independent central banks low inflation at no costs a widely held view suggests that politically independent central banks bring about relatively low and stable inflation rates a more debated question is whether one has to pay for this good outcome with more real instability in his seminal contribution kenneth rogoff 1985 suggests that an independent and inflation averse central bank reduces average inflation but as a result increases output variability the conservative central banker reduces the inflation bias due to the time inconsistency problem but stabilizes less however alesina and summers 1993 do not find that at least within the oecd countries more independent central banks are associated with more variability of growth or unemployment thus they conclude that independent central banks bring about low inflation at no apparent real costs the point of this paper is to provide theoretical underpinnings to this finding which is in contrast to rogoff 1985 2 the basic idea is that one can isolate two sources of output variability one is the economic variability induced by standard exogenous shocks that monetary policy is supposed to stabilize for instance money demand shocks or supply shocks the second source of variability is political or more generally policy induced this is the variability introduced in the system by the uncertainty about the future course of policy for instance alesina 1987 studies the effect of uncertain electoral outcomes in a model where the two contending parties have different preferences over inflation and unemployment an inflation averse independent central banker does not stabilize as much the economic variability in order to keep inflation low and stable this is rogoff s point however by insulating monetary policy from political pressures an independent central bank can reduce the political variability the overall effect of independence on output variability is thus ambiguous this result is consistent at least prima facie with the evidence in alesina and summers 1993 on the lack of correlation between centralbank independence and output variability in fact it is possible that when the politically induced output variability is predominant a more independent central bank reduces average inflation and the variance of output

interdependency of personal savings and labour force participation of the elderly and social security wealth a time series analysis using japanese annual time series data covering the period 1950 1982 our study shows that social security wealth during this period depressed personal savings as a result there was a reduction of approximately 79000 yen of wealth per capitain real terms from 1960 to 1980 however the declining labour force participation of elderly males brought about for example by earlier retirement stimulated personal savings by an estimated 13000 yen over the same period the results indicate that the benefit effect tends to outweigh the retirement effect furthermore this study has identified a negative interdependency between the level of personal savings and the retirement behaviour of elderly males a typical male worker saves more before retirement if that individual expects to stay a shorter time in the labour market retirement behaviour is less responsive to a change in personal savings behaviour than vice versa

an equilibrium efficiency frontier data envelopment analysis approach for evaluating decision making units with fixed sum outputs abstract based on the minimal reduction strategy yang et al 2011 developed a fixed sum output data envelopment analysis fsodea approach to evaluate the performance of decision making units dmus with fixed sum outputs however in terms of such a strategy all dmus compete over fixed sum outputs with no memory that will result in differing efficient frontiers evaluations to address the problem in this study we propose an equilibrium efficiency frontier data envelopment analysis eefdea approach by which all dmus with fixed sum outputs can be evaluated based on a common platform or equilibrium efficient frontier the proposed approach can be divided into two stages stage 1 constructs a common evaluation platform via two strategies an extended minimal adjustment strategy and an equilibrium competition strategy the former ensures that original efficient dmus are still efficient guaranteeing the existence of a common evaluation platform the latter makes all dmus achieve a common equilibrium efficient frontier then based on the common equilibrium efficient frontier stage 2 evaluates all dmus with their original inputs and outputs finally we illustrate the proposed approach by using two numerical examples

allocating the fixed cost as a complement of other cost inputs a dea approach in cost allocation problem traditional dea approaches allocate the fixed cost among a group of decision making units dmus and treat the allocated cost as an extra input of each dmu if costs except for the fixed cost are regarded as inputs in the cost allocation problem then it is obvious that the fixed cost is a complement of other inputs rather than an extra independent input therefore it is necessary to combine the allocated cost with other cost measures in cost allocation problem based on this observation this paper investigates the relationship between the allocated cost and the dea efficiency score and develops a dea based approach to allocate the fixed cost among various dmus an example of allocating advertising expenditure between a car manufacturer and its dealers is presented to illustrate the method proposed in this paper

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 generalized equilibrium efficient frontier data envelopment analysis approach for evaluating dmus with fixed sum outputs the recently published equilibrium efficient frontier data envelopment analysis eefdea approach yang et al 2014 represents a step forward in evaluating decision making units dmus with fixed sum outputs when compared to prior approaches such as fsodea fixed sum outputs dea approach yang et al 2011 and zsg dea zero sum gains dea approach lins et al 2003 and so on based on the eefdea approach in this paper we proposed a generalized equilibrium efficient frontier data envelopment analysis approach geefdea which improves and strengthens the eefdea approach compared to eefdea approach this approach makes several improvements in evaluation namely that 1 it is not necessary to determine the evaluation order in advance which overcomes the limitation that different evaluation orders will lead to different results 2 the equilibrium efficient frontier can be achieved in only one step no matter how many dmus they are which greatly simplifies the procedure to reach the equilibrium efficient frontier especially when the number of dmus is large and 3 the constraint that signs of outputs adjustment of each dmu must be same all non positive or all non negative in prior approaches has been relaxed in this sense the result obtained by the proposed approach is more consistent with the demand of practical applications finally the proposed approach combined with assurance regions ar is applied to the data set of 2012 london olympic games

frontier projection and efficiency decomposition in two stage processes with slacks based measures abstract in the prior literature on measuring the efficiency of two stage processes there are both radial and non radial methods of efficiency measurement in some cases non radial methods which allow all inputs intermediate measures and outputs to change non proportionally are more appropriate than radial methods but they do not ensure stage efficiency or allow for the efficiency decomposition of two stage processes based on slacks based measure sbm this paper develops both envelopment based and multiplier based models to obtain simultaneously both the frontier projection and the efficiency decomposition specifically we propose the variable intermediate measures sbm vsbm model to evaluate the system efficiency of two stage processes and consider the following three properties of the vsbm model 1 we derive the efficient dea frontier projection based on the vsbm model 2 we address potential conflicts in this model with respect to the intermediate measures 3 we prove that the system inefficiency is equivalent to the sum of inefficiencies of the two stages furthermore we derive the efficiency decomposition of two stage processes based on the dual of the vsbm model finally we apply our proposed approach to real data of us commercial banks and extend our approach to settings in which the assumption of variable returns to scale vrs holds or there are more general network structures

energy and environmental efficiency of china s transportation sectors under the constraints of energy consumption and environmental pollutions abstract the rapid growth of the economy in china has caused many problems for the country particularly the energy shortage and environmental pollution thus establishing a sustainable development of society has attracted considerable attention in recent years in this paper we evaluate the sustainability efficiency in terms of energy usage and environmental impact by using a new equilibrium efficient frontier data envelopment analysis eefdea approach for the first time dea is used in the context of required fixed reductions in both total energy consumption and total environmental pollution which is a realistic context that introduces a zero sum aspect to the problem as part of the analysis the generalized equilibrium efficient frontier eef is constructed based on minimum satisfaction degree maximization of all units considering both minimum and maximum adjustment strategy while most existing studies only minimized the weighted sum reduction finally the sustainability efficiency of transportation sectors of china s 30 main regions is analyzed by using our proposed model the results show that more effective measures should be taken for sustainable development

can higher inflation reduce real interest rates in the long run this paper describes a simple general equilibrium model in which a permanent easing of monetary policy engineered via open market purchases may produce a permanent decrease in the real interest rate and a permanent increase in the inflation rate under somewhat stronger assumptions the nominal interest rate may also decline est ce qu une inflation plus forte peut reduire les taux d interet reels a long terme ce m6moire pr6sente un modele d 6quilibre g6n6ral simple dans lequel un adoucissement per manent de la politique mon6taire engendr6 par des op6rations d open market peut pro duire une chute permanente du taux d int6ret r6el et un accroissement permanent du taux d inflation dans le cadre de postulats plus contraignants le taux d interet nominal peut meme chuter

social security and private saving new time series evidence in an important article in the journal of political economy martin feldstein 1974 estimated that the introduction of the social security system had reduced personal saving by 50 percent with serious consequences for capital formation and output his conclusion was based on a consumer expenditure function estimated with u s time series data and incorporating a social security wealth variable of his construction this paper presents new evidence that casts considerable doubt on feldstein s conclusion first the social security wealth variable used by feldstein was seriously flawed as a result of a computer programming error simply correcting this error substantially changes the estimated effect of social security on saving second the statistical evidence depends upon assumptions which are embedded in the construction of the social security wealth variable assumptions that are not demonstrably preferable and are in some cases inferior to alternative assumptions these assumptions relate first to how individuals form their expectations about the social security benefits they expect to receive and the social security taxes they expect to pay and second to estimates of the number of workers dependent wives and surviving

allocating fixed costs and resources via data envelopment analysis abstract in this paper we show that data envelopment analysis dea can be viewed as maximising the average efficiency of the decision making units dmus in an organisation building upon this we present dea based models for a allocating fixed costs to dmus and b allocating input resources to dmus simultaneous to allocating input resources output targets are also decided for each dmu numeric results are presented for a number of example problems taken from the literature

fixed cost and resource allocation based on dea cross efficiency abstract in many managerial applications situations frequently occur when a fixed cost is used in constructing the common platform of an organization and needs to be shared by all related entities or decision making units dmus it is of vital importance to allocate such a cost across dmus where there is competition for resources data envelopment analysis dea has been successfully used in cost and resource allocation problems whether it is a cost or resource allocation issue one needs to consider both the competitive and cooperative situation existing among dmus in addition to maintaining or improving efficiency the current paper uses the cross efficiency concept in dea to approach cost and resource allocation problems because dea cross efficiency uses the concept of peer appraisal it is a very reasonable and appropriate mechanism for allocating a shared resource cost it is shown that our proposed iterative approach is always feasible and ensures that all dmus become efficient after the fixed cost is allocated as an additional input measure the cross efficiency dea based iterative method is further extended into a resource allocation setting to achieve maximization in the aggregated output change by distributing available resources such allocations for fixed costs and resources are more acceptable to the players involved because the allocation results are jointly determined by all dmus rather than a specific one the proposed approaches are demonstrated using an existing data set that has been applied in similar studies

the adjusted spherical frontier model with weight restrictions abstract this paper presents the asfm lp model a parametric data envelopment analysis dea model for allocating resources commonly called inputs this model considers that a fair allocation of inputs is one that maximizes the dea ccr efficiencies of the decision making units dmus the main assumption of the asfm lp is the predefined spherical shape of the efficiency frontier we have demonstrated that our method extends the existing parametric model asfm to allow the introduction of weight restrictions which has great importance in practical applications of dea numeric examples are presented to show the application of the method

allocation of carbon dioxide emission permits with the minimum cost for chinese provinces in big data environment abstract the environmental problem and global warming have drawn many governments attention in order to solve the problem reasonable allocation of carbon dioxide emission cde permits is an important issue because it sets the targets for the decision making units to control the amount of carbon dioxide emission in this paper a new data envelopment analysis approach is proposed to evaluate the efficiency of decision making units in a big data environment and set the carbon dioxide emission permits for each decision making unit with the minimum costs comparing with the previous works on carbon dioxide emission permits allocation we firstly allocate the amount of carbon dioxide emission permits taking account into the cost each decision making unit should take to achieve its target moreover two kinds of linear programming problems are developed under efficiency invariance principle and efficiency changeability principle respectively as the allocation of carbon dioxide emission permits causes the minimum cost the decision making units are more easily to accept the allocation alternative finally our approach is applied to the carbon dioxide emission permits allocation among chinese provinces the results show that the approach can well allocate the cde permits with the minimum cost and also reveal the relationship between the marginal cost of reducing cde permits and the adjustment on them

olympic ranking based on a zero sum gains dea model abstract it is usual to rank the participant countries in the olympic games in accordance with the number of medals they have won an alternative ranking is suggested in this paper this ranking is based on each country s ability to win medals in relation to its available resources this is an efficiency that can be measured with the help of data envelopment analysis dea for which two models exist the traditional dea model that takes into account variable returns to scale and a dea model based on the premise that the sum of the gains is zero constant sum of outputs it is the latter that is developed in this paper

social security preretirement labor supply and saving a confirmation and a critique in an earlier article in thejournal of political economy burkhauser and turner 1978 we used time series data to test the net empirical importance of the substitution and wealth effects of social security on the market work of prime age men we found that hours worked per week would have fallen by 2 3 hours without the present social security system a recent paper by leimer and lesnoy this issue has shown that the feldstein 1974 social security wealth variable which we used in our regressions was calculated incorrectly in the light of this finding we have reestimated our original regressions using the leimer lesnoy corrected social security wealth variables our primary regression in table 1 col 1 which uses the entire sample period confirms our original results again we find that the work week is 2 3 hours higher than it would have been in the absence of social security a result empirically significant by conventional standards leimer and lesnoy have made an important contribution to research on social security by correcting a calculation error our empirical results however raise a fundamental question not discussed in our original paper which requires a reexamination of the empirical methodology found in feldstein 1974 leimer and lesnoy this issue and other papers the facile assumption that the effect of social security on saving can be directly determined from a consumer expenditure function we show leads to an overstatement of social security s negative effect on saving

taxation and uncertainty while taxes may be certain u s tax policy has certainly not been furthermore intrinsic economic risk makes investment decisions risky therefore a serious examination of the effects of tax policy on dynamic economic behavior should consider both sources of uncertainty this paper presents a simple theoretical and computational model that can analyze both intrinsic risk and uncertain taxation furthermore it will be clear that these techniques will be useful for examining general problems of taxation and risk when studying the impact of past and or proposed tax changes one of two extreme assumptions are usually made either agents are perfectly aware of future tax policy a perfect foresight assumption or they always believe that no change will ever occur a myopic foresight assumption these two assumptions yield substantially different views of recent tax experience as alan auerbach and james hines 1987 demonstrate in a partial equilibrium context both are clearly wrong the myopic specification assumes that individuals believe at each point in time that the current tax law will surely continue forever even after they have been hit repeatedly with tax changes on the other hand it is absurd to think that in say 1977 a significant number of individuals perfectly knew the various tax changes that would occur during the following decade this paper analyzes a dynamic general equilibrium model wherein taxpayers understand the uncertainty in tax policy when making their deci

competition strategy and efficiency evaluation for decision making units with fixed sum outputs this paper develops a dea data envelopment analysis model to accommodate competition over outputs in the proposed model the total output of all decision making units dmus is fixed and dmus compete with each other to maximize their self rated dea efficiency score in the presence of competition over outputs the best practice frontier deviates from the classical dea frontier we also compute the efficiency scores using the proposed fixed sum output dea fsodea models and discuss the competition strategy selection rule the model is illustrated using a hypothetical data set under the constant returns to scale assumption and medal data from the 2000 sydney olympics under the variable returns to scale assumption

inflation taxes and the coordination of monetary and fiscal policy by use of a game of chicken in this study some of the consequences of an uncertain policy struggle game of chicken between independent taxing agencies a monetary and a fiscal authority are exam ined we show that policy uncertainty may improve upon regimes where there is no uncer tainty and one agency succeeds in implementing a low tax policy at the expense of the other agency an uncertain tax policy never dominates a fully coordinated tax policy but it can move average tax rates in the right direction in this sense the game of chicken between agencies can be beneficial and can compensate for the lack of a specific coordinating admin