Performance of the public electric power industry: Evidence from Pakistan

The study investigates the performance of electric power sector of Pakistan at the firm level, as well as the sector as a whole. It identifies and attempts to quantify the extent of inefficiencies. Since either physical or financial or productivity indicators alone are not able to explain the duality of public infrastructure purposes and the complexity of their multi-dimensional goals, a set of relevant physical, financial, and productivity indicators have been used in evaluating the performance of this sector. Further, a Cobb- Douglas production function has also been used to calculate the trend in the growth of total factor productivity. Economies of scale have also been studied in the case of electric power generation.