ABSTRACT
How likely is genuine deregulation in the U.S. electric power industry? Events at the time of this book’s completion are not encouraging. As Professor Morriss has argued in the previous chapter, much of what had been touted as deregulation is simply re-regulation. Moreover, problems and failures under these new forms of regulation have led to calls for a return of the old regulated monopoly system (Goozner, 2001). The motivation this time is not the alleged natural monopoly characteristics-falling average costs as output increases-of the technology, although some argue that at least with respect to distribution, the industry is indeed still a natural monopoly, needing substantial regulation (see Chapter 6).
