Stochastic Frontiers and Asymmetric Information Models

This article is an attempt to shed light on the specification and identification of inefficiency in stochastic frontiers. We consider the case of a regulated firm or industry. Applying a simple principal-agent framework that accounts for informational asymmetries to this context, we derive the associated production and cost frontiers. Noticeably this approach yields a decomposition of inefficiency into two components: The first component is a pure random term while the second component depends on the unobservable actions taken by the agent (the firm). This result provides a theoretical foundation to the usual specification applied in the literature on stochastic frontiers. An application to a panel data set of French urban transport networks serves as an illustration.     

Economic Efficiency and Political Capture in Public Service Contracts

We consider contracts for public transport services between a public authority and a transport operator. We build a structural endogenous switching model where the contract choice results from the combined effects of the incentivization scheme aimed at monitoring the operator's efficiency and the political agenda followed by the regulator to account for the voice of private interests. Our results support theoretical predictions as they suggest that cost‐plus contracts entail a higher cost for society than fixed‐price contracts but allow the public authority to leave a rent to a subset of individuals. Accounting for transfers to interest groups in welfare computations reduces the welfare gap between cost‐plus and fixed‐price regimes.