World Class Economic Regulators join up in OECD

Economic regulators will soon have their own forum in OECD to discuss, with assistance from the international regulatory experts, issues of common interests such as how to guarantee the right degree of independence from government or how to measure their performance and give their economies value for money. On 24 April, some 20 regulating agencies and supervisory departments from some 15 countries met at OECD HQ for the third time to address a range of governance and efficiency issues. Best practices from the US Energy Commission (by John R. Norris) and the Portugal Water Authority (by J. Melo Baptista, from ERSAR) were scrutinised. The quality of the group's work and potential future contribution to the sustainable management of national public utilities (such as energy, telecom and water) may be recognised by member states by granting the network official status under the Organisation's operating rules. This will ensure that a new wealth of OECD economic literature will be updated for regulators world-wide, drawing lessons from success stories, sharing best practice and providing guidance to governments on when and how it may be best to delegate to an arms-length agency the management of such network assets. Any new published resource will be reported on this blog.