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...

In recent years the economic performance of public non-profit sectors such as cultural services has become an interesting economic issue. This is due to the high dependence of cultural institutions on public funding on the one hand and the increasing cost-pressure on public budgets on the other...

This paper analyzes the productivity development in the German public theater sector for the seasons 1991/1992-2005/2006. Using a stochastic distance frontier approach that allows to decompose total factor productivity change into different sources we examine (a) whether Baumol’s cost-disease...

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