Economies of scale and scope in multi-utilities
- Farsi, Mehdi Istituto microeconomia e economia pubblica (MecoP), Facoltà di scienze economiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
- Fetz, Aurelio Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zurich, Svizzera
- Filippini, Massimo Istituto microeconomia e economia pubblica (MecoP), Facoltà di scienze economiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
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2008
Published in:
- Energy journal. - Energy Economics. - 2008, vol. 29, no. 4, p. 123-143
English
This paper explores the economies of scale and scope in the electricity, gas and water utilities. These issues have a crucial importance in the actual policy debates about unbundling the integrated utilities into separate entities, a policy which has often been supported by the ongoing reforms in the deregulation of network industries. This paper argues that the potential improvements in efficiency through unbundling should be assessed against the loss of scope economies. Several econometric specifications including a random coefficient model are used to estimate a cost function for a sample of utilities distributing electricity, gas and/or water to the Swiss population. The estimates of scale and scope economies are compared across different models and the effect of heterogeneity among companies are explored. While indicating considerable scope and scale economies overall, the results suggest a significant variation in scope economies across companies due to unobserved heterogeneity.
- Language
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- English
- Classification
- Economics
- Other electronic version
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- Identifiers
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- RERO DOC 11330
- ARK ark:/12658/srd1317909
- Persistent URL
- https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1317909
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