Efficiency, Fairness and Innovation in Water Management. Theory and some Lessons from China

From the end of 1970s a political-ideological, and sometimes also an economic-analytical, debate on production and distribution of goods as energy, information, transport and water and sanitation has taken place. Politically the debat has taken place between liberalists and socialists with some pragmatics in between the two more extreme positions.

Economic-analytically many contributions has in fact been connected to political-ideological positions without a strong empirically foundation about real effects of privatisation and marketisation of water and sanitation. In the paper we have made some research about efficiency, fairness and sustainability in five cases on privatisation and joint ventures between private companies and public authorities in China since mid-1990s.

In some cases privatisation or joint ventures has been a succes in the three dimensions mentioned above. In other it has been a fiasco. Maybe water provision and sanitation can be delegated out to private agents but public authorities can not escape its responsibility in last resort.