Liberalization and regulatory reform of network industries: A comparative analysis of Italian public utilities

Measuring the efficiency of water utilities: a cross-national comparison between Portugal and Italy

“…In Portugal there is an urgent need to improve the overall productivity of the sector (several utilities struggle to break even) and to clarify the role of the central state as an operator/regulator (Marques, 2006). In Italy, the main problems have to do with the very long time that the Galli reform is taking to be carried out and to the absence of open tender procedures for the selection of private partners in several occasions, especially as the minority shareholders of the mixed companies (Asquer, 2011). In addition, the outcome of the 2011 referendum has defined a framework that is still hazy and unstable regarding both the governance choices and the process of tariff setting.…”

Understanding Subjectivities in the Regulation of Local Water Services: A Q-Methodology Study of Elected Public Officers in Italy

“…About two-thirds of the water industry still consists of utilities owned and controlled by local governments, albeit they have been typically re-incorporated under company laws rather than left operating as municipal agencies or departments [32]. In the rest of the water industry, utilities are owned by both local governments and private operators and investors, that include, for instance, French water multinational firms, local banks, and financial investors.…”

“…This study begun with the development of a concourse of about 150 statements about the regulation of local water services that had emerged from documentary sources and from about 20 interviews with elected public officers of both the national and local government level, water regulators, water utility managers, and mayors that were collected in previous research on water regulation and regulatory reform in Italy [30][31][32] (i.e., the concourse was formed by identifying claims about how local water services are delivered, how well they perform, and how they should be regulated as expressed by interviewees in the course of previous fieldworks). Then, the number of statements of the concourse was reduced to a Q sample made of 30 claims that related to five convenient a priori categories of features about the regulation of water services.…”

“…Several works have been done on the design of water regulatory systems [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], on the assessment of water regulatory institutions [24][25][26][27][28] and on the making and implementation of regulatory reforms in the water sector [29][30][31][32]. The present study is especially concerned with ideas about the regulation of water services at the local level.…”

Who Pushes the Buttons? Investigating the Regulatory Governance of Retail Electricity Tariff Setting in South Africa Through Institutional Analysis and Development

“…(Ostrom 2011a;Nowlin 2011). IAD was used as a comparative tool to match the institutional form of regulators with varying performance of Italian public utilities (Asquer 2011) and to track the influence of stakeholder groups and rules in shaping institutional forms and policy outcomes of electricity regulation in the United States (Baldwin 2013) and Brazil (Amorim 2013). The benefit that IAD brings to the study of complex policy situations is as an aid to analysing the way in which formal and informal rules shape the behaviour of institutional actors.…”