Efficiency in Public & Private French Water Industry: Prospects for Benchmarking

Abstract: This paper evaluates the efficiency of public versus private managed water services in 2009, using a mixture of data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis. Previous empirical results mostly suggest that either private companies are more efficient or that the relative efficiency between private and public companies is ambiguous. Contrary to that, our preliminary results indicate a strong advantage for publicly managed water companies in terms of technical efficiency.