Este trabajo analiza el papel de la competencia en la gestión pública, para lo cual toma como referencia la organización burocrática basada en centros de gasto que no cobran por sus servicios y suelen ser demasiado grandes e ineficientes. Para introducir competencia, se da libertad de elección a usuarios y productores, a la vez que se les responsabiliza de los costes que ocasionan sus decisiones. Se genera así un provechoso control mutuo entre usuarios y proveedores, que hace menos necesario el control jerárquico, de tipo vertical. Sin embargo, la eventual presencia de monopolios y asimetrías informativas puede ocasionar graves distorsiones y suele exigir una regulación activa, que es costosa y provoca búsqueda de rentas. Para corroborar la relevancia de este equilibrio de costes y beneficios, el trabajo analiza doce servicios públicos en los sectores de la sanidad, la educación y la justicia. Se constata la presencia de dificultades asociadas a monopolios, asimetrías informativas y búsqueda de rentas y se argumenta que, como consecuencia, se tienden a adoptar soluciones de naturaleza intermedia. Coherentemente con este argumento, se observa que en los servicios analizados o bien se emplean incentivos de baja intensidad o se restringen los derechos de decisión, de modo que no se aplican todos los elementos propios de la competencia pero tampoco se prescinde de ellos por completo. Por la moderación de los incentivos que genera, este uso incompleto de la competencia permite, además, que se puedan regular las actividades correspondientes mediante las fórmulas típicas de la Administración Pública, basadas en la reglamentación de decisiones recurrentes y la colegiación y supervisión jerárquica de un número pequeño de decisiones no regladas. This essay analyzes the role of competition in public management, taking as a reference a bureaucracy based on providers organized as expense centers, which do not charge users and tend to be too large and inefficient. To introduce competition, users and providers must be given freedom to decide and be made responsible for their decisions. This generates a beneficial mutual control between them, reducing the need of vertical control. The presence of monopolies and information asymmetries may provoke serious distortions, however, and it usually calls for active regulation, which is costly and generates rent seeking. To confirm the relevance of this trade-off, the article analyzes twelve public services in the fields of health, education and justice. The evidence shows that monopolies, information asymmetries and rent seeking are real concerns. As a consequence, the solutions adopted are hybrid. They constrain decision rights or apply low-powered incentives, so they do not use all the elements of competition but nor do they dispense with them all. With its weak incentives, this attenuated competition also makes possible the regulation of these services with the standard tools of Public Administration, based on standardization of procedures and hierarchical supervision of the few decisions that remain discretionary.
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Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number
490.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education K23 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law
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