Francisco J. Sáez-Fernández

The role of environmental factors in water utilities’ technical efficiency. Empirical evidence from Spanish companies

This article computes input-specific scores of technical efficiency for a sample of water utilities located in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. In addition, differences in efficiency between different operating environments are investigated. Concerning the debate about ownership and efficiency, we find that privately owned companies outperform public utilities in their management of labour. Furthermore, technical efficiency is found to be greater among firms located in highly populated areas and for utilities providing water services to tourist municipalities. Finally, no empirical evidence supporting the greater technical efficiency of consortia of water utilities, a managerial strategy strongly encouraged by regional politicians, is found.

Accounting for operating environments in measuring water utilities' managerial efficiency

In this paper adjusted input-specific scores of technical efficiency are computed for a sample of Spanish water utilities. Performance is adjusted by netting out efficiency scores from the effect of operating environments and statistical noise. The results show that computation of adjusted efficiency scores at the input level manifestly improves the assessment of utilities’ performance in our sample of water utilities. In addition, several environmental variables capable of affecting input-specific technical management are discovered, ownership or demand seasonality among them. Finally, distributions of conventional and adjusted scores of technical performance are found to be statistically different for some inputs.

Do Labour Societies Perform Differently to Cooperatives? Evidence from the Spanish Building Industry

Labour Societies and Cooperatives are both Social Economy enterprises, but with noticeable differences, some of which are imposed by legislation in Spain. The aim of this paper is to study whether such differences affect their management capacity and, in particular, efficiency. In doing so, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques and the metafrontier approach proposed by O’Donnell et al. (2008) are used on a sample of Spanish Labour Societies and Cooperatives belonging to the building industry. Scores of technical efficiency and metafrontier ratios are computed at firm level and, as a novel contribution to existing literature in this field of research, at input�?specific level. The main finding shows that Cooperatives enjoy some technological advantages over Labour Societies, particularly in regard to the management of labour, fixed assets and current assets.

Assessing performance in the management of the urban water cycle

This paper proposes the use of directional distance functions and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques to assess technical efficiency in the provision of the stages of the urban water cycle in Andalusia, a Southern Spanish region. Evaluating performance in the management of specific stages of the urban water cycle provides utility managers and regulating authorities with relevant information that could remain out of sight with more conventional approaches based on assessing performance at firm level. Among other results, we show that Andalusian water and sewage utilities could achieve important increases in the volume of water delivered without diminishing their production in the remaining services, and with the same quantities of inputs. Potential increases are also important for the volume of sewage collected, thus entailing significant environmental benefits in a territory where water scarcity has seen the efficient management of this natural resource become a pressing obligation.

Opportunity Costs of Ensuring Sustainability in Urban Water Services

This paper assesses technical performance in the water industry in the Southern European region of Andalusia, while accounting for sustainability in the management of water. This allows the opportunity cost of producing sustainability to be evaluated. Given the low cost of raw water in Spain in relation to the estimated opportunity cost of saving this natural resource, wasting water becomes a profitable strategy for utility managers from a private perspective. However, this managerial strategy has a huge social cost in an area of Europe where the sustainable management of water is a pressing need. The conclusion is that environmental policy aimed at discouraging this wasteful behaviour is urgently needed. For this reason, a suitable mix of environmental taxes on water abstraction and institutional reforms is proposed.

Assessing the performance of the Latin American and Caribbean banking industry: Are domestic and foreign banks so different?

Abstract This paper studies the relative performance of domestic and foreign banks in the Latin American and Caribbean banking industry. Data Envelopment Analysis is used to compute technical efficiency scores for the years 2001 and 2013. Our main contribution is twofold. On the one hand, we assess performance at the level of the management of specific production factors. On the other hand, we distinguish program efficiency from managerial efficiency, which allows us to evaluate whether the differences in technical efficiency between national and foreign banks are due to the use of different technologies (program efficiency) or, conversely, differences in the managerial capacities of managers in both categories of banks (managerial efficiency). The results show that foreign banks are more efficient than domestic ones, and provide evidence that the greater efficiency of foreign banks is mostly due to the superior technology they use.

ARE LAC COOPERATIVE AND COMMERCIAL BANKS SO DIFFERENT IN THEIR MANAGEMENT OF NON-PERFORMING LOANS?: ARE LAC COOPERATIVE AND COMMERCIAL BANKS SO DIFFERENT…?

This paper assesses technical efficiency in the management of non‐performing loans (NPLs) in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) banking industry. To that end, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques are employed with data from the years 2013 to 2016 on a sample of 307 LAC cooperative and commercial banks. Our main contribution to existing literature is that differences of efficiency between cooperative banks and commercial banks are assessed as the result of the different capacities of their managers – managerial efficiency – and the so‐called programme efficiency, which represents differences in the technology used by these two categories of entities. Our principal result suggests that the technology used by cooperative banks in the management of NPLs is more efficient than the technology of commercial banks.

An Empirical Enquiry into the Impact of Urban Planning Policy on Urban Growth

Recent research has stressed the need to evaluate the economic implications of urban planning policy. In this article, we present empirical evidence on the impact of this policy on the population growth of towns and cities. A simple theoretical model serves to highlight the mechanisms whereby this policy may affect urban growth. The model yields a reduced-form equation which we estimate for the towns and cities of Andalusia (Spain). The empirical model strongly supports the claim that urban planning policy considerably affects urban growth and thus, the distribution of population across space. Our results suggest that urban planning policy is contributing to the reduction of diseconomies of agglomeration in larger cities. On the negative side, we find that urban plans are subject to obsolescence, which slows down growth.