The efficiency properties of price and non-price instruments for conservation in environmental policy are well understood. Yet, there is little evidence comparing the effectiveness of these instruments, especially when considering water resource management. We exploit a rich panel of residential...

The observed two-part tariff price structure (consisting of a lump-sum price and a linear marginal price) for drinking water in Germany does not reflect the cost structure reported in the literature. Recovering marginal costs from a sample of 251 German counties, we see that there are positive...

The study examines the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for the estimation of the well being from drinking water using `commodities and capabilities' approach. DEA uses the general purpose linear programme version of the input oriented multi-input multi-output model for the estimation...

There is a lack of competition in the German water and sewerage sector. According to economic theory levels of service can be expected to be inefficient. I will check this hypothesis and therefore take a closer look at various categories of levels of service. In analysing the internet pages of...

Due to recent legislation, Benchmarking in the German water and sewerage sector will be introduced as widely as possible. Under certain conditions this decision by the German Bundestag might help to improve the efficiency of the industry. I will define two sets of conditions. First, a useful...

Due to recent European developments the question may no longer be if more competition should be introduced in the German water and sewerage sector. The issue rather is what kind of competition ought to be implemented. There are mainly three different approaches: Competition in the Market;...

Debido a las crisis fiscales y productivas que asolaron a los países de América Latina y del Caribe durante la década de 1980, se buscó la participación de agentes privados en los sectores de agua potable y saneamiento. Hasta esa década, el sector estaba regulado y administrado por el...

An econometric analysis of Hong Kong's monthly per capita water usage for the 25-year period of April 1985 through March 2010 reveals that per capita usage is insensitive to price but dependent upon past usage, per capita income, weather, and seasonal factors, with rising income countering what...

French municipalities often contract out the provision of local public services to private companies, and regularly choose the same private operator for a range of different services. We develop a model of relational contracts that shows how this strategy may lead to better performance at lower...

Under complicated billing structures, the price to which consumers respond remains inconclusive. In this paper, I exploit a quasi-experiment to estimate a causal effect of price for residential water customers during the introduction of increasing block rates for a North Carolina utility....