We study the impact of different regulatory designs on the cost efficiency of operators providing a public service, exploiting data from the French transport industry. The distinctive feature of the study is that it considers regulatory regimes as endogenously determined choices, explained by economic, political, and institutional variables. Our approach leans on a positive analysis to study the determinants of regulatory contract choices, which, in turn, affect the costs of operating urban public transport. Our results show that given similar network characteristics, networks operated under fixed-price contracts exert lower costs than those regulated under cost-plus contracts. This finding is in line with the theoretical prediction of new regulatory economics that fixed-price contracts provide more incentives for efficiency. Importantly, ignoring the endogeneity of contractual choices would lead to significantly underestimating the impact of contract type on cost efficiency. Our findings provide useful policy implications suggesting that the move toward more high-powered incentive schemes is indeed associated with significant cost efficiencies. Moreover, they highlight the importance of accounting for the endogeneity of regulatory contract choices.

我们利用法国运输行业的数据，研究了不同法规设计对运营商提供公共服务的成本效率的影响。该研究的独特之处在于，它认为监管制度是内生决定的选择，由经济，政治和制度变量来解释。我们的方法基于积极分析来研究监管合同选择的决定因素，而选择合同决定因素又会影响城市公共交通的运营成本。我们的结果表明，在网络特性相似的情况下，按固定价格合同运营的网络所产生的成本要低于按成本加成合同监管的网络。这一发现与新的监管经济学的理论预测一致，即固定价格合同为效率提供了更多激励。重要的，忽视合同选择的内生性会导致大大低估合同类型对成本效率的影响。我们的发现提供了有用的政策含义，表明朝着更高动力的奖励计划迈进确实与显着的成本效率相关。而且，它们突出了考虑监管合同选择的内生性的重要性。