Gestion Publique ou Privée? Un benchmarking des services d'eau en France

Abstract

This paper uses a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to assess the relative technical efficiency of 177 decision making units in the water supply sector in France in 2009. Water utilities can be directly managed by the local authorities or contracted out and then managed by a private operator. The use of a three-stage model mixing DEA and SFA enables us to dissociate managerial inefficiencies from the structural inefficiencies and statistical noise. Our results show that private managers face more difficult environment. After having taken into account the environmental variables, private management remains on average slightly less efficient than public management. However, this small difference dissipates when relative performance is econometrically measured. © Revue d'économie industrielle.