IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/waterr/v35y2021i10d10.1007_s11269-021-02897-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Changes to The Productivity of Water Companies: Comparison of Fully Private and Concessionary Water Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandros Maziotis

    (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Avda. Vicuña Mackenna
    New York College)

  • Ramon Sala-Garrido

    (Universidad de Valencia, Avd. Tarongers S/N5)

  • Manuel Mocholi-Arce

    (Universidad de Valencia, Avd. Tarongers S/N5)

  • Maria Molinos-Senante

    (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Avda. Vicuña Mackenna
    Centro de Investigación Para la Gestión Integrada Del Riesgo de Desastres (CIGIDEN), ANID/FONDAP/15110017)

Abstract

The water industry encompasses a wide variety of water companies operating with different production technologies. This study evaluated and compared changes to the productivity of several fully private water companies (FPWCs) and concessionary water companies (CWCs). Specifically, the cost Malmquist productivity index was estimated by integrating inputs, outputs and environmental variables. A non-parametric approach was used by applying data envelopment analysis. This approach allowed us to quantify the parameters driving changes to productivity as cost efficiency change (technical and allocative efficiency), cost scale efficiency and cost technical change (technical change and input price effect). Through breaking down the cost Malmquist productivity index, relevant information for supporting decision making process by water companies is possible. To further evaluate the impact of water company heterogeneity on productivity change, the changes (convergence versus divergence) to productivity between group and meta-frontiers was estimated. The approach was applied empirically on a sample of 22 water companies in Chile during 2010–2017. The results showed that the productivity of both FPWCs and CWCs improved over time, with FPWCs performing better compared to CWCs. The main drivers of productivity growth for both types of water companies were scale efficiency, technical efficiency and input price effect. Thus, water companies in Chile could improve productivity by moving to a cost-efficient allocation of their resources. The rate of productivity convergence was higher for CWCs compared to FPWCs. The approaches developed in this study provide information that could be used by water managers to better understand what drives productivity and, thus, delineate strategies to improve performance over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandros Maziotis & Ramon Sala-Garrido & Manuel Mocholi-Arce & Maria Molinos-Senante, 2021. "Changes to The Productivity of Water Companies: Comparison of Fully Private and Concessionary Water Companies," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 35(10), pages 3355-3371, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:35:y:2021:i:10:d:10.1007_s11269-021-02897-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s11269-021-02897-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11269-021-02897-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11269-021-02897-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mei-Ying Huang & Jia-Ching Juo & Tsu-tan Fu, 2015. "Metafrontier cost Malmquist productivity index: an application to Taiwanese and Chinese commercial banks," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 321-335, December.
    2. Mellah, Thuraya & Ben Amor, Tawfik, 2016. "Performance of the Tunisian Water Utility: An input-distance function approach," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 18-32.
    3. Yujiro Hayami, 1969. "Sources of Agricultural Productivity Gap Among Selected Countries," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 51(3), pages 564-575.
    4. George Battese & D. Rao & Christopher O'Donnell, 2004. "A Metafrontier Production Function for Estimation of Technical Efficiencies and Technology Gaps for Firms Operating Under Different Technologies," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 91-103, January.
    5. Maniadakis, Nikolaos & Thanassoulis, Emmanuel, 2004. "A cost Malmquist productivity index," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(2), pages 396-409, April.
    6. Higuerey, Angel & Trujillo, Lourdes & González, María Manuela, 2017. "Has efficiency improved after the decentralization in the water industry in Venezuela?," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 127-136.
    7. Cliff Huang & Tai-Hsin Huang & Nan-Hung Liu, 2014. "A new approach to estimating the metafrontier production function based on a stochastic frontier framework," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 241-254, December.
    8. Fabrizio Erbetta & Carmelo Petraglia, 2011. "Drivers of Regional Efficiency Differentials in Italy: Technical Inefficiency or Allocative Distortions?," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 351-375, September.
    9. Fan Li & Michelle Andrea Phillips, 2017. "The Influence of the Regulatory Environment on Chinese Urban Water Utilities," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(1), pages 205-218, January.
    10. Giulia Romano & Andrea Guerrini & Rui Cunha Marques, 2017. "European Water Utility Management: Promoting Efficiency, Innovation and Knowledge in the Water Industry," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(8), pages 2349-2353, June.
    11. Marta Suárez-Varela & María los Ángeles García-Valiñas & Francisco González-Gómez & Andrés J Picazo-Tadeo, 2017. "Ownership and Performance in Water Services Revisited: Does Private Management Really Outperform Public?," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(8), pages 2355-2373, June.
    12. Coelli, Tim J. & Gautier, Axel & Perelman, Sergio & Saplacan-Pop, Roxana, 2013. "Estimating the cost of improving quality in electricity distribution: A parametric distance function approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 287-297.
    13. Hayami, Yujiro & Ruttan, Vernon W, 1970. "Agricultural Productivity Differences Among Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(5), pages 895-911, December.
    14. Peter Bogetoft & Lars Otto, 2011. "Benchmarking with DEA, SFA, and R," International Series in Operations Research and Management Science, Springer, number 978-1-4419-7961-2, September.
    15. Christopher O’Donnell & D. Rao & George Battese, 2008. "Metafrontier frameworks for the study of firm-level efficiencies and technology ratios," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 231-255, March.
    16. N/A, 2004. "Index for 2004," European Union Politics, , vol. 5(4), pages 511-512, 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


    Cited by:

    1. Srivastava, Akanksha & Parmar, Dipteek & Pamucar, Dragan, 2023. "Comparing multi-criteria models for ranking the Performance of India's water supply utilities," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    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. Tsui‐Yueh Cho, 2020. "Cost metafrontier approach for measuring the Malmquist productivity index: An example of bank groups formed after the financial reform in Taiwan," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 475-494, October.
    2. María Molinos-Senante & Alexandros Maziotis, 2019. "Cost Efficiency of English and Welsh Water Companies: a Meta-Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 33(9), pages 3041-3055, July.
    3. Thanh Pham Thien Nguyen & Son Hong Nghiem & Eduardo Roca & Parmendra Sharma, 2016. "Efficiency, innovation and competition: evidence from Vietnam, China and India," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 1235-1259, November.
    4. Tsui-Yueh Cho & Tsai-Yi Wang, 2018. "Estimations of cost metafrontier Malmquist productivity index: using international tourism hotels in Taiwan as an example," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 1661-1694, December.
    5. Phuc Trong Ho & Pham Xuan Hung & Nguyen Duc Tien, 2023. "Effects of varieties and seasons on cost efficiency in rice farming: A stochastic metafrontier approach," Asian Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 13(2), pages 120-129.
    6. Hung-pin Lai & Cliff J. Huang & Tsu-Tan Fu, 2020. "Estimation of the production profile and metafrontier technology gap: a quantile approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(6), pages 2709-2731, June.
    7. Huang, Tai-Hsin & Chiang, Dien-Lin & Tsai, Chao-Min, 2015. "Applying the New Metafrontier Directional Distance Function to Compare Banking Efficiencies in Central and Eastern European Countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 188-199.
    8. Xiang Chen, 2018. "An allocation productivity indicator: Application in Taiwanese banks," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 8(5), pages 1-2.
    9. Economou, Polychronis & Malefaki, Sonia & Kounetas, Konstantinos, 2019. "Productive Performance and Technology Gaps using a Bayesian Metafrontier Production Function: A cross-country comparison," MPRA Paper 94462, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. John N. Ng’ombe, 2017. "Technical efficiency of smallholder maize production in Zambia: a stochastic meta-frontier approach," Agrekon, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(4), pages 347-365, October.
    11. Shalander Kumar & Abhishek Das & Michael Hauser & Geoffrey Muricho & Tulu Degefu & Asnake Fikre & Chris Ojiewo & Setotaw Ferede & Rajeev K. Varshney, 2022. "Estimating the potential to close yield gaps through increased efficiency of chickpea production in Ethiopia," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 14(5), pages 1241-1258, October.
    12. Khanal, Uttam & Wilson, Clevo & Shankar, Sriram & Hoang, Viet-Ngu & Lee, Boon, 2018. "Farm performance analysis: Technical efficiencies and technology gaps of Nepalese farmers in different agro-ecological regions," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 645-653.
    13. Owusu, Eric S. & Bravo-Ureta, Boris E., 2022. "Reap when you sow? The productivity impacts of early sowing in Malawi," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    14. Cho, Tsui-Yueh & Chen, Yi-Shuan, 2021. "The impact of financial technology on China’s banking industry: An application of the metafrontier cost Malmquist productivity index," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    15. Kumar, Surender & Jain, Rakesh Kumar, 2019. "Carbon-sensitive meta-productivity growth and technological gap: An empirical analysis of Indian thermal power sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 104-116.
    16. Zarkovic, Maja, 2020. "Cap-and-trade and produce at least cost? Investigating firm behaviour in the EU ETS," Working papers 2020/12, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    17. Owusu, Rebecca & Kwadzo, Moses & Ghartey, William, 2022. "Regional Productivity Differential and Technology Gap In African Agriculture: A Stochastic Metafrontier Approach," International Journal of Food and Agricultural Economics (IJFAEC), Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, Department of Economics and Finance, vol. 10(1), January.
    18. Li, Hong-Zhou & Kopsakangas-Savolainen, Maria & Xiao, Xing-Zhi & Lau, Sim-Yee, 2017. "Have regulatory reforms improved the efficiency levels of the Japanese electricity distribution sector? A cost metafrontier-based analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 606-616.
    19. Mei-Ying Huang & Jia-Ching Juo & Tsu-tan Fu, 2015. "Metafrontier cost Malmquist productivity index: an application to Taiwanese and Chinese commercial banks," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 321-335, December.
    20. Abebayehu Girma Geffersa & Frank Wogbe Agbola & Amir Mahmood, 2022. "Modelling technical efficiency and technology gap in smallholder maize sector in Ethiopia: accounting for farm heterogeneity," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(5), pages 506-521, January.

    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:spr:waterr:v:35:y:2021:i:10:d:10.1007_s11269-021-02897-1. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.