Productivity in Electricity, Gas and Water: Measurement and Interpretation
Staff working paper
This paper by Vernon Topp and Tony Kulys was released on 4 April 2012.
It examines productivity trends in the Australian utilities industry and highlights some significant issues relating to the measurement and interpretation of changes in measured productivity over time.
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- Preliminaries (PDF - 422 Kb)
- Cover, Copyright, Contents, Preface and Abbreviations
- Overview - including key points (PDF - 425 Kb)
- Chapter 1 Introduction (PDF - 287 Kb)
- 1.1 Project aims and outcomes
- 1.2 Project methodology and approach
- 1.3 Organisation of this study
- 1.4 Related Productivity Commission research
- Chapter 2 Declining MFP in the utilities division (PDF - 321 Kb)
- 2.1 Impact on the market sector
- 2.2 The rise and fall of utilities MFP
- 2.3 Three phases of MFP growth in the utilities division
- Chapter 3 MFP by subdivision (PDF - 331 Kb)
- 3.1 Subdivision MFP
- 3.2 Relative importance of the different subdivisions
- 3.3 Other productivity studies
- 3.4 Subdivision MFP results
- Chapter 4 Productivity in Electricity supply (PDF - 539 Kb)
- 4.1 Structure of the Electricity supply subdivision
- 4.2 The operating environment of Electricity supply
- 4.3 Measurement of outputs and inputs in Electricity supply
- 4.4 Proximate drivers of MFP in Electricity supply
- 4.5 Explaining the moderate MFP growth phase (1974-75 to 1985-86)
- 4.6 Explaining the rapid MFP growth phase (1985-86 to 1997-98)
- 4.7 Explaining the negative MFP growth phase (1997-98 to 2009-10)
- Chapter 5 Productivity in Water supply, sewerage and drainage services (PDF - 542 Kb)
- 5.1 Subdivision structure
- 5.2 The operating environment of water supply
- 5.3 Measures of output and inputs (volume terms)
- 5.4 Assessing productivity trends
- 5.5 Summarising the quantitative impacts on MFP
- Chapter 6 Productivity in Gas supply (PDF - 695 Kb)
- 6.1 The Gas supply subdivision
- 6.2 Inputs, output and MFP in Gas supply
- 6.3 Implications
- Chapter 7 Explaining negative MFP growth in utilities (PDF - 305 Kb)
- 7.1 Cyclical investment
- 7.2 Output measurement
- 7.3 Shifts to higher cost technologies
- 7.4 Unmeasured quality improvements
- 7.5 Lessons and implications
- Appendix A Methodology and data sources (PDF - 378 Kb)
- References (PDF - 312 Kb)
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