A Reform Proposal for Management of Regulated Prices (Written in Korean)

Abstract

The primary purpose of price regulation on public utilities and other public services is not to prevent them from rising and control inflation but to allocate resources efficiently and reflect social values, when market does not function perfectly. That is, price regulation by government is a policy tool which is aimed at microeconomic effects. Therefore, when a microeconomic policy tool is used for macroeconomic policy objectives, such as price stabilization, we can have problems stemming from the mismatch. One of the examples is distortions in the relative price structure of resources. As government suppresses increases in regulated prices in an effort to reduce inflationary pressures, some of the public services become relatively cheaper, resulting in excess use of those services under regulation. Also, inflexibility of adjusting regulated prices to the overall price changes results in deterioration of qualities of public services. This paper proposes a set of reform proposals which are intended to minimize such government failures. It is argued that the authority of price regulation should be decentralized, and ultimately done by independent regulatory commissions for each service. The pricing should be based on the principle of separate and independent accounting by each service unit and the principle of beneficiaries bearing the costs of services.