Atlantic Economic Journal

, Volume 21, Issue 3, pp 18–29 | Cite as

Cost analysis of water utilities: A goodness-of-fit approach

  • Kambiz Raffiee
  • Rangesan Narayanan
  • Thomas R. Harris
  • David Lambert
  • John M. Collins
Articles

Abstract

The behavior of privately owned and publicly owned water utilities is examined by calculating the percentage difference between the observed cost and the optimum cost consistent with the Weak Axiom of Cost Minimization for each individual water utility. It allows for a comprehensive analysis of nearly optimizing behavior of economic units as opposed to the conventional analysis of exact optimizing behavior. The empirical results provide evidence that private water utilities are more efficient than public water utilities.

Keywords

Empirical Result International Economic Public Finance Cost Minimization Comprehensive Analysis 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Atlantic Economic Society 1993

Authors and Affiliations

  • Kambiz Raffiee
    • 1
  • Rangesan Narayanan
    • 1
  • Thomas R. Harris
    • 1
  • David Lambert
    • 1
  • John M. Collins
    • 2
  1. 1.University of NevadaUSA
  2. 2.Department of Public WorksUSA

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