Research On Supervisory Institution Of Urban Public Utilities

Utilities belong to the most basic economic industries, and they play a fundamental and supporting role to other industries of national economy. Some scholars believe that the public utility products are"a good product"for the community. Utilities have a special structure of incomplete markets, various competitive behavior and unsatisfactory performance. The special nature of public utilities determines that the public utility industries have two efficiency goals, that is, social efficiency goals and economic efficiency goals. To maximize efficiency, public utility industries must take account of economic efficiency and social efficiency. Therefore, generally, the public utility industries are operated by the state-owned enterprises, which is in order to solve the shortcomings of market failure. However, practice shows that the monopoly of state-owned enterprises can not effectively solve market failures, on the contrary, the low efficiency of state-owned enterprises, and even corruptions have deviated from the overall planning of national economy and public interest.After 2000, with the introduction of national policies and regulations, the tide of market-oriented reforms rises through the whole country. However, the corresponding system of modern government supervision has not been established yet. During the process of advancing the marketization, inherent properties and product characteristics of public utilities determine that the government can not reduce his responsibilities, moreover, the government must not only create conditions for the market reform, but also ensure that the public interests do not loss in the reform. On the one hand, the government can introduce a competitive mechanism to compensate market failure and improve the economic efficiency. On the other hand, the government must promote universal services and ensure social equity.Until now, the problems of supervisory institution of urban public utilities mainly are the lack of laws and regulations of public utilities, excessive or lack of supervision, competitions are insufficient, lack of government commitment, non-standardized price supervision, regulators'ability issues, powers and functions of supervision sectors are not clearly demarcated, responsibilities, powers and benefits are not correspondent and so on. The paper will use the theory of public management, politics, economics and other basic theories, and on the focus of supervisory institution, urban businesses and citizens. The paper will explore how to perfect the supervisory institution. For the supervisory institution, the government needs to complete related laws and regulations, establish a modern supervision system of urban public utilities, and strengthen the control and supervision of supervisors. For businesses, the government should lead companies to enter competition, regroup the market structure, implement the incentive regulations, and then definite emphases. For citizens, the government should actively nurture and develop social intermediary organizations, and give full play to the supervisory role of the public.The paper is divided into four parts. In the first part, the paper will introduce the definition and characteristics of urban public utilities and their supervisory institutions. In the second part, the paper will describe the theoretical basis of urban public utility supervisory institutions, the specific objectives and configuration of functions, and so on, which provide theoretical support for the following discuss. In the third part, after the analysis and comparison of the setup of functions, power operation and supervisory mechanisms in UK, USA and Japan, the author will consider the experiences of developed countries and the revelation to urban public utilities supervisory institutions in China. In the fourth part, the paper will analyze the current status of public utility supervisory institutions and main issues, including supervisory basis, supervisory content, supervisory processes, supervisory system and regulators'problems. In the fifth part, to the current problems of urban public utility supervisory institutions, considering the advanced international practices, the paper will propose references on improving the urban public utilities supervisory institutions, such as setting basis, terms of configuration, optimizing supervisory team, etc., in order to benefit the urban public utilities supervisory institutions reform.