Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based cost norms have attractive properties in the regulation of natural monopolies … that the regulation will induce socially optimal output levels. In this paper, we analytically and numerically examine the … that the eight-year catch-up period allowed in this regulation gives strong incentives to reduce costs since the firms can …

investigate the incentives of a DEA based regulation when some of the demand dimensions, the cost drivers, can, in fact, be … controlled by the monopoly. In such cases, the classical DEA based regulation may lead to suboptimal incentives. Specifically, we … used to regulate Danish water firms. We show that the catch-up period allowed in this regulation gives strong incentives to …

The firms’ performance assessment for regulation requires estimating profit change and its drivers. This study … estimates and decomposes profit changes into components such as output and input price changes, output growth, and markups … scale, and efficiency change. We apply the profit decomposition to several full private water companies (FPWCs …