an empirical analysis of state and private sector provision of water services in africa under pressure from donor agencies and international financial institutions such as the world bank some developing countries have experimented with the privatization of water services this article reviews the econometric evidence on the effects of water privatization in developing economies and presents new results using statistical data envelopment analysis and stochastic cost frontier techniques and data from africa the analysis fails to show evidence of better performance by private utilities than by state owned utilities among the reasons why water privatization could prove problematic in lower income economies are the technology of water provision and the nature of the product transaction costs and regulatory weaknesses

stochastic dea with ordinal data applied to a multi attribute pricing problem multiple attribute pricing problems are highly challenging due to the dynamic and uncertain features in the associated market in this paper we address the condominium multiple attribute pricing problem using data envelopment analysis dea in this study we simultaneously consider stochastic variables non discretionary variables and ordinal data and present a new type of dea model based on our proposed dea an effective performance measurement tool is developed to provide a basis for understanding the condominium pricing problem to direct and monitor the implementation of pricing strategy and to provide information regarding the results of pricing efforts for units sold as well as insights for future building design a case study is executed on a leading canadian condominium developer

growth and profitability of small and medium sized enterprises some welsh evidence foreman peck j makepeace g and morgan b 2006 growth and profitability of small and medium sized enterprises some welsh evidence regional studies 40 307 319 policy makers throughout the organization for economic co operation and development oecd are keen to promote the development of small and medium sized enterprises smes by a wide variety of means the present study of over 1600 welsh smes casts doubt on the effectiveness of doing so by grants by encouraging trade associations by pursuing current initiatives in training or by stimulating innovation as defined by sme management on the other hand it finds that support for selective information technology investment and for marketing planning could be beneficial additional results that might be addressed by policy are short termism by older managers preferring current to future profits more than younger managers signs that fixed costs of tax compliance bear substantially more heavily on the profitability of smaller smes and evidence

cost allocation and convex data envelopment abstract this paper considers allocation rules first we demonstrate that costs allocated by the aumann shapley and the friedman moulin cost allocation rules are easy to determine in practice using convex envelopment of registered cost data and parametric programming second from the linear programming problems involved it becomes clear that the allocation rules technically speaking allocate the non zero value of the dual variable for a convexity constraint on to the output vector hence the allocation rules can also be used to allocate inefficiencies in non parametric efficiency measurement models such as data envelopment analysis dea the convexity constraint of the bcc model introduces a non zero slack in the objective function of the multiplier problem and we show that the cost allocation rules discussed in this paper can be used as candidates to allocate this slack value on to the input or output variables and hence enable a full allocation of the inefficiency on to the input or output variables as in the ccr model

estimation of returns to scale using data envelopment analysis a comment banker 1984 introduced the idea that the sum of the intensity variables in the dea activity analysis model can be used to identify returns to scale a counterexample in chang and guh 1991 shows that banker s method may fail this prompted banker and thrall 1992 to develop an alternative approach to estimate scale efficiency using dea seemingly unaware of the work by byrnes fare and grosskopf 1984 fare grosskopf and lovell 1985 1994 and fare and grosskopf 1985 etc on the same topic their new approach is very similar to the methodology originated in these references the purpose of this comment is to make our method known and to contrast it to the banker and thrall 1992 approach

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

commercial branch performance evaluation and results communication in a canadian bank a dea application abstract in this paper we focus on evaluating the performance of the commercial branches of a large canadian bank using data envelopment analysis two production models are considered in this country wide evaluation one model looking directly at resource usage is most useful to the branch manager the other model incorporating financial results is more geared towards senior management we introduce non discretionary factors to reflect specific aspects of the environment a branch is operating in such as risk and economic growth rate of the region both input and output multipliers are constrained by incorporating market prices as well as managerial preferences in order to get effectiveness measures the cost minimisation study led to valuable results pertaining to the performance of individual branches notable is the methodology introduced here that shows how to present graphical and numeric outcomes to managers gap maps pie charts and target tables are produced for each branch to provide performance goals for the managers useful information has also been obtained at the district level output oriented models were analysed to reflect the bank s recent emphasis towards growth in some areas

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

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

measuring economic efficiency with incomplete price information with an application to european commercial banks measuring economic efficiency requires complete price information while resorting to technical efficiency exclusively does not allow one to utilise any price information in most studies at least some information on the prices is available from theory or practical knowledge of the industry under evaluation in this paper we extend the theory of efficiency measurement to accommodate incomplete price information by deriving upper and lower bounds for farrell s overall economic efficiency the bounds typically give a better approximation for economic efficiency than technical efficiency measures that use no price data whatsoever from an operational point of view we derive new data envelopment analysis dea models for computing these bounds using standard linear programming the practical application of these estimators is illustrated with an empirical application to large european union commercial banks

some unsolved problems in data envelopment analysis a survey abstract the present study is a survey of a set of inherent characteristics and unsolved problems in current dea models we will focus on what types of local characteristics the dea estimated technology exhibits in relation to non jointness of a multi output multi input production no indicators are currently available telling the analysts whether or not the structure in data supports the existence of a joint technology if the estimated ccr technology has a sparse facet structure in the sense that few facets are active for output vectors in certain cones of the output space then the multi output multi input ccr technology is possibly locally non joint another important field of research relates to the inclusion of explicit distributional assumptions as part of the dea model specification and to the extension of the dea estimation from an estimation of a deterministic frontier towards an estimation of a stochastic frontier some recent results will be compared finally measures of scale economies from parametric models and dea models will be compared

are group affiliated firms really more profitable than nonaffiliated the role of corporate center in influencing the economic performance of business units has been a central research topic in the industrial organization and strategic management literature a common finding is the limited corporate and business group effects recently an emerging line of studies argues that the market inefficiencies and institutional voids in emerging markets can be overcome more efficiently by large diversified business groups than by non group small firms some empirical evidence also shows that non group small firms are significantly less profitable than group affiliated firms this paper raises this issue by empirically investigating the influence of group affiliation on the return on assets and tobin s q of 340 group affiliated firms versus 423 non group firms in taiwan during the period of 1997 1999 the statistical results show that group affiliation can not always create value for member firms the size of the business group matters when affiliated with the largest business groups member firms indeed show improved stock market performance but when firms are affiliated with small and medium sized groups their accounting performance suffers findings of this paper suggest a threshold effect and a u shape relationship between group affiliation and profitability in emerging economies

estimation of profit functions when profit is not maximum this paper deals with derivation and implications of profit functions when profit is not maximum due to the presence of either technical inefficiency or allocative inefficiency or both we show that input demand and output supply elasticities and returns to scale are in general affected by these inefficiencies we also show that the overall profit efficiency is not necessarily the product of technical and allocative efficiencies meaning that technical and allocative inefficiencies are not necessarily independent estimation techniques are developed for both cross sectional and panel data models working of the model is illustrated using a panel of 60 salmon farms copyright 2001 oxford university press

the new wave of regional innovation networks analysis characteristics and strategy today the number one priority for competitive advantage is innovation a new approach to regional business development has been pioneered in europe and the u s a this involves building a regional innovation infrastructure learning through networking has proven to be a successful approach in some of europe s more dynamic regional economics such as baden wurttemberg and emilia romagna this involves maximising the complete range of regional innovation assets the state of pennsylvania and other older industry centres are showing that such an approach is transferable from europe to the u s a the paper assesses knowledge transfer at the regional level and outlines the key elements for successful regional innovation networking practices the major finding s are that business networking is an effective way of increasing company turnover that not for profit organizations are excellent for setting up networks because they are trusted and that innovation networks are perhaps the most difficult thought requiring but important of the types of business network conceivable

hyperbolic efficiency and return to the dollar abstract this paper after establishing the relations between hyperbolic graph measure of technical efficiency and the radial measures of technical efficiency shows that the dual cost and revenue interpretation of the hyperbolic efficiency measure is related to georgescu roegen s notion of return to the dollar n georgescu roegen in koopmans t ed activity analysis of production and allocation wiley new york 1951 pp 98 115 once this relation is established it leads to a derivation of an allocative efficiency index which measures the price distortions using data on observed costs and revenues without requiring information on prices

frontier production functions and technical efficiency measures the concept of technical efficiency is central to measuring the firm performance the measurement of technical efficiency has proved difficult and complex and the literature provides a range of methodologies this paper reviews the various methodologies for measuring technical efficiency and offers a comparison between established methods of measurements the discussion is literary with less mathematical jargons and equations the objective of this paper is not to be exhaustive but to be up to date and to provide a significant discussion on some of the core methods of measuring technical efficiency

non parametric productivity analysis with undesirable outputs an application to the canadian pulp and paper industry this article extends the chavas cox approach to non parametric analysis by incorporating undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology inner and outer non parametric technology bounds are constructed the methods are illustrated with application to time series data for the canadian pulp and paper industry conventional measures that ignore changes in pollutant outputs underestimate true productivity growth further there is a large gap between estimates generated with reference to inner and outer bounds to the technology suggesting that researchers need to be aware of the limitations of results derived from analyses relying only on dea methods copyright 2001 oxford university press

measuring overall efficiency and effectiveness using dea this paper presents a framework where data envelopment analysis dea is used to measure overall efficiency and show how to apply this framework to assess effectiveness for more general behavioral goals the relationships between various cone ratio dea models and models to measure overall efficiency are clarified specifically it is shown that as multiplier cones tighten the cone ratio dea models converge to measures of overall efficiency furthermore it is argued that multiplier cone and cone ratio model selection must be consistent with the behavioral goals assigned or assumed for purposes of analysis consistent with this reasoning two new models are introduced to measure effectiveness when value measures are represented by separable or linked cones where the latter can be used to analyze profit maximizing effectiveness

efficiency and productivity of french ski resorts abstract this paper analyses french ski resorts productivity with the luenberger productivity indicator lpi based on the directional distance function it permits the calculation of a productivity indicator that is decomposed into technical efficiency change and technological change the conclusions are that productivity decreased for the majority of french ski resorts which is almost always explained by technological change finally the mixed results do not establish a clear relationship between the ski resorts size and productivity therefore the kruskal wallis test is used to statistically verify this relationship managerial implications are derived from this study

dea duality on returns to scale rts in production and cost analyses an occurrence of multiple solutions and differences between production based and cost based rts estimates this article discusses the concept of rts returns to scale in the framework of dea data envelopment analysis production and cost analyses focusing on an occurrence of multiple solutions and how to deal with such a difficulty dual relationships between production based and cost based rts estimates are also theoretically discussed in this study

inner and outer approximations of technology a data envelopment analysis approach this paper discusses inner and outer approximation to a technology given by a data set of prices and quantities

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

local social capital and entrepreneurship we aim to contribute to the analysis of the role that spacebound social capital plays in local regional entrepreneurship we compare social capital with other forms of capital the conclusion is that in the main social capital can be analyzed in the same way as other capital but it has some important special attributes with these attributes as starting point we sketch an outline model of how the spatially defined producer surplus and consumer surplus form a place surplus and of the role played by social capital in the creation of the producer surplus a rereading of schumpeter shows that he was aware of several aspects of what we denominate entrepreneurship inhibiting and facilitating aspects of social capital finally we discuss some formal economic modeling approaches to the theoretical relationship between social capital and entrepreneurship

social preferences inflation unemployment and political business cycles econometric evidence for the reagan presidency it is now common for theoretical analyses of macroeconomic policy to assume that the public s social preferences between inflation and unemployment may be represented by an indifference map that is concave to the origin and most assume that the functional form is quadratic we estimate such a quadratic social preference function we proxy public satisfaction by the public s rating of presidential performance using gallup poll data 2 such data have been widely used by both economists and political scientists in analyses of the economic and non economic determinants of presidential popularity 3 as we have found 33 that over the period 1953 to 1988 there have been structural shifts in the relationship between presidential popularity and inflation and unemployment we limit our analysis to only one presidency the reagan administration

non parametric analysis of multi output production with joint inputs we focus on analysing cost minimising production behaviour in multi output settings we distinguish between two approaches for modelling the use of joint inputs the cooperative approach assumes cost minimisation at the aggregate firm level while the non cooperative approach assumes cost minimisation at the level of the individual output division our framework extends the existing non parametric framework for analysing single output production an empirical application to the english and welsh drinking water and sewerage sector shows the practical usefulness of our framework specifically we compare the empirical validity of the cooperative and non cooperative models for describing the observed production behaviour

social and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship an empirical investigation of sme narratives this paper investigates links between social capital and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship in the context of small and medium enterprises smes the source of the primary data was 144 business profiles written by the owner managers of small businesses in application for a small business awards competition in 2005 included in each of these narratives were claims relating to the firms contributions to wider society relationships with customers employees and stakeholders these narratives were coded and classified in a framework drawn from nahapiet and ghoshal s 1998 academy of management review 23 2 242 266 categorisation of social capital the analysis revealed a range of strategic orientations towards the development of social and symbolic capital along a conceptual continuum ranging from being responsible for oneself to being responsible for others overall the evidence demonstrates the significance of the power inherent in the social relations of smes as a force for ethical behaviour and suggests that normative theories of the development of social capital may provide competitive advantage through responsible behaviour for small business in the global economy

testing data for consistency with revealed preference the author develops a method of hypothesis testing for revealed preference tests this method is particularly well suited to tests of commonality of tastes or tests of preference stability he devises a metric based on an estimate of the fraction of expenditure wasted in maximizing utility if all consumers in the sample share the same utility function this metric increases in size with increases in the proportion of observations having different tastes and with increasing differences in tastes the author proposes bootstrap methods for estimating the distribution of the test statistic copyright 1995 by mit press

differential impact of korean banking system reforms on bank productivity abstract we study the impact of banking system reforms during a crisis following a period of undisciplined lending regulatory changes aimed at strengthening the banks capital structure and risk management practices do not have a uniform impact on bank productivity but rather favor financially sound or strategically privileged banks we present evidence documenting the differential impact of regulatory reforms on korean commercial bank productivity over the period 1995 2005 average technical efficiency of banks decreased during the financial crisis of 1997 1998 it improved following the subsequent bank restructuring and continued to improve through 2005 the capital adequacy ratio is positively associated with banks technical efficiency the non performing loans ratio is negatively associated with technical efficiency both relationships are accentuated during the crisis but attenuated after the reforms

globalisation of knowledge production and regional innovation policy supporting specialized hubs in the bangalore software industry abstract this paper is concerned with the changing role of regional innovation systems and regional policies in supporting the transition of indigenous firms in developing countries from competing on low costs towards becoming knowledge providers in global value chains special attention is paid to policies supporting the emergence and development of the regional innovation system in this transition process regional innovation systems in developing countries have very recently started to be conceptualised as specialized hubs in global innovation and production networks asheim b coenen l vang lauridsen j 2007 face to face buzz and knowledge bases socio spatial implications for learning innovation and innovation policy environment and planning c government and policy 25 5 655 670 chaminade c vang j 2006a innovation policy for small and medium size smes in asia an innovation systems perspective in yeung h ed handbook of research on asian business edward elgar cheltenham maggi c 2007 the salmon farming and processing cluster in southern chile in pietrobello c rabellotti r eds upgrading and governance in clusters and value chains in latin america harvard university press a specialized hub refers to a node in a global value chain that mainly undertakes one or a few of the activities required for the production and development of a given good or service or serves a particular segment of the global market in global value chains firms in developing countries have traditionally been responsible for the lowest added value activities however a few emerging regional innovation systems in developing countries are beginning to challenge this scenario by rapidly upgrading in the value chain there is however still only a poorly developed understanding of how the system of innovation emerges and evolves to support this transition process and what the role of regional innovation policy is in building the regional conditions that support indigenous small and medium size enterprises smes in this transition process this paper aims at reducing this omission by analyzing the co evolution of the strategies of indigenous smes and the regional innovation system of bangalore india

matching demand and supply in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure experiences with innovation intermediaries abstract the privatization of agricultural research and extension establishments worldwide has led to the development of a market for services designed to support agricultural innovation however due to market and systemic failures both supply side and demand side parties in this market have experienced constraints in effecting transactions and establishing the necessary relationships to engage in demand driven innovation processes to mitigate these constraints a field of intermediary organizations has emerged to assist agricultural entrepreneurs to articulate demand forge linkages with those that can provide innovation support services and manage innovation processes this article aims to give an overview of the different kinds of the so called innovation intermediaries that have emerged in the netherlands and to report on their contributions and the tensions that are being experienced with regard to their functioning the article concludes with a discussion in which it is argued that the state should play a role as a market facilitator by funding such innovation intermediaries

nonparametric analysis of technical and allocative efficiencies in production in this paper we extend varian s 1984 nonparametric production analysis to situations when the set of observed output input and price data is not consistent with profit maximization for at least one firm in such cases varian s results imply that no production possibility set containing all observations can rationalize the observed data we identify each firm whose performance given the prices faced by it may be found consistent with profit maximization relative to some production possibility set containing all observed output input vectors we show that the set 4 of all such firms can itself be weaklv rationalized in the sense that there exists a closed convex and monotone production possibility set that contains all the observations and relative to which the performance of all the firms in the set 8o is consistent with profit maximization given their respective prices by definition firms not included in this largest set d of efficient observations unambiguously deviate from profit maximizing behavior for any production possibility set containing all observations we follow farrell 1957 and analyze these deviations into technical and allocative efficiency measures considering as admissible all closed convex and monotone production possibility sets relative to which the performance of each firm in the set g remains consistent with profit maximization we then describe nonparametric methods for determining the tightest upper and lower bounds on the technical allocative and aggregate efficiency measures evaluated relative to all such admissible production possibility sets it is seen that the tightest upper bound on the technical efficiency measure is the same as the value computed by the nonparametric efficiency evaluation technique known as data envelopment analysis thus establishing a link between this literature in management science operations research and the nonparametric production analysis in economics

analysis of trends in technical and allocative efficiency an application to texas public school districts abstract we present a new dea based method to analyze efficiency trends over time and differences across subgroups in a panel data setting we employ a result that the aggregate technical and allocative inefficiency score equals the technical inefficiency when input quantities are aggregated into a single total input cost variable and develop test procedures to evaluate the presence of allocative inefficiency we apply these methods to test for the presence of allocative inefficiency in texas school districts over 1993 99 and analyze shifts and trends in both technical and allocative inefficiencies over time for different regions our empirical results indicate the existence of statistically significant allocative inefficiencies while technical inefficiency increased over the six year sample period allocative inefficiency remained relatively stable during this period these results for the full sample obtain also when we repeat the analysis for different regions

privatization of nippon telegraph and telephone was it a good policy decision nippon telegraph and telephone ntt corporation was privatized in 1985 under the economic assertion that a public enterprise is less efficient and less profitable than a private enterprise this assertion is referred to as the property right theory in economics and it is used as a theoretical rationale for privatizing publicly owned organizations this article empirically examines the economic assertion by comparing ntt s performance before and after its privatization data envelopment analysis dea is used as the research tool in this study which confirmed the economic assertion in terms of production based efficiency measures but it cannot find any major difference in its cost reducing corporate efforts thus this study presents serious management problems occurring within the ntt s partial privatization the partial privatization is now prevailing in the telecommunications industry all over the world this article also discusses the japanese business environment which makes ntt managerially ineffective under its public private joint ownership

the law of one price in data envelopment analysis restricting weight flexibility across firms abstract the law of one price loop states that all firms face the same prices for their inputs and outputs under market equilibrium taken here as a normative condition for efficiency prices this law has powerful implications for productive efficiency analysis which have remained unexploited thus far this paper shows how loop based weight restrictions can be incorporated in data envelopment analysis dea utilizing the relation between industry level and firm level cost efficiency measures we propose to apply a set of input prices that is common for all firms and that maximizes the cost efficiency of the industry our framework allows for firm specific output weights and for variable returns to scale and preserves the linear programming structure of the standard dea we apply the proposed methodology to the evaluation of the research efficiency of economics departments of dutch universities this application shows that the methodology is computationally tractable for practical efficiency analysis and that it helps in deepening the dea analysis

a household based nonparametric test of demand theory a nonparametric test of demand theory determining the consistency of price expenditure data with the generalized axiom of revealed preference is applied to household macroeconomic data for the first time the fraction of consumption bundle comparisons that violate the generalized axiom of revealed preference is proposed as a summary statistic to indicate the consistency of a data set with revealed preference axioms this violation rate is calculated among consumption pairs with similar expenditures to increase the power of the test the results suggest that similar households consumption choices and budget constraints are generally consistent with the joint hypotheses of optimizing behavior and common preferences copyright 1995 by mit press

efficiency effectiveness and productivity of marketing in services abstract how can a service firm right size marketing expenses and yet strive to maximize revenue this paper represents the first attempt to model these efficiency and effectiveness issues using a 49 unit asia pacific hotel chain as illustration we employ a triangular dea model with total expenses controlling for number of rooms as the raw input marketing expenses as intermediate output input and revenues from room rentals and f b as final outputs we infer that efficiency tails off when more than 12 of the budget is expended on marketing activities in terms of effectiveness we find that all the units rated as relatively inefficient can accrue increasing returns to scale in revenues from marketing activities by contrast in the productivity stage linking the raw inputs to the revenues we observe mostly decreasing returns to scale our results highlight the crucial role of marketing in service organizations

measuring economic efficiency with incomplete price information abstract this note identifies and corrects a technical error in t kuosmanen g t post eur j oper res 134 2001 43 58

bureaucracy publicness and local government expenditures revisited comment the empirical literature on the publicness of local government services has observed no significant degree of publicness it is difficult to reconcile these findings with wyckoff s conclusion that bureaucrats prefer pure public goods wyckoff s solution is to suggest that bureaucracy has little effect on operating non capital expenditure decisions this solution however conflicts with the empirical findings of numerous local expenditure and wage studies based on bureau supply models but there is no need to consider this evidence because we have shown that wyckoff s cost assumptions imply that a median voter regime will also operate at a maximum attainable degree of publicness hence we must either reject wyckoff s assumptions or conclude that the nature of the services demanded from local government is such that the maximum attainable degree of publicness is close to no publicness at all in any case wyckoff s conclusions are not supported within the context of his own assumptions

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

an overall measure of technical inefficiency at the firm and at the industry level the lost profit on outlay abstract as a measure of overall technical inefficiency the directional distance function ddf introduced by chambers chung and fare ties the potential output expansion and input contraction together through a single parameter by duality the ddf is related to a measure of profit inefficiency which is calculated as the normalized deviation between optimal and actual profit at market prices as we show in the most usual case the associated normalization represents the sum of the actual revenue and the actual cost of the assessed firm consequently the corresponding profit inefficiency measure associated with the ddf has no obvious economic interpretation in contrast in this paper we allow outputs to expand and inputs to contract by different proportions this results in a modified ddf that retains most of the properties of the original ddf the corresponding dual problem has a much simpler interpretation as the lost profit on average outlay that can be decomposed into a technical and an allocative inefficiency component in addition an overall measure of technical inefficiency at the industry level is introduced resorting to the direction corresponding to the average input output bundle

alternative methods for environmentally adjusted productivity analysis abstract advances in the productivity with which food is produced around the world have been made possible through the intensive use of industrial inputs that have important environmental impacts like standard measures of macroeconomic performance however commonly used measures of agricultural efficiency and productivity account only for marketed commodities and inputs but ignore the environmental effects of these production processes a more complete analysis of trends in the sector s productivity requires the use of models that incorporate these environmental effects to provide better measures of the contributions of the sector from the social point of view this paper compares the conceptual merits and empirical performance of alternative approaches that can be employed for this purpose input distance functions output distance functions nonparametric methods and index number approaches each of the methods has relative strengths and weaknesses the methods are empirically illustrated using data from the canadian pulp and paper industry

small firms social capital and the enhancement of business performance through innovation programmes the paper explores the extent to which social capital is advantageous to small and medium enterprise sme growth social capital is a communal property involving civic engagement associational membership high trust reliability and reciprocity in social networks it is capable of being identified in social political and economic contexts often associated with strong communities however not all strong communities exert the effects of social capital in respect of business activities this paper assesses government programmes to promote collaboration amongst smes for improving innovation capacity by increasing social capital through networking it shows that for a sizeable proportion of programme funded firms in denmark ireland and wales u k social capital building was associated with enhanced business knowledge and innovation performance of particular importance was the opportunity afforded to firms for linkage with external innovation networks and the build up of embeddedness or the institutional basis for the enhancement of social capital as a consequence of discovering the advantages of social capital over a third of respondents planned to continue to develop it in future in many cases funding such activities privately rather than calling on the public purse

a generalized distance function and the analysis of production efficiency a generalization of shephard s distance functions is proposed extending the usefulness of distance functions in economic analysis applications to efficiency measurements and productivity analysis are presented new indexes of productivity and technical allocative and scale efficiency are proposed and analyzed interpretation of these indexes in terms of ray average cost ray average revenue and cost to revenue ratio is discussed

the lechatelier principle in a dea model abstract this paper aims to relate the lechatelier principle first introduced into economics by samuelson 1947 with the dea approach through two propositions these propositions allow for bridging the principle over a dea model with and without the presence of non discretionary inputs and enable one to make comparisons for the various efficiency measures under different conditions the quasi fixity of some inputs hinders a firm s capacity from instantly and freely adjusting its input combination in order to minimize its production costs the assumption that all inputs are discretionary tends to exaggerate managers ability to dispense resources and renders invalid information on the adjustment of the current input mix

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

inflation and the growth rate in the united states natural output the continuing and rising rate of inflation in the united states is of concern because inflation is not harmless inflation causes economic agents to waste time and resources reducing the growth rate of productivity and the natural level of output the size of this effect is estimated using in which an inflation variable natural growth rate is embedded in an expectations augmented phillis curve or lucas surprise function the effect is large for each one percentage point decrease in the annual inflation rate the annual growth rate in productivity is reduced by 0 223 percentage points thus a reduction in inflatin from 6 to zero would increase the natural rate of output growth by one and one third percentage points per year given the unwillingness of politicians and perhaps the chairman of the federal reserve system to attempt aggressively to lower the rate of inflation there is considerable merit in an institutional reform that directs the federal reserve to reduce inflation to zero and maintain p

economic efficiency and frontier techniques abstract most of the literature related to the measurement of economic efficiency has based its analysis either on parametric or on non parametric frontier methods the choice of estimation method has been an issue of debate with some researchers preferring the parametric and others the non parametric approach the aim of this paper is to provide a critical and detailed review of both core frontier methods in our opinion no approach is strictly preferable to any other moreover a careful consideration of their main advantages and disadvantages of the data set utilized and of the intrinsic characteristics of the framework under analysis will help us in the correct implementation of these techniques recent developments in frontier techniques and economic efficiency measurement such as bayesian techniques bootstrapping duality theory and the analysis of sampling asymptotic properties are also considered in this paper

fostering sustainability through sourcing from small businesses public sector perspectives this article examines the opportunities for fostering sustainable development through public sector sourcing from small and medium sized enterprises smes buying from small businesses can make such contributions in a variety of forms ranging from a contribution to local economic development through providing innovative green products and services particularly in the food sector to helping the public sector organisation to better align its operations with its community sourcing from small businesses also has implications for the governance of sourcing processes and can benefit from a partnership approach barriers to public sector sourcing from small businesses are discussed and suggestions made on how these can be overcome

the public s indifference map between inflation and unemployment empirical evidence for the nixon ford carter and reagan presidencies we have succesfully estimated the public s indifference map between inflation and unemployment the indifference curves are nonlinear and concave to the origin for most unemployment rates the data are insufficient to permit us to be sure of the form at low unemployment rates there is clear evidence of honeymoon and watergate effects and a reagan as president effect the public dislikes expected and unexpected inflation equally

a goal programming method of stochastic allocative data envelopment analysis abstract allocative data envelopment analysis adea is a version of data envelopment analysis dea which measures relative efficiency for a group of similar operating units with known input prices by using the actual input values adea provides information to managers on the minimum cost method of operation for each unit a major criticism of dea methods is that they are deterministic and have no means of allowing for uncertainty this paper applies the goal programming approach introduced by banker 1991 to allocative efficiency and develops the stochastic adea model a two stage solution method is introduced which is needed because of the existence of alternate optimal solutions regarding which units are found to be significantly inefficient we propose that identifying the significantly inefficient units is most useful to managers because it best facilitates improved efficiency the concept of a minimum frontier is introduced and used to define the significantly inefficient units we also show how bounds can be imposed which allow the ambiguity of the noise inefficiency trade off to be eliminated from the objective function the use of bounds also allows the identification of the significantly inefficient unit based on the amount of uncertainty present for each operating unit as a result of optimizing cost this method has the important advantage of being ideally suited for multiple outputs

the origins and dynamics of taiwan s r d consortia a series of collaborative r d ventures have emerged in taiwan within a quite distinctive institutional framework unlike the case of many of the collaborative arrangements between established firms in the us europe or japan where mutual risk reduction is frequently the driving influence in the case of taiwan it is technological learning upgrading and catch up industry creation that is the object of the collaborative exercises the taiwan r d alliances were formed hesitantly in the 1980s but have flourished in the 1990s as institutional forms have been found which encourage firms to cooperate in raising their technological levels several alliances could be counted in taiwan in the late 1990s bringing together firms and public sector research institutes with the added organizational input of trade associations and catalytic financial assistance from government the article discusses the evolving organizational architecture of these r d alliances utilizing several case studies and seeks to draw comparisons between these institutional innovations in taiwan and established collaborative arrangements in the usa japan and europe