Essays on network industries: privatization, regulation, and productivity measurement

This study was prepared by Andreas Kuhlmann, while he was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. It was completed in September 2006 and was accepted as a Ph.D. thesis by the Economics Department of the University of Munich. The subject of this study is the analysis of network industries with particular emphasis on privatization in this field in general and regulation and productivity measurement of the German electricity industry in particular. The methodological approach is threefold. The chapter on privatization is based on a theoretical model, followed by a chapter on the institutional and politico-economic background of the German and the US electricity industries. The following two chapters provide empirical productivity analyses based on a growth accounting fiamework. A major share of the data that are utilized for this exercise is taken trom a new database of the Ifo Institute which has been built up in the last two years for the purpose of productivity analyses.