Changing prices after the reform of local public services: remunicipalization versus privatization Albalate, Daniel Bel, Germà González-Gómez, Francisco Hernández-Gutiérrez, José C. Picazo-Tadeo, Andrés J. Local public services Prices Privatization Remunicipalization Urban water Privatization and remunicipalization have been used as alternative options to reform the delivery of local public services; in both cases, mainly because of disappointment with the service performance, although ideological preferences might also play a role. The drivers and effects of water privatization have been widely studied, whereas little empirical evidence is available for remunicipalization, particularly regarding its effects. Using a sample of Spanish municipalities, this paper assesses the change in the price of urban water following remunicipalization as compared to privatization. The main finding is that remunicipalization leads to smaller increases in price; this outcome is, however, due to a few atypical municipalities with abnormally low prices before the policy reform. Once these influential observations are controlled for, whether the reform consists of remunicipalization or privatization makes no difference regarding price changes. It is also found that remunicipalization is much more likely in cities governed by extreme left-wing parties. 2024-04-01T09:37:16Z 2024-04-01T09:37:16Z 2024-03-27 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Albalate, D., Bel, G., González-Gómez, F., Gutiérrez-Hernández, J.C. and Picazo-Tadeo, A.J. (2024). Changing prices after the reform of local public services: remunicipalization versus privatization. Journal of Regulatory Economics. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/90256 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11149-024-09472-7 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Springer