Scale characteristics are key properties of production functions that determine optimal firm sizes, and have considerable policy implications for sectors undergoing restructuring. However, estimates of scale characteristics typically vary with the assumptions of the underlying empirical model....

The increase in municipal economic activity in the utilities sector frequently comes under scrutiny. It is presumed that public utilities have less incentive to provide efficient service than private companies. This could result in excessive costs and prices for end users. New microdata on...

In the 1990s, a number of municipalities started privatizing their energy utilities; in recent years, there has been an intensive debate about whether a paradigm shift has taken place since then. Cities and municipalities have considered putting the energy, water, gas and heat supply back into...

Die Ausweitung der kommunalen Wirtschaftstätigkeit in der Energieversorgung wird oftmals kritisch betrachtet. Es wird vermutet, dass öffentliche Unternehmen im Vergleich zu privaten Unternehmen geringeren Anreizen zu effizienter Leistungserstellung unterliegen. Das könnte überhöhte Kosten...

Nachdem in den 90er Jahren viele Kommunen ihre Energieversorgungsunternehmen privatisiert hatten, ist mittlerweile oft von einem Paradigmenwechsel die Rede. Städte und Gemeinden ziehen demnach in Betracht, die Versorgung mit Strom, Wasser, Gas und Wärme wieder in die Hände öffentlicher...

Benchmarking methods are widely used in the regulation of firms in network industries working under heterogeneous exogenous environments. In this paper we compare three recently developed estimators, namely conditional DEA (Daraio and Simar, 2005, 2007b), latent class SFA (Orea and Kumbhakar, 2004;...

In this paper, we test for the existence of a common component in agricultural land auctions in eastern Germany during the price boom 2007-2018 and discuss respective policy implications. Using a large, detailed dataset of auctions, we can rely on professional appraisals of the auctioned good...

This paper investigates price differentials between organically and conventionally farmed arable land. Organic commodities offer higher prices and environmental benefits such as improved soil constitution, where land buyers gauge these benefits against lower yields at higher risk, switching and...

In this paper, we analyze the technical efficiency of CO2 reduction potentials of German power and heat plants, using a non-parametric sequential Data Envelopment Analysis. We apply a metafrontier framework to evaluate plant-level efficiencies in the transformation of inputs into desirable...

Efforts undertaken by France to restructure the allocation of governmental competencies increased the importance of subnational governments by transferring additional tasks. This paper analyzes the efficiency of public spending on an intermediate government level for a sample of 96 départements...