Technical efficiency and economies of scale in state owned enterprises: The Hellenic telecommunications organisation

In this paper we propose methodologies for assessing the relative efficiency of state owned enterprises that operate under monopolistic conditions. Irrespective of the ownership structure (private or public) monopolistic operation is often given unclear/conflicting operating objectives by their principals or regulators and thus efficiency should be assessed using alternative objectives such as cost, production and revenue. On the methodological side the paper employs parametric functional forms using ordinary least squares and goal programming methods of estimation. A secondary estimation stage was also pursued with the input/output variables of the models being corrected for technical inefficiency. The methodology was applied to examine the technical efficiency and economies of scale of the Hellenic telecommunications organisation over the period 1971–1993.