اصلاحات تنظیم مقررات و بهره وری: تجزیه و تحلیل تجربی از صنعت برق ژاپنی

The Japanese electricity industry has experienced regulatory reforms since the mid-1990s. This article measures productivity in Japan's steam power-generation sector and examines the effect of reforms on the productivity of this industry over the period 1978–2003. We estimate the Luenberger productivity indicator, which is a generalization of the commonly used Malmquist productivity index, using a data envelopment analysis approach. Factors associated with productivity change are investigated through dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation of panel data. Our empirical analysis shows that the regulatory reforms have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power-generation sector in Japan.

The Japanese electricity industry has undergone regulatory reforms since the mid-1990s. These reforms started with the amendment of the Electricity Utility Industry Law in 1995 to promote competition. Since then, the law has been amended several times and the electricity industry has undergone structural change to encourage efficiency improvement. Considering whether there has been an impact on productivity is essential to evaluating the success of these reforms because productivity growth is a fundamental source of improvement in economic welfare. The purpose of this article is to measure productivity and examine the effect of reforms on productivity over the period 1978–2003, focusing on the Japanese steam power-generation sector, which is the core of the Japanese electricity industry. There are several measures to estimate productivity. In this article, the Luenberger productivity indicator is used because this indicator has a more generalized form than the Malmquist productivity index, which is often used in the literature. There is no prior application of the Luenberger productivity indicator to the electricity industry. To estimate productivity measures, data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is a mathematical programming technique, is used. After estimating productivity, the factors associated with productivity change are investigated through econometric analysis. In the econometric models, serial correlation must be considered because the dependent variable is estimated using DEA. For this reason, dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation of panel data is used to correct for serial correlation. Our empirical results show that regulatory reforms in Japan have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power-generation sector. This article is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the regulatory reforms in Japan. Section 3 discusses the background. Section 4 presents productivity and econometric models. Section 5 describes the data, while Section 6 discusses the results. Finally, Section 7 provides concluding comments.

The Japanese electricity industry has experienced structural change because of regulatory reforms. This policy aims at introducing more competition to enhance efficiency and productivity. Although the impact of a series of regulatory reforms has attracted a great deal of interest, evaluation with properly designed empirical analysis has been limited. This study estimates TFP through productivity indicators, which has a more generalized form than the commonly used productivity measurement. In our econometric analysis, the factors associated with productivity change and its decomposed elements are examined. In addition to the static Tobit model, dynamic GMM estimation is applied to eliminate serial correlation. The results show that there is a positive effect of regulatory reforms on productivity. This productivity growth is mainly because of technological change. Therefore, companies which have the ability to shift frontier upwards have the possibility of receiving greater benefit from regulatory reforms.