1st Annual Conference on the Regulation of Infrastructure Industries

Florence, 15 June 2012

The main infrastructures – Energy, Transport, Communications – have experienced significant liberalization processes over the past 30 years. Liberalization has generally been accompanied by re-regulation, leading, among others, to the creation of sector-specific regulatory authorities, whose main role it is open up and sustain markets for the benefit of users and customers. This process of simultaneous liberalization and re-regulation has been particularly active in Europe, promoted as it is by the European Commission.

Observers of this process have become increasingly critical about the fact that liberalization has not delivered on its promises, that regulation has failed as well, and that new challenges are emerging in the infrastructures, requiring novel approaches to regulation. The most prominent such challenges pertain to investments, public services and public service obligations, infrastructure systems’ coherence, and more generally responsiveness of infrastructure operators to public policy objectives.

These constitute as many challenges for regulation and regulatory bodies. This conference aims at exploring these challenges for regulation and regulators across the infrastructures and in an interdisciplinary manner, combining engineering, economics, law, and political science.

Deadline for Submission: 1 March 2012