Public versus Private Water Delivery: A Critical Analysis of a Hedonic Cost Approach

In a recent article, Susan Feigenbaum and Ronald Teeples (1983) highlight an important omission in the public-versus-private, production-efficiency literature. They note the possibility that differences in product quality might explain apparent differences in efficiency. They, however, fail at the more fundamental task of accurately measuring differences in economic costs in their study of public and private water utilities. More generally, Feigenbaum and Teeples's methodology is not well suited for an analysis of the relative efficiency issue.

[1]  W. Crain,et al.  A Test of the Property-Rights Theory of the Firm: Water Utilities in the United States , 1978, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[2]  Peter Kemper,et al.  The economics of refuse collection , 1976 .

[3]  L. R. Christensen,et al.  The Relative Efficiency of Public and Private Firms in a Competitive Environment: The Case of Canadian Railroads , 1980, Journal of Political Economy.

[4]  E. G. Furubotn,et al.  Property Rights and Economic Theory: A Survey of Recent Literature , 1972 .

[5]  Scott E. Atkinson,et al.  A Test of Relative and Absolute Price Efficiency in Regulated Utilities , 1980 .

[6]  J. T. Bennett,et al.  Tax Reduction without Sacrifice: Private-Sector Production of Public Services , 1980 .

[7]  T. Cott,et al.  Public versus private economic activity: A new look at school bus transportation , 1984 .

[8]  Rolf Färe,et al.  The Rate-of-Return Regulated Firm: Cost and Production Duality , 1983 .

[9]  M. Wohar,et al.  Regulation, Scale Economies, and Productivity in Steam-Electric Generation , 1983 .

[10]  John J. McGowan,et al.  On the Misuse of Accounting Rates of Return to Infer Monopoly Profits , 1983 .

[11]  R. Spady,et al.  Hedonic Cost Functions for the Regulated Trucking Industry , 1978 .

[12]  J. T. Bennett,et al.  Public versus private provision of collective goods and services: garbage collection revisited , 1979 .

[13]  T. G. Moore.  The Effectiveness of Regulation of Electric Utility Prices , 1970 .

[14]  A. Alchian,et al.  Some Economics of Property Rights , 1965 .

[15]  H. Demsetz,et al.  Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization , 1975, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[16]  H. Manne.  Economic Policy and the Regulation of Corporate Securities , 1969 .

[17]  J. M. Griffin,et al.  An Intercountry Translog Model of Energy Substitution Responses , 1976 .

[18]  Susan Feigenbaum,et al.  Public versus Private Water Delivery: A Hedonic Cost Approach , 1983 .

[19]  R. Shepherd.  Theory of cost and production functions , 1970 .