Paola Valbonesi

Una valutazione delle ipotesi di revisione del Metodo tariffario normalizzato per il servizio idrico integrato

L’acqua e un bene pubblico essenziale in grado di generare una pluralita di domande spesso in concorrenza tra loro. Sebbene l’obiettivo di assicurare un accesso alla risorsa non subordinato alla “ability to pay” rimanga uno dei principi cardine dell’offerta, la riforma italiana del servizio idrico – avviata a partire dalla Legge Galli 36/1994 - configura una gestione industriale su larga scala dell’intera filiera di produzione, distribuzione e depurazione dell’acqua potabile, con il duplice scopo di rilanciare gli investimenti nello sviluppo dei servizi e di creare una gestione in grado di “autofinanziarsi” attraverso entrate tariffarie, secondo un principio di full cost recovery. Il metodo tariffario vigente - conosciuto come Metodo Tariffario Normalizzato – incorpora concretamente tali principi; recentemente, tale metodo e stato oggetto di una proposta di revisione da parte del Comitato di Vigilanza sull’Uso delle Risorse Idriche. In questo lavoro viene dapprima presentata una breve rassegna degli obiettivi di regolamentazione perseguiti attraverso il Metodo Tariffario Normalizzato e vengono, quindi, illustrati gli elementi ed i parametri oggetto di revisione. L’analisi si concentra, in particolare, sulla revisione degli elementi di regolazione che concernono la determinazione della cosiddetta “tariffa di riferimento”: a questo riguardo viene effettuata una simulazione sui diversi parametri oggetto della proposta di revisione prendendo come riferimento di analisi il caso dell’ATO Bacchiglione e del gestore Acegas-APS e ne vengono proposti e discussi i risultati.

Equilibrium State Aid in Integrating Markets

Abstract We present a model of the impact of state aid on equilibrium market structure and on market performance in an integrating market when the process of integration is driven by consumer inertia. In a partial equilibrium model, it is an equilibrium for governments to grant state aid, even though this reduces common market welfare.

Court Efficiency and Procurement Performance

Disputes over penalties for breaching a contract are often resolved in court. A simple model illustrates how inefficient courts can sway public buyers from enforcing a penalty for late delivery in order to avoid litigation, therefore inducing sellers to delay contract delivery. By using a large dataset on Italian public procurement, we empirically study the effects of court inefficiency on public work performance. We find that where courts are inefficient: i) public works are delivered with longer delays; ii) delays increase for more valuable contracts; iii) contracts are more often awarded to larger suppliers; and iv) a higher share of the payment is postponed after delivery. Other interpretations receive less support from the data.

State Aid to Business

This timely and much-needed Handbook reconsiders an old topic from a fresh perspective, raising a number of new, interesting and worthwhile issues in the wake of ten years of globalization. This comprehensive analysis illustrates that old-style industrial policies whereby the government directly intervened in markets, and was often the producer itself, are no longer relevant. Structural changes occurring in economies – summarized in the term ‘globalization’ – are triggering the definition and implementation of new industrial policies. The contributors, leading experts in their field, unite to evaluate this shift of over a decade ago.

Fuel Poverty and the Energy Benefits System: The Italian Case

In this paper we discuss a number of ways to define and measure the affordability of energy consumption, and we examine the emergence of fuel poverty in Italy in the period from 1998 to 2011. The paper examines the eligibility criteria for claiming the benefits available to support energy consumption for vulnerable families and it identifies the potential beneficiaries. The study assesses the appropriateness of the eligibility criteria by comparing the population targeted by the policy with the population actually living in fuel poverty. A simulation exercise, using the hypothetical scenario most likely to result in energy benefits being made available, shows that, regardless of the affordability index adopted, the provision of state energy benefits has little impact on fuel poverty.

Sticks and Carrots in Procurement: an experimental exploration.

Abstract We test the robustness of recent findings on the benefits of penalty contracts to the environments typical of B2B (and B2G) procurement, where buyers and sellers interact repeatedly, matching is endogenous and competitive, there are contractible and non-contractible tasks, and reputation-based relationships can emerge. Both bonuses and penalties boost efficiency, strongly increasing effort in the contractible task while only mildly crowding it out in the non-contractible one. However, sellers grab a higher fraction of surplus with bonuses, as buyers’ offers become more generous. Consequently, buyers prefer penalties, which may explain why they are so widespread in procurement.

Toward Defining and Measuring the Affordability of Public Utility Services

This paper reviews the progress made in the literature toward defining and measuring the affordability of utilities. It highlights the relative merits of alternate affordability metrics; the practical challenges to their operationalization, including the underlying data requirements; and their implications for the design, evaluation, and implementation of appropriate affordability programs.

Revenue Sharing Rules for International Telephony

The method for settling telecommunications payments between operators in different countries is the reciprocal accounting rate system. This is a discriminatory system, because different operators pay different prices to access the same national network and these price differences are not related to different costs of providing the service.Reforms of the accounting rate system are currently under discussion in international organizations. In this paper we study the effects of the existing regime and of the main alternative proposal, the international traffic terminating fee, on the retail price of international telephone calls.Our main result is that the current regime of reciprocal accounting rates may determine lower prices than the proposed alternative system.

Too Many Charities? Insight from an Experiment with Multiple Public Goods and Contribution Thresholds

We present results from an experiment with multiple public goods, where each good produces benefits only if total contributions to it reach a minimum threshold. The experiment allows us to compare contributions in a benchmark treatment with a single public good and in treatments with more public goods than can be funded. The presence of multiple public goods makes coordination among participants more difficult, discouraging contributions, and decreasing the likelihood of any public good being effectively funded. Multiplicity decreases funding unless one public good stands out as being the most efficient alternative. Applied to the case of philanthropy, the results show how overall donations and the number of effectively funded charities may both decrease as the total number of charities increase. This is true even if the new charities offer higher potential benefits than previous options.

Sticks and Carrots in Procurement

We study differently framed incentives in dynamic laboratory buyerseller relationships with multi-tasking and endogenous matching. The experimental design tries to mitigate the role of social preferences and intrinsic motivation. Absent explicit incentives, effort is low in both tasks. Their introduction boosts efficiency substantially increasing effort in the contractible task, mildly crowding it out in the non-contractible one, and increasing buyer surplus. Bonuses and penalties are equivalent for efficiency and crowding-out, but different in distributional effects: sellers’ surplus increases with bonuses as buyers’ offers become more generous. Buyers tend to prefer penalties, which may explain why they are dominant in procurement.