文章基本信息

标题：Fair Pricing Regulation
本地全文：下载
作者：Jan Muir
期刊名称：Agenda
印刷版ISSN：1322-1833
电子版ISSN：1447-4735
出版年度：2001
卷号：8
期号：1
出版社：Australian National University
摘要：Some products and services are such an important component of business and consumer expenditure that their pricing can have widespread implications for the efficiency and well-being of significant groups of business or consumers. Where firms producing such items face little or no competition, incentives exist for prices to be set in ways that compromise those interests. Consequently, governments may seek to regulate those prices to ensure outcomes acceptable to the community. Public utilities, including water, energy and telecommunications, are traditionally regulated for such reasons. The regulators tasked with the job of setting or approving prices or price changes usually operate within parameters given to them directly by government. These rules usually require the prices to be 'efficient'. They frequently require them to be 'fair'. Economics offers guidance as to what is meant by 'efficiency' in price setting. There is much less consensus about what constitutes a 'fair' price. Fair against what criterion. Fair to whom. There is even less consensus about the relative importance of the two criteria. If making a price fairer were also to make it less efficient, how is a solution to be reached. Are such trade-offs likely, or even inevitable