IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/82898.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The welfare costs of non-marginal water pricing: evidence from the water only companies in England and Wales

Author

Listed:
  • Porcher, Simon
  • Maziotis, Alexandros
  • Molinos-Senante, Maria

Abstract

The evaluation of the economic efficiency of regulatory schemes is essential for regulators and utilities. In this study it is analysed for the first time the welfare costs of non-marginal cost pricing in the water supply in England and Wales, by computing the deadweight loss of the water only companies (WoCs) that existed over the period of 1993–2009. The results indicate that the current price schemes can have substantial efficiency costs. Our estimates show that the loss of efficiency for the WoCs lies between 15 and 60 million GBP over the period 1993–2009. These amounts could have been redistributed either to the companies in terms of profits or to the consumers via price reductions. The methodology and results of this study are of great interest for both regulators and water utilities managers to evaluate the effectiveness of price regulation and make informed decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Porcher, Simon & Maziotis, Alexandros & Molinos-Senante, Maria, 2017. "The welfare costs of non-marginal water pricing: evidence from the water only companies in England and Wales," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 82898, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:82898
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/82898/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garcia, Serge & Reynaud, Arnaud, 2004. "Estimating the benefits of efficient water pricing in France," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-25, March.
    2. 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.
    3. Simon Porcher, 2014. "Efficiency and equity in two-part tariffs: the case of residential water rates," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(5), pages 539-555, February.
    4. Lucas W. Davis & Erich Muehlegger, 2010. "Do Americans consume too little natural gas? An empirical test of marginal cost pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(4), pages 791-810, December.
    5. Lucas W. Davis & Lutz Kilian, 2011. "The Allocative Cost of Price Ceilings in the U.S. Residential Market for Natural Gas," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(2), pages 212-241.
    6. David Saal & David Parker & Tom Weyman-Jones, 2007. "Determining the contribution of technical change, efficiency change and scale change to productivity growth in the privatized English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: 1985–2000," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 127-139, October.
    7. Kristof De Witte & Rui Marques, 2010. "Designing performance incentives, an international benchmark study in the water sector," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 18(2), pages 189-220, June.
    8. Zhang, Congwen & Boyle, Kevin J. & Kuminoff, Nicolai V., 2015. "Partial identification of amenity demand functions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 180-197.
    9. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio, 2003. "Cost Inefficiency in the English and Welsh Water Industry: An Heteroskedastic Stochastic Cost Frontier Approach," Economics Discussion Papers 8872, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    10. Saal, David S & Parker, David, 2001. "Productivity and Price Performance in the Privatized Water and Sewerage Companies of England and Wales," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 61-90, July.
    11. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, April.
    12. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio, 2009. "Scale economies, technology and technical change in the water industry: Evidence from the English water only sector," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 138-147, March.
    13. Erbetta Fabrizio & Cave Martin, 2007. "Regulation and Efficiency Incentives: Evidence from the England and Wales Water and Sewerage Industry," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(4), pages 1-28, December.
    14. Molinos-Senante, María & Maziotis, Alexandros & Sala-Garrido, Ramón, 2014. "The Luenberger productivity indicator in the water industry: An empirical analysis for England and Wales," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 18-28.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Porcher, Simon, 2017. "The ‘hidden costs’ of water provision: New evidence from the relationship between contracting-out and price in French water public services," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 166-175.
    2. María Molinos-Senante & Alexandros Maziotis, 2019. "Cost Efficiency of English and Welsh Water Companies: a Meta-Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 33(9), pages 3041-3055, July.
    3. Maria Molinos-Senante & Alexandros Maziotis, 2022. "Decomposition of Cost Efficiency Into Persistent and Transient Efficiency in the Provision of Water Services: Evidence from England and Wales," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 36(6), pages 1849-1862, April.
    4. Molinos-Senante, María & Maziotis, Alexandros & Sala-Garrido, Ramón, 2020. "Changes in the total costs of the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: The decomposed effect of price and quantity inputs on efficiency," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).

    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. Molinos-Senante, María & Maziotis, Alexandros & Sala-Garrido, Ramón, 2014. "The Luenberger productivity indicator in the water industry: An empirical analysis for England and Wales," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 18-28.
    3. Alexandros Maziotis & María Molinos-Senante & Ramon Sala-Garrido, 2017. "Assesing the Impact of Quality of Service on the Productivity of Water Industry: a Malmquist-Luenberger Approach for England and Wales," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(8), pages 2407-2427, June.
    4. Barbosa, Alexandro & Lima, Severino Cesário de & Brusca, Isabel, 2016. "Governance and efficiency in the Brazilian water utilities: A dynamic analysis in the process of universal access," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(PA), pages 82-96.
    5. Jinjin Zhao, 2020. "Productivity change in the privatized water sector in China (1999–2006)," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 227-241, April.
    6. María Molinos-Senante & Alexandros Maziotis & Ramon Sala-Garrido, 2017. "Assessment of the Total Factor Productivity Change in the English and Welsh Water Industry: a Färe-Primont Productivity Index Approach," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(8), pages 2389-2405, June.
    7. Pointon, Charlotte & Matthews, Kent, 2016. "Dynamic efficiency in the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 86-96.
    8. Molinos-Senante, María & Maziotis, Alexandros & Sala-Garrido, Ramón, 2020. "Changes in the total costs of the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: The decomposed effect of price and quantity inputs on efficiency," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    9. Pointon, Charlotte & Matthews, Kent, 2016. "Reprint of: Dynamic efficiency in the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 98-108.
    10. 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.
    11. Mocholi-Arce, Manuel & Sala-Garrido, Ramon & Molinos-Senante, Maria & Maziotis, Alexandros, 2021. "Water company productivity change: A disaggregated approach accounting for changes in inputs and outputs," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    12. Carvalho, Anne Emília Costa & Sampaio, Raquel Menezes Bezerra & Sampaio, Luciano Menezes Bezerra, 2023. "The impact of regulation on the Brazilian water and sewerage companies’ efficiency," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(PA).
    13. Nancy L. Rose, 2014. "Learning from the Past: Insights for the Regulation of Economic Activity," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Regulation and Its Reform: What Have We Learned?, pages 1-23, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Walter, Matthias & Cullmann, Astrid & von Hirschhausen, Christian & Wand, Robert & Zschille, Michael, 2009. "Quo vadis efficiency analysis of water distribution? A comparative literature review," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 225-232, September.
    15. Michael Zschille, 2012. "Consolidating the Water Industry: An Analysis of the Potential Gains from Horizontal Integration in a Conditional Efficiency Framework," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1187, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    16. Zschille, Michael, 2012. "Consolidating the Water Industry: An Analysis of the Potential Gains from Horizontal Integration in a Conditional Efficiency Fr," CEPR Discussion Papers 8737, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Carvalho, Anne Emília Costa & Sampaio, Luciano Menezes Bezerra, 2015. "Paths to universalize water and sewage services in Brazil: The role of regulatory authorities in promoting efficient service," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 1-10.
    18. Abbott, Malcolm & Cohen, Bruce, 2009. "Productivity and efficiency in the water industry," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 233-244, September.
    19. Romano, Giulia & Molinos-Senante, María & Guerrini, Andrea, 2017. "Water utility efficiency assessment in Italy by accounting for service quality: An empirical investigation," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 97-108.
    20. Francisco González-Gómez & Miguel García‐Rubio & Francisco Alcalá-Olid & M. Ortega-Díaz, 2013. "Outsourcing and Efficiency in the Management of Rural Water Services," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 27(3), pages 731-747, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    profits; deadweight loss; water industry;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ehl:lserod:82898. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.