How to Determine the Reach of a Socially Optimal Energy Policy?

摘要

The energy sector has since long been a popular playground for political interventions. In market oriented economies like the OECD countries, such policy actions are warranted only to rectify existing market failures. The present paper analyzes the goals and instruments of energy policy and finds that actual policy action has had a much wider reach than can be motivated by the rational pursuit of social utility. The politicians have assumed that they possess better foresight, and behave more rationally than market actors. In many cases the policies have had a hidden agenda to promote small interest groups rather than to contribute to the utility of society at large. The OECD economies would have been better off with much less ambitious energy policy efforts.