This paper analyses the regulatory attitudes to asset valuation in the twentieth century. It focuses in particular on the US experience from <italic>Smith v Ames 169 US 466 (1898)</italic> to <italic>Federal Power Commission v Hope Natural Gas 320 US 591 (</italic><italic>1944</italic>) and on the experience in the UK in last two decades of the...

This article analyses government-industry relations in the nationalised British gas industry in the 1950s and 1960s. New archival research suggests that the government exercised a relatively benign influence on the gas industry in this period. The gas industry was provided with adequate funds...