Requirements on Regulation Frameworks: What is the Best Way of Securing Efficiency in the Water Sector?
The paper investigates the effects of several characteristics of regulatory frameworks in the water sector on the efficiency of water provision. Several requirements on efficient regulatory frameworks suggested in other studies of network industries are modified and others are derived from different economic theories of regulation. The resulting set of criteria is applied to the regulation systems of the Dutch, German and US-American water industry. A comparison of several performance indicators for the three countries suggests that some relationship between the design of regulatory frameworks and the price-quality-ratios in the water sector might exist.
