Financial and Political Factors Motivating the Privatisation of Municipal Water Services

Explanatory factors in the renewal of contracts for the privatisation of public services

“…Short-term solvency is defined as an organisation’s ability to generate sufficient liquidity to pay its short-term debts (Groves et al, 2003). Zafra-Gómez et al (2016a, 2016b) confirmed the existence of a relation between short-term solvency and privatisation, finding that when short-term solvency worsens, public services are more likely to be privatised. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 3: When short-term solvency worsens there is a greater likelihood that public service contracts will be renewed. …”

“…Political ideology may be an explanatory factor both of privatisation and of the renewal or otherwise of contracts. There is empirical evidence that more conservative governments tend to rely more on the market for the provision of public services (Plata-Díaz et al, 2014; Zafra-Gómez et al, 2016a). In the same vein, Bel and Fageda (2007) concluded that progressive governments are more likely to oppose the use of market mechanisms and to favour the public provision of municipal services.…”

“…Thus, Bivand and Szymanski (2000) highlighted the presence of spatial effects in the distribution of the costs of the waste collection service in the United Kingdom. Other studies, by González-Gómez and Guardiola (2009) and Zafra-Gómez et al (2016b), indicate the influence of variables such as the size of the municipality (measured by the resident population), the index of tourism-oriented activities and the importance of the industrial sector in the area, all of which require analysis of their influence on the contract renewal process.…”

Political and Institutional Explanations for Increasing Re-municipalization

“…Thereby, special attention should be paid to social services as the role of political ideology might be different from more technical services (see Petersen, Houlberg, and Christensen 2015;Plata-Díaz et al, 2017). Fourth, Zafra-Gómez et al (2016) found, for shifts in Spanish water services, statistical evidence that the parametric specification of logit estimations is too inflexible. A discrete time survival model could be suitable, especially for interpreting the ideological variables.…”

Estimación de la eficiencia a largo plazo en servicios públicos locales mediante fronteras robustas con datos de panel

“…Para la determinación de la relación entre eficiencia a largo plazo y formas de prestación de los servicios públicos, proponemos la evaluación del servicio de recogida y tratamiento de basura. Éste es un servicio público con una gran importancia para los gobiernos locales debido, entre otros aspectos, al peso que representa dentro de su presupuesto (Simonetto y Borenstein, 2007;Plata-Díaz et al, 2014;Zafra-Gómez et al, 2016). De esta forma, el servicio de gestión de residuos se ha visto sujeto a diversas reformas organizativas con el objetivo de minimizar su coste (Bohm et al, 2010;Abrate et al, 2012), aunque, tanto la provisión pública como privada de este servicio se ha caracterizado por una estructura monopolística (Stiglitz, 2000;Bel, 2006).…”