Abstract
During the last decades a wave of deregulations has swept across the world. One market that has been heavily affected by this is the retail electricity market, where the previous system of regulated monopolies in many cases have been replaced by competition. Exogenous technological and institutional changes are often seen as explanations for this. But different countries have responded in very different ways and especially the timing of deregulation vary widely. Using a data set covering jurisdictions from the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand the deregulation of retail electricity markets is analyzed using a duration model. Separate analyses are also done for the US and Europe subsamples. The results indicate that there are important qualitative differences between the US and Europe. In the US, deregulation is more likely in states where the old regulatory regime had resulted in high prices and the results are fairly consistent with the public interest hypothesis. For Europe almost the opposite is true and deregulation has been more likely where the old system had resulted in low prices. The private/producer interest hypothesis is better at explaining the European example.