In this paper, we investigate productivity growth in 55 major Australian urban water utilities using nonparametric frontier techniques over the period 2005/06 to 2008/09. The five outputs included in the analysis are chemical and microbiological compliance, and the inverses of real loses per...

Since the 1980s, the European Union favours regulatory reforms in network industries and the water sector appears to be the latest to be included in this. We deal with this issue while questioning the concept of "modernization of the Urban Water Systems in European (UWSE)." This process began in...

This paper estimates economies of scale and scope for 55 major Australian urban utilities over the period 2005/06 to 2008/09. The models used to specify operating and capital costs as a function of chemical and microbiological compliance, water losses, water quality and service, water main...

Cross-country comparisons avoid the unsteady equilibrium in which regulators have to balance between economies of scale and a sufficient number of remaining comparable utilities. By the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we compare the efficiency of the drinking water sector in the...

Political and economic reforms in India have made private sector participation (PSP) in urban water delivery a viable strategy for state and city policy, against the expectations of many scholars. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the development of temporal, geographic and...

The paper deals with the effects of local governments’ interference with business affairs of publicly owned utilities. A partial model is presented to illustrate the consequences of democratic controlʺ for the public managers’ effort and the efficiency of local public production. To check...