Webinars in Economics of Environment, Energy and Transports
At 4pm on Zoom and has a duration of 60 minutes, with questions at the end.
In order to attend the webinar, registration is mandatory. Please use the following link to access the registration form.
Alexandre Mayol (BETA – Université de Lorraine) et Stéphane Saussier (IAE de Paris – Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Does merging public utilities save money? The case of water in France
Abstract
The public policies aim to merge the different public utilities hoping to save money and gain an economy of scale. In France, the municipalities are responsible for water provision. The French government incentivizes them to merge their different local public utilities such as water, transport, and energy. However, the majority of the municipalities don’t accept this. We can question the motivations to merge (or not): political opportunism, efficiency, fiscally. From an exhaustive panel database (2008-2018), we analyze the merging of water in France to understand their reasons and the impact. This paper is relevant to question the economies of scale in utilities.