Desde principios de los años noventa se ha presenciado un proceso de desregulación de distintos mercados de servicios tradicionalmente conocidos como servicios públicos, entre ellos los energéticos (gas y electricidad), que se ha verificado en diversas partes del mundo y que aún continúa....

A partir de la sanción de la Ley de Emergencia Económica y Social, N° 25.561, el Estado Argentino decidió pesificar las tarifas de los servicios públicos que en sus Contratos de Concesión estaban expresadas en dólares estadounidenses a la relación US$1 igual a $1, y prohibir su...

Following the process initiated by Chile in the early 1980s, most countries in South America have undergone deep transformations in their electric industries. In this new playing field, the comparison of the relative efficiency of several regional monopolies seems to be a potentially valuable...

The paper develops a cost frontier model of gas distribution and estimates it on data for gas distribution companies of Argentina. Efficiency measures are an important tool for regulators, showing how much a firm can rise its output without using more inputs. In Argentina, the Regulatory...

In this paper we use a stochastic frontier approach to analyse the technical change in the post-privatisation period in the gas distribution sector in Argentina. We found that there are both a catching up effect and a shift in the frontier that are showing that the sector as a whole improved its...

In this paper we develop a model to understand the interactions between optimal regulation and external credit constraints. If a big proportion of the regulated sector is owned by foreign investors, a credit-constrained country who wants to send profits abroad has to generate enough surplus in...

There is a growing recognition of the importance of competition for the success of market economies, and of the need for government action both to maintain competition and to regulate industries where competition remains limited. In the area of telecommunications, upon which I shall focus today,...

Worldwide privatization of the telecommunications industry and the introduction of competition in the sector, altogether with the ever-increasing rate of technological advance in telecommunications, raise new and critical challenges for regulation. For matters of pricing, universal service...

Regulators must understand basic principles of regulation, to explain with credibility their decissions, to asess the universality of the proposals, to develop new solutions, etc. For the relevance of economic theory, economists must fight to include in their frameworks enough constraints, as...

During the last years, there has been an increasing concern about the importance of competition policy as a mean to increase efficiency in the allocation of resources and the supply and variety of goods and services. Competition between firms provides powerful incentives for cost minimization...