Efficiency and stock market performances of electric power generating companies: A comprehensive analysis of deregulation and reregulation era.

摘要

U.S. electric power industry has been in a big regulatory change from monopoly to competitive industry in the 1990s. The generation, transmission, and distribution functions of the industry have been separated in order to increase competition. In addition to separating those functions, power markets were established to trade electricity like other commodities. The electricity price is set by the free market instead of regulatory authority.; Under these circumstances, the productivity and efficiency of power generation have become much more important in order to reduce the cost, and to compete and survive in a competitive market.; This thesis consists of two main parts: one is to measure productivity and efficiency of the power generating companies; and the other is to investigate whether there is a link between productivity of electric power companies and their stock market performances.; Total factor productivity (TFP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) were used to measure the productive efficiency and technical efficiency, respectively. The analysis covers from 1986 to 2000; therefore, we compared the productivity measures in a regulated and deregulated time periods in terms of productivity, efficiency and stock market performances.; We found that there is significantly different productivity and efficiency of the power companies between time periods. We also found a significant correlation between the common stock returns and productivity and efficiency growths in the period of 1997--2000, which is the deregulating era.