Efficiency in the Public & Private French Water Utilities: Prospects for Benchmarking

29 Pages Posted: 12 Oct 2014

See all articles by Aude Le Lannier

Aude Le Lannier

Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne

Simon Porcher

Université Paris Panthéon-Assas

Date Written: April 16, 2013

Abstract

This paper uses a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to assess the relative technical efficiency of 177 decision making units in the French water supply sector in 2009. Water utilities can be directly managed by the local authorities or contracted out and then managed by a private operator. The use of a three-stage model mixing DEA and SFA enables us to dissociate managerial inefficiencies from the structural inefficiencies and statistical noise. After having taken the environmental variables into account, we find that private management are on average slightly less efficient than public management. An explanation to this performance gap can be different resource management.

Keywords: water utilities, technical efficiency, data envelopment analysis, stochastic frontier analysis, public management

JEL Classification: D24, L95

Suggested Citation

Le Lannier, Aude and Porcher, Simon, Efficiency in the Public & Private French Water Utilities: Prospects for Benchmarking (April 16, 2013). Applied Economics, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2496959

Aude Le Lannier

Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne ( email )

Peris
France

Simon Porcher (Contact Author)

Université Paris Panthéon-Assas ( email )

1 rue Guy de La Brosse
Paris, 75005
France

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