Ulises Genis Cuevas*, Jordan Loper**

Internal seminars
phd seminar

Ulises Genis Cuevas*, Jordan Loper**

AMSE
Are Mexican Water Utility Companies Efficient? A Nonparametric Answer*
Traditional Norms, Female Empowerment and Husband's Migration: Evidence from Indonesia**
Venue

VC Salle 205

Centre de la Vieille-Charité - Salle 205

Centre de la Vieille Charité
2 rue de la Charité
13002 Marseille

Date(s)
Tuesday, May 9 2017| 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Contact(s)

Edward Levavasseur: edward.levavasseur[at]univ-amu.fr
Lara Vivian: lara.vivian[at]univ-amu.fr

Abstract

*A well-known difficulty encountered when comparing firms according to their efficiency is that the technology they use may be affected by several exogenous factors that are beyond managers control. This is particularly the case for water utility firms whose production process depends significantly upon climatic or hydrologic parameters that vary significantly across locations. In this paper, we evaluate, for both the years 1998 and 2008, the productive efficiency of the largest 341 Mexican water utility companies defined to be those serving more than 12,500 customers in 2008. While most empirical rankings of firms based on efficiency that we are aware of are based on the the Debreu-Farell efficiency index, we choose to focus on the Weighted Additive index, which is the unique known  index that is strictly monotonic with respect to efficiency gain and that indicates perfectly efficiency (Russell and Schworm (J Prod Anal, 2011, 36:143-156)).  We provide a non-parametric estimate of the relationship between this index and a bunch of external factors in such a way as to neutralize the effects of those factors on the comparisons of firms based on their efficiency.  Comparisons with the ranking of firms provided by the Debreu-Farell index as well as with indices based on the more restrictive cost-minimization hypothesis are also provided.

**Economists and Anthropologists have argued that traditional norms can significantly affect economics outcomes. This paper examines the effect of post-marriage residence norms and female empowerment on husband’s split migration. First, I show that traditional post-marriage resi dence norms are, still, important predictors of actual household composition, with a stronger presence of wife’s relatives in matrilocal households. Then, I exploit a policy experiment in Indonesia that exogenously increased religious courts’ budget to foster access to justice for women, and therefore increased women's ability to divorce. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I outline that women originating from matrilocal ethnic groups experienced a stronger empowerment in response to the program. Finally, I find that following exogenous female empowerment due to the experiment, matrilocal husbands’ propensity to split migrate - to migrate without their wife - increased by 1.6 to 2.4 percentage points - corresponding to an increase of 39 to 57 percent. The results suggest that in the presence of customary norms, reforms aimed at promoting female access to institutions may have implications that go beyond female empowerment and affect their husband’s willingness to split migrate to accept economic opportunities in the long run.