Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Scale economies, technology and technical change in the water industry: Evidence from the English water only sector

Contents:

Author Info

  • Bottasso, Anna
  • Conti, Maurizio

Abstract

In this paper we estimate a variable cost function to analyze cost economies and technical change in the English water only sector over the 1995-2005 period. We jointly model the impact on costs of output, customer numbers and area size which allows us to consider both the vertical and horizontal (spatial) dimensions of water utilities' operations. Estimates suggest the existence of unexploited economies of output and customer density and small scale economies which appear to be increasing with population density. These findings suggest that moderate cost savings from prudent mergers could be expected; in particular, benefits of merging water utilities might be higher in more densely populated urban areas. Finally, technical change is found to be increasing over the sample period.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V89-4T13CDD-1/2/d8299975a4d59d18d7f8e356925a9094
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Volume (Year): 39 (2009)
Issue (Month): 2 (March)
Pages: 138-147

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:eee:regeco:v:39:y:2009:i:2:p:138-147

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/regec

Related research

Keywords: Regulation Water utilities Scale economies;

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Bhattacharyya, Arunava & Harris, Thomas R. & Narayanan, Rangesan & Raffiee, Kambiz, 1995. "Technical Efficiency Of Rural Water Utilities," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 20(02), December.
  2. Baltagi, Badi H & Griffin, James M & Rich, Daniel P, 1995. "The Measurement of Firm-Specific Indexes of Technical Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(4), pages 654-63, November.
  3. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Diewert, W Erwin, 1982. "Multilateral Comparisons of Output, Input, and Productivity Using Superlative Index Numbers," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(365), pages 73-86, March.
  4. Mark J. Roberts, 1986. "Economies of Density and Size in the Production and Delivery of Electric Power," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 62(4), pages 378-387.
  5. Fumitoshi Mizutani & Takuya Urakami, 2001. "articles: Identifying network density and scale economies for Japanese water supply organizations," Papers in Regional Science, Springer, vol. 80(2), pages 211-230.
  6. Massimo Filippini & Cornelia Luchsinger, 2005. "Economies of Scale in the Swiss Hydropower Sector," CEPE Working paper series 05-44, CEPE Center for Energy Policy and Economics, ETH Zurich.
  7. Torres, Marcelo & Morrison Paul, Catherine J., 2006. "Driving forces for consolidation or fragmentation of the US water utility industry: A cost function approach with endogenous output," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 104-120, January.
  8. Baltagi, Badi H. & Song, Seuck Heun & Koh, Won, 2003. "Testing panel data regression models with spatial error correlation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 123-150, November.
  9. Antonioli, B. & Filippini, M., 2001. "The use of a variable cost function in the regulation of the Italian water industry," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 10(3-4), pages 181-187.
  10. Mehdi Farsi & Aurelio Fetz & Massimo Filippini, 2006. "Economies of scale and scope in local public transportation," CEPE Working paper series 06-48, CEPE Center for Energy Policy and Economics, ETH Zurich.
  11. Kelejian, Harry H. & Robinson, Dennis P., 1992. "Spatial autocorrelation : A new computationally simple test with an application to per capita county police expenditures," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 317-331, September.
  12. 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, vol. 31(3), pages 183-203, November.
  13. Youn Kim, H. & Clark, Robert M., 1988. "Economies of scale and scope in water supply," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 479-502, November.
  14. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & Michael Kuenzle, 2004. "Cost Efficiency in Regional Bus Companies: An Application of Alternative Stochastic Frontier Models," CEPE Working paper series 04-33, CEPE Center for Energy Policy and Economics, ETH Zurich.
  15. Paola Fabbri & Giovanni Fraquelli, 2000. "Costs and Structure of Technology in the Italian Water Industry," Empirica, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 65-82, March.
  16. Baltagi, Badi H. & Wu, Ping X., 1999. "Unequally Spaced Panel Data Regressions With Ar(1) Disturbances," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(06), pages 814-823, December.
  17. Jeffrey P. Cohen & Catherine Morrison Paul, 2007. "The Impacts Of Transportation Infrastructure On Property Values: A Higher-Order Spatial Econometrics Approach," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 457-478.
  18. John Ashton, 2000. "Cost efficiency in the UK water and sewerage industry," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 7(7), pages 455-458.
  19. Cubbin, John, 2005. "Efficiency in the water industry," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 289-293, December.
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 in new window

Cited by:
  1. Carvalho, Pedro & Marques, Rui Cunha & Berg, Sanford, 2011. "A meta-regression analysis of benchmarking studies on water utilities market structure," MPRA Paper 32894, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Subal Kumbhakar & Alan Horncastle, 2010. "Improving the econometric precision of regulatory models," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 144-166, October.
  3. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio & Piacenz, Massimiliano & Vannoni, Davide, 2011. "The appropriateness of the poolability assumption for multiproduct technologies: Evidence from the English water and sewerage utilities," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 112-117, March.
  4. Michael Zschille, 2012. "Consolidating the Water Industry: An Analysis of the Potential Gains from Horizontal Integration in a Conditional Efficiency Framework," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1187, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  5. Ferro, Gustavo & Lentini, Emilio & Mercadier, Augusto & Romero, Carlos A., 2010. "Retornos a escala en agua y saneamiento: estimaciones para América Latina
    [Returns to scale in water and sanitation: estimates for Latin Amercia]    ," MPRA Paper 20324, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jan 2010.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:regeco:v:39:y:2009:i:2:p:138-147

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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