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We adress the question of remunicipalization of water services in France. Gather- ing information on the 1998-2015 period concerning the way more than 1 200 French municipalities are organizing their water services at contract renewal time, we identified nearly 130 remunicipalization cases. Using an endogenous switching regression model in a two-stage probit estimation we found that the choice of municipalities is driven by expectations concerning price and leak: efficiency consideration are thus important drivers. However we also find evidence of mimetic behaviors suggesting that munici- palities that are uniformed or not skilled enough to anticipate the consequence of their choice on efficiency might rely on observed decisions coming from municipalities from the neighborhood. (JEL: H0, H7, K00, L33)
