Property Rights Versus Public Spirit: Ownership and Efficiency of U.S. Electric Utilities Prior to Rate-of-Return Regulation
利用1897-98年美国劳工专员收集的微观数据，在回报率监管前比较公有与私有电力公司的效率，发现公有公司显著更高效。
For over a century, American economists have been engaged in a vigorous theoretical and empirical debate over the economic performance of publicly-owned versus privately-owned electric utilities. The authors review the historical debate and use micro data collected by the U.S. Commissioner of Labor in 1897-98 to construct efficiency measures based on a nonparametric frontier production function. Since this is prior to state rate-of-return regulation, regulatory effects do not confound the analysis. The authors find that publicly-owned electric utilities were significantly more efficient than their privately-owned counterparts. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.