China's Power Industry Regulatory Governance Structure Theory And Empirical Research

Regulatory governance is one of the most important topics attracting attention all over the world. It's proved that regulatory performance is not only relative to regulatory incentive, but also to regulatory commitment, they constitute regulatory governance structure.Under the international electricity industry reform, regulatory governance structure is more and more important, it is emergent for China to construct regulatory governance structure in electricity industry, which is crucial for the success of reform. But there are many fundamental questions: What is regulatory governance structure? What is the regulatory governance structure with characteristics of developing countries as China? How to construct regulatory governance structure? etc. In this thesis, we investigate these questions theoretically and empirically. This thesis is organized as follows:In Chapter 1 and 2, we discuss the importance and emergency to study the regulatory governance structure, the theory of natural monopoly, regulatory economics and regulatory reform in natural monopoly, also in electricity industry, and present a critical review of the existing theory of regulatory reform.Chapter 3-7 are the body of the thesis. In Chapter3, we analyze electricity regulatory governance structure in the electricity industry according to new institution economics. Firstly, based on the theory of trade, contract and governance structure, we present regulation is the neoclassic contract, to which commitment is very important. As a kind of contract, governance is crucial for regulation. Then we focus on the contract characteristics of electricity regulation. Regulatory governance structure is formal institution of regulatory governance, which is composed of regulatory commitment and regulatory incentive. Regulatory commitment is also called regulatory environment, because it is essential for regulatory performance, especially when constructing regulatory framework in a developing country. Regulatory incentive has directive effect on regulation, so they are both relative to regulatory reform.In Chapter 4, we put forward two hypothesises for institition context, governance structure and performance. We validate them through the theoretical model analysis of the regulatory cost and the optimal regulatory governance structure, where regulatory cost is minimal. At last, we develop a methodology for analysis of regulatory reform in developing countries.In Chapter 5, we explore the factors that have great effect on regulatorygovernance structure in our country. The analysis begin on four Latin countries-Argentine, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia, because they have already innovated electricity industries for many years, and gain much experience of reform. Through the case study, we find ideology and interest conflict are more important for regulatory governance structure. In Chinese electricity industry, although reform is just on the first step, there are more affecting factors, they are government mechanism reform, economic reform.In Chapter 6, we establish a quantitative evaluating model of regulatory governance structure in electricity industry and investigate empirically regulatory governance structure of our country. We draw the evaluation index system from the questionnaires. There are two parts- regulatory commitment capacity and incentive power. In the empirically study, we find, in Chinese electricity industry, commitment and incentive are both low.In Chapter 7, we establish a quantitative model to investigate empirically corporate the relationship between regulatory governance structure and performances. Although we have established the evaluation index system, its usage in Chinese electricity is very limited, because China is just on the initial stage of establishing electricity regulatory governance structure. So, we choose three factors- privation, competition and regulation, and just study their relationship with performance. The results show that privation and competition are positively related to industry performance, but the relation between the re...