Do competition and ownership matter? Evidence from local public transport in Europe

Andrea Boitani (1) , Marcella Nicolini (2) , Carlo Scarpa (3)

1 Catholic University
2 FEEM
3 UniBs - Università degli Studi di Brescia = University of Brescia

This paper investigates how the ownership and the selection procedure of firms operating in the local public transport sector affect their productivity. In order to compare different institutional regimes, we carry out a comparative analysis of 77 companies operating in large European cities over the period 1997-2006. This allows us to consider firms selected either through competitive tendering or negotiated procedures. Retrieving the residuals we obtain a measure of total factor productivity, which we regress on firm and city characteristics. We find that totally or partially public firms display lower productivity than privately owned firms. Moreover, firms selected through competitive tendering display higher total factor productivity.

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Andrea Boitani, Marcella Nicolini, Carlo Scarpa. Do competition and ownership matter? Evidence from local public transport in Europe. Applied Economics, 2011, 45 (11), pp.1419-1434. ⟨10.1080/00036846.2011.617702⟩. ⟨hal-00768582⟩