2004, Vol.13, No.2

Journal of Regulation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.78

pISSN : 1738-7132
https://journal.kci.go.kr/ksrs2002

Competitive electricity markets create the new industry structure and business environment, which require a new type of regulation system. For rational division of duties between general competition agency and sector-specific regulator, static comparative advantage, synergy effect and dynamic aspects need to be considered. A critical condition for efficient regulatory institutions is independence. The grounds for the need of independence can be obtained from the theory of regulation and credibility issues. The scope of regulation in electricity industry of UK can be categorized into the entry regulation, the regulation for promoting competition, the regulation for consumer protection, the monopoly sector regulation, the regulation for public interests, and the regulation on power exchange and transmission network management, where OFGEM plays an essential role. For the improvements of the present regulation system of electricity industry, active role of the Korea Electricity Commission is required in consumer protection, public interests, entry regulation, monopoly regulation, and investigation of unfair behavior. The Korea Electricity Commission needs independence and rational division of duties between itself and Korea Fair Trade Commission.

This paper investigates the determinants of the surcharges imposed on the cases of Unfair Taking Advantage of a Position in the Business Area clause of Korean Fair Trade Act. The results show that surcharge is imposed only on corporations that caused damages to specific victims. Higher surcharge is likely when the defendant is a principal customer to the victim or when the damages are nationwide. However, the surcharge rate increases less than proportionately with the size of the defendant firm. Theses results imply that the primary purpose of the clause is ex post arbitration of business disputes rather than ex ante prevention of anti-competitive behavior through strong penalties.

Despite of continued efforts to reform regulations on business associations, we can hardly see visible changes like foundations of competitive organizations. In addition, various problems have been continuing to take place due to the regulations restricting the freedom of associations. First of all, these regulations are depriving some groups of their opportunity to input their interest into policy process by limiting the creation of new business association. Member dues are also extraordinary expensive compared with those of other nations like U.S.. The benefits of organization itself are overriding the interest of members who pay for the organization when the interests of the association conflict with that of their members. As the associations are splitted by clear boundaries defined by entry and business boundary regulation, conflicts on policy issues among the associations are so serious that the agreements on policy reforms crucial to the industry, for examples changes of business boundary and entry regulations, are nearly impossible. To solve all of these problems, all regulations that guarantee the monopoly power of business associations over their member should be abolished. In addition, civil affairs delegated to business associations also need to be returned to government or re-distributed to any agencies who will not abuse them for organizational interest.