We estimate a regulated cost function to examine the contributions of technical change, scale economies, and regulatory bias to productivity growth in an eleven-year, twenty-firm panel of interstate natural gas pipeline companies. We derive the unregulated cost function from the regulated cost...

Rewarding regulated firms based on their relative performance requires benchmarks that reflect how performance is affected by regulation. This paper demonstrates how parametric and nonparametric efficiency measures can be employed to produce benchmarks that account for the effects of regulation....

This paper examines whether having to comply with Phase 1 of Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act, and rate of return regulation, each impacted the rate of total factor productivity (TFP) growth when accounting for the production of good and bad outputs. Phase 1, effective from 1995 to 1999,...

This paper examines whether rate-of return regulation alters the input quantities firms use to produce their selected output level when the corresponding input prices change, in a manner similar to the Le Chatelier principle. More specifically, would the change in a rate regulated firm’s input...

The paper examines how having to comply with Phase 1 of Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act affected production cost and the substitution between fuel and non-fuel (labor, capital) inputs. Phase 1 required firms to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions. Enacting procedures to reduce sulfur...

This paper examines the decomposition of total factor productivity growth for firms subject to regulation, given the production of a bad output. The production of good and bad outputs provides benefits and costs to society. Corporate socially responsible firms recognize the cost to society of...

This paper examines the impact of regulation on a firm’s choice of innovations and on the rate of technical change. Using a 1977–1987 panel of 20 U.S. interstate natural gas pipeline companies, I find that regulation led firms to adopt a technology that augmented (i) noncapital more than...