Integrating the power sector in India: Reflections and suggestions
Abstract The historical development of the power generation industry in India shows a steady trend towards complete integration: ‘… The aim is to connect all the power-regions by the end of the Seventh Plan. The desirability of having a single organization to own and to operate the essential elements of the national grid needs to be urgently considered …’ ([4], p 335). This paper seeks to verify the actual desirability of integration, through economic as well as technical aspects; and to emphasize the deviations induced by a strengthened concentration and suggest corrective directions to a second-best equilibrium.
Dual v uniform prices — an application
Abstract The economic literature on non-linear pricing schemes mainly considers the case where average price decreases with quantity — indeed this pricing strategy is often referred to, especially by firms displaying non-convex production sets. However, such a price schedule seems inadequate to cope with the ‘endowments’ of most developing countries, viz severe income inequalities and binding capacity constraints. Thus, we design here an increasing-blocks tariff and show, as an illustration, how it can improve the distribution pattern of low-voltage electricity in India without depressing the producer's profit. Shadow income transfers automatically flow within the sector, without requiring the heavy informational and operational background necessary for lump-sum transfers, as advocated by second-best theory.
Political Developments: Some Conclusions and an Interpretation
When the political decisions and achievements of the post-Khrushchev Soviet leadership are considered as a whole, it is not immediately obvious that there is any pattern to them. It may, nevertheless, be useful to begin by devoting attention to some of the major policy tendencies and outcomes of the past decade, most of which have already been considered in greater detail by other contributors, before going on to enquire if any broad strategy underlying them may be discerned and to attempt to place the various changes in a broader political context.