A public-choice model is presented in order to explain the fact that publicly owned electricity utilities rarely price at marginal cost in practice. It is shown that if (1) government revenues are raised through proportional taxes, (2) median income is less than mean income, and (3) the share of...

We develop a model in which two firms from different countries compete on each other domestic market. Each firms is jointly owned by the residents and the government of its country. The extent of the government's stake in the public enterprise is endogenous and it determines the weight given the...

Economists have long advised pricing electricity at marginal cost. In the case of public utilities producing from hydraulic sources, this would ordinarily generate a rent that could be used to finance public projects or to lower taxes. But marginal cost pricing by public utilities is rarely...

Load management programs are used by electric utilities to reduce the amount of reserve capacity that is required in order to meet peak consumption. Although these programs are generally offered to costumers as alternatives to regular service, economic models of their allocative efficiency have...

We compare the economic efficiency of a publicly-owned utility directly controlled by the government with a publicly-owned utility regulated by a public utility commission (PUC). Regulation by a PUC is modelled as a Nash equilibrium of a game between two principals, the government and the PUC,...