Current Issues in Public Utilities and Public Policy

Fumitoshi Mizutani is a professor at the Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University, where he has worked since obtaining a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1993. Currently he is serving as president of the Japan Society of Public Utility Economics and the Japan Society of Transport Economics. His main research has focused on the economic analysis of regulatory changes in public utility industries. He has also been involved in international research projects such as with the World Bank, and he has published in books and international journals such as Journal of Regulatory Economics, Empirical Economics, and Review of Network Economics. He has been awarded academic prizes.　   Takuya Urakami is a professor at the Faculty of Business Administration, Kindai University. His interest is in productivity, efficiency and performance analysis, especially of the water and sewerage industry. He currently serves on council committees forthe Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism as well as various municipal governments. He is now a research representative for Kindai University, cooperating with the Centre for Productivity and Performance of Loughborough University, UK. He has published in international journals such as European Journal of Operational Research, Urban Studies, and Papers in Regional Science.   Eri Nakamura has been an associate professor at the Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University, since 2014. After obtaining her Ph.D. from Kobe University in 2011, she worked as a lecturer at Shinshu University until 2013. She was a visiting researcher at Vienna University of Economics and Business from 2016 to 2018. She has been engaged in research on efficiency, organizational management, governance and corporate social responsibility in public utilities as well as general private companies. She has published in international journals such as Utilities Policy, Journal of Business and Industrial Economics, and Journal of Management and Governance.

Introduction.- An Analysis of the Effect of Demand Response on Electricity Consumption: Assessing Households’ Heterogeneous Reaction to Dynamic Pricing.- Estimation of Tap Water Demand in Japan: A Panel Data Analysis.- Economies of Scale and Consolidation Effects in the Japanese Sewerage Industry.- Productivity Measurement and Decomposition of Total Factor Productivity in Japan’s Postal and Parcel Delivery Industry.-  Preferential Slot Allocation for LCCs at a Congested Airport, and Airfare: The Case of Haneda Airport in Tokyo.- The Impact of Airport Concession on Technical Efficiency: Evidence from Major Airports in Japan.