the drivers of international migration to the uk a panel based bayesian model averaging approach a heterogeneous panel based bayesian model averaging approach is used to identify the robust economic and policy drivers of international migration to the uk from 14 different source regions over 1980 2007 around three quarters of the increase in net immigration over the last decade which is particularly pronounced for selected source regions is associated with structural change which may be attributed to uk and foreign immigration policy the remainder of the rise is largely explained by friends and family effects there are considerable uncertainties associated both with the effects of particular economic drivers of immigration and with forecasts of immigration

productivity in swedish electricity retail distribution this paper examines productivity growth in electricity retail distribution in sweden in a multiple output multiple input framework the approach used is nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea productivity is measured by means of the malmquist index productivity comparisons are made between different types of ownership and between different service areas the study indicates a high rate of productivity growth due to economies of density when measured over a period of 17 years the results show no significant differences in productivity growth between different types of ownership or economic organization

assumptions matter model uncertainty and the deterrent effect of capital punishment the effectiveness of capital punishment in deterring homicides has remained unclear despite the fact that the supreme court s mor atorium on capital punishment and the subsequent adoption of capital punishment by a subset of states combined with very different rates of execution across polities would appear to be an ideal environment for revealing deter rence effects using panel data methods one can find papers that argue that postmoratorium data reveal large deterrent effects dezhbakhsh rubin and shepherd 2003 drs hereafter zimmerman 2004 fail to provide evidence of a deterrent effect donohue and wolfers 2005 durlauf navarro and rivers 2010 dnr hereafter or provide a mixture of positive deter rence and negative deterrence brutalization effects depending on the frequency of execution shepherd 2005

does schooling cause growth a number of economists find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries a model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one s elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling the model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the effect of schooling on growth by using evidence from the labor literature on mincerian returns to education the upshot is that the impact of schooling on growth explains less than one third of the empirical cross country relationship the ability of reverse causality to explain this empirical relationship is also investigated

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

rough and lonely road to prosperity a reexamination of the sources of growth in africa using bayesian model averaging this paper takes a fresh look at africa s growth experience by using the bayesian model averaging bma methodology bma enables us to consider a large number of potential explanatory variables and sort out which of these variable can effectively explain africa s growth experience posterior coefficient estimates reveal that key engines of growth in africa are substantially different from those in the rest of the world more precisely it is shown that mining primary exports and initial primary education exerted differential effect on african growth these results are examined in relation to the existing literature copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

efficiency analysis of german electricity distribution utilities non parametric and parametric tests this study applies non parametric and parametric tests to assess the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in germany traditional issues in electricity sector benchmarking are addressed such as the role of scale effects and optimal utility size as well as new evidence specific to the situation in germany labour capital and peak load capacity are used as inputs and units sold and the number of customers as output the data cover 307 out of 553 german electricity distribution utilities a data envelopment analysis dea is applied with constant returns to scale crs as the main productivity analysis technique whereas stochastic frontier analysis sfa with distance function is the verification method the results suggest that returns to scale play but a minor role only very small utilities have a significant cost advantage low customer density is found to affect the efficiency score significantly in particular in the lower third of all observations surprisingly east german utiliti

trade creation and diversion revisited accounting for model uncertainty and natural trading partner effects summary the effect of preferential trade agreements ptas on trade flows is subject to model uncertainty stemming from the diverse and even contradictory effects suggested by the theoretical pta literature the existing empirical literature has produced remarkably disparate results and the wide variety of empirical approaches reflects the uncertainty about the correct set of explanatory variables that ought to be included in the analysis to account for the model uncertainty that surrounds the validity of the competing pta theories we introduce bayesian model averaging bma to the pta literature statistical theory shows that bma successfully incorporates model uncertainty in linear regression analysis by minimizing the mean squared error and by generating predictive distributions with optimal predictive performance once model uncertainty is addressed as part of the empirical strategy we find strong evidence of trade creation trade diversion and open bloc effects our results are robust to a range of alternative empirical specifications proposed by the recent pta literature copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

benchmarking and regulation of power distribution companies in pakistan abstract using stochastic frontier analysis the study examines the cost effectiveness of electricity distribution utilities in pakistan for this purpose cost in efficiency is calculated for 8 distribution utilities using data for the period 2003 2013 the findings reveal that on average there is 72 5 efficiency in the electricity distribution sector it indicates that electricity distribution utilities in pakistan are cost inefficient by 27 5 it is also found that quality of service affects efficiency the results imply that there is significant potential to improve efficiency of electricity distribution utilities and that quality of service should be incorporated as part of efficiency of the electricity distribution utilities in pakistan

investing under model uncertainty decision based evaluation of exchange rate forecasts in the us uk and japan we evaluate the forecast performance of a range of theory based and atheoretical models explaining exchange rates in the us uk and japan a decision making environment is fully described for an investor who optimally allocates portfolio shares to domestic and foreign assets methods necessary to compute and use forecasts in this context are proposed including the means of combining density forecasts to deal with model uncertainty an out of sample forecast evaluation exercise is described using both statistical criteria and decision based criteria the theory based models are found to perform relatively well when their forecasts are judged by their economic value

errors in the penn world table demographic data abstract versions 5 6 and 6 1 of the penn world table contain errors in the demographic data underlying some series for population real gdp per capita and real gdp per worker evidence and methods for correction are presented

efficiency and regulation of the slovenian electricity distribution companies abstract the slovenian energy law adopted in 1999 has opened the internal market to competition up to 64 of the final consumption the opening of the internal market to foreign competition is envisaged for 2003 with regard to the methodology of price regulation the energy law introduces the price cap regulation which aims to give firms incentive for cost reduction to provide information for effective price regulation we estimated a cost frontier function on a sample of slovenian electricity distribution utilities over the 1991 2000 period the estimated efficient frontier could be used by slovenian regulatory agency as a benchmark to regulate network access prices our results show that slovenian distribution companies are cost inefficient we have also proved the presence of increasing returns to scale with most utilities not achieving the minimum efficient scale thus the slovenian regulatory authority should consider how to induce mergers of small electricity distribution utilities into larger units

evidence on features of a dsge business cycle model from bayesian model averaging the empirical support for features of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with two technology shocks is evaluated using bayesian model averaging over vector autoregressions the model features include equilibria restrictions on long run responses a structural break of unknown date and a range of lags and deterministic processes we find support for a number of features implied by the economic model and the evidence suggests a break in the entire model structure around 1984 after which technology shocks appear to account for all stochastic trends business cycle volatility seems more due to investment specific technology shocks than neutral technology shocks

growth econometrics for agnostics and true believers abstract the issue of model uncertainty is central to the empirical study of economic growth many recent papers use bayesian model averaging to address model uncertainty but ciccone and jarocinski 2010 have questioned the approach on theoretical and empirical grounds they argue that a standard agnostic approach is too sensitive to small changes in the dependent variable such as those associated with different vintages of the penn world table pwt this paper revisits their theoretical arguments and empirical illustration drawing on more recent vintages of the pwt and introducing an approach that limits the degree of agnosticism

network access charges vertical integration and property rights structure experiences from the german electricity markets abstract after the deregulation of the german electricity markets in 1998 the german government opted for a regulatory regime called negotiated third party access which would be subject to ex post control by the federal cartel office network access charges for new competitors are based on contractual arrangements between energy producers and industrial consumers as the electricity networks are incontestable natural monopolies the local and regional network operators are able to set monopolistic charges at their own discretion restricted only by the possible interference of the federal cartel office bundeskartellamt in this paper we analyze if there is evidence for varying charging behaviour depending on the supplier s economic independence structure of property rights or its level of vertical integration for this purpose we hypothesise that incorporated and vertically integrated suppliers set different charges than independent utility companies multivariate estimations show a relation between network access charges and the network operator s economic independence as well as level of vertical integration on the low voltage level for an estimated annual consumption of 1700 kw h vertically integrated firms set in accordance with our hypothesis significantly lower access charges than vertically separated suppliers whereas incorporated network operators charge significantly higher charges compared to independent suppliers these results could not have been confirmed for other consumptions or voltage levels

the technical efficiency of schools in chile this paper assesses the technical efficiency of schools in chile which is defined as the capacity of schools to generate the maximum output academic achievement given the quantity of inputs they use two alternative methodological approaches for measuring efficiency are used i estimation of a stochastic production frontier and ii data envelopment analysis dea which allows identification of the efficient production frontier of the schools analysed nonparametrically each of these techniques has advantages and limitations which are discussed in the paper they lead however to the same conclusions when a sample of 2000 schools is analysed the results obtained provide interesting points for educational policy discussion in chile

operational performance of the bangladesh rural electrification program and its determinants with a focus on political interference abstract this article tries to quantitatively capture the effect of political intervention on the operational performance of the bangladesh rural electrification program rep firstly efficiency changes over the last 15 years of rural electric cooperatives in the rep are examined using data envelopment analysis dea then the critical determinants of the efficiency changes including political indicator are identified with an application of the tobit model results from the dea analysis show the overall efficiency score on a scale of zero to one changes in the 0 856 0 929 range in 15 years with two turnaround points in 1996 and 2001 these are the years that the national elections were held the results also find a gap between the efficient rural electric cooperatives and the inefficient rural electric cooperatives the results of the tobit model imply that political power has a negative impact on efficiency

benchmarking and incentive regulation of quality of service an application to the uk electricity distribution networks abstract quality of service has emerged as an important issue in post reform regulation of electricity distribution networks regulators have employed partial incentive schemes to promote cost saving investment efficiency and service quality this paper presents a quality incorporated benchmarking study of the electricity distribution utilities in the uk between 1991 92 and 1998 99 we calculate technical efficiency of the utilities using data envelopment analysis technique and productivity change over time using quality incorporated malmquist indices we find that cost efficient firms do not necessarily exhibit high service quality and that efficiency scores of cost only models do not show high correlation with those of quality based models the results also show that improvements in service quality have made a significant contribution to the sector s total productivity change in addition we show that integrating quality of service in regulatory benchmarking is preferable to cost only approaches

the determinants of vulnerability to the global financial crisis 2008 to 2009 credit growth and other sources of risk abstract in this paper we identify initial macroeconomic and financial market conditions that help explain the distinct response of the real economy of a particular country to the recent global financial crisis using four measures of crisis severity we examine a data set with over 90 potential explanatory factors employing techniques that are robust to model uncertainty four findings are of particular note first we find empirical evidence for the pivotal role of pre crisis credit growth in shaping the real economy s response to the crisis specifically a 1 increase in pre crisis lending translates into a 0 2 increase in the cumulative loss in real output moreover the combination of pronounced growth in lending ahead of the crisis and the country s exposure to external funding from advanced economies is shown to intensify the real downturn economies with booming real activity before the crisis are found to be less resilient to the global shock buoyant growth in real gdp in parallel with strong growth of credit particularly exacerbated the effects of the recent crisis on the real economy finally we provide empirical evidence on the importance of holding international reserves in explaining the response of the real economy to the crisis the accumulation of international reserves mitigated the harmful effects of financial stress on the real economy in particular when domestic funding via credit is abundant the results are shown to be robust to several estimation techniques including those allowing for cross country spillovers

the impact of data revisions on the robustness of growth determinants a note on determinants of economic growth will data tell summary ciccone and jarocinski american economic journal macroeconomics 2010 2 222 246 show that inference in bayesian model averaging bma can be highly sensitive to small data perturbations in particular they demonstrate that the importance attributed to potential growth determinants varies tremendously over different revisions of international income data they conclude that agnostic priors appear too sensitive for this strand of growth empirics in response we show that the found instability owes much to a specific bma set up first comparing the same countries over data revisions improves robustness second much of the remaining variation can be reduced by applying an evenly agnostic but flexible prior copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

the effect of risk based capital requirements on profit efficiency in banking the purpose of this paper is twofold to show how to measure profit efficiency in banking using a newly developed technique and to use that technique to determine the effect of risk based capital requirements on the profit performance of us banks the measure of profit efficiency used captures deviations from profit maximization arising from technical inefficiency caused by a lack of managerial oversight and allocative inefficiency which is caused by managers choosing a nonoptimal mix of inputs and outputs a leverage ratio constraint and a risk weighted capital ratio constraint are explicitly included in the model which allows identification of the effect on profits of those constraints the techniques are applied to random samples of us banks for 1990 1992 and 1994 the results indicate that allocative inefficiency is a larger source of profit loss than technical inefficiency and that the risk based capital standards have a significant effect on bank allocative efficiency

output based incentive regulation in electricity distribution evidence from italy abstract incentive regulation in electricity distribution is expected to enlarge its scope from an input oriented instrument to one that includes additional output based incentives this creates a potential conflict with more traditional concerns for productive efficiency in the case of italy together with input oriented instruments output based incentives have been applied to indicators of quality for over a decade using micro data from the largest italian distribution company we conduct an assessment of the effects of this regulatory framework the aim of this work is threefold first we measure performance in terms of cost efficiency and find that similar cost reducing efforts were exercised in all distribution units second we measure performance with respect to the overall regulatory framework using quality related rewards and penalties we find that more cost efficient areas were also more successful in earning rewards avoiding penalties favorable external conditions have similar positive effects on both cost and quality performance using the cost of the energy not supplied we find no evidence of a conflict between cost efficiency and social cost efficiency results indicate however that itis preferable to use social costs when measuring a single unit s performance from these results we derive specific policy indications

explaining efficiency differences among large german and austrian banks cost efficiency scale efficiency and productivity change are estimated by data envelopment analysis and cost efficiency is regressed on explanatory variables no evidence is found for average productivity responding to deregulation over the period studied state owned banks are found to be more cost efficient likely owing to cheaper funds and cooperative banks to be about as cost efficient as private banks increasing economies of scale but decreasing economies of scope provide rationale for m as among banks with similar product portfolios interbank and capital market funding is found to be more cost efficient than deposits when the cost of retail networks is controlled

macroeconomic stability and the distribution of growth rates it is often argued that macroeconomic instability can form a binding constraint on economic growth drawing on a new index of stability threshold estimation is used to divide developing economies into two growth regimes depending on a threshold level of stability for the more stable group of countries the output benefits of investment are greater conditional convergence is faster and measures of institutional quality have more explanatory power suggesting that instability forms a binding constraint for the less stable group macroeconomic stability is also shown to dominate several other candidates for identifying distinct growth regimes

regional differences in electricity distribution costs and their consequences for yardstick regulation of access prices abstract in this paper we estimate an average cost function for a panel of 59 swiss local and regional electricity distribution utilities as a basis for yardstick regulation of the distribution network access prices shleifer 1985 proposed yardstick competition in terms of price to regulate local monopolies producing a homogeneous good the regulated price for the individual firms depends on the average costs of identical firms the yardstick competition concept can also be applied to firms that produce heterogeneous goods if these goods differ only in observable characteristics to correct the yardstick for heterogeneity the regulator can use a multivariate estimation of an average cost function in the case of electricity distribution the heterogeneity of output consists mainly of different characteristics of the distribution service areas in this paper we follow shleifer s suggestion to estimate a multivariate average cost function that can be employed by the regulatory commission to benchmark network access prices at the distribution level several exogenous variables measuring the heterogeneity of the service areas were included in the cost model specification we find that the regional differences of the service areas e g area shares of forests agricultural areas or unproductive land and population density significantly influence electricity distribution costs

technical efficiency of european railways a distance function approach this study has two principal objectives the first objective is to measure and compare the performance of european railways the second objective is to illustrate the usefulness of econometric distance functions in the analysis of production in multioutput industries where behavioural assumptions such as cost minimization or profit maximization are unlikely to be applicable using annual data on 17 railways companies during 1988 1993 multioutput distance functions are estimated using corrected ordinary least squares cols the resulting technical efficiency estimates range from 0 980 for the netherlands to 0 784 for italy with a mean of 0 863 the distance function results are also compared with those obtained from single output production functions where aggregate output measures are formed using either total revenue or a tornqvist index the results obtained indicate substantial differences in parameter estimates and technical efficiency rankings casting significant doubt upon the reliability of

the efficiency of museums a stochastic frontier production function approach this article examines the technical efficiency of museums based upon data derived from a questionnaire survey of south west england a stochastic frontier production function is estimated with output measured in terms of visitor numbers the cobb douglas function is shown to be the best representation of the production function average levels of efficiency are estimated to be fairly low at 45 5 with wide variations across museums the results indicate that high levels of public funding and voluntary activity have a significantly negative impact on technical efficiency it is argued that further research is needed to develop more sophisticated measures of the output of cultural industries and understand the economic importance of volunteers

jointness of growth determinants this paper introduces a new measure of dependence or jointness among explanatory variables jointness is based on the joint posterior distribution of variables over the model space thereby taking model uncertainty into account by looking beyond marginal measures of variable importance jointness reveals generally unknown forms of dependence positive jointness implies that regressors are complements representing distinct but mutually reinforcing effects negative jointness implies that explanatory variables are substitutes and capture similar underlying effects in a cross country dataset we show that jointness among 67 determinants of growth is important affecting inference and informing economic policy copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

on the in efficiency of swiss hospitals the efficiency of hospitals is of interest to health insurers government authorities and hospital management itself however econometric methods for determining in efficiency have severe drawbacks since hospitals are multiproduct firms and because the duality between production and cost functions cannot be assumed in this work non parametric deterministic data envelopment analysis dea is used to measure the relative inefficiency of 89 swiss hospitals covering the years 1993 1996 310 observations special attention is given to the role of patient days in the production of health the findings depend on whether patient days are viewed as an input of patient time or as an output as in previous studies while the probability of a unit being inefficient cannot be explained using the available data the degree of overall inefficiency is shown to significantly depend on the financial incentives faced by management in particular due to subsidization private hospitals do not seem to be less inefficien

regulating platform competition in two sided markets under the o2o era abstract online to offline o2o services permeate our daily life and consumption along with the advanced technology in e commerce in this study motivated by taxi hailing market case we analyze the effect of government regulations on competition in two sided markets featured network externality under the o2o era first a model with hotelling specification is formulated to describe the competition in taxi hailing markets using subsidies as decision variables in the model platforms subsidize two sides agents labeled drivers and passengers and the subsidies are given based on whether a state of membership or every transaction second government regulations are introduced into the model by adding corresponding modification into agents utility and new consequent market equilibriums are compared with the benchmark status major findings of this work include i the effects of price adjustments regulation depend largely on relative size of mutual network externalities which causes a negative impact on social welfare except for extreme size level ii butt joint with official platforms brings down platforms cost in both sides so that companies make more profits where social welfare including consumer surplus and profits increases iii forbiddance setting in time limited usage scarifies a little economic effectiveness to ensure better safety

elasticity of substitution and technical efficiency evidence from the us electricity generation abstractthe implications of national or regional energy policies for technical efficiency and environmental outcomes in electricity generation depend on fossil fuel input substitution this study u

determinants of technical efficiency of crop and livestock farms in poland la pologne est l un des pays d europe de l est candidats a une accession a l union europeenne qui rencontre de graves problemes de restructuration agricole l article etudie l efficacite technique en 2000 d exploitations agricoles individuelles polonaises specialisees en elevage et en grandes cultures l efficacite est estimee par la methode de frontiere stochastique et sa variabilite statistique evaluee par la construction d intervalles de confiance l article examine egalement les determinants de l efficacite les resultats obtenus pas la methode de frontiere stochastique sont compares avec ceux obtenus par la methode de data envelopment analysis dea en moyenne l efficacite technique des exploitations d elevage est superieure a celle des exploitations de grandes cultures pour les deux specialisations la relation entre l efficacite et la taille des exploitations est positive les grandes exploitations sont les plus efficaces les resultats obtenus par la methode de frontiere stochastique sont generalement confirmes par la methode dea la qualite de la terre et le degre d integration dans les marches d aval sont d importants determinants de l efficacite la faible education est un obstacle majeur a l efficacite en particulier pour les exploitations de grandes cultures de plus celles ci utilisent beaucoup les marches de facteurs terre et travail alors que les exploitations d elevage utilisent plutot leurs propres terres et le travail familial