This paper applies an ordered discrete choice framework to model fuel choices and patterns of cooking fuel use in urban Indian households. The choices considered are for three main cooking fuels: firewood, kerosene, and LPG (liquid petroleum gas). The models, estimated using a large...

This paper applies an ordered logit model to fuel choices and patterns of cooking fuels in urban Indian households. A large microeconomic dataset is employed to carry out the analysis. The results show that in addition to income, there are several socio-demographic factors such as education and...

Energy demand, and in particular electricity demand in India has been growing at a very rapid rate over the last decade. Given, current trends in population growth, industrialisation, urbanisation, modernisation and income growth, electricity consumption is expected to increase substantially in...

This paper examines the issue of cost-efficiency in Switzerland's nursing homes, an issue of concern to policy makers because of the rapid growth of elderly care expenditure and the aging of the population. The fact that nursing homes in Switzerland exist in different institutional forms,...

The purpose of this study is to analyze the cost efficiency of electricity distribution systems in order to enable regulatory authorities to establish price- or revenue cap regulation regimes. The increasing use of efficiency analysis in the last decades has raised serious concerns among...

This paper studies the cost structure of Swiss gas distribution utilities. Several econometric models are applied to a panel of 26 companies over 1996–2000. Our main objective is to estimate the optimal size and scale economies of the industry and to study their possible variation with respect...

The persistence of increasingly high government subsidies in Switzerland’s railroads has led the federal and cantonal authorities to discussing the possibility of high-powered incentive contracts such as those based on cost efficiency benchmarking. Railways are however, characterized by a high...

Based on a cross-section data set of 2004 reflecting Swiss Post’s delivery cost we estimate its cost function and derive measures of economies of scale, density and scope.

This paper explores the economies of scale and scope in the electricity, gas and water utilities. These issues have a crucial importance in the actual policy debates about unbundling the integrated utilities into separate entities, a policy which has often been supported by the ongoing reforms...