Recent studies have shown that barriers to entry for large retail establishments in Spain have been increased in the last decade. Using information on local markets, we test whether the entry of large retail establishments was effectively limited by regional regulation and whether it effectively...

The electricity industry in most developed countries has been restructured over recent decades with the aim of improving both service quality and firms’ performance. Regulated segments (e.g. transmission) still provide the infrastructure for the competitive segments and represent a notable...

RESUMEN: El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar, desde el punto de vista primal, la eficiencia técnica de una muestra de barcos dedicados a la pesca de merluza en Asturias. Un rasgo característico de esta actividad es la importancia que tienen las capturas de otras especies distintas de la...

Let u ≥ 0 be technical inefficiency, let z be a set of variables that affect u, and let δ be the parameters of this relationship. The model satisfies the scaling property if u(z, δ) can be written as a scaling function h(z, δ) times a random variable u* that does not depend on z. This...

In this paper, we estimate parametric input and output distance functions and discuss how to estimate a mixture/latent class model (LCM) involving the output and input distance functions in the context of multi-input and multi-output production technology. The proposed technique is applied to a...

In this paper we review two different approaches followed in the empirical literature to test for the existence of public capital spillovers. Additionally, we explore the role played by an additive aggregator of public capital in neighboring regions versus the multiplicative aggregator used...

Efficiency estimation in stochastic frontier models typically assumes that the underlying production technology is the same for all firms. There might, however, be unobserved differences in technologies that might be inappropriately labeled as inefficiency if such variations in technology are...

The main aim of this paper is to develop an econometric approach to the estimation of marginal costs of improving quality of service. Estimating marginal costs of quality can help energy regulators to design more effective incentive mechanisms for network utilities to achieve optimal quality...

In this paper we advocate using the latent class model (LCM) approach to control for technological differences in traditional efficiency analysis of regulated electricity networks. Our proposal relies on the fact that latent class models are designed to cluster firms by uncovering differences in...