Do Private Utilities Outperform Local Government-Owned Utilities? Evidence from German Retail Electricity

Stiel Caroline, Cullmann Astrid and Nieswand Maria
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Stiel Caroline: German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin),Berlin, Germany
Cullmann Astrid: German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin),Berlin, Germany
Nieswand Maria: German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin),Berlin, Germany

German Economic Review, 2018, vol. 19, issue 4, 401-425

Abstract: Against the background of remunicipalisation trends in European public service sectors, this paper estimates firm-level productivity for German electricity retailers and tests whether the ownership type has a significant impact on productivity. We specify a production function for the retail sector with labour and external services as main inputs, which is estimated using a control function approach. Employing a newly constructed dataset on German utilities by the German Federal Statistical Office for the years 2003-12, we find that firm-level productivity generally increased until 2008 but not afterwards. We do not find any evidence for ownership having an impact on productivity.

Keywords: Productivity; retail electricity; ownership; structural production function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1111/geer.12134

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