The electric utility industry in the US is technologically complex, and its structure as a classic network industry makes it intricate in business terms as well, so deregulation of such a complicated industry was a particularly detailed process. Steve Isser provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the history of the transformation of this complex industry from the 1978 Energy Policy Act to the present, covering the economic, legal, regulatory, and political issues and controversies in the transition from regulated utilities to competitive electricity markets. The book is a multidisciplinary study that includes a comprehensive review of the economic literature on electricity markets, the political environment of electricity policymaking, administrative and regulatory rulemaking, and the federal case law that restrained state and federal regulation of electricity. Isser offers a valuable case study of the pitfalls and problems associated with the deregulation of a complex network industry.

'This authoritative book is full of detail but also presents the broad sweep of events over the last twenty-five years. It is a multidisciplinary tour de force, showing how a mix of technical, economic, legal and political factors contributed both to the decisions made and to their results.'

Richard Green - Imperial College Business School, London

'Electricity Restructuring in the United States is an extraordinarily comprehensive history of the restructuring of the US electric power industry from 1978 until the present. The book is multidisciplinary, integrating numerous primary sources from economics, utility regulation, politics, engineering and legislative activity. It provides the most detailed documentation available of the forces that influence the rate and direction of electricity sector restructuring in the United States.'

Paul L. Joskow - President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

'This book brilliantly demonstrates how the institutional, legal and regulatory circumstances of a country shape, and are shaped by, the evolution of the electricity supply industry and how they constrain restructuring possibilities. It is therefore of central interest to all students of electricity regulation and reform.'

David Newbery - Director, Energy Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge

'In Steve Isser’s Electricity Restructuring in the United States, readers will find a rich resource that delves deeply into the story of energy law’s evolution. The book covers the particulars of nearly every development in US energy law and policy related to electricity restructuring from 1978 until about 2014. It documents the kinds of details that are lost over time: names, squabbles, and strange bedfellows that contributed to energy law as we know it. For researchers, such details provide texture and an ample array of sources for further exploration.'

Emily Hammond Source: Yale Journal on Regulation