Cost efficiency of waste management in Dutch municipalities

This paper analyses the cost efficiency of waste management of Dutch municipalities. For the first time stochastic frontier analysis is applied to Dutch data, employing recent multi-year data (2005-2008). The preliminary findings confirm earlier results on the importance for cost efficiency of urbanization levels and the mode of provision for cost efficiency. Contracting out seems to imply cost savings, but ownership of the suppliers (public or private) hardly matters. Economies of scale are essentially absent, except for the smallest municipalities. However, many of them indirectly benefit from economies of scale by contracting out to (large) public or private firms. More analysis is necessary to obtain robust results on the relative merits of public, private and mixed provision and on the organizational and managerial factors underlying waste management efficiency.