Competition and the Electric Utility Industry: An Evaluation

Electric utilities have historically been granted monopoly franchises to take advantage of the cost benefits of centralized production. In return for the monopoly franchise, the utility gave the state the right to regulate price and quality of service. In recent years, many have begun to question whe-ther cost advantages of centralized production continue to exist in the electric utility industry. Legislation has been proposed that would deregulate the industry and allow greater competition

Competition and the Electric Utility Industry: An Evaluation

Electric utilities have historically been granted monopoly franchises to take advantage of the cost benefits of centralized production. In return for the monopoly franchise, the utility gave the state the right to regulate price and quality of service. In recent years, many have begun to question whe-ther cost advantages of centralized production continue to exist in the electric utility industry. Legislation has been proposed that would deregulate the industry and allow greater competition

Perceived Risk and the Marginal Value of Safety.

Two contributions are made toward understanding variation in marginal value of safety estimates from labor-market studies. First, marginal safety values are obtained from direct measurement of workers' perceived job-related accidental death rates. Second, wage-risk relationships are explored for several categories of workers using the hedonic price method. Statistically significant relationships found for unionized, blue collar, and blue collar-unionized workers imply marginal safety values of 1.5, 1.18, and 2.10 million dollars, respectively. Further results in this paper suggest that alternative methods are needed to measure marginal safety values for workers in other categories. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

A Dynamic Model of Insurgency: The Case of the War in Iraq

This paper uses a system of differential equations to describe the insurgency in Iraq. The system has four possible outcomes or cases: (1) The U.S.-led coalition increases in size and the number of attacks by the insurgents increases. (2) The size of the U.S.-led coalition decreases and the number of attacks by insurgents decreases. (3) The size of the U.S.-led coalition increases and the number of insurgent attacks decreases. (4) The size of the U.S.-led coalition decreases and the number of insurgent attacks increases. Which case is relevant depends on the recruitment rates of the U.S.-led coalition and insurgents as well as the combat effectiveness of both sides. Policy implications are provided.