IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/feemcl/146438.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Methodology to Propose the X-Factor in the Regulated English and Welsh Water And Sewerage Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Maziotis, Alexandros
  • Saal, David S.
  • Thanassoulis, Emmanuel

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology which can be used to set X-factor under price cap schemes, when the number of observations is limited. We firstly apply a panel index approach across Water and Sewerage companies (WaSCs) over time to decompose unit-specific index number based productivity growth as a function of the productivity growth achieved by benchmark firms, and the catch-up to the benchmark firm achieved by less productive firms. We then calculate the potential productivity catch-up of laggard firms and an estimate of how the top performing company improved its productivity over time (technical change). Both estimates are used to propose X-factor for the industry over a particular period. The results indicated that significant gains in productivity occurred after 2000, when Ofwat set tighter price cap reviews in order to pass previous productivity benefits to consumers. However, average WaSC still needs to improve its productivity towards the benchmark firm (reduce their costs in real terms) by 2.69%, while the most productive firm needs to continue to improve its productivity by 0.95% over a period of five years. This technique is of great interest to researchers who are interested in developing comparative performance measurement under regulation and setting appropriate regulated prices when sample sizes are extremely limited.

Suggested Citation

  • Maziotis, Alexandros & Saal, David S. & Thanassoulis, Emmanuel, 2013. "A Methodology to Propose the X-Factor in the Regulated English and Welsh Water And Sewerage Companies," Climate Change and Sustainable Development 146438, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:feemcl:146438
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.146438
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/146438/files/NDL2013-014.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.146438?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M C A S Portela & E Thanassoulis & A Horncastle & T Maugg, 2011. "Productivity change in the water industry in England and Wales: application of the meta-Malmquist index," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(12), pages 2173-2188, December.
    2. Robert J. Hill, 2004. "Constructing Price Indexes across Space and Time: The Case of the European Union," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1379-1410, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maziotis, Alexandros & Saal, David S. & Thanassoulis, Emmanuel & Molinos-Senante, María, 2016. "Price-cap regulation in the English and Welsh water industry: A proposal for measuring productivity performance," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 22-30.
    2. Barnett, William A. & Erwin Diewert, W. & Zellner, Arnold, 2011. "Introduction to measurement with theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(1), pages 1-5, March.
    3. Diewert, W. Erwin & Fox, Kevin J., 2017. "Substitution Bias in Multilateral Methods for CPI Construction using Scanner Data," Microeconomics.ca working papers erwin_diewert-2017-3, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 23 Mar 2017.
    4. Mocholi-Arce, Manuel & Sala-Garrido, Ramon & Molinos-Senante, Maria & Maziotis, Alexandros, 2023. "Profit productivity change in the English and Welsh water sector: Impact of the price reviews," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    5. Chen, Xiang & Grifell-Tatjé, Emili & Fu, Tsu-Tan, 2023. "A profit difference decomposition model for measuring group performance: an application to Chinese and Taiwanese commercial banks," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    6. M. Portela & A. Camanho & A. Keshvari, 2013. "Assessing the evolution of school performance and value-added: trends over four years," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 1-14, February.
    7. Afsharian, Mohsen & Ahn, Heinz & Harms, Sören Guntram, 2019. "Performance comparison of management groups under centralised management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 278(3), pages 845-854.
    8. Magne Mogstad, 2007. "Measuring Income Inequality under Restricted Interpersonal Comparability," Discussion Papers 498, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    9. Anderson, Heather M. & Dungey, Mardi & Osborn, Denise R. & Vahid, Farshid, 2011. "Financial integration and the construction of historical financial data for the Euro Area," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1498-1509, July.
    10. Majumder, Amita & Ray, Ranjan & Sinha, Kompal, 2015. "Spatial Comparisons Of Prices And Expenditure In A Heterogeneous Country: Methodology With Application To India," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(5), pages 931-989, July.
    11. Heather Anderson & Mardi Dungey & Denise Osborn & Farshid Vahid, 2007. "Constructing Historical Euro Area Data," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2006 99, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    12. Alicia Gómez-Tello & Alfonso Díez-Minguela & Julio Martinez-Galarraga & Daniel A. Tirado, 2019. "Regional prices in early twentieth-century Spain: a country-product-dummy approach," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 13(2), pages 245-276, May.
    13. Amita Majumder & Ranjan Ray & Kompal Sinha, 2015. "Estimating Purchasing Power Parities from Household Expenditure Data Using Complete Demand Systems with Application to Living Standards Comparison: India and Vietnam," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(2), pages 302-328, June.
    14. Erwin Diewert, 2010. "New Methodological Developments For The International Comparison Program," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(s1), pages 11-31, June.
    15. Qingxiao Li & Metin Çakır, 2024. "Estimating SNAP purchasing power and its effect on participation," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 106(2), pages 779-804, March.
    16. Menggen Chen & Yan Wang & D. S. Prasada Rao, 2020. "Measuring the spatial price differences in China with regional price parity methods," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 1103-1146, April.
    17. Miśkiewicz, Janusz, 2010. "Entropy correlation distance method. The Euro introduction effect on the Consumer Price Index," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(8), pages 1677-1687.
    18. Amita Majumder & Ranjan Ray, 2020. "National and subnational purchasing power parity: a review," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 47(2), pages 103-124, June.
    19. Ingvild Almås & Timothy K.M. Beatty & Thomas F. Crossley, 2018. "Lost in Translation: What do Engel Curves Tell us about the Cost of Living?," CESifo Working Paper Series 6886, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental Economics and Policy;

    JEL classification:

    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:feemcl:146438. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feemmit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.