Lynne Kiesling
I am pleased to announce that I delivered my book manuscript to the publisher a week and a half ago. Here’s a teaser:
Economic growth and technological change have brought the electric industry and its regulation to a crossroads. Technological change from outside the industry has prompted changes in both regulatory institutions and business models, leading to the incremental disaggregation of the vertically-integrated firm in some regions of the U.S. and not in others. Simultaneously, increasing use of market transactions within this vertical value chain provides further strains on the existing institutional environment.
One of the largest challenges facing the electric industry and policymakers today is the mismatch between regulatory and technological inertia within the industry and the vibrant, thriving economic and social dynamism that technological change has helped to create in nearly all other aspects of human society. Is it possible for regulatory institutions to be less inertial, to be more adaptive to unknown and changing conditions like innovation, changes in fuel costs, and changes in environmental policy? This book explores possible answers to that question, focusing particularly on the retail portion of the electricity value chain.
It’s a synthesis of complexity science, Austrian economics, and new institutional economics, focused on how technology enables us to move from centralized control to decentralized coordination.
The manuscript is available for your perusal; the book, published by Routledge, will be available in July.