Have Consumers Benefited from the Reforms in the Electricity Distribution Sector in Latin America?
The authors bring new empirical evidence on the impact of the choice of ownership and regulatory regime on firms' productivity and prices paid by consumers. They collect the evidence from a sample of electricity distribution companies in Latin...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/10/5215591/consumers-benefited-reforms-electricity-distribution-sector-latin-america http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14230 |
| Summary: | The authors bring new empirical evidence
on the impact of the choice of ownership and regulatory
regime on firms' productivity and prices paid by
consumers. They collect the evidence from a sample of
electricity distribution companies in Latin America. The
authors rely on estimations of labor and operation and
maintenance (O&M) input requirement functions using
alternative econometric approaches. Their main conclusions
are: 1) Private firms perform better (approximately 30
percent) than public firms. 2) The regulatory regimes
matter, so that price-cap regulated firms do better than
rate-of-return regulated firms, and firms regulated under
hybrid regimes have intermediate performance. 3) Private
firms operating under rate of return are at most as
efficient as public firms. 4) There is no clear pattern of
differences in electricity prices according to the
regulatory regime. 5) Final prices fell in general but the
drop did not match the productivity gains, implying that the
operators and the state share some of the gains in the form
of rents and higher tax revenue, respectively. |
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