Overview
This project seeks to assess the Efficiency and Quality in the UK Water and Sewerage Industry.
Though the idea of adjusting for improvements in Environmental Quality have been considered in the literature, no research has yet considered Quality as a defined factor of production in the Water and Sewerage industry.
This project extends the notion of Quality to include improvements to the delivery of company services, and aims to use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to determine whether the use of quality as a factor changes the Techincal Efficiency of the companies.
Research
This project seeks to assess the Efficiency and Quality in the UK Water and Sewerage Industry.
Though the idea of adjusting for improvements in Environmental Quality have been considered in the literature, no research has yet considered Quality as a defined factor of production in the Water and Sewerage industry.
This project extends the notion of Quality to include improvements to the delivery of company services, and aims to use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to determine whether the use of quality as a factor changes the Techincal Efficiency of the companies.
To address this, the project uses a Composite Indicator to form an aggregate indicator of Quality, so that only one additional variable is added. Then, Static and Dynamic DEA models are used to determine the changes in efficiency due to this new factor. In using dynamic models, Network DEA models and models that assume Quasi-Fixed investments in Quality will be explored.
Finally, the project wishes to make an exploratory theoretical economic model of the Water and Sewerage industry, which would then be simulated and compared to the real industry data. In doing so, the project hopes to provide a useful policy tool, whilst also investigating any theoretical differences between the For-Profit companies and the singular Non-Profit company in the industry: Welsh Water.