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Full-Text Articles in Economics
Critical Foundations: Providing Australia’S 21st Century Infrastructure, Michael Regan
Critical Foundations: Providing Australia’S 21st Century Infrastructure, Michael Regan
Michael Regan
Extract:
Infrastructure is undoubtedly the least understood of the major asset classes in Australia. A tradition of public ownership and operation, its status as a public good and a lack of information about its investment characteristics in both public and private hands has contributed to limited recognition of its role in national and regional economies. However, this situation is changing. A coincidence of political, economic and financial events in the lead up to the worldwide economic recession of the late 1980s and Australia's microeconomic reforms of the 1990s b[r]ought into sharper focus the central role that infrastructure plays in both …
Water Allocation Under Distribution Losses: Comparing Alternative Institutions, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, Eithan Hochman, Chieko Umetsu, David Zilberman
Water Allocation Under Distribution Losses: Comparing Alternative Institutions, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, Eithan Hochman, Chieko Umetsu, David Zilberman
Ujjayant Chakravorty
The distribution of water resources is characterized by increasing returns to scale. Distribution links water generation to its end-use. Standard economic analysis overlooks the interaction among these micro-markets - generation, distribution and end-use. We compare water allocation when there is market power in each micro-market. These outcomes are compared with benchmark cases - social planning and a competitive business-as-usual regime. Simulations suggest that institutions with market power in generation and end-use generate significantly higher welfare than the distribution monopoly and the competitive regime. However, if the policy goal is to maximize the size of the grid, a distribution monopoly is …