In: Servizi pubblici: nuove tendenze nella regolamentazione nella produzione e nel finanziamento, 2007, p. 159-176
In the last two decades electricity distribution sector have witnessed a wave of regulatory reforms aimed at improving efficiency through incentive regulation. Most of these regulation schemes use benchmarking namely measuring a company’s efficiency and rewarding them accordingly. The reliability of efficiency estimates is crucial for an effective implementation of those incentive mechanisms. A...
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In: International Journal of Public Health, 2010, vol. 55, no. 5, p. 469–478
Objectives: Outpatient antibiotic consumption widely varies across Europe. The investigation of the causes of such variation may help to identify interventions that would improve the efficient use of antibiotics. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of socioeconomic determinants and the role played by information about bacterial resistance. Methods: Comparable data on systemically...
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This paper investigates socioeconomic determinants of outpatient antibiotic consumption in Europe. Comparable data on antibiotic use measured in the defined daily doses per 1000 inhabitants (DID) are currently provided by the ESAC project. Results from applied econometric estimations for panel data reveal a link between antibiotic use and the per capita income, the demographic structure of the...
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In: International Journal of Public Health, 2010, vol. 55, no. 5, p. 469-478
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In: Journal of productivity analysis, 2008, vol. 29, no. 2, p. 169-182
This study estimates cost inefficiency and economies of scale of Slovenian water distribution utilities over the 1997-2003 period by employing several different stochastic frontier methods. The results indicate that significant cost inefficiencies are present in the utilities. An introduction of incentive-based price regulation scheme might help resolve this problem. However, the inefficiency...
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We model demand for different classes of antibiotics used for respiratory infections in outpatient care using a linear approximate almost ideal demand system approach. We compute elasticities to socioeconomic determinants of consumption and own- and cross- price elasticities between different groups of antibiotics. We find significant elasticities between newer/more expensive generations and...
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This paper examines costs in the nursing home industry, an issue of concern to Swiss policy makers because of the explosion of elderly care costs and the aging of the population. Moreover, the fact that Swiss nursing homes are managed by different forms of institutional organizations (private for-profit nursing homes, government nursing homes and nonprofit nursing homes) raises the issue of their...
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In dieser Studie haben wir die Kostenstruktur der schweizerischen Regionalbahnen analysiert, um die Skalenerträge und Skalenineffizienz dieser Unternehmen zu messen. Das Modellspezifikation hat die Zerlegung des Konzeptes der Skalenerträge in drei Aspekte und damit die Identifizierung von ‚economies of density‘, economies of network size‘ und ‚economies of scale‘ ermöglicht. Wir...
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In this paper we estimate an average-cost function for a panel of 45 Swiss electricity distribution utilities as a basis for yardstick regulation of the distribution-network access prices. Unlike the existing literature, we separate the electricity sales function of utilities from the network operation function. Several exogenous variables measuring the heterogeneity of the service areas were...
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In deregulated transport markets, a firm’s ownership status and management system represent an important issue. Economic theory suggests that productivity and performance are higher in the private than in the public sector. In Switzerland, providers of bus transportation are traditionally corporations, though a large part of their equity shares are still held by the public sector (federal...
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