On Creating Competition and Strategic Restructuring: Regulatory Reform in Public Utilities

This book examines the ongoing transformation of public utilities, also known as network-based industries, in Western Europe and the United States. Examples are telecommunications, energy, and water distribution. Most of these network-based industries were until recently natural monopolies. Over the last two decades national governments have embarked upon privatization, deregulation and liberalization of their public utilities. The contributors in this volume examine the many related aspects, including:

• key characteristics and regulation of network based industries
• the emerging EU regulatory framework
• corporate strategies, industry dynamics, and organizational performance
• case studies from the telecommunications and water industries
• engineering competition versus engineering regulation.

This book provides a non-ideological and multidisciplinary overview of recent views and experiences with the liberalization, privatization and regulatory reform of public utilities in Europe and the United States. As such it will be of interest to scholars and researchers of institutional economics, and organizational studies, as well as regulators, policymakers and consultants involved in both studying and governing network-based industries.

Edited by Emiel F.M. Wubben, Associate Professor in Strategic Management for the Management Studies Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands and Willem Hulsink, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and New Business Venturing, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands