Trinkwasserversorgung: privat gleich teuer?

The article examines the relationship between the degree of private ownership and the price level in the German drinking water market. In addition to a compact overview of important characteristics of the German drinking water supply and the regulatory framework, the empirical study focuses on the 100 largest communities and is based on a multivariate OLS regression and a fixed effects analysis using annual data for 2009–15. The results do not conclusively indicate a rise in prices due to a higher degree of private ownership. For future surveys, it might be useful to include key economic figures of the respective water supply companies into the analysis.