The power industry is traditionally organized as a public utility. While the United States relies on investor owned utilities combined with public regulation. Europe and many other countries use public ownership as a means to control and regulate this important industry. This paper reviews economic theories which justify and/or explain public ownership, or more generally the regulation of (private or public) firms. The aim is to use recent (economic) approaches and criteria of deregulation in order to arrive at a proposal of a — presumably more efficient — organization of the power industry.
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