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Do Private Utilities Outperform Local Government-Owned Utilities? Evidence from German Retail Electricity

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  • Stiel, Caroline
  • Cullmann, Astrid
  • Nieswand, Maria

Abstract

Against the background of remunicipalisation trends in European public service sectors, this paper estimates firm-level productivity for German electricity retailers and tests whether the ownership type has a significant impact on productivity. We specify a production function for the retail sector with labour and external services as main inputs, which is estimated using a control function approach. Employing a newly constructed dataset on German utilities by the German Federal Statistical Office for the years 2003-12, we find that firm-level productivity generally increased until 2008 but not afterwards. We do not find any evidence for ownership having an impact on productivity.

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  • Stiel, Caroline & Cullmann, Astrid & Nieswand, Maria, 2018. "Do Private Utilities Outperform Local Government-Owned Utilities? Evidence from German Retail Electricity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 19(4), pages 401-425.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:223233
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