Technical and Scale Efficiency of the Brazilian Municipalities’ Water and Sanitation Services: A Two-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

Seeking to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” is an admirable Sustainable Development Goal and an honourable commitment of the United Nations and its Member States regarding the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation services (WSSs). However, the majority of countries are not on target to achieve this by 2030, with several of them moving away from the best practices. Brazil is one of these cases, given, for example, the existing asymmetries in the access to water supply and sanitation service networks. For this reason, we propose a benchmarking exercise using a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis to measure the technical and scale efficiency of the Brazilian municipalities’ WSSs, noting their contextual environment. Our results point towards low mean efficiency scores, motivated by the existence of significant scale inefficiencies (the vast majority of municipalities are operating at a larger than optimal scale). Furthermore, the Water source was found to be a statistically significant efficiency predictor, with statistically significant differences found in terms of Ownership and Geography. Ultimately, we suggest policy-making and regulatory possibilities based on debureaucratization, the implementation of stricter expenditure control policies, and investment in the expansion of WSSs.

A network Data Envelopment Analysis to estimate nations’ efficiency in the fight against SARS-CoV-2

“…They contemplate health expenditure per capita, GDP per capita, population density, the percentage of the population that uses PPE, the percentage of the infected population, the percentage of the infected population that needs hospitalisation, the percentage of the hospitalised population that needs treatment in the ICU, the Human Development Index (HDI) and its components (namely life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, and mean years of schooling), and are commonly used in the literature (see, e.g., Pereira and Marques, 2021 , Pereira and Marques, 2022a ). Given the presence of outliers and heteroscedasticity in the sample, the dependent variables of the truncated double bootstrap regression were replaced using a log transformation (see, e.g., Pereira & Marques, 2022b ). First, the bivariate correlation analysis denoted statistically significant results in terms of the GDP per capita ( ), the percentage of the population that uses PPE ( ), the percentage of the infected population ( ), and the HDI and all its components ( , , , and , respectively).…”

Efficiency benchmarking of wastewater service providers: An analysis based on the Portuguese case

“…Indeed, Byrnes et al (2009), Walker et al (2021) and Pereira and Marques (2022) had already found economies of scale for SP up to an 'optimal' size, and (dis)economies of scale thereafter, which also applies to the Portuguese reality (Carvalho and Marques, 2014, 2015Caldas et al, 2019;Henriques et al, 2020;Mergoni et al, 2022). Byrnes et al (2009) and Molinos-Senante and Maziotis (2021) also highlighted the positive relevance of the collectors' grid and connections to efficiency.…”

“…Furthermore, water source and treatment level, type of WW treatment facility, density and pumping capacities were found to influence productivity. Pereira and Marques (2022) proposed a two-stage DEA model to determine technical and scale efficiencies of 2160 Brazilian municipal water and sanitation services, observing significant scale inefficiencies. Water source, ownership and geography were found to be significant explanatory factors.…”

Potential benefits of public-private partnerships to improve the efficiency of urban wastewater treatment

“…For a region, improving UWTE often entails treating as much wastewater as possible to meet required standards at the lowest cost regarding personnel, capital, and equipment at a given level of technology [10]. This requires technical training for wastewater treatment practitioners to maximise capital use and equipment operation efficiency [11].…”