The Revealed Preference of Regulatory Menus: Evidence from the Pre-Nationalisation British Gas Industry

Prior to nationalisation British gas undertakings were faced with a choice of three different regulatory schemes linking the price charged for gas with the amount of dividend that could be paid. The three schemes, the maximum price system, the sliding scale and the basic price system possessed varying incentive properties. This paper investigates, empirically, the characteristics of firms under each regime. The multinomial logit results suggest that larger firms with lower unit costs were more likely to opt for regulatory options with more powerful incentive mechanisms.