EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Capacity, sustainability, and the community benefits of municipal utility ownership in the United States

George C. Homsy

Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 2020, vol. 23, issue 2, 120-137

Abstract: Most literature on utility sustainability focuses on internal operations; this misses the role that utilities could play within a community. This study measures the impact of municipal ownership of water and electric utilities on the sustainability policymaking of local governments. I find that municipalities with government-owned water utilities adopt more sustainability measures than those with investor-owned service. Similarly, municipally-owned electric utilities have higher levels of energy sustainability in the community, but not in government operations. The utilities provide fiscal and technical capacity to municipalities. Interdepartmental coordination also strongly predicts sustainability policymaking. This study brings potential community benefits to the discussion of private investment in public service delivery.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17487870.2018.1515014 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jpolrf:v:23:y:2020:i:2:p:120-137

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GPRE19

DOI: 10.1080/17487870.2018.1515014

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Policy Reform is currently edited by Dr Judith Clifton

More articles in Journal of Economic Policy Reform from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst (chris.longhurst@tandf.co.uk).

 
Page updated 2024-07-04
Handle: RePEc:taf:jpolrf:v:23:y:2020:i:2:p:120-137