Have consumers benefited from the reforms in the electricity distribution sector in Latin America?

The authors bring new empirical evidence on the impact of the choice of ownership and regulatory regime on firms'productivity and prices paid by consumers. They collect the evidence from a sample of electricity distribution companies in Latin America. The authors rely on estimations of labor and operation and maintenance (O&M) input requirement functions using alternative econometric approaches. Their main conclusions are: 1) Private firms perform better (approximately 30 percent) than public firms. 2) The regulatory regimes matter, so that price-cap regulated firms do better than rate-of-return regulated firms, and firms regulated under hybrid regimes have intermediate performance. 3) Private firms operating under rate of return are at most as efficient as public firms. 4) There is no clear pattern of differences in electricity prices according to the regulatory regime. 5) Final prices fell in general but the drop did not match the productivity gains, implying that the operators and the state share some of the gains in the form of rents and higher tax revenue, respectively.Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Markets and Market Access,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Business in Development,Business Environment

Global attractors for gradient flows in metric spaces

We develop the long-time analysis for gradient flow equations in metric spaces. In particular, we consider two notions of solutions for metric gradient flows, namely energy and generalized solutions. While the former concept coincides with the notion of curves of maximal slope, we introduce the latter to include limits of time-incremental approximations constructed via the Minimizing Movements approach. For both notions of solutions we prove the existence of the global attractor. Since the evolutionary problems we consider may lack uniqueness, we rely on the theory of generalized semiflows introduced by J.M. Ball. The notions of generalized and energy solutions are quite flexible and can be used to address gradient flows in a variety of contexts, ranging from Banach spaces to Wasserstein spaces of probability measures. We present applications of our abstract results by proving the existence of the global attractor for the energy solutions both of abstract doubly nonlinear evolution equations in reflexive Banach spaces, and of a class of evolution equations in Wasserstein spaces, as well as for the generalized solutions of some phase-change evolutions driven by mean curvature

Comparing the performance of public and private water companies in the Asia and Pacific region : what a stochastic costs frontier shows

Estache and Rossi estimate a stochastic costs frontier for a sample of Asian and Pacific water companies, comparing the performance of public and privatized companies based on detailed firm-specific information published by the Asian Development Bank in 1997. They find private operators of water companies to be more efficient than public operators. Costs in concessioned companies tend to be significantly lower than those in public companies. The authors show that rankings based on standard indicators are not always very consistent. This paper contributes to that growing literature. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical structure of the cost model estimated. Section 3 provides an overview of earlier studies of the water sector. Section 4 presents the estimates of costs frontiers obtained for a large sample of Asian and Pacific Region water companies, distinguishing between public and private operators. Section 5 compares the performance ranking from efficiency frontier measures to those obtained from productivity indicators. Section 6 concludes.Decentralization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Economic Theory&Research,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Water and Industry,Economic Theory&Research,Town Water Supply and Sanitation

Access to Audio-visual Contents, Exclusivity and Anticommons in New Media Markets

Media markets are characterized by strong peculiarities that often call for longterm exclusivity contracts between content providers and distributors or for vertical or horizontal integration. This paper analyzes and compares the economic effects of existing alternative systems of access to valuable content for new media platforms, under the lens of technological convergence and 'network neutrality'. The analysis suggests the increasing need for a coordinated regulatory framework aimed at balancing costs and benefits of the different models in order to ensure that the development of new markets and new technologies in the age of media convergence is not hindered by "anticommons" tragedies.contents, new media, anticommons, antitrust.

Regulatory agencies : impact on firm performance and social welfare

The authors explore the relation between the establishment of a regulatory agency and the performance of the electricity sector. The authors exploit a unique dataset comprising firm-level information on a representative sample of 220 electric utilities from 51 development and transition countries for the years 1985 to 2005. Their results indicate that regulatory agencies are associated with more efficient firms and with higher social welfare.Infrastructure Regulation,Privatization,Energy Production and Transportation,Emerging Markets,Regulatory Regimes

Weighted Energy-Dissipation principle for gradient flows in metric spaces

This paper develops the so-called Weighted Energy-Dissipation (WED) variational approach for the analysis of gradient flows in metric spaces. This focuses on the minimization of the parameter-dependent global-in-time functional of trajectories \mathcal{I}_\varepsilon[u] = \int_0^{\infty} e^{-t/\varepsilon}\left( \frac12 |u'|^2(t) + \frac1{\varepsilon}\phi(u(t)) \right) \dd t, featuring the weighted sum of energetic and dissipative terms. As the parameter $\varepsilon$ is sent to~$0$, the minimizers $u_\varepsilon$ of such functionals converge, up to subsequences, to curves of maximal slope driven by the functional $\phi$. This delivers a new and general variational approximation procedure, hence a new existence proof, for metric gradient flows. In addition, it provides a novel perspective towards relaxation

Contracts and Motivations. The Case of Open Source

The literature on Open Source phenomenon has revealed the crucial role played by both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. However an analysis attempting to formally explore this interplay is still missing. In this paper, we try to fill the gap by introducing intrinsic motivations in standard principal-agent model, focusing on the case of Open Source Software (OSS). We show that, if developers’ intrinsic motivation is sufficiently high, paying developers to work on OSS projects allows the firm to induce a desired level of workers’ effort at a lower cost compared to the standard case of monetary incentives and sanctions coupled with costly monitoring.extrinsic and intrisic motivations, agency contracts, open-source software, open-source software developers

The Nature, Timing and Impact of Broadband Policies: a Panel Analysis of 30 OECD Countries

We empirically investigate the impact of a vast array of public policies on wireline broadband penetration through a novel and unique dataset covering 30 OECD countries, over 1995-2010. We find that while both supply and demand-side policies have a positive effect on broadband penetration, their relative impact depends on the actual stage of broadband diffusion. When an advanced stage is reached, only demand-side policies appear to generate a positive and increasing effect. Moreover, both technological and market competition play a positive role, and the effect of the latter shows a non-linear path along the stage of market development. Finally, the relative weight of the service sector in the national economy reveals to be crucial for broadband penetration. Our analysis provides new insights into the policy debate and in particular on the rationale of a selective policy design for broadband penetration and, in perspective, for the rollout of next-generation networks.telecommunications policies, broadband penetration, infrastructure investments