PTR programs hide a political choice to give-up incentive-compatibility in favour of political acceptability, implicitly subsidizing consumers in the process. This decisionimplies both deadweight effects and a need to develop complex monitoring techniques. If - on second thought - such a choice was revised, the relevant political issuewould be to increase allocative efficiency as cost-efficiently as possible in terms of public funds. Some complementarities between distinct public policies may then arise:1. local monopolies should make it easier to maintain historical cross-subsidies by allowing a better control of the amount of public funds spent.2. competition should be more efficient at wiping out historical cross-subsidies, given the impossibility to set exogenous constraints on tariffs.
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