efficiency analysis for exogenously fixed inputs and outputs we evaluate by means of mathematical programming formulations the relative technical and scale efficiencies of decision making units dmus when some of the inputs or outputs are exogenously fixed and beyond the discretionary control of dmu managers this approach further develops the work on efficiency evaluation and on estimation of efficient production frontiers known as data envelopment analysis dea we also employ the model to provide efficient input and output targets for dmu managers in a way that specifically accounts for the fixed nature of some of the inputs or outputs we illustrate the approach using real data for a network of fast food restaurants

job search and hyperbolic discounting structural estimation and policy evaluation this paper estimates the structural parameters of a job search model with hyperbolic discounting and endogenous search effort it estimates quantitatively the degree of hyperbolic discounting and assesses its implications for the impact of various policy interventions aimed at reducing unemployment the model is estimated using data on unemployment spells and accepted wages from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy the likelihood function explicitly incorporates all the restrictions implied by the optimal dynamic programming solution to the model both observed and unobserved heterogeneity are accounted for the results point to a substantial degree of hyperbolic discounting especially for low and medium wage workers the structural estimates are also used to evaluate alternative policy interventions for the unemployed estimates based on a model with exponential discounting may lead to biased inference on the economic impact of policies jel c6 c73 d90 j64 j68

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

a note on fiscal policy under flexible exchange rates abstract the paper studies the effects of fiscal policy under flexible exchange rates the demand for real money balances in terms of the expenditure basket of goods is a function of income in terms of the same basket it turns out that fiscal expansion is expansionary neutral or contractionary in the money wage model depending on whether the income elasticity of the demand for money is smaller than equal to or greater than one the price of domestic goods rises is unchanged or declines in this model depending on whether the income elasticity is smaller than equal to or greater than one

non discretionary and discretionary factors and scale in data envelopment analysis abstract this paper discusses the interpretation of exogenously fixed non discretionary factors in data envelopment analysis dea and suggests a generalised model for incorporating different types of inputs and outputs in dea the paper first compares two approaches to the inclusion of continuous non discretionary factors in a one stage model one introduced by banker and morey operat res 34 4 1986 513 521 and the other by lovell top 2 1994 175 248 and ruggiero eur j operat res 90 1996 553 565 the approaches are compared theoretically on the basis of axiomatic systems and empirically on the basis of examples and simulated data the key difference is that some models require non discretionary factors to be scale independent i e indices and some require them to be scale dependent i e volume measures also the returns to scale properties vary depending on the manner in which non discretionary factors are treated in practice we may want to utilise the properties of the different models simultaneously a generalised dea model allowing for this possibility is presented

job search hours restrictions and desired hours of work a structural empirical job search model is presented that incorporates the labor supply decision of individuals the arrival of a job offer is modeled as a random draw from a wage hours offer distribution subjective information is used on desired working hours to identify optimal hours from offered hours policy simulations are performed to address several policy questions does a decrease in unemployment benefits lead to the acceptance of jobs with less preferred working hours how does a decrease in the length of the standard working week affect the job acceptance behavior of the unemployed

benchmarking urban energy efficiency in the uk this study asks what is the best way to measure urban energy efficiency there has been recent interest in identifying efficient cities so that best practices can be shared a process known as benchmarking previous studies have used relatively simple metrics that provide limited insight on the complexity of urban energy efficiency and arguably fail to provide a fair measure of urban performance using a data set of 198 urban uk local administrative units three methods are compared ratio measures regression residuals and data envelopment analysis the results show that each method has its own strengths and weaknesses regarding the ease of interpretation ability to identify outliers and provide consistent rankings efficient areas are diverse but are notably found in low income areas of large conurbations such as london whereas industrial areas are consistently ranked as inefficient the results highlight the shortcomings of the underlying production based energy accounts ideally urban energy efficiency benchmarks would be built on consumption based accounts but interim recommendations are made regarding the use of efficiency measures that improve upon current practice and facilitate wider conversations about what it means for a specific city to be energy efficient within an interconnected economy

estimating technical and allocative efficiency in the public sector a nonparametric analysis of dutch schools abstract public sector output provision is influenced not only by discretionary inputs but also by exogenous environmental factors in this paper we extended the literature by developing a conditional dea estimator of allocative efficiency that allows a decomposition of overall cost efficiency into allocative and technical components while simultaneously controlling for the environment we apply the model to analyze technical and allocative efficiency of dutch secondary schools the results reveal that allocative efficiency represents a significant 37 percent of overall cost efficiency on average although technical inefficiency is still the dominant part furthermore the results show that the impact of environment largely differs between schools and that having a more unfavorable environment is very expensive to schools these results highlight the importance of including environmental variables in both technical and allocative efficiency analysis

anticipating the consequences of school reform a new use of dea we use dea type linear programming techniques to simulate a basic component of educational reform eliminating restrictions on the allocation of school personnel our technique allows us to identify potential output gains or equivalently potential cost savings from reform we can also identify which personnel groups are likely to gain and lose under this reform when we apply our model to a sample of texas school districts we find evidence that the educational establishment has substantial economic rents to protect from school reform and that the primary beneficiaries of reform are likely to be affluent school districts with few minority students the technique which relies on the relationship between the direct and indirect distance functions can be easily generalized to measure the potential gains from removing other input restrictions such as union work rules environmental regulations or deed restrictions

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

data envelopment analysis on a relaxed set of assumptions data envelopment analysis is a procedure for evaluation of the relative efficiency of units in a production system dea involves construction of composite units as convex combinations of other units inputs and outputs under various conditions related to returns to scale the assumption of convexity is inconsistent with increasing returns to scale and not implied by constant or non increasing returns to scale an alternative dea approach which does not invoke the assumption of a convex production possibility set is developed in this paper it is implemented in two stages stage one is concerned with the spanning of isoquants and stage two with an evaluation of the position of an observed input output combination compared to the isoquants both stages involve linear programming techniques solely

a synthesis of the macroeconomic approaches to exchange rate determination abstract the paper develops a general model with the goods money domestic and foreign bond and labor markets the special assumptions needed to generate the predictions of the different approaches from the model are found it turns out that the assumption of perfect capital mobility essentially generates the monetarist predictions and perfect monetary sterilization by the central bank at a fixed interest rate the predictions of the elasticity absorption approach the approaches turn out to be independent rather than conflicting parts of the general model each approach abstracting from what the other is analyzing this is technically done by dichotomizing the general model the monetarists making the money market equation and the keynesians the goods market and balance payments equations the independent ones while the keynesian monetarist and short term portfolio balance approaches differ in their policy regime assumptions the long run portfolio balance approach differs in its equilibrium condition by constraining the trade balance to equilibrium

is there a prison size dilemma an empirical analysis of output specific economies of scale abstract we advocate a nonparametric multi output framework to estimate output specific economies of scale and we apply this model to male prisons in england and wales over the sample period 2009 2012 to estimate output specific returns to scale in prisons we consider not only the cost per place but also qualitative outputs such as purposeful out of cell activity and successful reintegration furthermore we introduce environmental heterogeneity using the characteristics of the prison ers england and wales offers a unique example to study economies of scale in prisons as the uk has started to build new super size prisons in order to replace the most outdated prisons

job search search intensity and labor market transitions an empirical analysis this article proposes an empirical structural job search model with endogenously determined search intensity the model describes both the behaviour of unemployed job seekers and on the job search it draws on data on various indicators for the intensity of search to examine the effect of the intensity of search on labour market transitions the estimation results provide insight into the effectiveness of search the impact of the benefit level on the search intensity of unemployed job seekers is quantified the estimation results are used to gain insight into the discouraged worker effect

the impossibility of convex constant returns to scale production technologies with exogenously fixed factors abstract the extensions to the variable vrs and the constant crs returns to scale models developed by banker and morey are considered among the main approaches to the incorporation of exogenously fixed factors in models of data envelopment analysis dea recently syrjanen showed that the banker and morey crs technology is not convex taking into account that its subset vrs technology is explicitly assumed convex this observation leads to difficulties with explaining the fundamental production assumptions of the crs extension motivated by the example of syrjanen the contribution of this paper is twofold first we show that the nonconvex banker and morey crs technology is nevertheless a suitable reference technology for the assessment of scale efficiency second we ask if a convex technology could be constructed that would correct the nonconvexity of the crs technology of banker and morey the answer to this is negative one consequence of assuming both convexity and ray unboundness with fixed exogenous factors is that we can always mix and match discretionary and nondiscretionary factors taken from different units arriving at totally unrealistic production plans this demonstrates that generally there exists no meaningful convex crs technology with exogenously fixed factors that can be used in its own right apart from its use as a reference technology in the measurement of scale efficiency

search behaviour transitions to non participation and the duration of unemployment using longitudinal micro data on unemployed individuals for 1983 85 a structural job search model is estimated the model allows for transitions from unemployment to nonparticipation an extended version of the model deals with the influence of on the job search and prospective wage increases on search behavior of the unemployed the empirical results show that the probability of accepting a job offer is almost one for most unemployed individuals a large portion of unemployment spells ends in a transition out of the labor force the effects of changes in benefits on duration appear to be extremely small copyright 1990 by royal economic society

energy efficiency measurement in agriculture with imprecise energy content information abstract measuring energy efficiency is crucial when planning energy reduction policies however decision makers are understandably reluctant to act in the absence of solid data and results supporting a policy position this paper proposes a methodology to measure the energy efficiency of farms based on the data envelopment analysis dea approach in a manner similar to the cost framework we decompose energy efficiency measurements into technical and allocative efficiencies in energy contents of inputs in this study we replace input prices used in traditional economic efficiency measurements by their energy content we use the energy efficiency model to explore the optimal input mix that produces the current outputs at minimum energy consumption we demonstrate that this decomposition can help policy makers design accurate energy policies however the uncertainty of the data and more particularly the energy content of the inputs leads us to recommend using the methodologies to calculate the bounds of efficiency to obtain more plausible and robust results based on our analysis energy efficiency is not a fixed value and policy makers should consider it with caution we use a 2007 database of french farms specialised in field crops for empirical illustration

individual wealth reservation wages and transitions into employment we investigate the relationship between financial wealth reservation wages and labor market transitions wealth is assumed to affect the level of the reservation wage and the employment probability we test for the validity of this assumption by estimating a simultaneous equations model of reservation wages labor market transitions and wealth the data used for the analysis relate to a sample of unemployed job searchers we use subjective information on the reservation wage wealth is found to have a significantly positive impact on the reservation wage the overall impact of wealth on the employment probability is negative though small

piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces linear programming formulations for piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces are derived from a set of basic properties postulated for the underlying production possibility sets unlike the piecewise linear model of banker charnes and cooper banker r d a charnes w w cooper 1984 models for the estimation of technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis management sci 30 september 1078 1092 this approach permits the identification of increasing marginal products and estimation of the classical s shaped production functions methods are also provided for estimating technical inefficiencies and other production characteristics such as rates of substitution and transformation marginal products returns to scale and most productive scale sizes on the basis of observed production data the results of a simulation study are reported to illustrate the usefulness of this estimation method in empirical applications when there are a priori reasons to expect increasing marginal products in some regions of the production function a modified model is provided to extend this analysis to the situation of non competing outputs addressed by the bi extremal model of banker charnes cooper and schinnar banker r d a charnes w w cooper a schinnar 1981 a bi extremal principle for frontier estimation and efficiency evaluation management sci 27 december 1370 1382

empirical matching functions searchers vacancies and un biased elasticities this paper shows that conventional empirical estimates of matching functions are systematically biased because unobservable and endogenous search behaviour such as on the job search by workers or the use of different search channels by firms is neglected i propose an approach for recovering unbiased elasticities under different scenarios of competition for workers and jobs without the need for constructing proxies for unobserved stocks of searchers and vacancies using german administrative data i estimate the biases affecting conventional studies and derive bias corrected estimates of the matching elasticities under different scenarios

search costs and efficiency do unemployed workers search enough many labor market policies affect the marginal benefits and costs of job search the impact and desirability of such policies depend on the distribution of search costs in this paper we provide an equilibrium framework for identifying the distribution of search costs and we apply it to the dutch labor market in our model the wage distribution job search intensities and firm entry are simultaneously determined in market equilibrium given the distribution of search intensities which we directly observe we calibrate the search cost distribution and the flow value of non market time these values are then used to derive the socially optimal firm entry rates and distribution of job search intensities from a social point of view some unemployed workers search too little due to a hold up problem while other unemployed workers search too much due to coordination frictions and rent seeking behavior our results indicate that jointly increasing unemployment benefits and the sanctions for unemployed workers who do not search at all can be welfare improving

job search and academic achievement abstract the paper develops a structural model for the labor market behavior of students entering the labor market we explicitly model the trade off between devoting effort to studying and to job search furthermore we allow for on the job search the model is estimated using a unique data set of individuals who completed undergraduate education in the netherlands between 1995 and 2001 our estimation results show that labor market returns of high grades are low wage increases between jobs are explained by labor market friction rather than returns of early work experience our results indicate that a 1 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate increases wage offers on average by 3 percent but that the amount of job search effort is not very sensitive to business cycle fluctuations policy simulations show that study effort and hence academic achievement are much more sensitive to financial incentives than job search effort and labor market outcomes

the effects of foreign disturbances under flexible exchange rates abstract foreign fiscal expansion has a contractionary and monetary expansion an expansionary effect on the small economy in the real wage model the reverse conclusions hold in the money wage model only if the income elasticity of the demand for money is one or greater the same results hold also for the stationay state effects this theory provides an explanation in the policy mix of the united states for the recent lacklustre performance of europe under rational expectations foreign monetary expansion leads to an overshooting appreciation fiscal expansion leading to several possible exchange rate responses the new results are produced by consistently specified money demand and import functions the supply side and the wealth effect

a comparative application of data envelopment analysis and translog methods an illustrative study of hospital production this paper compares inferences about hospital cost and production correspondences from two different estimation models 1 the econometric modeling of the translog cost function and 2 the application of data envelopment analysis dea while there are numerous examples of the application of each approach to empirical data this paper provides insights into the relative strengths of the estimation methods by applying both models to the same data the translog results suggest that constant reruns are operant whereas the dea results suggest that both increasing and decreasing returns to scale may be observed in different segments of the production correspondence in turn suggesting that the translog model may be averaging diametrically opposite behavior on the other hand by examining the rate of output transformation both models agree that patient days devoted to care of children are more resource intensive than those devoted to adults or to the elderly in addition we compare estimates of technical efficiencies of individual hospitals obtained from the two methods the dea estimates are found to be highly related to the capacity utilization but no such relationship was found for the translog estimates this comparative application of different estimation models to the same data to obtain inferences about the nature of underlying cost and production correspondences sheds interesting light on the strengths of each approach and suggests the need for additional research comparing estimation models using real as well as simulated data

efficiency subsidies and environmental adaptation of animal farming under cap the purpose of this article is to model the interaction between the targets of the current cap environmental adaptation subsidies and efficiency q1 of animal farming to this end we first have to identify the production frontier and relative efficiency level for each animal oriented farm in the sample the production frontier and efficiency index for each type of farm assuming no specific production functions are identified using data envelope analysis dea techniques we then address the relationship between relative efficiency farm size and environmentally friendly behavior by carrying out a nonparametric regression of efficiency on economic size a proxy for the degree of environmental appropriateness and regional dummies calculations of the efficiency of the farms including direct subsidies are compared with the counterfactual exercise in the case in which direct subsidies are not considered finally we look for relations between subsidies and factors such as farm size efficiency and environmentally friendly behavior one key result shows that on average direct payments generally tend to increase efficiency however in most of the cases the mean efficiency decreases as the percentage of direct payments rises direct payments are found to be positively related to environmentally friendly production at least in germany however in general the direct payment system is not sufficient to offset the fact that the less environmentally friendly farms as well as the larger farms are more efficient

an empirical equilibrium search model of the labor market in structural empirical models of labor market search the distribution of wage offers is usually assumed to be exogenous however because in setting their wages profit maximizing firms should consider the reservation wages of job seekers the wage offer distribution is essentially endogenous we investigate whether a proposed equilibrium search model in which the wage offer distribution is endogenous is able to describe observed labor market histories we find that the distributions of job and unemployment spells are consistent with the data and that the qualitative predictions of the model for the wages set by employers are confirmed by wage regressions the model is estimated using panel data on unemployed and employed individuals we distinguish between separate segments of the labor market and we show that productivity heterogeneity is important to obtain an acceptable fit to the data the results are used to estimate the degree of monopsony power of firms further the effects of changes in the mandatory minimum wage are examined

reference dependent job search evidence from hungary we propose a model of job search with reference dependent preferences with loss aversion relative to recent income the reference point in this model newly unemployed individuals search hard since consumption is below their reference point over time though they get used to lower income and thus reduce their search effort in anticipation of a benefit cut their search effort rises again then declines once they get accustomed to the lower postcut benefit level the model fits the typical pattern of exit from unemployment even with no unobserved heterogeneity to distinguish between this and other models we use a unique reform in the unemployment insurance ui benefit path in 2005 hungary switched from a single step ui system to a two step system with overall generosity unchanged the system generated increased hazard rates in anticipation of and especially following benefit cuts in ways the standard model has a hard time explaining we estimate a model with optimal consumption endogenous search effort and unobserved heterogeneity the reference dependent model fits the hazard rates substantially better than plausible versions of the standard model including habit formation our estimates indicate a slow adjusting reference point and substantial impatience likely reflecting present bias jel codes d03 j64 j65

wage differentials employer size and unemployment the unique equilibrium solution to a game in which a continuum of individual employers choose permanent wage offers and a continuum of workers search by sequentially sampling from the set of offers is characterized wage dispersion is a robust outcome provided that workers search while employed as well as when unemployed the unique nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of wage offers is constructed for three cases 1 identical workers and employers 2 identical employers and an atomless distribution of worker supply prices and 3 identical workers and an atomless distribution of job productivities copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the evolution and main determinants of productivity in brazilian electricity distribution 1998 2005 an empirical analysis abstract this paper estimates changes in the productivity of the brazilian electricity distribution sector using data envelopment analysis dea on a panel of 18 firms from 1998 to 2005 the study decomposes the productivity change of these distribution firms in terms of technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical progress this exercise aims to help the understanding of the main determinants of the evolution of productivity focusing its relationship with the restructuring process implemented in the 1990s tfp index records a yearly positive growth rate of 1 3 in the whole period under analysis for all firms technical change was the main component behind this evolution with an average growth of 2 1 per year while technical efficiency presented a yearly negative performance of 0 8 the results prove that in general terms the incentives generated in the reform process do not seem to have led the firms to behave in a more efficient manner

eco efficiency analysis of power plants an extension of data envelopment analysis abstract in public discussion on environmental policy the notion of eco efficiency is often used the joint production of goods and undesirable outputs such as pollutants which may not be freely disposable without costs causes difficulties to measure the overall performance of the firm because of the absence of market prices for the undesirable outputs we are not able to estimate the environmental costs some of the measurement and evaluation difficulties can be overcome by employing data envelopment analysis dea as the efficiency measurement vehicle we propose the use of two different approaches in the first approach we start by decomposing the problem into two parts 1 the problem of measuring technical efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the inputs and 2 the problem of measuring so called ecological efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the undesirable outputs separately those two efficiency indicators are then combined in the second approach we treat pollutants as the inputs in the sense that we wish to increase desirable outputs and decrease pollutants and inputs the approaches are applied to the problem of measuring the efficiency of 24 power plants in a european country

evaluating the performance of us credit unions credit unions are small cooperative not for profit institutions which distinguishes them from other financial intermediaries in this study we conduct a performance evaluation of credit unions the criteria respect the unique organizational and institutional features of credit unions without losing sight of the fact that they must compete with other financial intermediaries we use nonparametric nonstochastic techniques to measure performance and we use parametric stochastic techniques to attribute performance variation to features of credit unions and their operating environment our sample consists of two thirds of all active credit unions in 1990