Influência de regimes e ambiente regulatório sobre o risco sistemático das empresas reguladas de infraestrutura

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the relationship between regulatory regimes and environments with the systematic risk of regulated infrastructure companies across different sectors and countries. Research on the relationship between regulatory regimes that offer more incentives for efficiency, regulatory environments that are more favorable to competition, and regulatory quality on the systematic risk of regulated companies using cross-sectional variables is scarce. The findings demonstrated that regulatory regimes with greater power to encourage efficiency and environments with higher regulatory quality are negatively associated with systematic risks; alternatively, environments more favorable to competition are positively associated with systematic risks. This work contributes to the literature by demonstrating how regulatory risk can affect systematic risk and, therefore, the return on capital invested in regulated network infrastructure companies from different countries. It also assists investors in their decision-making. Additionally, it empirically contributes to regulators and public policy makers by demonstrating the relevance of the regulatory environment and mechanisms to encourage efficiency and their effect on systematic risk, internalizing such effects into the regulatory process. By highlighting factors that can affect the price of public services, this work contributes to a better understanding of the regulatory process by consumers. Finally, the research helps preparers and auditors by demonstrating how regulation can affect the systematic risk of regulated companies, enabling them to evaluate their accounting choices in this scenario. To achieve these results, an analysis was carried out with panel data from 174 companies in 27 countries, spanning different regulated infrastructure sectors, using multiple linear regression for the period from 2010 to 2021.