Regulating mergers and acquisitions of U.S. electric utilities : : industry concentration and corporate complication / / Scott Hempling.
"What happens when electric utility monopolies pursue their acquisition interests--undisciplined by competition, and insufficiently disciplined by the regulators responsible for replicating competition? Since the mid-1980s, mergers and acquisitions of U.S. electric utilities have halved the num...
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| Place / Publishing House: | Cheltenham, England : : Edward Elgar Publishing,, 2020. |
| Year of Publication: | 2020 |
| Language: | English |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (234 pages) |
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Table of Contents:
- Part I: The transactions : sales of public franchises for private gain, undisciplined by competition, producing a concentrated, complicated industry no one intended Diverse strategies, common purpose : selling public franchises for private gain
- Missing from utility merger markets : competitive discipline
- The structural result : concentration and complication no one intended
- Part II: The harms : economic waste, misallocation of gain, competitive distortion, customer risks and costs
- Suboptimal couplings cause economic waste
- Merging parties divert franchise value from the customers who created it
- Mergers can distort competition : market power, anticompetitive conduct and unearned advantage
- Hierarchical conflict harms customers
- Part III: Regulatory lapses : visionlessness, reactivity, deference
- Regulators' unreadiness : checklists instead of visions
- Promoters' strategy : frame mergers as simple, positive, inevitable
- How do regulators respond? : by ceding leadership, underestimating negatives and accepting minor positives
- Explanations : passion gaps and mental shortcuts
- Part IV: Solutions : regulatory posture, practices and infrastructure
- Regulatory posture and practice : less instinct, more analysis; less reactivity, more preparation
- Regulatory infrastructure : strengthen regulatory resources, clarify statutory powers, assess mergers' effects
- The U.S. electric industry : a tutorial
- Appendix A.1 List of companies referenced
- Appendix A.2 Does federal bankruptcy law preempt a state commissions franchising authority?
- Appendix A.3 Ring-fencing provisions approved by the D.C. Public Service Commission.