Public Utility Ownership in 19th-Century America: The 'Aberrant' Case of Water
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Forthcoming
66 Pages Posted: 27 Sep 2004 Last revised: 1 Jan 2010
Date Written: November 20, 2009
Abstract
Unlike other public utilities, most water in the United States is supplied by publicly owned and operated waterworks. The predominance of the public sector in the supply of water was not always the case, however; private firms dominated U.S. water supply throughout most of the 19th century. This paper analyzes the puzzle of why water and sanitation systems were the only major utilities to become predominantly public by, first, re-examining historical accounts of the problems of contracting for water services in light of modern theories of economic organization and, then, evaluating hypotheses derived from those accounts using data on 373 waterworks serving U.S. municipalities with populations over 10,000 in 1890. Among other results, municipal ownership is found to be related to the distribution of population and commerce within a city in ways that suggest that frictions between cities and private companies over system extensions and improvements played a significant role in the shift to municipal ownership.
Keywords: Public utilities, contracting
JEL Classification: L14, L22, L33, L95
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The 20th Century United States
By David M. Cutler and Grant Miller
-
The Urban Mortality Transition in the United States, 1800-1940
-
By Michael R. Haines, Lee A. Craig, ...
-
The Red Queen and the Hard Reds: Productivity Growth in American Wheat, 1800-1940
By Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode
-
The Poor and the Dead: Socioeconomic Status and Mortality in the U.S., 1850-1860
-
Water, Water, Everywhere: Municipal Finance and Water Supply in American Cities
By David M. Cutler and Grant Miller
-
Ethnic Differences in Demographic Behavior in the United States: Has There Been Convergence?
-
Death and the City: Chicago's Mortality Transition, 1850-1925
By Joseph P. Ferrie and Werner Troesken