The German potable water supply industry is regarded highly fragmented, thus preventing efficiency improvements that could happen through consolidation. Focusing on a hypothetical restructuring of the industry, we use a cross-section sample of 364 German water utilities in 2006, applying Data...

The issue of quality and its relationship with efficiency and performance is a crucial operational issue in many fields of study including production economics, operations research, engineering and business management. In this paper we provide a methodology for identifying latent quality...