About the Center

James Cummings Bonbright (1891-1985) was a pioneer whose basic positions on property valuation and utility regulation have become almost universally accepted. He was primarily an academician but also involved in public policy as an advisor and administrator. His influence continues through revision and reprinting of his work.

Born in Evanston, Illinois, he was the son of Daniel and Alice (Cummings) Bonbright, the former on the faculty at Northwestern University and Acting President (1900-02). Bonbright received a BS degree from Northwestern in 1913 and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University (1921). Joining the faculty at Columbia in 1920, he rose to Professor of Political Science in the Graduate School of Business (1927-1960). He was awarded an honorary LLD from Northwestern in 1956 and the James C. Bonbright Utilities Center was established in his honor at the University of Georgia in 1991.

George Albert Coe (1862-1951), a prominent religious educator at Northwestern and friend of the family, was a mentor from 1911 until his death in 1951 (see George A. Coe Papers, Northwestern University Archives). James' family and Coe nurtured the high moral standard and public interest orientation. He married Martha Jane Earnest in 1933 and was the father of three children: Alice Vivian Bonbright. (Merrified); James C. Bonbright, Jr.; and Daniel I Bonbright.

Bonbright wrote in leading academic journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, and American Economic Review, honing the concepts later incorporated into treatises. His most enduring books are Valuation of Property (1937) and Principles of Public Utility Rates (PDF | 19 MB) (1961). More topical books like The Holding Company: Its Significance and Its Regulation (1932) co-authored with Gardner Means influenced formulation of the Holding Company Act (1935). He shaped corporate and public policy related to the railroads and public utilities.

Nearly all of his early work was related to capitalization, moving progressively from valuation of railroad to general corporate and utility property. This led to analyzing holding companies and controversies related to investor-owned v. nationalized electric power and transmission systems. Bonbright championed private over state ownership of utilities with restrictions on holding companies, limited public power as a yardstick for assessing performance of investor-owned utilities, and state regulation of utilities based on original cost of used and useful property.

During the 1920s and 1930s when the courts, industry advocates, and well-known academics lake Harry Gunnison Brown championed fair value, Bonbright argued for valuations based on original costs. Acceptance by the Supreme Court in the Hope Natural Gas (1944) case was a cause for jubilation according to family and friends. His position on most issues was always based on principle as opposed to vested interest and developed long before they became generally accepted. Examples include his treatment of depreciation charges, fair return on prudent investments and cost recovery based on his criteria of a sound rate structure. His early and sustained advocacy of rate design based on marginal or incremental costs has gained limited acceptance but remains contentious to this day.