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...

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...

This article examines the empirical performance of alternative frontier estimators' ability to replicate a known underlying technology and economic measures such as multi-product and product-specific economies of scale, and economies of scope. A cross sectional Monte Carlo procedure to simulate...

This paper explores (dis-)economies of scale in property value assessment via cooperative agreements among small tax assessing jurisdictions without consolidation. New York State incentivizes small neighboring towns to unify their assessment function while maintaining respective tax authority;...