Author(s): Lewis T. Evans and Richard B. Meade

NZ Fiction

Lewis T. Evans and Richard B. Meade place New ZealandâÂÂs current institutional arrangements for its electricity sector within the context of successive waves of economic reform. They compare these arrangements with developments internationally, drawing together lessons for future policymaking both in New Zealand and overseas. Alternating Currents or Counter-Revolutioni is a work of political economy â and the book carefully analyses the interplay between technology, economics and politics that has at different times driven the sector.

Controversially, the authors argue that the market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s provided greater supply security than the more centralised arrangements prevailing in the past â and that New ZealandâÂÂs reversion to more centralised and political control since the late 1990s has resulted in an unsustainable half-way house that hinders private electricity investments and reinforces this trend.
First published March 2006.
The authors

Lewis T. Evans is a professor of economics at Victoria University of Wellington and was the first executive director of the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation Inc (ISCR). He is a senior consultant for Charles River Associates (Asia Pacific) Limited. At ISCR he supervised research into aspects of the New Zealand electricity industry.

Richard B. Meade is a research principal of ISCR, and as principal of Cognitus Advisory Services Limited advises clients on strategic and analytical problems drawing on the tools of economics, corporate finance and quantitative analysis. He also lectures in corporate finance, corporate governance and Maori/tribal governance at Victoria University of Wellington.