The quality of urban life is linked closely to the efficiency with which public services are provided.
Unfortunately, relatively little has been done to estimate the returns to scale for selected local government
services including refuse collection. Thus, the primary concern of this study is the application of a cost
function approach to municipal refuse collection. The aim of this paper is to examine the existence or not
of economies of scale in the provision of this particular local government service. Our findings can be
interpreted as revealing increasing returns to scale.
(EN)
University of Peiraeus
