The story of electricity reform in Latin America is, in some ways, a chronicle of ambition. In 1993, both Chile and Argentina stood as early experimenters with privatization in the power sector—steps that would later ripple across the continent. For those seeking to measure the real consequences of these reforms, ISIC 3510—electric power generation, transmission, and distribution—serves as the formal entry point. The code provides a necessary, if incomplete, lens on how the sector’s structure and outcomes evolved before and after the break with state ownership.
The first challenge is assembling the population of ISIC 3510‐registered firms, both before and after reform. In the early 1990s, Chile had already gone further than most, breaking up its integrated utilities and introducing competition in generation and distribution. Argentina, while a step behind, would soon follow with its own ambitious restructuring. National business registries, energy ministry reports, and—where available—sector association directories provide the names and basic statistics. The registry itself, though, only tells part of the story. Many firms changed names, split, or merged during the transition, so continuity is sometimes a matter of careful record linkage and an awareness of policy timelines.
Once the firms are identified, attention turns to generation capacity. Energy regulator filings, industry yearbooks, and international energy agency reports often list installed capacity by firm, fuel type, and year. By plotting these figures pre- and post-privatization, analysts can see whether capacity rose, fell, or merely shifted ownership. In Chile, an uptick in independent power producers and foreign investment often coincided with visible capacity growth, especially in the mid-1990s. In Argentina, the initial years after reform saw consolidation, a few new entrants, and some regional divergence.
But it’s not just capacity that matters. Price changes are at the heart of most reform debates. Before privatization, retail electricity tariffs were often set by government fiat, subsidized or cross-subsidized, and generally insulated from market signals. Post-reform, both countries saw the introduction of wholesale spot markets and more transparent, if sometimes volatile, pricing regimes. Central bank bulletins, regulatory filings, and even period newspaper articles can be used to construct time series for average prices, both at the generator (wholesale) and consumer (retail) level. For real comparability, these series should be corrected for inflation and, ideally, for changes in consumption mix.
Correlating capacity and price data is not always straightforward. The first years after reform can be noisy, with lags between policy implementation and measurable effects. Exchange rates, droughts (particularly relevant for hydropower-heavy systems), and macroeconomic shocks—such as the Tequila Crisis—can muddy the results. Analysts are well advised to document these confounding variables and, where possible, look for broader trends over several years rather than snap changes in a single quarter.
A further complication is the evolving regulatory environment. Both Chile and Argentina established independent regulators and transmission system operators to oversee the new markets, but the maturity of these institutions varied. Some reforms were rolled out in stages, with pilot projects or exceptions for certain regions. Tracking which firms were subject to what rules—and when—requires close reading of legal texts, implementation decrees, and sometimes interviews with sector veterans.
Every assumption—about firm continuity, data quality, or inflation correction—should be carefully logged. The boundaries of “before” and “after” privatization are not always crisp; in some cases, deals were in the works years before official launch, and their effects show up in the data early.
Layering ISIC 3510 firm records with capacity and price data, analysts can begin to trace the outlines of market reform’s impact in Chile and Argentina. The picture is inevitably uneven. Some regions and segments benefited more than others. Prices sometimes dipped, sometimes spiked, while capacity growth depended as much on outside investment and macro conditions as on regulatory design. But in these messy, shifting numbers is a record of how two countries tried to remake their power sectors—and what other nations might learn, for better or worse, from their example.