This paper analyses and compares potential efficiency gains induced by the introduction of product market competition and cross boarder trade in the piped water market. We argue that due to the specific circumstances in the water sector product market competition, i.e. competition by common...

The United Kingdom began deregulating its electric market years before the U.S. Thus, the UK provides the best example of what can be expected in the deregulated residential retail electric market in the United States. . An extensive review of the evidence found: Questionable price savings:...

Due to the increasing discussion about liberalisation in the piped water industry municipal authorities in several European countries consider modifications of their water utilities’ structure such as legal constitution, business objectives or private participation. The purpose of this paper...

This paper surveys water pricing models, highlighting some important results. Efficiency rquires marginal cost pricing. Intra-annual price changes or customer differentiation to reflect differences in marginal costs can enhance efficiency. A marginal cost pricing mechanism may signal the value...

Marginal cost pricing of running water and sewerage services has long been the default recommendation of economists and natural resource specialists to firms and local governments. However, water pricing has never been studied simultaneously with the water metering problem before. The socially...

The periodical re-auction of a water monopoly concession causes the danger of underinvestment. If the life-time of specific assets such as water pipes exceeds the contract length and transferring the ownership of assets is difficult, the incumbent franchisee faces a hold-up problem. Using a...

Metering water consumption has been long advocated by economists in developing countries as a way to curb waste and prevent resource depletion. However, very few of these economists have studied the inefficiencies brought about by universal metering or the conditions under which decentralized...

It is well known since Owen (Management Science, 1968) that the weights in the weighted Shapley value cannot be interpreted as a measure of power (i.e. of the ability to bargain) of the players. This paper proposes a new weight scheme for the Shapley value. Weights in this framework have to be...

A formal scheme is described for coalition formation in a game of interconnected participants with monotonic utility functions. Special coalitions are studied which have an advantage over the rest in the sense of higher utility for each of the participants taken separately.

We define the canonical form of a cost spanning tree problem. The canonical form has the property that reducing the cost of any arc, the minimal cost of connecting agents to the source is also reduced. We argue that the canonical form is a relevant concept in this kind of problems and study a...