Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:09:39.806Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2022

Emmanuelle Auriol
Affiliation:
Toulouse School of Economics
Claude Crampes
Affiliation:
Toulouse School of Economics
Antonio Estache
Affiliation:
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Get access

Summary

Regulated services represent between 14% and 26% of households’ expenditures in all economies and are costly to operate and maintain. They demand heavy investments for extensive periods of time. Funding them is a challenge: investment needs in infrastructure average 1– 2% of GDP, and 4– 8% of GDP in developing economies. The technological characteristics of these services justify their production by monopolies or quasi-monopolies. Moreover, their demand being inelastic, there is a risk of abuse of market power, which drives the original case for the regulation of the price of these services. When setting them, the regulator needs to address multiple goals: financial or fiscal viability, efficiency, equity, institutional viability and political viability. It implies trade-offs, which reflects the fact that regulation is not only an economic decision but also a political one. It needs to account for the specific institutional context in which the decision is taken. For many of the key decisions, economic theory provides useful guidelines, but in some dimensions, theory still has some way to go to become fully operational in the practice of regulation. This book aims to bridge part of this gap.

Type
Chapter
Information
Regulating Public Services
Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice
, pp. 1 - 31
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×