Since the 1990s, efficiency and benchmarking analysis has increasingly been used in network utilities research and regulation. A recurrent concern is the effect of environmental factors that are beyond the influence of firms (observable heterogeneity) and factors that are not identifiable...

Improving the efficiency and performance of the UK residential sector is now necessary for meeting future energy and climate change targets. Building Performance Evaluation and Certification (BPEC) tools are vital for estimating and recommending cost effective improvements to building energy...

This paper examines repeated implementation of a social choice function (SCF) with infinitely-lived agents whose preferences are determined randomly in each period. An SCF is repeated-implementable in (Bayesian) Nash equilibrium if there exists a sequence of (possibly history-dependent)...

This paper explores the empirical effects of competition on technical efficiency in the context of electricity industry restructuring. Restructuring programs adopted by many U.S. states made utilities residual claimants to cost savings and increased their exposure to competitive markets. We...

If stock prices followed a random walk, uncertainty about future stock prices would be so great that the observed bias towards equities in long-term investment portfolios would be surprising. The good news is that if, as a growing body of research suggests, there is even a weak tendency for...

Since the 1990s, efficiency and benchmarking analysis has increasingly been used in network utilities research and regulation. A recurrent concern is the effect of environmental factors that are beyond the influence of firms (observable heterogeneity) and factors that are not identifiable...

In this paper, we conduct a pan-European efficiency analysis to investigate the performance of European railways with a particular focus on economies of vertical integration. We test the hypothesis that integrated railways realize economies of scope and, thus, produce railway services with a...

In the course of railway reforms in the end of the last century, national European governments, as well the EU Commission, decided to open markets and to separate railway networks from train operations. Vertically integrated railway companies - companies owning a network and providing transport...