Premium
REORGANIZING ELECTRICITY SUPPLY IN NEW ZEALAND: LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES
Author(s) -
MICHAELS ROBERT J.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
contemporary economic policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.454
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1465-7287
pISSN - 1074-3529
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00576.x
Subject(s) - deregulation , monopoly , jurisdiction , competition (biology) , electricity , business , industrial organization , market economy , distribution (mathematics) , electricity retailing , economics , government (linguistics) , mains electricity , electricity market , power (physics) , law , engineering , ecology , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , electrical engineering , mathematics , physics , quantum mechanics , political science , biology
The New Zealand government recently announced a rather far‐reaching policy of deregulation and reorganization of certain governmental entities, including electricity generation and transmission. Electricorp, a state‐owned enterprise whose actions will be subject to a standard of commercial efficiency, has been formed to take over these functions and to sell bulk power at wholesale to localized distribution entities–who then will resell it at retail. Electricorp will be unregulated but subject to antitrust jurisdiction, as will be the distribution entities. Neither Electricorp nor the distributors will have any protected monopoly status. Substantial possibilities exist for competition in both bulk power and retail power markets over the long run, and one has reason to be optimistic that antitrust can deal with the remaining monopoly issues. New Zealand's radical deregulation yields favorable inferences about the outcome of the somewhat slower deregulation of electricity in the United States.