This paper examines the impact of deregulation and the political support for it on the electric power industry using a consistent state-level electricity generation dataset for the US contiguous states from 1997 to 2014. Recent analyses of productivity growth suggests that institutional factors are important and we wish to study the role of deregulation as a state-level institutional change through two measures: (a) restructuring and (b) the political support for it, measured by the majority political affiliation of public utility commissions. We find evidence of positive impacts of deregulation (both restructuring and the political support for it) on technical efficiency across the models estimated. Our preferred model which allows for the control for deregulation variables on the mean and variance of the inefficiency shows an average technical efficiency of 73.1 percent. The results of the marginal effects reveal that the impact of deregulation including its political support on inefficiency is negative and monotonic, with a potential reduction in technical inefficiency by 8.4%, thereby suggesting a compelling evidence for generation efficiency improvement via deregulation.

本文使用 1997 年至 2014 年美国毗连州的一致州级发电数据集，研究了放松管制及其对电力行业的政治支持。最近对生产率增长的分析表明，制度因素很重要，我们希望通过两项措施研究放松管制作为国家级机构变革的作用：(a) 重组和 (b) 对其的政治支持，以公用事业委员会的多数政治隶属关系衡量。我们发现放松管制（重组和对其的政治支持）对估计模型中的技术效率产生积极影响的证据。我们首选的模型允许控制无效率均值和方差的放松管制变量，平均技术效率为 73.1%。边际效应的结果表明，放松管制（包括其政治支持）对低效率的影响是负面和单调的，技术低效率可能降低 8.4%，从而为通过放松管制提高发电效率提供了令人信服的证据。