Local policy makers in developed countries have to make decisions in increasingly complex scenarios. Consequently, they should use all the tools available when deciding which management option is the most suitable for urban water service, given how important that service is and the variety of...

In countries where privatisation is permitted by law, policymakers usually give different reasons of general interest to allow private companies to manage water services. However, these kinds of decisions often provoke intense political debate and are at times opposed by citizens. In this paper,...

A more efficient and sustainable use of available water resources, especially in arid and semiarid areas, is a real challenge for many countries. The reutilization of treated wastewater for irrigation purposes is becoming more widespread in many places around the world because of its positive...

This paper assesses the sporting performance of Spanish professional football teams at competition level, namely, League, King’s Cup and European competitions (Champions League and UEFA Cup). Then, the gap between the result obtained by a team in a given competition and that expected according...

In this paper adjusted input-specific scores of technical efficiency are computed for a sample of Spanish water utilities. Performance is adjusted by netting out efficiency scores from the effect of operating environments and statistical noise. The results show that computation of adjusted...

As in other economic activities, privatization of water delivery has not resulted in the retreat of the public sector, but rather a change in the way in which the government intervenes in the water industry. This paper illustrates this situation by comparing urban water services in two Spanish...

This paper assesses the relationship between provider ownership and the price of water for residential use set by 386 Southern Spanish municipalities. Our main contribution to the previous literature is that we go much further than merely distinguishing between private and public ownership....

Quality is a dimension of water services that has been repeatedly omitted in the study of performance of water utilities. In this paper, we make use of Data Envelopment Analysis techniques (DEA) to compute both conventional quantity-based and quality-adjusted indicators of technical efficiency...

This paper analyses referee home bias due to social pressure with data from the matches played in the First Division of the Spanish football league between the 2002/03 and 2009/10 seasons. Finally, our main conclusion is that the time the referee has to make a decision does affect the final...