contracts as a barrier to entry it is shown that an incumbent seller who faces a threat of entry into his or her market will sign long term contracts that prevent the entry of some lower cost producers even though they do not preclude entry completely moreover when a seller possesses superior information about the likelihood of entry it is shown that the length of the contract may act as a signal of the true probability of entry

financial deregulation and productivity growth in banking sector empirical evidence from bangladesh this article examines the effects of regulatory reform on productivity growth in the bangladesh banking industry we use a unique balanced panel dataset comprising bank level annual data from the e

income redistribution in a common labor market when households are mobile among jurisdictions income redistribution by individual jurisdictions creates fiscal externalities a model of interjurisdictional migration is used to study the nature of this redistributive externality analysis of optimal redistribution and optimal corrective subsidies from higher level governments shows that benefit levels for the recipients of income transfers and tax rates on mobile taxpayers should be equalized across jurisdictions a system of jurisdictions with a common labor market can achieve welfare improvements through coordination of domestic redistributive policy or through the intervention of a higher level government copyright 1991 by american economic association

on the optimal pricing policy of a monopolist the paper presents a simple explanation of price dispersion by a monopolist assuming only that consumers arrive in a random order and are served on a first come first served basis a firm can sometimes increase its profits by charging two different prices for the same good and rationing sales at the lower price however it is never necessary to charge more than two prices and a single price is sufficient as long as either the marginal revenue curve is everywhere downward sloping or the marginal cost of production is constant

the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination in the author examines third degree price discrimination by an upstream monopolist in an intermediate good market discrimination is motivated by the fact that downstream firms differ in their abilities to integrate backward into supply of the input the author shows that under reasonable specifications of equilibrium price discrimination leads to all buyers facing higher input prices in other cases discrimination raises some prices and lowers others the author derives conditions under which discrimination lowers welfare by reducing total output and shows that in some markets discrimination will raise welfare by preventing socially inefficient backward integration copyright 1987 by american economic association

exclusionary pricing when scale matters we consider an incumbent firm and a more efficient entrant both offering a network good to several asymmetric buyers and both being able to price discriminate the good has positive value to buyers only if the network size exceeds a certain threshold the incumbent s installed base guarantees this critical size to the incumbent while the entrant needs to attract enough new buyers to meet this threshold we show that price discrimination in the various forms it may take reduces the set of achievable socially efficient entry equilibria and discuss the policy implications of this result

cooperatives as entrants a potential shortcoming of game theoretic models in industrial organization is their failure to consider consumers as players we introduce a customer coalition a cooperative as a potential entrant and compare the cooperative entry threat with that posed by the usualforprofit entrant we identify four fundamental distinctions between cooperative andfor profit entrants and demonstrate that the strategic interplay between a cooperative and an incumbent firm may differ markedly from that between the incumbent and a for profit entrant the results impart a prospectively powerful role to potential cooperatives in beneficially regulating free market performance

diffusion of a new product under network effects the us dvd market we formulate a model that captures the inter dependence between hardware demand and software supply indirect network effect in the dvd industry the identification of the network effect comes from the difference in software availability across two different formats vhs and dvd we find that a 1 increase in the number of dvd titles raises the demand for dvd players by 0 87 simultaneously a 1 increase in video player ownership leads to a 0 14 increase in the variety of video titles our simulations show that hardware manufacturers might be able to internalize the network externality to increase total industry revenues

shared atm networks and banking competition abstract in this paper we study the incentives of banks to share their automatic teller machines atms when they are competitors in the market for deposits we construct a stylized model of banking competition which emphasises the distinctive features of atm compatibility we find that in equilibrium either a strict subset of banks share their atms or total incompatibility prevails we also derive the implications for atm compatibility of withdrawal fees interchange bank fees entry and depositor switching costs finally we investigate the normative implications of our model and draw some policy conclusions

optimal second degree price discrimination and arbitrage on the role of asymetric information among buyers the traditional theory of second degree price discrimination tackles individual self selection but does not address the possibility that buyers could form a coalition to conduct arbitrage we study the optimal sale mechanism that takes into account both individual and coalition incentive compatibility we show that the monopolist can achieve the same profit regardless of whether or not buyers can form a coalition although marginal rates of substitution are not equalized across buyers of different types in the optimal sale mechanism they fail to realize the gains from arbitrage because of the transaction costs in coalition formation generated by asymmetric information

scale economies in banking a restructuring and reassessment the issue of scale economies in banking has a rich history most earlier studies report modest operating cost scale economies for small institutions those with less than about 50 million of deposits in 1968 dollars but are unclear where these economies might end if at all unfortunately these studies are limited in four important respects first those that were well specified did not measure the total cost of banking operations but concentrated on estimating scale economies for individual banking functions e g demand deposits separately from commercial loans second an average cost curve that could take a u shape over the full range of banks was not fitted either because larger banks were not included or because of the functional form used cobb douglas consequently the optimum or minimum cost size of a bank or office could not be determined third the variables measuring the costs of branching were misspecified fourth the branch

chicken and egg competition among intermediation service providers we analyze a model of imperfect price competition between intermediation service providers we insist on features that are relevant for informational intermediation via the internet the presence of indirect network externalities the possibility of using the nonexclusive services of several intermediaries and the widespread practice of price discrimination based on users identity and on usage efficient market structures emerge in equilibrium as well as some specific form of inefficient structures intermediaries have incentives to propose non exclusive services as this moderates competition and allows them to exert market power we analyze in detail the pricing and business strategies followed by intermediation services providers copyright 2003 by the rand corporation

crop insurance in a political economy an alternative perspective on agricultural policy lawmakers often subsidize farmers in times of financial distress this article models this political impulse as a constraint on government farm policy describing how ex ante government farm insurance can deter ex post disaster relief and improve production incentives by countering the moral hazard that otherwise prevails absent ex ante government policy ex post relief takes the form of revenue insurance which prompts excessive entry into farm production and under production by operating farmers ex ante government policy can raise economic and political welfare by buying out low productivity farmers and offering profitable farmers a combination of revenue insurance price supports and a program participation fee copyright 2003 oxford university press

output and productivity in banking concepts in banking output and the empirical literature on bank productivity which employs output concepts are critically surveyed for output the national accounts production and intermediation approaches are compared as regards productivity both partial and total factor productivity measures and the dea and parametric approaches to the latter are assessed among the most striking results is the prevalence of technical inefficiency in banking but it is also suggested that measurement techniques have often outpaced the theory of what is to be measured notably in fields such as joint production risk and competition alternative approaches to address these issues are suggested

voluntary contributions and local public goods in a federation abstract this paper considers nonneutral effects of government spending in a federation of multiple jurisdictions both government spending and private donations finance local public goods redistributive programs that provide transfers for the poor in the standard model government spending has no effect on the public goods as donors reduce their donations one for one in response to an increase in government spending in a federation donors of a jurisdiction donate through federal charities to help the poor in the jurisdiction and the poor in other jurisdictions as well jurisdictions are thus linked through donations such linkage influences donors behavior beyond the traditional crowding out effect as a result government spending has nonneutral effects on the level of public goods

price discrimination and social welfare studies the effect of price discrimination on social welfare using methods from duality theory features of the reservation model presented quasi linear utility and consumers surplus upper and lower bounds on welfare change bounds on welfare change with optimal price discrimination from ebsco

tax transfer policies and the voluntary provision of public goods abstract the purpose of this paper is twofold first it extends previous models of non cooperative private funding of pure public goods by allowing both for distortionary taxation of private goods and for subsidies based on contributions to the public goods second it clarifies the type of behavioral and informational assumptions which are needed to insure neutrality of both lump sum and distortionary policies the analysis is developed in the context of fiscal federalism

assistance to the poor in a federal system abstract this paper explores the roles of different levels of government in assisting the poor using a model incorporating utility interdependence the paper first presents some theoretical results indicating how levels of poor relief vary with the extent of mobility of the poor under both centralized and decentralized systems of support it then provides a survey of the empirical work on migration of the poor along with a brief historical discussion of the experience under the english poor laws the concluding section turns to normative issues and contends that mobility of the poor is a basic source of inefficiency in wholly decentralized systems of support this inefficiency along with certain other equity considerations establishes a role for the central government in assistance to the poor

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

ideals versus dollars donors charity managers and government grants this paper demonstrates how changes in untied lump sum government grants or income from unrestricted endowments will affect the behavior of charities operated by managers with strong philosophical or professional commitments an increase in such funds will reduce the charity s accountability to private donors and lower its fund raising activities the grant will not be spent entirely on raising the quantity of output instead it will permit the charity manager to reduce his or her dependence on the costly solicitation of donors who do not completely share the manager s preferences in order to understand nonprofit charities one must recognize both their diversity and the independent role of their managers in furthering this diversity we will miss much of their special character if we view them as mere conduits seeking faithfully to reify the wishes of their contributors in this paper i demonstrate how an increase or a fall in untied lump sum government grants or income from unrestricted endowments will affect the behavior of charities operated by managers with strong philosophical or professional commitments to some service mixes rather than others an increase in such funds will reduce the charity s accountability to private donors and lower its fund raising activities the grant will not be spent entirely on raising

evolution of banking efficiency within an unstable macroeconomic environment the case of turkish commercial banks this paper analyses the efficiency performance of the turkish banking sector between 1988 and 1999 a period characterized by increasing macroeconomic instability the technical and scale efficiencies of turkish commercial banks are measured with the use of nonparametric data envelopment analysis the empirical results suggest that over the sample period both pure technical and scale efficiency measures show a great variation and the sector did not achieve sustained efficiency gains it is also reported that the sector suffers mainly from scale inefficiency and scale inefficiency in turn is due to decreasing returns to scale there are also reported differences in the efficiency performance of commercial banks with different ownership status in addition the relationships between profitability asset quality size and the two definitions of efficiency are considered efficient banks are more profitable and pure technical efficiency and scale inefficiency are positively related to size the trend in th

measuring the nominal value of financial services in the national income accounts measuring the nominal value of financial services in the national income accounts i introduction the treatment of financial services in national income accounting has been a sometimes controversial subject for over thirty years for economies which specializes in financial services such as switzerland and luxembourg the treatment of these services has always been critical to an accurate assessment of their domestic product and foreign trade status with the recent growth in the financial services sector in the united states this controversy and its resolution are again topical in the united states between 1977 and 1985 the commercial banking share of gnp increased by 34 7 percent while its share in national employment increased by 23 3 percent furthermore the internationalization of capital markets has significantly increased the importance of financial services in the u s trade accounts in this paper we examine both current and proposed treatments of financial services in the national income accounts specifically we briefly review the concepts and methods currently used by the united nations u n and the united states u s commerce department to determine the nominal value of financial services with particular emphasis on their treatment of uncharged for services many financial services are provided without an explicit charge these uncharged for financial services can be viewed as implicit payments to depositors for their funds or simply as payments in kind the issue in the national accounting literature is whether the net interest earned by financial firms should be treated as the value of these uncharged for services and whether it should be included in the nominal value of output in the national accounts 1 we then evaluate a variety of possible methods for inferring the nominal value of financial services from existing sources of information these methods are called imputation methods we base our evaluation of alternative imputation methods on their consistency with a microeconomic theory of financial firms grounded in a user cost of money concept developed by donovan 1978 and barnett 1980 and applied to financial firms by hancock 1985 we show that several of these imputation methods are inconsistent with or not closely related to this microeconomic foundation we then derive a general imputation formula within the financial firm framework and demonstrate how the two leading imputation methods those of the u s department of commerce and the u n statistical office are specializations of this formula our framework thus provides a heretofore absent economic rationalization for the imputation methods commonly used we then briefly introduce a conceptual framework for the construction of a financial firm output price index this index yields a measure of real output consistent with the accounting approaches we summarize our points in the concluding section ii current views of interest payments in national accounts the revenues of financial firms consist largely of net interest the difference between interest received primarily from loans and interest paid primarily on deposit accounts and explicit service charges service charges are typically only a minor part of the total revenue received by banks and fall short of covering the non interest cost of operations by implication financial firms provide services for which there is not an explicit charge and the cost of these services must be partly or wholly offset by net interest controversy however exists over how to value the implicit financial services provided because of long held differences about the way in which interest is viewed as a transfer payment between borrowers and lenders or as a payment for services rendered interest as a transfer payment in this view financial firms merely serve as conduits for the interest payment flows between borrowers and lenders depositors

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

the effects of shared atm networks on the efficiency of turkish banks this study investigates whether forming shared atm networks has yielded positive benefits for banks in turkey by increasing their productive efficiency using a data envelopment analysis dea approach pure technical and scale efficiency scores of turkish banks are estimated and analysed for the period 2000 2003 the results suggest that although it is possible to realize positive effects through atm sharing arrangements there are multiple factors that determine which banks realize such benefits the geographical distribution of shared atms between urban and rural markets and the level of competition between banks within urban areas are shown to be important determinants of differences in bank efficiency this discrepancy between the gains associated with atm sharing may have important implications concerning the adoption and sharing of new technology by banks in developing countries

financial liberalization and bank efficiency a comparative analysis of india and pakistan this paper provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of the technical efficiency of commercial banks in india and pakistan during 1988 1998 a period characterized by far reaching changes in the banking industry brought about by financial liberalization data envelopment analysis is applied to two alternative input output specifications to measure technical efficiency and to decompose technical efficiency into its two components pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency the consistency of the estimated efficiency scores are checked by examining their relationship with three traditional non frontier measures of bank performance in addition the relationship between bank size and technical efficiency is examined it is found that the overall technical efficiency of the banking industry of both countries improved gradually over the years especially after 1995 unlike public sector banks in india public sector banks in pakistan witnessed improvement in scale efficiency only it is also found that banks are relatively more efficient in generating earning assets than in generating income this is attributed to the presence of high non performing loans in addition it is found that the gap between the pure technical efficiency of different size groups has declined over the years

efficiency and its determinants in pharmaceutical industries ownership r d and scale economy the purpose of this article is to measure the efficiency of pharmaceutical firms and identify their determinants using korean and american samples from 1992 to 2004 we document some stylized facts in the patterns and sources of efficiency change in korean and american pharmaceutical firms the evidence shows that ownership structure can substantially influence the efficiency of pharmaceutical firms especially institutional ownership rate affects corporate efficiencies negatively corroborating the myopic institutional investor hypothesis the hypothesis is supported by both korean and american samples however we find evidence that foreign ownership in korea promotes efficiency of pharmaceutical firms it is shown that r d intensity is positively related to contemporaneous largest ownership rate and prior foreign ownership rate in korean pharmaceutical firms in contrast little evidence is found on the relationship between ownership structure and r d intensity in the american pharmaceutical industry

consumer strategies limiting the monopolist s power multiple and joint purchases i characterize the menu of bundles price quantity combinations offered by a monopolist when consumers can buy several bundles share bundles with others or do both in a two type setting i find that although perfect arbitrage prevents any price discrimination partial arbitrage in the form of multiple or joint purchases may actually lead to more pronounced price discrimination than when consumers can only pick one single bundle further clear predictions emerge for the price pattern contrasting with the existing literature with multiple purchases only the firm offers strict quantity discounts with joint purchases only discounts are infeasible

impact of financial reforms on efficiency of state owned private and foreign banks in pakistan this article uses a unique bank level data from 1991 to 2000 and evaluates how financial reforms affect banking efficiency of domestic and foreign banks in pakistan the results suggest that banking efficiency falls during initial reform period when banks adjust to enhanced competition but increases in more advanced stages of reform while in general foreign and private banks show superior efficiency and factor productivity than do state owned banks the relative performance of foreign banks worsens after the consolidation stage of the financial reforms is over we show the importance of link between bank size asset quality and bank branches with efficiency indexes and also note that every 10 increase in share of nonperforming to total loans decreases banking efficiency by 6 to 10

voluntary donations and public expenditures in a federal system proponents of the new federalism argue that nonprofit organizations and local governments will fully offset federal social service expenditure cutbacks the author analyzes this proposition as a competitive game in which donations are motivated by private and public good considerations the author characterizes the response of political economic equilibrium to exogenous changes in federal expenditures when local voters are cognizant of donor reactions partial replacement is the most likely outcome though others are possible copyright 1987 by american economic association

technical scale and allocative efficiencies in u s banking an empirical investigation a nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall technical pure technical allocative and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks the sample was drawn from the federal deposit insurance corporation tapes on the reports of condition and reports of income call reports for the year 1986 the results indicated a low level of overall efficiency the main source of inefficiency was technical in nature rather than allocative separate efficiency frontiers were constructed to test the effect of branching however the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and non branching banks were not found to be different

exclusionary contracts and competition for large buyers abstract this paper reconsiders the analysis of the competitive effects of buyer contracts in contrast to the previous literature we do not impose ex ante asymmetry on the contracting opportunities of firms rather we consider a market composed of two segments involving small anonymous and large non anonymous buyers while the large buyers can contract with each other and any firm in the market it is assumed that no such opportunities exist for the small buyers that is neither the large buyers nor firms can make contractual commitments with small buyers firms must supply these buyers based on arms length single price oligopolistic competition in this environment we demonstrate that large buyers will have an incentive to form a coalition with a single firm so as to extract rents from the small customer segment market dominance results the outcome is socially suboptimal as either production takes place at a higher cost than is otherwise possible or there is a monopoly for small buyers with an associated allocative loss

bank employment in the world s largest banks an update note in this paper we replicate two studies published in this journal twelve and thirteen years ago short 1971 and kaufman 1970 the results indicate that there may indeed have been substantial gains in labor productivity among the world s largest banks over the period 1967 79 moreover the gains were greater for the smaller banks in our sample than for the larger ones because banking has traditionally been regarded as a highly labor intensive industry the general assumption has been that productivity gains in banking would be hard to achieve and even harder to identify baumol and oates 1972 ascribed the source of rising costs or a cost disease in service industries to the lagging technical progress there vis a vis other industries in the economy several attempts have been made to investigate this thesis with respect to banking with mixed results kinsella 1973 found that the growth in labor productivity in banking in ireland during the 1960 71 period confirmed the baumol oates 1972 hypothesis how

banking efficiency in the nordic countries abstract evidence of the relative competitiveness of the banking industries in three nordic countries is provided by applying data envelopment analysis of productivity on the national and the pooled data sets the analysis produces a detailed account of how well banks from different countries and different sizes may be prepared to meet the more intense competition of a common european banking market

evaluating the cost efficiency of the italian banking system what can be learned from the joint application of parametric and non parametric techniques abstract research on bank efficiency has developed in two separate streams econometric studies and data envelopment analysis a linear programming technique these two branches of literature have developed quickly but separately in this paper these two approaches have been tested on a common panel of 270 italian banks and this has suggested the following i econometric and linear programming results do not differ dramatically when based on the same data and conceptual framework ii when differences arise they can be explained by going back to the intrinsic features of the models moreover some findings on italian banks may be of interest also to the international reader i efficiency scores show a high variance ii the banking system is split in two between northern and southern banks iii there is a direct rather than inverse relationship between productive efficiency and asset quality iv the efficiency of italian banks did not increase over the period 1988 1992

customer coalitions monopoly price discrimination and generic entry deterrence abstract this paper analyzes the interplay between a profit maximizing monopolist and a set of consumers who are able to form coalitions that bargain with the monopolist and or integrate into production we show that the monopolist will deter the formation of these countervailing coalitions through strategic selection of generic limit price offers to each consumer these limit prices are derived as subgame perfect equilibria in two alternative models of customer monopoly interplay in both models price discrimination emerges in environments wherein it has previously been considered unprofitable welfare analysis of the equilibria demonstrates the procompetitive effects of potential customer coalitions and generally provides an efficiency based motivation for a government ban on price discrimination

two part pricing with costly arbitrage this paper considers the optimal two part pricing strategy of a monopolist whose customers collude when they purchase the firm s product in contrast to the sentiment in the existing price discrimination literature i find that a monopolist s profit can actually increase when consumers share its good when transaction costs for collusion are zero the firm can extract the full consumer surplus through two part prices when transaction costs are positive or there are a substantial number of consumers without access to resale the firm may be hurt by arbitrage

production efficiency of british building societies the purpose of this paper is to examine the relative efficiency of british building societies and to find out whether efficiency factor is the driving force behind the merging of small building societies efficiency indices for societies are derived from a 1981 sample of cross section data the results indicate wide disparities in efficiency these differences are not related to the size of building societies but apparently to managers skill and motivation

the most favored nation pricing policy and negotiated prices previous work has viewed the most favored nation mfn contract as a practice capable of facilitating collusion among sellers but this paper shows that even a monopoly seller may gain by including the mfn provision in sales contracts we consider a case in which the seller negotiates price separately with each of two buyers by including a mfn clause in her contract with the first buyer the seller raises her cost of granting price concessions to the second buyer this increases the seller s bargaining strength with respect to the second buyer thereby helping her negotiate a higher price

a signaling explanation for charity this article examines a novel but plausible motive for charitable giving charitable donations which are observable can signal wealth or income the signaling equilibrium of charitable donations has attractive properties donations increase proportionally with population size governmental funding for public goods affects private charity only through an income effect crowding out need not be complete income redistribution is generically nonneutral increasing the spread between the poorest and richest person in a community tends to increase private donations our theory are based on the assumption that people are willing to make charitable donations even if they will not increase provision of the public good the data on charitable giving support the hypothesis that donors donate at least partly for signaling purposes rather than only to aid the recipient or to obtain satisfactions unrelated to status though charitable organizations usually report donations within categories thus not allowing perfect revelation for analytical tractability we shall consider an equilibrium with perfect revelation and a continuum of types as characterized in george j mailath 1987 and norman j ireland 1994

technical scale and allocative efficiencies of turkish banking industry this paper investigates input and output efficiency in the turkish banking industry to understand the impact of size international variables ownership control and governance on profit cost allocative technical pure technical and scale efficiency measures employing a non parametric approach along with a parametric approach we estimate the efficiency of turkish banks over the 1988 1996 period this period allows us to account for the changes in the macro economy and regulatory treatment of the turkish banking industry over time our results suggest that the heterogeneous characteristics of banks have significant impact on their efficiency moreover cost and profit efficiencies of the turkish banks have exacerbated over time results also indicate that the dominant source of inefficiency in turkish banking is due to technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency which is mainly attributed to diseconomies in scale to the extent that they chose an inefficient level of production bank management is responsible for scale inefficient operations however increasing demand for banking services in the nineties fueled by the state s increasing demand for funds to finance chronic budget deficits and high growth policies and the oligopolistic nature of the turkish banking market do not justify scale adjustments our policy suggestions are that the government implement financial reform packages that foster competition in the banking market and that the industry devise incentive schemes to improve managerial efficiency

efficiency in the commercial banking industry a production frontier approach 1990 efficiency in the commercial banking industry a production frontier approach applied economics vol 22 no 4 pp 539 551

financial deregulation and total factor productivity change an empirical study of turkish commercial banks abstract in january 1980 a new liberal economic policy was adopted in turkey to promote financial market development and increase the efficiency and productivity of the financial sector by fostering competition among banks as a result of this policy the turkish banking system witnessed a series of legal structural and institutional changes throughout the 1980s to enhance their competitive viability turkish banks responded by streamlining their operations and investing in new technology utilizing a dea type malmquist total factor productivity change index we examine productivity growth efficiency change and technical progress in turkish commercial banks during the deregulation of financial markets in turkey we found that all forms of turkish banks although in different magnitudes have recorded significant productivity gains driven mostly by efficiency increases rather than technical progress efficiency increases however were mostly owing to improved resource management practices rather than improved scales our results also indicate that private banks began to close their performance gap with public banks in the new environment

pareto optimal redistribution and private charity abstract when private charity exists and is motivated by utility interdependence a non pareto optimal outcome the free rider problem typically arises nevertheless incremental fiscal redistribution cannot achieve a paretian welfare improvement so long as private charity continues at positive levels donors respond to incremental fiscal redistribution by reducing their voluntary contributions by exactly a dollar for every dollar transferred in this way no net transfer is achieved unless incremental fiscal redistribution is pursued to the point where private contributions have been driven to zero alternatively a net transfer may be achieved by fiscal measures which affect donors marginal incentives to donate

technical efficiency and scale efficiency in the italian banking sector a non parametric approach measures of technical and scale efficiencies are derived in the italian banking industries by implementing non parametric data envelopment analysis on a cross section of 174 italian banks taken in 1991 the methodology of the parametric and non parametric approaches to measure efficiency are discussed the existence of both technical and allocative efficiency is established this result is robust to modifications in the specification of inputs and outputs suggested by the intermediation approach and by the asset approach in implementing both the intermediation and the asset approach the traditional specification of inputs is modified to allow an explicit role for financial capital in addition regression analysis is used on a bank specific measure of inefficiency to investigate determinants of banks efficiency efficiency is best explained by productive specialization size and to a lesser extent by location