IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/22254.html

Ownership and the Price of Residential Electricity: Evidence from the United States, 1935-1940

Author

Listed:
  • Carl T. Kitchens
  • Taylor Jaworski

Abstract

In this paper, we quantify the difference between public and private prices of residential electricity immediately before and after major federal reforms in the 1930s and 1940s. Previous research found that public prices were lower in a sample of large, urban markets. Based on new data covering over 15,000 markets and nearly all electricity generated for residential consumption, we find the difference between public and private prices was small in 1935 and negligible in 1940 for typical levels of monthly consumption. These findings are consistent with a market for ownership that helped to discipline electricity prices during this period. That is, private rents were mitigated by the threat that municipalities would use public ownership to respond to constituent complaints and public rents were limited by electoral competition and the growth of private provision.

Suggested Citation

  • Carl T. Kitchens & Taylor Jaworski, 2016. "Ownership and the Price of Residential Electricity: Evidence from the United States, 1935-1940," NBER Working Papers 22254, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22254
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22254.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peltzman, Sam, 1971. "Pricing in Public and Private Enterprises: Electric Utilities in the United States," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 109-147, April.
    2. Faulhaber, Gerald R, 1975. "Cross-Subsidization: Pricing in Public Enterprises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 966-977, December.
    3. Kitchens, Carl, 2014. "The Role of Publicly Provided Electricity in Economic Development: The Experience of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1929–1955," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 389-419, June.
    4. Werner Troesken, 2003. "Municipalizing American Waterworks, 1897--1915," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 373-400, October.
    5. Min, Brian & Golden, Miriam, 2014. "Electoral cycles in electricity losses in India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 619-625.
    6. John C. Panzar & Robert D. Willig, 1977. "Free Entry and the Sustainability of Natural Monopoly," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(1), pages 1-22, Spring.
    7. Jarrell, Gregg A, 1978. "The Demand for State Regulation of the Electric Utility Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 269-295, October.
    8. Hausman, William J. & Neufeld, John L., 2002. "The Market for Capital and the Origins of State Regulation of Electric Utilities in the United States," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(4), pages 1050-1073, December.
    9. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Min, Brian & Uppal, Yogesh, 2015. "Election cycles and electricity provision: Evidence from a quasi-experiment with Indian special elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 64-73.
    10. Paul L. Joskow, 1997. "Restructuring, Competition and Regulatory Reform in the U.S. Electricity Sector," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 119-138, Summer.
    11. Nancy L. Rose & Paul L. Joskow, 1990. "The Diffusion of New Technologies: Evidence from the Electric Utility Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(3), pages 354-373, Autumn.
    12. Christopher R. Knittel, 2006. "The Adoption Of State Electricity Regulation: The Role Of Interest Groups," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 201-222, June.
    13. Bellows, John & Miguel, Edward, 2009. "War and local collective action in Sierra Leone," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1144-1157, December.
    14. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2005. "Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 151-184, February.
    15. William M. Emmons, 1997. "Implications Of Ownership, Regulation, And Market Structure For Performance: Evidence From The U.S. Electric Utility Industry Before And After The New Deal," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 279-289, May.
    16. 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.
    17. Werner Troesken, 2006. "Regime Change and Corruption. A History of Public Utility Regulation," NBER Chapters, in: Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History, pages 259-281, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Koichiro Ito, 2014. "Do Consumers Respond to Marginal or Average Price? Evidence from Nonlinear Electricity Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 537-563, February.
    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. Vincent Geloso & Germain Belzile, 2018. "Electricity in Quebec before Nationalization, 1919 to 1939," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 46(1), pages 101-119, March.
    2. Landgraf, Steven W., 2020. "Entry threats from municipal broadband Internet and impacts on private provider quality," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    3. Leroux, Anke & Söderberg, Magnus, 2023. "Network Regulation under electoral competition," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    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. Thomas Lyon & Nathan Wilson, 2012. "Capture or contract? The early years of electric utility regulation," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 225-241, December.
    2. Robert Michaels, 2008. "Electricity Market Monitoring and the Economics of Regulation," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 32(3), pages 197-216, May.
    3. Savitski, David W., 2003. "Ownership selection in the US electric utility industry," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 203-223, December.
    4. Craig, J. Dean, 2016. "Motivations for market restructuring: Evidence from U.S. electricity deregulation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 162-167.
    5. Baltrunaite, Audinga & Bello, Piera & Casarico, Alessandra & Profeta, Paola, 2014. "Gender quotas and the quality of politicians," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 62-74.
    6. Todd Pugatch, 2014. "Safety valve or sinkhole? Vocational schooling in South Africa," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-31, December.
    7. Kahsay, Goytom Abraha & Medhin, Haileselassie, 2020. "Leader turnover and forest management outcomes: Micro-level evidence from Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    8. David Encaoua & Michel Moreaux, 1987. "L'analyse théorique des problèmes de tarification et d'allocation des coûts dans les télécommunications," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 38(2), pages 375-414.
    9. Maarten Voors & Eleonora Nillesen & Philip Verwimp & Erwin Bulte & Robert Lensink & Daan van Soest, 2010. "Does Conflict affect Preferences? Results from Field Experiments in Burundi," HiCN Working Papers 71, Households in Conflict Network.
    10. Jeffrey R. Bloem, 2021. "Aspirations and investments in rural Myanmar," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(4), pages 727-752, December.
    11. Çetin, Tamer & Yasin Eryigit, Kadir, 2013. "The economic effects of government regulation: Evidence from the New York taxicab market," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 169-177.
    12. Prakash, Nishith & Rockmore, Marc & Uppal, Yogesh, 2019. "Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    13. Yvrande-Billon, Anne & Menard, Claude, 2005. "Institutional constraints and organizational changes: the case of the British rail reform," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 675-699, April.
    14. Vellore Arthi & James Fenske, 2018. "Polygamy and child mortality: Historical and modern evidence from Nigeria’s Igbo," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 97-141, March.
    15. Briggs, Ryan C., 2021. "Power to which people? Explaining how electrification targets voters across party rotations in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    16. Carmine Guerriero, 2016. "Endogenous Property Rights," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 313-358.
    17. Vincent Iehlé, 2004. "Stable pricing in monopoly and equilibrium-core of cost games," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques b05023, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    18. Spiller, Pablo T., 2013. "Transaction cost regulation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 232-242.
    19. Joseph Flavian Gomes, 2020. "The health costs of ethnic distance: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 195-226, June.
    20. Berha, Andu & Mohapatra, Sandeep, 2025. "Distributional effects of energy costs: Does firm ownership structure matter?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:22254. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.