This paper discusses the use of benchmarking in general and its application to the drinking water sector. It systematizes the various classifications on performance measurement, discusses some of the pitfalls of benchmark studies and provides some examples of benchmarking in the water sector....

The academic rankings are a controversial subject in higher education. However, despite all the criticism, academic rankings are here to stay and more and more different stakeholders use rankings to obtain information about the institutions’ performance. The two most well-known rankings, The...

In Portugal, as worldwide, especially in the past decades, crime has become an issue of increasing interest both for society and researchers. The global growth of criminality had several repercussions in the prison system. The most direct one was the overcrowding of prisons. This situation...

Following the liberalization wave in the airline sector, airports have been gradually taken out of the public sphere and open to the private initiative. This phenomenon is generally referred to as privatization, but not all the cases consist of, in fact, a full divestiture of assets. Although...

All European Union (EU) member states have to comply with the demanding recycling rates targets that were set for the recovery of packaging waste in the Directive 94/62/EC. Nevertheless, each country has its own system for accomplishing these targets. Some already had national legislation when...

The recycling of packaging waste is an objective of the Community with very ambitious recycling rate targets laid down in the European law. Research on the operations and on the financial and economic costs that resulted from this environmental policy is an ongoing effort. Currently, there is...

This paper aims to investigate if the market structure reforms in the Portuguese health system have improved hospital performance and productivity. A robust non-parametric Malmquist index is applied to measure group performance. The significance of the results achieved is examined using a...

All European Union (EU) member states have to comply with the demanding recycling rates targets that were set for the recovery of packaging waste in the Directive 94/62/EC. Nevertheless, each country has its own system for accomplishing these targets. Some already had national legislation when...

The academic rankings are a controversial subject in higher education. However, despite all the criticism, academic rankings are here to stay and more and more different stakeholders use rankings to obtain information about the institutions’ performance. The two most well-known rankings, The...