IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/9346.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cost Efficiency and Subsidization in German Local Public Bus Transit

Author

Listed:
  • Nieswand, Maria
  • Walter, Matthias

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of endogenous deficit-balancing subsidies on the cost efficiency of local public bus companies by using alternative frontier cost models for panel data. Thereby, the multidimensional performance estimation incorporates the subsidy variable directly. The empirical analysis relies on a unique dataset of 33 German companies observed over a period of up to twelve years. We find a positive effect of endogenous subsidies on the standard deviation of cost inefficiency implying that the range of companies? cost inefficiency increases with the level of subsidies relative to total costs. Further, we find that non-subsidized firms perform better.

Suggested Citation

  • Nieswand, Maria & Walter, Matthias, 2013. "Cost Efficiency and Subsidization in German Local Public Bus Transit," CEPR Discussion Papers 9346, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9346
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP9346
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nieswand, Maria & Cullmann, Astrid & Neumann, Anne, 2010. "Overcoming Data Limitations in Nonparametric Benchmarking: Applying PCA-DEA to Natural Gas Transmission," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 9(2).
    2. K. Hadri & C. Guermat & J. Whittaker, 2003. "Estimating Farm Efficiency in the Presence of Double Heteroscedasticity Using Panel Data," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 255-268, November.
    3. Matthias Walter, 2011. "Some Determinants of Cost Efficiency in German Public Transport," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 45(1), pages 1-20, January.
    4. Schmidt, Peter & Lovell, C. A. Knox, 1980. "Estimating stochastic production and cost frontiers when technical and allocative inefficiency are correlated," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 83-100, May.
    5. Massimo Filippini & Paola Prioni, 2003. "The influence of ownership on the cost of bus service provision in Switzerland - an empirical illustration," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(6), pages 683-690.
    6. Hadri, Kaddour, 1999. "Estimation of a Doubly Heteroscedastic Stochastic Frontier Cost Function," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 17(3), pages 359-363, July.
    7. Massimo FILIPPINI & Rico MAGGI & Paola PRIONI, 1992. "Inefficiency In A Regulated Industry," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 437-454, July.
    8. Viton, Philip A, 1981. "A Translog Cost Function for Urban Bus Transit," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 287-304, March.
    9. Adler, Nicole & Yazhemsky, Ekaterina, 2010. "Improving discrimination in data envelopment analysis: PCA-DEA or variable reduction," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 202(1), pages 273-284, April.
    10. Kumbhakar, Subal C., 1990. "Production frontiers, panel data, and time-varying technical inefficiency," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 201-211.
    11. Hadri, Kaddour & Guermat, Cherif & Whittaker, Julie, 2003. "Estimating Farm Efficiency in the Presence of Double Heteroscedasticity Using Panel Data," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 6(2), pages 1-14, November.
    12. Schmidt, Peter & Knox Lovell, C. A., 1979. "Estimating technical and allocative inefficiency relative to stochastic production and cost frontiers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 343-366, February.
    13. K. Obeng, 2011. "Indirect production function and the output effect of public transit subsidies," Transportation, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 191-214, March.
    14. Fox, Kevin J., 1999. "Efficiency at different levels of aggregation: public vs. private sector firms," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 173-176, November.
    15. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & Michael Kuenzle, 2006. "Cost Efficiency in Regional Bus Companies: An Application of Alternative Stochastic Frontier Models," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 40(1), pages 95-118, January.
    16. Kim, Moshe & Spiegel, Menahem, 1987. "The effects of lump-sum subsidies on the structure of production and productivity in regulated industries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 105-119, October.
    17. James Odeck & Abdulrahim Alkadi, 2004. "The performance of subsidized urban and rural public bus operators: Empirical evidence from Norway," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 38(3), pages 413-431, September.
    18. K. Obeng & R. Sakano, 2000. "The Effects of Operating and Capital Subsidies on Total Factor Productivity: A Decomposition Approach," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(2), pages 381-397, July.
    19. B. de Borger & K. Kerstens, 2006. "The performance of bus-transit operators," Post-Print hal-00185456, HAL.
    20. Pitt, Mark M. & Lee, Lung-Fei, 1981. "The measurement and sources of technical inefficiency in the Indonesian weaving industry," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 43-64, August.
    21. Schmidt, Peter & Sickles, Robin C, 1984. "Production Frontiers and Panel Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 2(4), pages 367-374, October.
    22. Kerstens, K., 1996. "Technical efficiency measurement and explanation of French urban transit companies," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 431-452, November.
    23. Karlaftis, Matthew G. & McCarthy, Patrick, 2002. "Cost structures of public transit systems: a panel data analysis," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-18, January.
    24. Astrid Cullmann, 2012. "Benchmarking and firm heterogeneity: a latent class analysis for German electricity distribution companies," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 147-169, February.
    25. DE BORGER, Bruno & KERSTENS, Kristiaan & COSTA, Álvaro, "undated". "Public transit performance: What do we learn from frontier studies?," Working Papers 2000019, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    26. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & Michael Kuenzle, 2005. "Unobserved heterogeneity in stochastic cost frontier models: an application to Swiss nursing homes," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(18), pages 2127-2141.
    27. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo, 2009. "An analysis of cost efficiency in Swiss multi-utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 306-315, March.
    28. van Goeverden, Cees & Rietveld, Piet & Koelemeijer, Jorine & Peeters, Paul, 2006. "Subsidies in public transport," European Transport \ Trasporti Europei, ISTIEE, Institute for the Study of Transport within the European Economic Integration, issue 32, pages 5-25.
    29. Miller, David R, 1970. "Differences among Cities, Differences among Firms, and Costs of Urban Bus Transport," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 22-32, November.
    30. Subal Kumbhakar, 1997. "Efficiency estimation with heteroscedasticity in a panel data model," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 379-386.
    31. Karlaftis, Matt G. & McCarthy, Patrick, 1998. "Operating subsidies and performance in public transit: an empirical study," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 359-375, September.
    32. Luis Orea & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2004. "Efficiency measurement using a latent class stochastic frontier model," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 169-183, January.
    33. Caudill, Steven B & Ford, Jon M & Gropper, Daniel M, 1995. "Frontier Estimation and Firm-Specific Inefficiency Measures in the Presence of Heteroscedasticity," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(1), pages 105-111, January.
    34. Carlo Cambini & Massimiliano Piacenza & Davide Vannoni, 2007. "Restructuring Public Transit Systems: Evidence on Cost Properties from Medium and Large-Sized Companies," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 31(3), pages 183-203, November.
    35. Sakai, Hiroki & Shoji, Kenichi, 2010. "The effect of governmental subsidies and the contractual model on the publicly-owned bus sector in Japan," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 60-71.
    36. Ryoichi Sakano & Kofi Obeng & G. Azam, 1997. "Subsidies And Inefficiency: Stochastic Frontier Approach," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 15(3), pages 113-127, July.
    37. Battese, G E & Coelli, T J, 1995. "A Model for Technical Inefficiency Effects in a Stochastic Frontier Production Function for Panel Data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 325-332.
    38. Greene, William, 2005. "Reconsidering heterogeneity in panel data estimators of the stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 269-303, June.
    39. Sakano, Ryoichi & Obeng, Kofi, 2011. "Examining the Inefficiency of Transit Systems Using Latent Class Stochastic Frontier Models," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 50(2).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Filippini, M. & Koller, M. & Masiero, G., 2015. "Competitive tendering versus performance-based negotiation in Swiss public transport," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 158-168.
    2. Drevs, Florian & Tscheulin, Dieter K. & Lindenmeier, Jörg & Renner, Simone, 2014. "Crowding-in or crowding out: An empirical analysis on the effect of subsidies on individual willingness-to-pay for public transportation," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 250-261.
    3. Andrés Gomez-Lobo, 2017. "The efficiency case for transit subsidies in the presence of a ‘soft’ budget constraint," Working Papers wp447, University of Chile, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cinzia Daraio & Marco Diana & Flavia Di Costa & Claudio Leporelli & Giorgio Matteucci & Alberto Nastasi, 2014. "Efficiency and effectiveness in the urban public transport sector: a critical review with directions for future research," DIAG Technical Reports 2014-14, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    2. Idaira Cabrera‐Suárez & Jorge V. Pérez‐Rodríguez, 2021. "Bank branch performance and cost efficiency: A stochastic frontier panel data approach," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 5850-5863, October.
    3. Ayadi, Ahmed & Hammami, Sami, 2015. "An analysis of the performance of public bus transport in Tunisian cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 51-60.
    4. Lundgren, Tommy & Marklund, Per-Olov & Zhang, Shanshan, 2016. "Industrial energy demand and energy efficiency – Evidence from Sweden," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 130-152.
    5. Karlaftis, Matthew G. & Tsamboulas, Dimitrios, 2012. "Efficiency measurement in public transport: Are findings specification sensitive?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 392-402.
    6. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo, 2009. "An analysis of cost efficiency in Swiss multi-utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 306-315, March.
    7. Paul, Satya & Shankar, Sriram, 2018. "Modelling Efficiency Effects in a True Fixed Effects Stochastic Frontier," MPRA Paper 87437, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Sakano, Ryoichi & Obeng, Kofi, 2011. "Examining the Inefficiency of Transit Systems Using Latent Class Stochastic Frontier Models," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 50(2).
    9. Satya Paul & Sriram Shankar, 2020. "Estimating efficiency effects in a panel data stochastic frontier model," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 163-180, April.
    10. Subal Kumbhakar & Gudbrand Lien & J. Hardaker, 2014. "Technical efficiency in competing panel data models: a study of Norwegian grain farming," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 321-337, April.
    11. Vanesa D’Elia & Gustavo Ferro, 2019. "Empirical Efficiency Measurement in Higher Education: An Overview," CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. 708, Universidad del CEMA.
    12. repec:aer:wpaper:324 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Li, Hong-Zhou & Kopsakangas-Savolainen, Maria & Xiao, Xing-Zhi & Tian, Zhen-Zhen & Yang, Xiao-Yuan & Wang, Jian-Lin, 2016. "Cost efficiency of electric grid utilities in China: A comparison of estimates from SFA–MLE, SFA–Bayes and StoNED–CNLS," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 272-283.
    14. Concetta Castiglione & Davide Infante & Marta Zieba, 2018. "Technical efficiency in the Italian performing arts companies," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 609-638, October.
    15. Li, Hong-Zhou & Tian, Xian-Liang & Zou, Tao, 2015. "Impact analysis of coal-electricity pricing linkage scheme in China based on stochastic frontier cost function," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 296-305.
    16. Subal C. Kumbhakar & Christopher F. Parmeter & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2022. "Stochastic Frontier Analysis: Foundations and Advances I," Springer Books, in: Subhash C. Ray & Robert G. Chambers & Subal C. Kumbhakar (ed.), Handbook of Production Economics, chapter 8, pages 331-370, Springer.
    17. Federico Belotti & Silvio Daidone & Giuseppe Ilardi & Vincenzo Atella, 2013. "Stochastic frontier analysis using Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 13(4), pages 718-758, December.
    18. Liu, Xiao-Yan & Pollitt, Michael G. & Xie, Bai-Chen & Liu, Li-Qiu, 2019. "Does environmental heterogeneity affect the productive efficiency of grid utilities in China?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 333-344.
    19. Gralka, Sabine, 2018. "Stochastic frontier analysis in higher education: A systematic review," CEPIE Working Papers 05/18, Technische Universität Dresden, Center of Public and International Economics (CEPIE).
    20. Per J. Agrell & Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & Martin Koller, 2013. "Unobserved heterogeneous effects in the cost efficiency analysis of electricity distribution systems," Working Papers 0038, Swiss Economics.
    21. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & William Greene, 2005. "Efficiency Measurement in Network Industries: Application to the Swiss Railway Companies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 69-90, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stochastic cost frontier; Endogenous subsidies; Heteroscedasticity; Local public bus transportation; Cost efficiency; Panel data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9346. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.