This book offers the most comprehensive characterization assembled to date of the historical, institutional, and economic forces affecting electricity regulation. Eminent economists organized by the University of California Energy Institute survey the US, UK, Scandinavia, Latin America, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, and Yugoslavia. Recent experiments with privatization, competition, and restructuring in electricity are contrasted with instances where government ownership and traditional vertical integration still dominate. The introductory essay by Richard J. Gilbert, Edward P. Kahn, and David Newbery synthesizes individual country studies.