بهره وری و کارایی از شرکت انتقال گاز آمریکا: چشم انداز نظارتی اروپا

On both sides of the Atlantic, the regulation of gas transmission networks has undergone major changes since the early 1990s. Whereas in the US, the long-standing regime of cost-plus regulation was complemented by increasing pipe-to-pipe competition, most European countries moved towards incentive regulation complemented by market integration. We study the productivity development of a panel of US interstate companies using data envelopment analysis and Malmquist productivity indices. Results are presented for changes in productivity, as well as for several convergence tests. The results indicate that taking productivity and convergence as performance indicators, regulation has been rather successful, in particular during a period where overall demand was flat. However, we argue that a benchmarking-based regulation might have brought about stronger convergence. Lessons for European regulators are twofold. First, the US analysis shows that benchmarking of European transmission operators would be possible if data were available. Second, our results suggest that, in the long-run, market integration and competition are alternatives to the current European model.

Gas transmission networks are regulated rather differently in Europe and in the US. Both, traditional US cost-of-service or rate-of-return regulation and European incentive regulation are based on the notion of natural monopoly. However, while the US regulation is shifting its focus from cost to value by complementing cost-of-service regulation with institutions fostering competition and market integration (O’Neill, 2005), the European regulators treat gas transmission as incentive-regulated franchise monopolies (Makholm, 2007).

This paper investigates the performance of a sample of US interstate gas transmission pipelines from a benchmarking perspective. We assess the performance of the US industry and therefore also of the regulator using frontier productivity and efficiency measures that are widely applied in Europe today. Also, we show that European regulators can learn both from the data analysis as well as recent US regulatory reform. The lessons we draw from the latter are exploratory in the sense that we extrapolate from past US performance to future European performance. Nevertheless we believe that this study helps regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to learn from each other.