Nepal is rich in water resources with a dense network of glaciers, lakes, rivers, and springs that originate in the Himalayas. However, only an estimated 15 billion cubic meters (BCM) of the 225 BCM water available annually is utilized for economic and social purposes. Several elements have...

The firms’ performance assessment for regulation requires estimating profit change and its drivers. This study estimates and decomposes profit changes into components such as output and input price changes, output growth, and markups. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we compute the...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based cost norms are widely used to regulate natural monopolies like water, electricity, and gas networks. In the typical application, demand is considered fixed and non-controllable (non-discretionary), and the challenge is to incentivize the monopoly to provide...

We estimate the impacts of two interventions implemented as field experiments in informal settlements by Nairobi’s water and sanitation utility to improve revenue collection efficiency and last mile connection loan repayment: (i) face-to-face engagement between utility staff and customers to...