{"title":"Extending Metafrontier Technique to Input-Oriented Distance Functional Form: An Application to China's Urban Water Utilities","authors":"Hongzhou Li, Yong Yin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2934704","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper extends two different metafrontier models proposed by O’Donnell et al. (2008) and Huang et al. (2014) to the input-oriented distance functional form which has been mentioned by O’Donnell et al. (2008, p250) but has not been done so far partly due to endogenous problem. As noted by Kumbhakar (2013, p465), there are a few industries such as public utilizes and banks where the hypothesis of exogenous outputs is satisfied. Thus, the metafrontier framework can be used in those industries without the problem of endogeneity. The extended model is then applied to a panel of Chinese urban water utilities. The estimated results show that the average technical efficiency for Chinese urban water utilities as a whole is below 60%, indicating the presence of much technical inefficiency. Our findings also show that the ownership reform happened in China cannot guarantee the efficiency growth in public utilities. Thus, Chinese regulatory agents should deepen the reform and change the current rate of return regulation to a more incentive-based one and require utilities to improve their efficiency before applying for raising water price.","PeriodicalId":135506,"journal":{"name":"SRPN: Urban Design & Planning (Topic)","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2017-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"SRPN: Urban Design & Planning (Topic)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2934704","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper extends two different metafrontier models proposed by O’Donnell et al. (2008) and Huang et al. (2014) to the input-oriented distance functional form which has been mentioned by O’Donnell et al. (2008, p250) but has not been done so far partly due to endogenous problem. As noted by Kumbhakar (2013, p465), there are a few industries such as public utilizes and banks where the hypothesis of exogenous outputs is satisfied. Thus, the metafrontier framework can be used in those industries without the problem of endogeneity. The extended model is then applied to a panel of Chinese urban water utilities. The estimated results show that the average technical efficiency for Chinese urban water utilities as a whole is below 60%, indicating the presence of much technical inefficiency. Our findings also show that the ownership reform happened in China cannot guarantee the efficiency growth in public utilities. Thus, Chinese regulatory agents should deepen the reform and change the current rate of return regulation to a more incentive-based one and require utilities to improve their efficiency before applying for raising water price.
本文将O 'Donnell et al.(2008)和Huang et al.(2014)提出的两种不同的元前沿模型扩展到O 'Donnell et al. (2008, p250)提到的输入导向的距离函数形式,但由于内生问题,迄今尚未完成。正如Kumbhakar (2013, p465)所指出的,有少数行业如公共设施和银行满足外生产出假设。因此,元前沿框架可以在这些行业中使用,而不会出现内生性问题。将扩展模型应用到中国城市自来水公司的面板上。估算结果表明,我国城市自来水企业整体平均技术效率低于60%,存在较多的技术低效。我们的研究结果也表明,中国的所有制改革并不能保证公用事业效率的提高。因此,中国的监管机构应该深化改革,将现行的回报率监管转变为更基于激励的监管,并要求公用事业公司在申请提高水价之前提高效率。