Public-Utility Regulators Are Only Human: A Positive Theory of Rational Constraints
提出监管者的个人动机影响监管行为，通过设定包含人类关切和政治过程的监管目标函数，推导出理性监管者会施加给企业的约束，并解释了回报率监管等规则的理论基础。
Positive models of public-utility regulation should capture personal incentives of regulators. A regulatory objective function is specified by appea l to standard human concerns coupled with politics and processes pecu liar to public-utility regulation. Constraints a rational regulator w ould impose on the firm are thereby derived, and connections between regulatory objectives and regulatory rules illuminated. Results inclu de theoretical rationales for "rate-of-return" regulation in a worl d of certainty, and a largely neglected type of "rate-of-return" re gulation under (symmetric) uncertainty. Other forms of regulation sho uld also be explicable in terms of personal motives of human regulato rs. Copyright 1988 by American Economic Association.