IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ira/wpaper/200815.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Similar problems, different solutions: Comparing refuse collection in the Netherlands and Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Germà Bel

    (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona)

  • Elbert Dijkgraaf

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

  • Xavier Fageda

    (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona)

  • Raymond Gradus

    (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Abstract

Local public service provision can vary greatly because of differences in institutional arrangements, public service markets, and national traditions regarding government intervention. In this paper we compare the procedures adopted by the local governments of the Netherlands and Spain in arranging for the provision of solid waste collection. We find that Spain faces a consolidation problem, opting more frequently to implement policies of privatization and cooperation, at the expense of competition. By contrast, the Netherlands has, on average, larger municipalities, resorting somewhat less to privatization and cooperation, and more to competition. The two options - cooperation and competition - have their merits when striving to strike a balance between transaction costs and scale economies. The choices made in organizational reform seem to be related to several factors, among which the nature of the political system and the size of municipalities appear to be relevant.

Suggested Citation

  • Germà Bel & Elbert Dijkgraaf & Xavier Fageda & Raymond Gradus, 2008. "Similar problems, different solutions: Comparing refuse collection in the Netherlands and Spain," IREA Working Papers 200815, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Nov 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:200815
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ub.edu/irea/working_papers/2008/200815.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Local governments; contracting-out; privatization; inter-municipal cooperation.;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:200815. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alicia García (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feubaes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.