How does contracting out affect service performance? Evidence to date is mixed. We argue that this is partially due to prior studies focusing often on whether – not how – services are contracted. Yet, how services are contracted matters. In particular, we argue that whether users pay user fees for services to contractors affects efficiency. Where they do, contractor revenue depends on user satisfaction and contractors face incentives to provide quality services to users to retain revenue. Where, by contrast, governments fund services, information asymmetry about the quality of services users receive allows contractors to shirk quality. The assertion is substantiated by empirical evidence derived from a comprehensive analysis of conditional efficiency within the water supply services across 2,111 municipalities in Spain, employing a two-stage Conditional Order-M Data Panel estimation. Our results show that contracting out where users pay service fees and thus have incentives to hold contractors accountable outperforms contracting out without user fees in quality-adjusted service provision.

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评估外包中用户责任的影响

外包如何影响服务绩效？迄今为止的证据好坏参半。我们认为，这部分是由于之前的研究通常关注服务是否（而不是如何）签订合同。然而，如何签订服务合同很重要。特别是，我们认为用户是否向承包商支付服务费用会影响效率。在这种情况下，承包商的收入取决于用户满意度，并且承包商面临着向用户提供优质服务以保留收入的激励。相比之下，在政府资助服务的情况下，用户获得的服务质量的信息不对称使得承包商可以逃避质量。这一主张得到了对西班牙 2,111 个城市供水服务条件效率的综合分析得出的经验证据的证实，采用两阶段条件阶 M 数据面板估计。我们的结果表明，在质量调整服务提供方面，用户支付服务费并因此有动力让承包商承担责任的外包优于不向用户付费的外包。