To date, empirical investigations of trade liberalization under the conditions of increasingreturns to scale (IRS) and imperfect competition (IC) have either assumed or imposed themarket and productive structures necessary for such a model. However, of the recent IRS/ICmodels used to simulate...

Water utilities in developing countries face a challenge in maintaining the existing supply and extending the supply of pipe-borne water to rural areas in face of growing demand. Understanding the cost structure is important for developing the pricing policies, regulating the market structure...

This is the first study to specify a physician practice cost function with practice costs as the unit of analysis. Our study is based on the data of 3,706 physician practices for the years 2006 to 2008. We propose a model using physician practices as the unit of observation and considering the...

Potable water supply in Germany is highly fragmented. A consolidation of the industry could, therefore, lead to lower cost of water supply and price savings for the customers. In this paper we estimate a total cost function for potable water supply based on a unique sample of German water...