Le procedure di affidamento del servizio idrico integrato in Italia: esiste un disegno di gara?

Italian water service’s competitive tendering: does any tender design exist? (by Barbara Antonioli) - ABSTRACT: During the last two decades, the procurement of public services has been engaged in a process of intensive change, both at the local and national level, particularly in Europe. In Italy, recent developments of legislative framework are aimed to adopt competitive tenders both for service’s concession or private partner selection. Economists and operators generally agree about the effectiveness of auctions for the concession’s contracting out. Otherwise, the agreement is weaker if the question is how to prepare the auction: bidding market à la Demsetz, beauty contests or hybrid forms? In other words, more attention should be devoted to the analysis of reference market and to auction’s design. The aim of this paper is to verify, starting from the analysis of auction realized between 1998 and 2005, the real designing of the auctions other than the presence of an idea of industrial policy for water services. Results highlights that tenders are few, poorly designed and scarcely effectives. To be more precise, results remark the lack of foresight of industrial policy and, more generally, the necessity to reflect on the real possibility of the competition for the market in the water sector, characterized by an high degree of economical and social complexity. JEL classification: K0, L1, L5, L9

Barbara Antonioli, Le procedure di affidamento del servizio idrico integrato in Italia: esiste un disegno di gara? in "ECONOMIA DELLE FONTI DI ENERGIA E DELL’AMBIENTE" 3/2006, pp 69-97, DOI: