Disappointing Results from Deregulation

From Economist's View:

Disappointing Results from Deregulation

The deregulation of electricity generation has been problematic:

Competitive Era Fails to Shrink Electric Bills
by David Cay Johnston, NY Times

A decade after competition was introduced in their industries, long-distance phone rates had fallen by half, air fares by more than a fourth and trucking rates by a fourth. But a decade after the federal government opened the business of generating electricity to competition, the market has produced no such decline. Instead, more rate increase requests are pending now than ever before...

Article continued:

The disappointing results stem in good part from the fact that a genuinely competitive market for electricity production has not developed. ... The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and five other agencies, in the draft of the report to Congress, are unable to specify any overall savings. “It has been difficult,” the report states, “to determine whether retail prices” in the states that opened to competition “are higher or lower than they otherwise would have been” under the old system. ...

Under the old system, regulated utilities generated electricity and distributed it to customers. Under the new system, many regulated utilities only deliver power, which they buy from competing producers whose prices are not regulated. For example, Consolidated Edison, which serves the New York City area, once produced almost all the power it delivered; now it must buy virtually all its electricity from companies that bought its power plants and from other independent generators. The goal is for producers to compete to offer electricity at the lowest price, savings customers money.

Independent power producers, free-market economists and the Clinton Administration cheered in 1996 when the federal government allowed states to adopt the new system. ... But ... A truly competitive market has never developed, and, in most areas, the number of power producers is small. ...

[C]ritics say that, as in California five years ago in a scandal that enveloped Enron, the auction system can be manipulated to drive up prices, with the increases passed on to customers. What is more, companies that produce electricity can withhold it or limit production even when demand is at its highest, lifting prices. This happened in California, and the federal commission has found that it occurred in a few more instances since then. Critics say that more subtle techniques to reduce the supply of power are common ...

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, said the supposedly competitive market has been “a complete failure and colossal waste of time and money.” He asked the federal commission to revoke competitive pricing in his state, but the commission dismissed the complaint last Wednesday, saying the state had not proved its case.

Advocates of moving to the new system say that, in time, the discipline of the competitive market will mean the best possible prices for customers. Alfred E. Kahn, the Cornell University economist who led the fight to deregulate airlines and who, as New York’s chief utility regulator in the 1970’s, nudged electric utilities toward the new system, said that he was not troubled by the uneven results so far.

“Change,” Professor Kahn said, “is always messy.” ...

Stubborn adherence to a policy that isn't working can be even messier. Free, unregulated markets are best when it results in an efficient outcome, but the necessary conditions for competition are not met in these markets and oversight is needed to prevent and penalize price manipulation.

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