[eng] Performance and efficiency in the utilities : The case of delegated water utilities. . In this paper we offer an empirical analysis of the operating costs of drinking-water supply delegated to private companies in France. An important factor in our modelling is the allowance for water...

This paper studies the optimal growth when research and development are explicitly distinguished. To this end, we perform the quantitative welfare analysis of an original model based on (i) a matching process between research and development and (ii) a competitive search process that determines...

Public authorities (often local) frequently mandate public or private agencies to manage their natural resources. Contrary to the agency, which is an expert in resource management, public authorities usually do not know the sustainable harvest level. In this paper, we model the contractual...

Issues on service quality are crucial for water utility management and regulation. Omitting these aspects can lead to possible bias in estimating the efficiency of services. We integrate in a Translog cost function variables proxying this multi-dimensionality. Empirical results show that taking...

Issues related to service quality are crucial for water utility management and regulation. Omitting these aspects, especially when they are treated as exogenous, can lead to large biases in estimating cost functions as well as to misleading information concerning technology. In this article, we...