienden a acentuar los factores de diseño institucional, pero otros elementos del ambiente regulatorio actúan en sentido inverso, con lo cual la predicción teórica es indefinida, aunque en forma previsible en este caso, las decisiones son tomadas en niveles superiores del gobierno. English: The paper looks at the design and context of operation of newly created, formally autonomous, regulatory agencies in different sectors at the federal level in Argentina (including water and sewarage in Buenos Aires, natural gas, electric power and telecommunications). It tries to predict what kind of incentives should be expected of those agencies (i. e. , a more concentrated industry should be expected to be able to better coordinate "transfers" and disclosure of information to the regulator and thus, ceteris paribus, this would imply a consistent bias to favor the industry in the regulator`s use of the discretion enjoyed in interpreting facts to justify decisions, etc. ). The implicit model behind our theory is one of an agent responding to various principals with conflicting objetives, where the principals are less informed than the agent but offer "transfers" linked to results to help the agents internalize their objectives. We then look at actual decisions taken by those agencies (the sample is small, but to our knowledge, unbiased) to see if those expected biases do happen. We conclude preliminarily that they do happen, and thus that design and context of operation of regulatory agencies, all of them sharing the same institutional foundations of the same country at the same historic period, are important for agency behavior (which should be expected, but we do not confirm, impacts upon the regulated firms´ behavior in terms of investment, disclousure of information, cost minimization, etc. ).

Suggested Citation

  • Santiago Urbiztondo & Fernando Navajas & Daniel Artana, 1998. "La autonomía de los entes reguladores argentinos: Agua y cloacas, gas natural, energía eléctrica y telecomunicaciones," Research Department Publications 3038, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
  • Handle: RePEc:idb:wpaper:3038
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Manuel A. Abdala, 2001. "Institutions, Contracts and Regulation of Infrastructure in Argentina," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 217-254, November.

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