Property rights and transaction costs: The role of ownership and organization in German public service provision

Maria Friese, Ulrich Heimeshoff and Gordon Klein

No 282, DICE Discussion Papers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)

Abstract: This paper provides evidence that ownership and organization matters for the efficiency of provision of public services. In particular, we find that pure private ownership is more efficient than pure public ownership, and public ownership is more efficient than mixed ownership. The delegation of management in different legal forms also has an impact, highlighting the importance of the design of the government-operator relationship. We apply a structural approach of production function estimation ensuring precise determination of total factor productivity for a panel of German refuse collection firms between 2000-2012. We project total factor productivity estimates on ownership and organization. Our results are in line with the trade-offs implied by the property rights literature and provide important policy implications regarding the organization of public service provision.

Keywords: productive efficiency; refuse collection; public service (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D2 H1 L3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-eur
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Journal Article: Property rights and transaction costs – The role of ownership and organization in German public service provision (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:dicedp:282

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