There is a general perception, based upon casual observation and some systematic empirica! study, that public enterprises are inefllcient.! This paper takes this to be true, and is concerned with the problem of providing a rigorous analysis and explanation of this inefficiency.2 Privatisation, which, in the U.K. at least has received its primary impetus from political and ideological motivarion...

A game of simultaneous free entry and sequential output choices is analyzed. Firms enter simultaneously in stage 1 by paying a fixed cost, and they choose output levels sequentially in subsequent stages. At the subgame-perfect equilibrium of the game, the production level of a firm is decreasing with the order of the firm in the decision-making. The firm that is the last to choose output produc...

We study two standard multi-unit auction formats for allocating multiple units of a single good to multi-demand bidders. The first one is the Discriminatory Auction, which charges every winner his winning bids. The second is the Uniform Price Auction, which determines a uniform price to be paid per unit. Variants of both formats find applications ranging from the allocation of state bonds to in...

The paper analyzes the determinants of the efficiency levels reached by twenty-one African water utilities. Efficiency is assessed through the estimation of a production frontier for the sector in Africa. The efficiency estimates confirm much of the common perceptions from partial productivity indicators. They point to a great heterogeneity in the African water utilities’ performances, the pred...

The purpose of this study was to measure the technical efficiency of canola farmers and determine the underpinning factors. Required data were collected using stratified random sampling method and questionnaire survey. In this context, 157 canola farmers from Tabriz County, Iran, were asked to fill out the questionnaire in 2012-2013 growing season. The technical efficiency was evaluated using s...