In recent years, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has begun promoting policy initiatives designed to substitute market responsive industry practices for the micro-management regulatory practices previously employed. These new policies are expected to generate a flexible gas pricing policy that more accurately reflects market supply and demand conditions. / Historically, much of the regulation of this industry was enacted to ensure that pipeline companies would be able to recover the very large up-front investments in immobile equipment that characterize the production, transportation, storage, and distribution of natural gas. The importance of these specialized investments and the importance of regulatory policy in determining the structure of the natural gas industry are analyzed here using the methods of transaction cost economics. / The institutional detail available from historical accounts of the development of the natural gas industry are used to describe structural change in this industry over time. Univariate descriptive statistical methods are then employed to describe the structure of the natural gas industry since 1964. Seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) and fixed effects models are estimated for samples of small and large natural gas companies since 1964. The newly available data sources from the reports of federal regulatory agencies are used for these tests. / Regulatory policy, the level of asset specificity, and the extent of secondary environmental uncertainty are all shown to exert significant effects on the level of integration into production, storage, and marketing by natural gas firms as hypothesized. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-05, Section: A, page: 1835. / Major Professor: Philip Sorensen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76413 |
| Contributors | Sauer, Douglas Gerard., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 257 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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