The evaluation of market structures and the quantification of returns to scale in network industries usually are of high interest for researchers and policy makers. Regarding the debate on optimal market structures in German potable water supply, we use a cross-sectional sample of 364 German...

This paper envisages economies of scale - or rather, diseconomies of low scale - caused in small nations by a sometimes acute shortage of talent and to indivisibility of teams: for example, a small country such as Iceland or Luxembourg cannot participate in an international football tournament...

The paper presents a decomposition of a production unit’s cost ratio over two periods into explanatory factors. The explanatory factors are growth in the unit’s cost efficiency, output growth, changes in input prices and technical progress. In order to implement the decomposition, an...

German municipalities are expected to suffer from (often significant) population losses in the upcoming decades. We assess these local governments' vulnerability to the fiscal consequences of this demographic decline through two means (using a sample of 1021 municipalities in the state of...

The scarcity of fossil fuel and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) has made every 2nd fuel user to think on some alternative resources, or at least devise some sort of technique to overcome the shortage of fuel during CNG holidays. Thus this study covers an overview of HHO gas production, principles...

This note argues that the competitive paradigm of neoclassical economics breaks down in the presence of constant returns to scale (CRS). With CRS, all goods can be produced at identical costs by all economic agents, making self-production a feasible alternative to market production. In the...

Third sector scholarship has long neglected the issue of excessive organizational duplication and its possible negative effects on efficiency. With the Israeli third sector ranking among the largest in the world and at a time in which the government is looking to further empower Israeli NGOs, it...