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In April 2010, the executive meeting of the State Council decided that in order to deepen the reform of energy prices and strengthen the management of energy demand, the tiered price of residential electricity will be implemented. In October 2010, the National Development and Reform Commission, the electricity pricing authority, issued the Guiding Opinions on Tiered Pricing for Residents (Draft for Comments), which introduced two options for implementing tiered pricing. After the announcement of the tiered pricing plan, it immediately attracted widespread public attention, which is of course related to the price increase factors highlighted by it. After all, residents' electricity use is an important livelihood issue. However, price increases are only part of the story, and when inflation comes, price increases are not news, and not raising prices is news. In addition to the price increase, what deserves more attention this electricity price reform may be the shift from linear pricing to tiered pricing. In fact, in the practice of electricity pricing in countries around the world, ladder pricing is not a new thing. As early as the 70s of the 20th century, in order to solve the impact of rising electricity prices on low-income users, some places in the United States introduced a progressive era of ladder pricing. In recent years, with the global concern for environmental and sustainable development issues, regulatory agencies in many countries have rekindled their enthusiasm for tiered pricing and introduced this pricing method. However, it goes without saying that since the birth of tiered pricing, whether it is to regulate income distribution or to promote resource conservation, it cannot hide the obvious conflict with the principle of efficiency. It is this inherent contradiction between ladder pricing and resource allocation efficiency that determines that the basic logic must be rethought when choosing this pricing method. According to the explanation of the National Development and Reform Commission, among the three grades of residential tiered electricity prices, the first level of electricity is determined to meet the basic electricity needs of residents, and the electricity price remains at a low price level; The second tranche reflects the normal and reasonable demand for electricity, and the electricity price is gradually adjusted to a level that can make up for the reasonable costs and reasonable benefits of power enterprises; The third gear reflects the higher quality of life electricity demand. The specific situation of the two schemes is: for option 1, the first tranche is calculated according to the electricity coverage of 70%, and when the monthly electricity consumption of each household is below 110 kWh, the current electricity price will be maintained, and it will remain unchanged for the next three years; The second gear is designed according to the power coverage of 90%, and the monthly electricity consumption of each household is 110-210 kWh, exceeding the basic electricity consumption, and the electricity per kWh rises by 5 cents; In the third gear, the monthly electricity consumption of each household exceeded 210 kWh, and the excess increased by 2 cents per kWh. For plan 2, the first tranche is calculated according to the electricity coverage of 80%, and the monthly electricity consumption of each household is less than 140 kWh, which increases by 1 cent per kWh; The second gear is designed according to the power coverage of 95%, and the monthly electricity consumption of each household is 140-270 kWh, and the excess electricity per kWh rises by 5 cents; In the third gear, the monthly electricity consumption of each household exceeded 270 kWh, and the electricity per kWh increased by 2 cents. After a simple comparison, it can be seen that in the two tiered pricing schemes, except for the user electricity price of the first tranche in scheme 1, which remains unchanged at the current level, the electricity price of other users will face an increase, which means that this price adjustment will increase the overall electricity price level. As for why the price has increased, according to the explanation given by the National Development and Reform Commission, and also a common complaint of power generation companies, the current residential electricity price is too low, and even puts power generation enterprises on the verge of loss. Due to the low voltage of residential power supply, the cost of residential power supply is already high, coupled with the rapid rise in coal prices in recent years, but the coal power price linkage mechanism has not been established, the coal price determined by the market has risen, but the electricity price is still artificially limited to a low level, so it is necessary to return the electricity price to rationality. Whether it is the explanation of the National Development and Reform Commission or the complaint of power generation enterprises, it is obviously a monopoly narrative, and it is difficult to win the recognition of ordinary people, which is easy to understand, because under the existing power system, the power generation cost of power generation enterprises lacks competition constraints, and the feed-in tariff is not formed in competition, so it is meaningless to talk about low electricity prices or high power supply costs. Of course, the introduction of a competition mechanism in the electricity market does not mean that the price of electricity will necessarily decrease, but only that the competition mechanism will increase the credibility of cost information and price formation, which is the essence of the problem. Behind the pricing problem is actually the problem of the power system, but also the problem of the electricity market mechanism. But the current situation is that although power generation production has been marketized, sales have not yet been marketized, the wholesale electricity market has not yet been established, the on-grid tariff is still controlled by the state, electricity sales are still under the control of the state, and the power grid company is unified purchase and sales. Since the State Council's No. 5 Document in 2002 clarified the direction of electricity marketization reform, the electricity reform can be said to have made slow progress, and the fundamental reason is the lack of motivation for reform. Hicks said that the biggest benefit of monopoly is the possibility of enjoying a leisurely life, that is, it is too easy to make money from a monopoly position. Promoting the reform of the electricity market means that there will be huge resistance to touching the interests of many people. When it is difficult to promote the reform of electricity marketization, it will rely on the existing electricity price formation mechanism and solve many contradictions through price increases. However, rising prices will undoubtedly create great tension, which the government is undoubtedly very aware of. One of the interesting things about this electricity price reform is that the relevant departments are very smart, they know that simply according to the original pricing method, the opinions of the people will definitely be very large, which will affect the image of the government, so while raising prices, the theme of saving resources is highlighted, because rich people generally consume more electricity, so in the pricing scheme, let these people pay higher electricity prices. In this way, the price increase occupies the moral high ground and looks beautiful. In fact, one of the main features of this price increase is that the price adjustment plan implies the idea of income redistribution, which gives people the feeling that the price increase itself is in pursuit of fairness and justice, and the rational rhetoric of value has eliminated the antagonistic emotions of many people. However, it is clear that tiered pricing itself does not solve the problem of electricity price formation mechanism, in essence, tiered pricing is nothing more than a wonderful reason for price increases. Even the tiered pricing reform reflects some of the signs of current reform, that is, pan-value theory has replaced instrumental rationality. Second, the income distribution narrative gives ladder pricing the function of regulating income distribution, which shows that the government recognizes the people's dissatisfaction with the current income distribution situation, and also reflects that there are many problems in the traditional income distribution adjustment method of fiscal taxation. But even if tiered pricing is used as a tool to regulate income redistribution, or electricity consumption as a means of redistribution in kind, it is still necessary to consider whether it is the most effective way. The most basic feature of tiered pricing is that the applicable marginal price increases cumulatively as electricity consumption increases. According to the most basic economic common sense, this pricing method violates the law of electricity costs, because the long-term incremental costs of electricity production, including variable costs, exclusive fixed costs and capacity costs, do not change with the increase of electricity consumption. What better reflects this cost structure is two-step pricing, or real-time pricing, rather than tiered pricing. Tiered pricing without a cost basis is undoubtedly contrary to the principle of efficient economy and will produce unnecessary welfare losses. When considering whether to use distorted relative prices to achieve income distribution goals, there is a very famous principle in economics called the Arcson-Stiglitz theorem, which is a basic principle that government pricing must first consider in any field. Its main meaning is that under general conditions, income distribution does not need to distort prices, but only with the help of tax means, and adjusting income distribution by price means is doomed to be inefficient. Price is price, and its purpose is simple, it is to act as a signal of resource allocation, and it cannot do anything else, including regulating income distribution. If the distribution of income is adjusted by price means, it will inevitably pay the price of resource allocation efficiency. Of course, the real world is complex and does not necessarily meet the conditions of the Arcson-Stiglitz theorem, so there is room to regulate income distribution by means of prices. In essence, rationality for improving income distribution by means of price depends on how the loss of welfare caused by price distortions compares with the efficiency of the tax system. An important concept is used here, called the marginal cost of public funds, which simply means the social cost of each dollar of tax collected. Generally speaking, the tax system of developed countries is more efficient, so it is more reasonable to use fiscal taxation methods; Developing countries, on the other hand, have less efficient fiscal and tax systems, higher costs of public funds, and more room for the use of price instruments. Even so, welfare losses from price distortions need to be specifically considered, preferably through moderations designed to target specific groups. In real life, one danger of using price to improve income distribution is that income distribution goals are often used as an excuse to protect monopolies, because distorted prices, including ladder pricing, are incompatible with the competitive mechanism, and only under the monopoly system, relying on coercive force, this mechanism can be implemented, in this sense, ladder pricing includes monopoly thinking. Now, many industries have proposed universal service goals, that is, to provide services to everyone, regardless of the cost of services or ability to pay, but the problem is that the provision of these services may be at a loss, such as highlands or remote areas, users with relatively low income levels, in the absence of direct government subsidies, the provision of services needs cross-subsidy, and this cross-subsidy mechanism eventually evolves into a monopoly excuse. It must be emphasized that tiered pricing does not meet the incentive compatibility constraints of consumers and therefore does not give consumers choice. That is to say, if consumers are given different marginal price choices, they will definitely choose lower prices, so ladder pricing can only be implemented by coercive force. In contrast, in the field of telecommunications, consumers already have the right to choose telecommunications tariffs, and under the monopoly system, it is impossible to have such a choice. In addition to the issue of efficiency, improving income distribution by distorting prices also involves the issue of procedural justice, which is related to the mashup of "price" and "tax". According to the National Development and Reform Commission, part of the expected overcharge after the price increase will subsidize the increase in the cost of power plants, and the other part will subsidize the cost of desulfurization, which is part of the internalized external cost. Of course, there are external costs that have not yet been internalized. From this point of view, ladder pricing has a threefold mission: first, to recover the cost of electricity; The second is to internalize the external cost of electricity use, that is, the "Pigou tax", which is equivalent to paying environmental costs in addition to direct costs after consumers consume electricity; The third is to regulate income distribution. In ladder pricing, there is both the meaning of price and the concept of tax, but the problem is that "price" and "tax" are mixed together, for consumers, only know that like personal income tax, ladder pricing is a progressive tax, but do not know which part is the price paid, which part is paid "Pigou tax", and which part belongs to the distribution of income in kind. Of course, this phenomenon does not only exist in electricity pricing, and the mixing of price and tax is actually a norm, and ordinary people do not know their tax payment behavior. It is not obvious what the social cost of residential electricity consumption is to the consumption of resources, and the amount of electricity used. Obviously, it cannot simply be said that the more electricity is used, the higher the marginal cost. Although the progressive Pigou tax has the function of adjusting the distribution of income, it is not reasonable from a pricing point of view, not to mention that the relevant authorities have not even measured the cost of electricity production and environmental costs. Even if the power industry, as a special industry, has a logical basis for increasing the Pigou tax in the use link, it is necessary to separate the price and tax, make the price and tax transparent, so that it is also conducive to the establishment of civil society, let the people know their tax obligations, and at the same time make the government responsible for the money collected, which is the requirement of procedural justice in pricing and taxation. However, the government's current approach is to only explain what the money will be used for after the price increase, that is, to set the current collection with the future use, without providing transparency of prices and taxes, so it gives the impression that it is to raise prices. Third, the dilemma of the resource conservation proposition is to save energy and protect the environment by imposing a Pigou tax to make users bear the entire social cost of electricity. However, saving energy is not a simple proposition, even if raising the price of electricity can reduce electricity consumption, it does not mean that energy consumption is reduced, and the proposition of saving energy needs to be considered on a larger scale. Increasing electricity prices can reduce electricity demand and thus save energy, with the assumption that consumers will lower their overall energy demand because they pay more. This assumption is not necessarily true, because consumers do not necessarily reduce their overall demand for energy because of the increase in electricity prices, and are likely to switch to other alternative energy sources. The complexity of the resource conservation proposition is that the demand for electricity is not the final demand, but a demand caused by other consumption, that is, people need not electricity itself, but use electricity to do other things. The problem is that there are many types of energy and they are interchangeable, in economic terms, that is, raising electricity prices not only has a revenue effect, which therefore suppresses electricity demand, but also has a substitution effect, and the method and degree of substitution depends on short- and long-term considerations. For example, cooking can use electricity or natural gas, and when the price of electricity increases, people will use more natural gas to meet the needs of cooking. In addition, changing electricity prices may change people's lifestyles, but they will not necessarily change people's energy needs. For example, when the price of electricity is very low, many people are used to using computers to read online, but if the price of electricity rises, it is likely to be printed out for reading. Although less electricity is used, but more paper is used, which way can save energy and which way is more environmentally friendly? In the previous stage, many people discussed whether electric vehicles were energy-saving or more environmentally friendly. From the perspective of the way electric vehicles replace driving, electric vehicles will reduce gasoline consumption, so it does save energy, however, electric vehicles are charged and need to be recycled and processed batteries, and the potential impact of rechargeable batteries on the environment may be difficult to estimate, and many experts even believe that in the long run, it produces much more pollution than gasoline use. From the characteristics of electricity itself, electricity is a secondary energy, compared with primary energy, it is itself an efficient and clean energy, which is why the country vigorously develops electricity and why it spends so much money to build a transmission network. If the price of electricity rises and the price of other energy sources remains unchanged, people will choose alternative energy sources, or alternative lifestyles, so it is difficult to say whether the price increase will reduce energy demand. If the total demand for energy remains the same, it is obviously not worth the loss to replace electricity with less efficient and environmentally unfriendly energy. Fundamentally, the consumption of resources depends on the mode of growth, or more precisely, the speed of economic development. It is undeniable that the current global resource pricing is difficult to reflect the full cost, and some major environmental pollutants such as carbon dioxide have the attributes of global public goods, under such conditions, economic growth is actually a "free rider" behavior, changing the mode of growth is difficult to commit political will, in the absence of a global constraint mechanism, it is difficult for any government to restrain the impulse to grow. From this point of view, it is unrealistic to adjust energy demand simply by raising electricity prices, rather than drastically changing the growth pattern and slowing down the pace of development. IV The Challenge of Ladder Pricing If the introduction of ladder pricing is a political choice, then whether it is to return electricity prices to rationality, or to adjust income distribution, or to promote energy conservation, to achieve these good intentions, it is necessary to formulate and implement reasonable ladder prices, but because of some attributes of ladder pricing itself, the adoption of this pricing method faces great challenges. In this regard, both the academic community and the price authority must have sufficient understanding, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve its effect. According to the basic principles of microeconomics, there are two issues that deserve special attention to cumulative tiered pricing: First, the mutual influence of different electricity prices. In the case of multi-level electricity prices, an important property of tiered electricity prices is that low-grade electricity prices have a pure income effect on high-end electricity price consumers, but there is no substitution effect, that is, raising low-grade electricity prices suitable for low-income consumers will more effectively suppress electricity consumption, which is a paradox of tiered pricing. This paradox means that there is a helpless trade-off between the price level of electricity and changing consumer behavior: the low-end electricity price of option 2 is higher than the low-end electricity price of option 1, but due to the income effect generated by the ultra-marginal price, although the high-end electricity price level of option 1 and option 2 is the same, under option 2, not only will low-end electricity consumers reduce consumption, but also high-end electricity users will reduce electricity consumption relative to option 1. Second, there is a concentration of electricity consumption at the inflection point of ladder pricing, that is, many consumers with different preferences will choose the same level of electricity consumption at the inflection point with each other. This is tantamount to saying that tiered pricing may reduce rather than increase demand effects, which is clearly contrary to the principle of effective electricity pricing, which is another paradox of tiered pricing. This important feature of incremental ladder pricing will affect the choice of different electricity price levels and the determination of inflection points of different gears. At present, it is difficult to know whether the relevant authorities are concerned about the technical problems caused by this shift in pricing. However, it should be emphasized that these considerations are not only purely technical, and in the era of tiered pricing, these seemingly difficult technical issues mean that price authorities must face the technical challenges brought by non-linear pricing, especially reflected in the need for micro-information. In the era of linear pricing, the formulation of optimal pricing does not need to consider the consumer's preference information, but only needs to know the aggregate demand information, because as long as there is elastic information and cost information on the total demand for electricity, the optimal electricity price can be determined in accordance with the Ramsay pricing principle. However, as a non-linear pricing, tiered pricing has revolutionized information demand, and the adoption of tiered pricing means that it is not enough to set the optimal price to understand the total demand, but also to understand the individual demand information. This is undoubtedly a methodological revolution for price authorities accustomed to linear pricing. Of course, from the actual point of view, this rational appeal may be too harsh, and the government pricing may not pay too much attention to this instrumental rational requirement, or it can only meet part of the rational demand. For example, for various reasons, the inflection point of tiered pricing may be determined by politics, and the policy tools of price authorities become only to optimize electricity prices in different levels, in which case the linear pricing thinking of the past may still apply to some extent. However, according to the current information, it is impossible to judge the rationality of the level of electricity prices in different levels, and the National Development and Reform Commission proposes that the determination of inflection points should be decided by each locality, but it is impossible to know the criteria for determining these inflection points. It must be noted that the absence of effective pricing may not affect the political correctness of tiered pricing or its implementation, but governments and the public must recognize that the resulting opportunity costs are enormous, and although this opportunity cost is implicit, it is not fundamentally different from any way that directly reduces consumer welfare, such as reducing consumer income, or reducing consumer satisfaction. Another challenge posed by tiered pricing will be reflected in the evaluation of its effectiveness after implementation. It can be expected that after the implementation of tiered pricing, whether government departments or academia, in order to evaluate the implementation effect of tiered pricing, or for the purpose of improving tiered pricing, it is necessary to conduct empirical research on the effect of tiered pricing, such as estimating the relevant elasticity. However, under tiered pricing, these empirical studies face great challenges, including the need to learn more about micro-information at the household level, and a series of technical difficulties, such as how to account for the impact of marginal and average prices. Failure to properly consider these issues will mislead future pricing policies. V. The previous analysis of the future of electricity price reform shows that tiered pricing is at best a means of regulating income distribution, but it is far from solving the core problem of electricity prices, that is, promoting the effective allocation of resources in the power industry. So what is effective pricing in the power industry? The answer lies in real-time pricing. The most basic techno-economic feature of the power industry is that the potential demand and supply of the power system may be unbalanced, but the power system must be balanced at all times. Given at any point in time, if the power demand is insufficient and the power supply is excessive, the power supply system needs to reduce the power generation and transmission, otherwise the power system will have problems, such as the fuse will be blown and the electrical appliances will be destroyed; If there is excess demand and insufficient existing capacity, the power system will also go wrong, such as light bulbs going dark. Since there is uncertainty in electricity demand, and the increase in generation and transmission capacity is discontinuous and comes at a cost, the eternal theme of the power system is how to manage demand in the short term and with limited capacity; In the long term, promote a reasonable increase in capacity. This characteristic of power products determines that the pricing of the power industry is different from the pricing of general products, and the optimal pricing of electricity must be related to a specific time and space. Effective pricing in the power generation industry needs to solve problems that are very similar to those of other industries with capacity constraints, such as transportation. For the transportation industry, supply and demand are often mismatched. For example, during the morning or evening rush hour, the road network is very crowded and cannot meet the demand for vehicles, but in addition to most of the time, there are not so many cars, and the road network is largely underutilized. More and more road congestion problem, not only in the construction of the road can not keep up with the increase in vehicles, in a certain period of time, the supply is indeed limited, the road can not increase at once, because building a road not only requires funds, but also a certain amount of construction time, more importantly, maintaining a certain blockage is in line with the principle of efficiency. The same is true of the power system, where supply is difficult to meet all demand during peak demand, so demand management and even power cuts are required, but most of the time, the supply is excessive. The technical and economic characteristics of the power industry determine that the pricing method for effective allocation of power resources is real-time pricing. In real-time pricing, one of the simplest pricing methods is peak-to-valley pricing, which is when electricity prices are higher during peak hours; In the trough stage, the price of electricity is lower, so that consumers have an incentive to choose to avoid the peak and valley period of electricity. The implementation of real-time pricing is the main trend of international electricity price reform. Technically, implementing peak-to-valley electricity prices, or even more complex real-time pricing, is not a problem, which is to install a smart meter to distinguish electricity consumption at different times. In fact, China has tried to do this for a long time, but it has not been rolled out on a large scale, and there are many reasons for this, the most important of which is related to our system. Under the existing monopoly system, companies have no incentive to do so, and they certainly prefer to make money in the simplest way. For future electricity price reform, there is still huge room for reform under the framework of introducing tiered pricing. The option that can be considered is to embed real-time pricing (peak-valley pricing) in tiered pricing, so that different goals can be achieved by different means, among which, peak-valley pricing mainly undertakes the mission of effective pricing, while tiered pricing more assumes the function of social regulation, which may be the direction that the next step of electricity price reform can work towards. But it all depends on the momentum for change that stakeholders have. Zhang Xinzhu, June 2015（AI翻译）
