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The Political Economy of Institutional Change in the Electricity Supply Industry: Shifting...

By Chick, Martin
Publication: Economic Record
Date: Wednesday, June 1 2005

The Political Economy of Institutional Change in the Electricity Supply Industry: Shifting Currents, by Carlos Rutn (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2003), pp. xiii + 226.

This is an interesting comparative analysis of the processes and outcomes of institutional change in the electricity supply

industries of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Brazil from the early 1980s. Rutn concentrates on the outcome for each industry in terms of ownership structure and the degree of competition, paying particular attention to the influence of judicial independence, the ideological preferences of policymakers and the level of distributional conflict in each country. His main findings is that ideology has the greatest impact on both ownership and competition outcomes, with distributional conflict tagging along behind and often operating by buying-off groups who suffer as a result of the change, rather than acting directly on the choice of ownership and competitive structures. The influence of judicial independence on ownership and competitive outcomes is weak.

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