The paper investigates the costs of waste disposal and recycling services by using a well-behaved Composite cost function model. Our estimates on a unique sample of more than 500 Italian municipalities highlight that the refuse collection technology exhibits constant returns to scale as well as...

This paper investigates the determinants of board compensation for a sample of Italian State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). To that purpose, we use a newly collected panel data of 106 local public utilities observed form 1994 through 2004, which includes detailed information on the boards of...

This paper explores the link between accountability, corruption and efficiency in the context of a career concern model where politically con- nected local monopolies are in charge of the provision of a local public service. We fi?nd that both corruption and a low degree of accountabil- ity...

This paper deals with the open issue about the choice between a centralized versus a decentralized public procurement strategy. Using a unique dataset on tender prices of selected drugs for hospital usage awarded by a sample of 52 Italian local health service providers (ASLs) between 2009 and...

In this paper, using a sample of Italian passenger transport firms, we compare the estimates from a Composite Cost Function econometric model (Pulley and Braunstein, 1992) with the ones coming from other traditional functional forms such as the Standard Translog, the Generalized Translog, and...

The paper investigates the link between corruption and efficiency by using a rich micro-level dataset concerning solid waste collection activities in 529 Italian municipalities observed over the years 2004-2006. In order to test the impact of corruption on cost efficiency we estimate a...

The focus of the paper is to analyze the costs of solid waste collection by applying a well-behaved multi-product cost function model to a sample of more than 500 Italian municipalities. Beyond shedding light on the presence and on the extent of size (or scale) economies, our aim is to...

The empirical literature on the cost structure of multiproduct firms (e.g., public utilities providing in combination gas, water, and electricity) traditionally assumes a common technology across different products and stages of production, letting the issue of poolability unexplored. The...

This paper analyses the effects of board composition on the behaviour and performance of a sample of 114 Italian local public utilities, for which information about 1630 directors during 1994-2004 has been collected. This period is particularly interesting because of the legal changes that...