Essays in productivity and efficiency

Part II approaches the issue of evaluating productivity and efficiency from the perspective of incentive regulation. Related issues are benchmarking of the performance of regulated companies and a design of a regulation scheme that provides incentives for adequate performance. Focusing on the regulation of regional distribution utilities operating under similar circumstances and able to achieve the same minimum cost, it has been shown how the traditional yardstick competition scheme can be augmented to resolve the trade-off between price and reliability of service.