ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how U.S. electric power firms and other regulated public utilities make plant investment decisions. Although the discussion touches upon corporate decision making in general, the paper concerns principally the practices of public and private utilities, as determined by a 1977 sampling of the utility industry. The results of the survey were supplemented by personal observation of utility practices and corroborated by two earlier surveys that were limited to the investor-owned sector of the electric power industry.
