Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Revisiting The Public Utility, Jim Rossi, Morgan Ricks
Revisiting The Public Utility, Jim Rossi, Morgan Ricks
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This foreword introduces "Revisiting the Public Utility," a series of essays published in a special issue of Yale Journal on Regulation. We cluster the contributions to this issue around public utility regulation’s core rationales and its scope, its implications for innovation and industry stability, and its evolving approach to price regulation. The scholarship represented in this issue challenges the notion that public utility ideas are obsolete or irrelevant to modern issues in economic regulation. It questions whether public utility regulation has fallen short of its goals, and shows that there are some good reasons to question many embedded regulatory practices. …
Universal Service In Competitive Retail Electric Power Markets: Whither The Duty To Serve?, Jim Rossi
Universal Service In Competitive Retail Electric Power Markets: Whither The Duty To Serve?, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article addresses whether traditional service obligations can coexist with retail competition. A rationale often given for universal service obligations in the telecommunications industry is that universal service, by promoting interconnectivity, enhances network system benefits for all customers. While the network economies argument may have worked to sustain universal service in the face of telecommunications deregulation, it is tenuous when applied to the natural gas and electricity industries. Many reformers look askance at the duty to serve in competitive retail utility service markets, often pointing to conflict between retail competition in electricity and the duty to serve. This article argues, …