| 摘要 | ABSTRACT
1. Research Purpose
As energy and resources become more and more important due to high oil price and the exhaustion of fossil fuels, energy security has been one of the critical policy goal all over the world. Especially, "energy efficiency" is recognized as an essential measure for energy security as it attracts eyes as the fifth energy source with oil, coal, atomic energy and renewable energy. In this regards, Korea also prepares various energy efficiency plans such as energy and carbon emission target management and energy efficiency resource standard("EERS").
However, such measures mainly focus on industry sector and energy providers. Thus, they have their own limit because other important pivots of energy consumption such as residential-commercial and transportation sectors are excluded. In order to supplement these limits and promote energy efficiency in the residential-commercial and transportation sectors, the Korean government is now considering the introduction of a Japanese type of Top-Runner system.
Top-runner system is a regulatory scheme to heighten energy efficiency of end user products, mostly appliances and automobiles. Japan introduced and has implemented the scheme for the first time. Top-Runner sets the most efficient product as the goal of energy efficiency and enforces other products to satisfy this standard for a given period of time.
In regulatory economics perspective, Top-Runner has a characteristic of yardstick competition which regulates the companies on the basis of their relative performances. Even though yardstick competition regulation scheme has many virtues, it has also some side effects. Therefore, we need to examine some problems of the scheme thoroughly, before the introduction of Top-Runner system.
For example, yard-stick competition has some weak points in the sense that it allows collusion among regulated companies. Because the evaluation standard of Top-Runner is the performance of other companies in the same industry, the regulated companies has an incentive to restrain their effort for energy efficiency improvement. If the costs for achieving top-runner is bigger than the benefits, it is highly likely that the regulated companies will reduce investment in energy efficiency improvement through tacit collusion.
Therefore, in advance of the introduction of Top-Runner system, we need to examine various problems and explore pro-competitive and efficient ways for introducing the system. In this regard, the purpose of this research is to provide some policy implications by investigating fundamental problems that Top-Runner system has.
2. Summary
This research overviews main arguments of theoretical studies on yardstick competition and elicits useful policy implications for designing Top-Runner system.
According to some theoretical studies on yardstick competition, investment incentives of individual companies can be more distorted than under individual regulation. In the dynamic regulatory setting, a regulator can extract future rents belonging to regulated companies on the basis of some information obtained from relative performance evaluation. If investment is irreversible and a regulator can not commit, investors may confront hold-up problem. Thus, companies expecting this situation has incentives to reduce their investments below social optimum level.
Next, investment having spillover effects across industry can be shrunken. Under the relative performance evaluation scheme such as yardstick competition, investments which gives positive externality to other companies' productivity can not have influence on the relative performance of the invested companies. This result suggests that government should support industry specific investments that induces the improvement of energy efficiency of the whole industry.
Last, Chong and Huet(2009) shows the fact that yardstick competition regulation has a weakness in allowing tacit collusion. Moreover, they proposes that a compensation scheme is more likely effective in lowering collusion than yardstick competition scheme based on punishments. This result provides some policy implications for us to design Top-Runner system in the future. In other words, in case of the introduction of Top-Runner system, it may be effective to design a scheme strengthening incentives to companies which could achieve the goal rather than a scheme reinforcing punishment to companies which could not achieve the goal.
3. Research Results and Policy Implications
In summary, the following should be paid attention in case of the introduction of Top-Runner system.
First, when selecting products regulated by Top-Runner system, we need to select products which has less possibility of tacit collusion. Especially, in the market where a small number of companies are participating and their market shares are high, a collusion may easily occur. Therefore, when we include these products under Top-Runner scheme, we should try to reduce the possibility of collusion by preparing various supplementary measures.
Second, an absolute energy efficiency evaluation can help deter tacit collusion among companies. In case that targeted companies mutually collude to restrain energy efficiency technology development, absolute efficiency index will decline. Thus, provided that an absolute efficiency standard such as "energy efficiency grade system" currently in force in Korea is complemented, the possibility of collusion can be reduced.
Third, an appropriate compensation scheme can decrease collusion among regulated companies. However, the further in-depth discussion is necessary on which one is better between the direct compensation to Top-Runner companies and the indirect compensation through incentives to consumers. If companies can extract most additional expenditures on improving energy efficiency by raising their prices, the indirect compensation plan providing additional incentive for consumers purchasing Top-Runner products is more desirable. Therefore, there is a need to lay out differentiated regulatory scheme by investigating market structure and product differentiation, etc.
Fourth, several theoretical models give an alarm that Top-Runner system may create hold-up problem and shrink industry-specific investments. Therefore, government should get rid of any concern about hold-up problem by the way of legislation on essential regulatory values such as target products and target periods. In addition, government should provide support to R&D which influences energy efficiency of the whole industry in order to prevent the decrease of industry-specific investments.
Last but least, it is consumers that select products in the market. However, if energy price is distorted and avoided energy costs that consumers face are less than the benefits obtained when using more energy efficient products, consumers are reluctant to purchase energy efficient products. Therefore, above all, it should be done first to make conditions to let consumers realize that energy efficiency is an important factor in selecting products through clear energy price signal. |
