Exploration information and AEC regulation of the domestic uranium industry

Abstract

For roughly twenty years following the second world war, the Atomic Energy Commission was the only purchaser of domestically produced uranium. Such monopsony power implicitly allowed the Atomic Energy Commission's to regulate the U.S. uranium industry. This paper investigates the Atomic Energy Commission's implicit regulation, asking if an efficient allocation of resources was induced. The main finding is that undesirably high levels of exploration were induced.