Weakening political connections by means of regulatory reform: Evidence from contracting out water services in Spain

One area of public policy where rent-seeking and favoritism is relatively common is the contracting out of public services. Private firms can improve their chances of obtaining contracts by bribing politicians or public servants and funding political parties. In the same vein, firms can gain access to policymakers by hiring influential former politicians—a practice commonly referred to as revolving-doors. In this paper, we use information from 922 privatizations of water services in Spanish municipalities between 1984 and 2016 and multinomial logistic regression techniques to study the association between specific firms securing contracts and the political parties ruling the municipalities. We find robust statistical evidence of an association between the Popular Party (Partido Popular or PP) and the firm Aqualia, part of the large Spanish holding company Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), which is known to have funded the Popular Party. Furthermore, former PP politicians have been appointed to top positions in the FCC Board of Directors. However, this relationship weakened after the institutional reform of 2007 on public procurement and financing of political parties, which is empirically evaluated in this paper

Is eco-efficiency in greenhouse gas emissions converging among European Union countries?

Eco-efficiency refers to the ability to produce more goods and services with less impact on the environment and less consumption of natural resources. This issue has become a matter of concern that is receiving increasing attention from politicians, scientists and researchers. Furthermore, greenhouse gases emitted as a result of production processes have a marked impact on the environment and are also the foremost culprit of global warming and climate change. This paper assesses convergence in eco-efficiency in greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union. Eco-efficiency is assessed at both country and greenhouse-gas-specific levels using Data Envelopment Analysis techniques and directional distance functions, as recently proposed by Picazo-Tadeo et al. (Eur J Oper Res, 220:798–809, 2012). Convergence is then evaluated using the Phillips and Sul (Econometrica, 75:1771–1855, 2007) approach that allows testing for the existence of convergence groups. Although the results point to the existence of different convergence clubs depending on the specific pollutant considered, they signal the existence of at least four clear groups of countries. The first two groups are core European Union high-income countries (Benelux, Germany, Italy, Austria, the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries). A third club is made up of peripheral countries (Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece) together with some Eastern countries (Latvia and Slovenia), while the remaining clubs consist of groups containing Eastern European countries

Eco-efficiency measurement and material balance principle:an application in power plants Malmquist Luenberger Index

Incorporating Material Balance Principle (MBP) in industrial and agricultural performance measurement systems with pollutant factors has been on the rise in recent years. Many conventional methods of performance measurement have proven incompatible with the material flow conditions. This study will address the issue of eco-efficiency measurement adjusted for pollution, taking into account materials flow conditions and the MBP requirements, in order to provide ‘real’ measures of performance that can serve as guides when making policies. We develop a new approach by integrating slacks-based measure to enhance the Malmquist Luenberger Index by a material balance condition that reflects the conservation of matter. This model is compared with a similar model, which incorporates MBP using the trade-off approach to measure productivity and eco-efficiency trends of power plants. Results reveal similar findings for both models substantiating robustness and applicability of the proposed model in this paper