Is Market-Oriented Reform Producing a ‘Two-Track’ Europe? Evidence From Electricity and Telecommunications

Abstract

The European Commission has formally recognised that adequate provision of basic household services, including energy, communications, water and transport, is

Choice and Equality: Are Vulnerable Citizens Worse Off After Liberalization Reforms?

“…Although citizens' responses to poorly performing public services have featured on the research agenda for some time (see most prominently, Hirschman ; Lyons et al ), recent years have seen an upsurge in interest in studying responses to public services, including citizen satisfaction (James ; Van Ryzin and Charbonneau ), their behaviour when dealing with poor performance (Gofen ; Jilke and Van de Walle ), and the link between these two aspects (Dowding and John , ; Salucci and Bickers ). Following large‐scale public service reforms, such as service liberalization, the pursuit of the ‘choice agenda’, and the creation of quasi‐markets (Le Grand ; Clifton and Diaz‐Fuentes ), attention has been drawn to the outcome of these reforms for ordinary citizens (Clifton et al , ; Grosso and Van Ryzin ; Florio ).…”

Liberalizing markets, liberalizing welfare? Economic reform and social regulation in the EU's electricity regime

“…First, this phenomenon can be seen as part of wider trends in EU policy making: the construction of 'social Europe' through alternative forms of policy making (Heritier 2001); The inclusion of a social dimension in the reform of other related sectors, such as telecommunications (Héritier 2001;Thatcher 2004); and the Commission's interest, which developed during the mid 2000's, in the question of how the insights of behavioural economics can be relevant to the design of reforming infrastructure services: making markets work for those consumers who face difficulties in either attaining or processing the relevant information for full participation in the market (Clifton et al 2011). …”

Vulnerable Consumers in the Deregulated Dutch Health System

“…By drawing on the insights of decision theory, we are able to expose the structural disadvantages that potentially vulnerable consumers face when exercising choice behaviour (Clifton, et al, 2011). Specifically, information overload, choice overload and the fear of making the wrong decision (regret) reinforce the tendency toward decision avoidance and maintaining the status quo [9]- [11] (Schwartz, 2005;Elbel and Schlesinger, 2006;Frank and Lamiraud, 2009).…”

“…As a result of large-scale deregulation and the pursuance of the choice-agenda in the European public service sectors [1] (Clifton and Díaz-Fuentes, 2010) there has been an international surge of interest for the outcomes of these reforms for ordinary citizens [2]- [6] (Clifton et al, 2011(Clifton et al, , 2012Grosso and Van Ryzin, 2012;Florio, 2013;Jilke, 2015). Similarly in the Netherlands, where the health insurance sector was deregulated with the establishment of the Health Insurance Act (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006).…”

“…Although in practice, it turns out to be less straight forward than European policymakers imagined. Several recent publications show that the deregulation gains are primarily harvested by the "strongest" in society because the "potentially vulnerable"-including for example, low-skilled and the elderly-are not capable of exercising optimal choice behaviour [2] [6] (Clifton et al, 2011;Jilke, 2015). In the monopoly era, potentially vulnerable consumers could count on the standardisation tool of the government to guard them against suboptimal choice behaviour.…”