Contract renewal in urban water services, incumbent advantage, and market concentration
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
Wiley
Materia
Competition Contract renewal Market concentration Private urban water industry Spain Transparency
Fecha
2022-03Referencia bibliográfica
Albalate, D., Bel, G., González‐Gómez, F., & Picazo‐Tadeo, A. J. (2022). Contract renewal in urban water services, incumbent advantage, and market concentration. Public Administration Review, 82(2), 314-324.
Patrocinador
European Regional Development Fund; Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación; Generalitat Valenciana; Government of Catalonia; Government of AndalusiaResumen
Contract renewal with the incumbent is common practice in the contracting-out of public services. It could, however, affect competition by reinforcing trends towards market concentration. This article contributes empirical evidence on the determinants of the result of public tenders for the renewal of private provision of the urban water service. A dataset with information on 215 public tenders held in Spain between 2008 and 2019 is employed. The methodology is grounded in logistic regression techniques. The findings indicate that incum- bents’ size does not play a role in the probability of alternating between service providers. Fur- thermore, competitionproxied by the number of biddersand transparency in managing public tenders both increase the likelihood of alternating between providers. Lastly, the estimates sug- gest that larger municipality size and discretionary power of entrenched political parties might also play a role in favoring incumbents’ contract renewal.