productivity growth of newly industrializing economies in heterogeneous capital goods markets the case of the korean machinery and equipment industry although many previous studies have investigated the economic growth of east asian countries from the perspective of productivity growth they have adopted a limited focus only on the national level or on the aggregated level and have overlooked the heterogeneity at the disaggregated level furthermore only a few studies have examined the sources of the remarkable growth and trade performance of the korean machinery and equipment industry despite its importance for sustainable growth of national economy therefore we investigated the total factor productivity growth tfpg of the korean machinery and equipment industry and its 12 sub sectors from 1970 to 2012 using the stochastic frontier production approach as a result we found that the industry has achieved labour input driven tfpg largely due to technical progress this is contrary to the previous result that east asia has expanded the production frontier by capital accumulation in contrast in some sub sectors scale effect and allocation effici

small manufacturing enterprises in developing countries emphasis is often placed on the promotion of small enterprises in developing countries particularly as a means of improving the lot of unskilled workers this focus raises questions about the relationship between establishment size and the pattern and efficiency of factor use and about the nature and effects of price differentials in factor markets this article goes some way toward answering these questions with data from surveys of small manufacturing enterprises in india and colombia sponsored by the world bank and relevant material from other countries the article also examines india s long standing policy unusual among developing countries of providing special support and protection for small enterprises analyses based on disaggregated data found that small firms are not reliably more labor intensive than their larger counterparts nor are they consistently more technically efficient in their use of resources in light of these findings and an analysis of factor markets this article discusses the general implications of the research results for industrial policy in developing countries

when where and how to estimate persistent and transient efficiency in stochastic frontier panel data models abstract in this paper we examine robustness of a recently developed panel data stochastic frontier model that allows for both persistent and transient also known as long run and short run or time invariant and time varying inefficiency along with random firm effects heterogeneity and noise we address some concerns that the practitioners might have about this model first given that there are two random time invariant components persistent inefficiency and firm effects the concern is whether the model can accurately identify them and if so how precisely can the model estimate them second there are two time varying random components transient inefficiency and noise and the concern is whether the model can separate noise from transient inefficiency and if so how precisely can the model estimate transient inefficiency third how well are persistent and transient inefficiency estimated under different scenarios viz under different configurations of the variance parameters of the four random components given that the model is quite complex relatively new and becoming quite popular in the panel efficiency literature we feel that there is need for a detailed simulation study to examine when where and how one can use this model with confidence to estimate persistent and transient inefficiency

entrepreneurship selection and performance a meta analysis of the impact of education in developing economies this meta analytical review of empirical studies of the impact of schooling on entrepreneurship in selection and performance in developing economies looks at variations impact across specific characteristics of the studies a marginal year of schooling in developing economies raises enterprise income by an average of 5 5 percent which is close to the average return in industrial countries the return varies however by gender rural or urban residence and the share of agriculture in the economy furthermore more educated workers typically end up in wage employment and prefer nonfarm entrepreneurship to farming the education effect that separates workers into self employment and wage employment is stronger for women possibly stronger in urban areas and also stronger in the least developed economies where agriculture is more dominant and literacy rates are lower

the impact of subsidies on x efficiency in ldc industry theory and an empirical test the x inefficiency costs of protection and industrial concentration have been topics of considerable interest in the literature on economic development balassa 1975 and bergsman 1974 for example have argued that protection by increasing x inefficiency generates a major welfare cost which is not captured by traditional costs of protection calculations and white 1976 has examined the relationship between inappropriate factor intensities which he associates with xinefficiency and industrial concentration the common theme which emerges from each of these studies is that public policy can have a major impact on economic performance not only by influencing factor proportions but also by influencing the intensity with which a non measurable input x efficiency is employed despite the intuitive appeal of the x efficiency concept there have been very few empirical tests of this hypothesis this partly reflects the imprecise nature of the basic concept but also the lack of adequate micro economic data x efficiency clearly relates to efficiency within firms so that the most appropriate tests would rely on data on firm level efficiency in this paper we propose a direct test of the x efficiency hypothesis using firm level data we build on previous work by corden 1970 1974 and martin 1978 who showed how to model x efficiency effects using the concept of managerial leisure we extend these simple models of managerial behavior emphasizing the role of the external managerial labor market the model is then used to explore the relationship between changes in public policy managerial effort and x inefficiency certain predictions of the model are tested using cross section data from a survey of firms in two subsidized industries in ghana efficiency indices are computed on the basis of a translog frontier production function variations in relative efficiency are then correlated with several explanatory variables including the presence or absence of subsidy payments to the firm subsidized firms in both industries are found to exhibit higher relative levels of x inefficiency

persistent and transient productive inefficiency in a regulated industry electricity distribution the productive efficiency of a firm can be decomposed into two parts one persistent and one transient this distinction seems to be appealing for regulators during the last decades public utilities such as water and electricity have witnessed a wave of regulatory reforms aimed at improving efficiency through incentive regulation most of these regulation schemes use benchmarking namely measuring companies efficiency and rewarding them accordingly focusing on electricity distribution we sketch a theoretical model to show that an imperfectly informed regulator may not disentangle the two parts of the cost efficiency therefore the regulator may fail to set optimal efficiency targets which also undermines quality we then provide evidence on the presence of persistent and transient efficiency using data on 28 new zealand electricity distribution companies between 2000 and 2011 first we estimate a total cost function by means of traditional stochastic frontier models for panel data these come up with an estimation of the persistent part or the transient part of the cost efficiency finally we use the more recent generalized true random effects model that allows for the simultaneous estimation of both transient and persistent efficiency we also find some evidence that persistent efficiency is associated to higher quality and wrong efficiency targets are associated to lower quality compliance

scale of production and choice of technique in the engineering industries in developing countries this article examines the relationship between scale of production optimal choice of technique and costs for three engineering industries nuts and bolts iron founding and machine tools in all three industries costs of production fell as the scale of output increased this was associated with switches of technique and the spread of fixed costs over a larger number of units the capital output ratio fell and labour productivity increased with increases in scale while in most cases the capital labour ratio increased the implications of these findings are briefly discussed

firm size and efficiency in the german mechanical engineering industry research usually finds a positive size efficiency relationship but few studies focus on sectors dominated by small and medium sized firms smes this paper fills this gap by analyzing this relationship in the german mechanical engineering industry sector which is both successful and increasingly dominated by smes the analysis using a large and representative dataset finds that small and large firms are on average the most efficient ones while medium sized firms have on average the greatest inefficiencies thus the size efficiency relationship is u shaped rather than monotonically increasing additionally the analysis finds that companies with active owner s are significantly more efficient and that capital firms are less efficient than firms with personally liable owners being located in either east or west germany has no effect

measuring hotel performance toward more rigorous evidence in both scope and methods abstract this paper extends the literature on hotel performance in both scope and methods we introduce a model that accounts for heterogeneity in a flexible way and allows for the measurement of both efficiency and productivity the model also accounts for the endogeneity problem in inputs and the issue of unobserved prices we use a large sample of hotel companies that spreads across multiple geographical regions and locations and accounts for some interesting and key determinants of hotel performance we provide more validation to some contradictory findings in the literature we show that large hotels do not necessarily outperform small hotels and that hotel efficiency differs based on location geographical region and type of service the results further indicate that productivity growth is not a driving force in the industry

the returns to schooling a selectivity bias approach with a continuous choice variable the essence of selection bias is that we do not observe nonoptimal choices this applies whether the choice variable is discrete or continuous this paper extends the selection bias methodology to the case where the choice variable is continuous and the choice set is ordered the leading practical application of this analysis is the schooling choice problem schooling is treated as a continuous choice variable and selectivity corrected rates of return are estimated the findings suggest selectivity is of considerable importance and support the comparative advantage hypothesis of willis and rosen 18

are small firms less efficient this paper compares the technical efficiency of small and medium sized enterprises smes with that of large firms and studies the factors influencing technical efficiency for taiwan s electronics industry unlike conventional studies we use two alternative approaches to control for the influence of size effect one is the two stage switching regression to correct for endogenous size effect on technical efficiency and the other is a metafrontier production function for firms in different groups the main results are as follows first the average technical efficiency for large firms is higher than that of smes without considering the size effect and lower when considering the endogenous choice on firm size this study cannot therefore conclude that there is a negative size technical efficiency relationship it however sheds light on the importance of size effect on the size technical efficiency nexus second the estimates on the determinants of technical efficiency show that being a subcontractor has a statistically significant positive influence on smes technical efficiency but the effect decreases with firm size

the economic costs of environmental regulation in u s dairy farming a directional distance function approach analyses of the costs of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy production which could be used to assess the effectiveness of alternative policy measures is a missing link in the literature this article addresses this gap by establishing the economic impact associated with a hypothetical greenhouse gas environmental regulatory regime across major dairy producing counties in the united states in doing so the article makes three important contributions to the literature first it develops a comprehensive pollution index based on environmental protection agency methodologies which contrasts with previous studies that rely on partial measures based only on surplus nitrogen stemming from the over application of fertilizer second the article uses a directional output distance function an approach that has not been employed previously to evaluate polluting technologies in the u s dairy sector third the article incorporates a four way error approach that accounts for unobserved county heterogeneity time invariant persistent technical efficiency time varying transient technical efficiency and a random error the results indicate that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy farming would induce a 5 percentage point increase in average technical efficiency in addition the economic costs of implementing this hypothetical regulatory framework exhibit significant spatial variation across counties in the united states

technology invention and diffusion in residential energy consumption a stochastic frontier approach traditional large appliances absorb a large share of residential electricity consumption and represent important targets of energy policy strategies aimed at achieving energy security despite being characterized by rather mature technologies this group of appliances still offers large potential in terms of efficiency gains due to their pervasive diffusion in this paper we analyse the electricity consumption of a set of four traditional white goods in a panel of ten eu countries observed over 21 years 1990 2010 with the aim of disentangling the amount of technical efficiency from the overall energy saving the technical efficiency trend is modelled through a set of technology components representing both the invention and adoption process by the means of specific patents weighted by production and bilateral import flows which allows to overcome the rigid stochastic frontier framework in modelling the effect of technical change our results show that the derived energy demand and inefficiency trends are both related to changes in the amount of available technology embodied in energy efficient appliances the effect is significant both in its domestic and international components and suggests an active role of innovation and trade policies for achieving efficiency targets which directly impact the amount of electricity consumed by households

aggregate implications of factor substitution in industrial processes abstract using a number of recently completed studies of the scope for factor substitution in industrial processes we estimate the total private benefits of systematic adoption cost minimizing technology as compared with capital intensive technology obstacles to the choice of such technology are examined and presented within a benefit cost framework the reasons for some of the current choices of technology are analyzed and policies necessary to alter these are suggested

a spatial productivity index in the presence of efficiency spillovers evidence for u s banks 1992 2015 abstract we present the methodology for a new spatial decomposition of total factor productivity tfp growth the relevant literature is underdeveloped as there is just one short study which proposes a partial spatial tfp growth decomposition we develop this literature in four respects the first two developments are methodological to go from a partial decomposition to a complete one first we augment the partial decomposition with a cost efficiency spillover growth component second we introduce own and spillover allocative efficiency growth components third we provide a more detailed coverage of the spatial decomposition of tfp growth fourth in contrast to the traditional application to geographical areas e g countries in the relevant literature we apply our decomposition using firm level data which suggests that there can be an important role for spatial productivity analysis in or our application is to large u s banks over the period 1992 2015 among other things we find for the average large u s bank that tfp growth since the financial crisis has become much more dependent on the bank itself and less so on spatial spillovers

productivity or politics the determinants of the indonesian tariff structure abstract the paper considers whether the structure of the effective rate of protection across manufacturing sectors in indonesia is better explained by variables that measure economic efficiency or those capturing the potential political influence wielded by those active in various sectors econometric estimates for 1984 indicate that tariffs were made to measure to offset the degree of low productivity in individual sectors political influence does not appear to significantly affect the granting of protection

labour use efficiency in swedish social insurance offices this paper considers the estimation of frontier production functions in panel data models it proposes a multi stage method to obtain estimates of 1 the parameters of a flexible input requirement function and 2 technical inefficiency decomposed into time invariant firm specific time varying and the residual components the proposed method is used to analyse labour use efficiency of swedish local social insurance offices on the basis of a large panel of observations during the time period 1974 84 empirical results show 1 substantial variations in labour use efficiency among these offices with the mean efficiencies declining over time 2 presence of economies of scale thereby meaning that most of the offices were of suboptimal size

cost efficiency of the lodging industry in the tourist destination of gran canaria spain abstract this paper analyses whether the expansion of the lodging industry in gran canaria canary islands spain which has occurred during the last 10 years as a result of increases in tourist numbers and the accommodation made available to them has been accompanied by a parallel increase in efficiency over the same period thus the cost efficiency and economic scale of the lodging industry hotels and apartments on the island of gran canaria during the period 1991 2002 are studied assuming that such efficiency is non constant over time the estimation of a stochastic cost frontier model was considered by using a panel data approach a translog cost function was estimated using unbalanced panel data for a sample of 44 companies over the study period the overall results indicate the existence of diseconomies of scale except in the case of small companies with an operating revenue of less than 3 7 million euros these comprised 40 of the companies in the sample the findings on cost inefficiency show that this is time variant that not all lodging companies produce at minimum cost levels and that it decreases over time specifically average cost inefficiency is around 17 and decreases over time

estimation of technical inefficiency in panel data models with firm and time specific effects abstract this paper uses a panel data model and develops methods to estimate production function parameters and technical inefficiency the model distinguishes technical inefficiency from firm and time specific effects determinants of technical inefficiency is introduced by allowing its mean to be a function of exogenous variables both random and fixed effects treatment of firm and time specific effects are considered in estimation

age structure and inflation a wicksellian interpretation of the oecd data wicksell s cumulative inflation process is founded on the separation of investment and saving decisions the demographic age structure influences the aggregate of both these decisions and therefor

short run and long run performance of international tourism evidence from bayesian dynamic models abstract measuring the technical efficiency of the tourism industry is essential for evaluating tourism sustainability and reshaping tourism activities this paper introduces for the first time a new dynamic stochastic frontier model to 1 measure and compare the short run and long run technical efficiencies of leading tourism destinations and 2 provide impulse response functions and persistence measures to trace out the dynamic effect of shocks in technical inefficiency we develop our model in a bayesian framework using carefully constructed markov chain monte carlo mcmc techniques we report efficiency results and persistence scores for individual destinations and discuss how different destinations recover from shocks in tourism performance

cost structure and productivity growth of the taiwanese international tourist hotels abstract this study investigates the cost structure and economic implications of the taiwanese international tourist hotel industry a multi product translog cost function with three inputs and three outputs is estimated using seemingly unrelated regression estimation and three stage least squares a balanced panel dataset consisting of 47 international tourist hotels in taiwan over the period 1997 2001 was obtained from taiwanese tourism bureau and used to estimate the cost function the results show that both scale and scope economies exist in the taiwanese international tourist hotel industry in addition productivity growth is positive over the study period managerial and policy implications for the taiwanese international tourist hotel industry are also discussed

perspectives on the sources of heterogeneity in indian industry abstract this paper examines technical efficiency variation across four industrial sectors in india using a stochastic production frontier technique the results obtained are comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns obtained in other countries heterogeneity in firm level efficiency is examined against internal firm level and external industry and location characteristics the results suggest that managerial effectiveness significantly influences efficiency and that there are considerable benefits deriving from location within established industrial clusters for particular industries the methodology and findings indicate that the study of industry specific technical efficiency patterns is a useful analytic tool for tracking firm response to ongoing liberalization

scandinavian evidence on growth and age structure the age distribution is seldom taken into consideration in macroeconometric papers in spite of the fact that established economic theories predict that demographic factors will affect the aggregate economy this paper investigates empirically the influence of age variables on growth unlike recent papers on the subject the focus here is on investigating the relationship on annual data for individual scandinavian countries estimations of a typical growth specification augmented with age variables are run and the results indicate that economic growth is indeed affected by the age distribution where the demographic structure catches the mediumrun trend in the growth rate the robustness of this finding is first checked by instrumental variable regressions to control for the potential endogeneity of the economic variables and then by running ridge regressions to mitigate the collinearity between the age variables rarement les etudes macro economiques considerent la distribution de la population par ge

productivity and efficiency dynamics in indian banking an input distance function approach incorporating quality of inputs and outputs summary banking technology is typically characterized by multiple inputs and multiple outputs that are associated with various attributes such as different types of deposits loans number of accounts classes of employees and location of branches these quality differentials in inputs and outputs are mostly ignored in empirical studies these omissions make the practical value of productivity studies in organizations like banks questionable because quality is a key component of performance this paper proposes using hedonic aggregator functions as a tool of aggregating inputs and outputs with quality attributes within an input distance function framework and analyzes the impact of banking deregulation on efficiency and total factor productivity tfp change in the indian banking industry using panel data for the period 1996 2005 empirical results indicate that banks have improved their efficiency from 61 in 1996 to 72 in 2005 during the post deregulation period and the gain in efficiency of state owned banks has surpassed that of private banks improvement in capital base as indicated by increased capital adequacy ratio played an important role in ushering efficiency gain the return to scale estimate suggests that state owned banks are operating far above their efficient scale and cost savings can be obtained by reducing their size of operations overall tfp growth was above 3 5 annually both technical progress and technical efficiency change consistently played an important role in shaping tfp growth copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

impact of quality on estimations of hotel efficiency abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of output quality on hotel efficiency it demonstrates how ignoring quality can lead to erroneous efficiency estimates the study uses stochastic frontier methodology and the model proposed by battese and coelli 1995 to estimate the efficiency of 838 hotels in spain in the period 2009 2013 the key advantage of this methodology is its ability to estimate efficiency and identify factors that explain differences in efficiency in a single stage sampling procedure estimates of cost efficiency which only include the costs of higher quality are compared to those of profit efficiency which not only consider costs but also the revenues generated by higher quality results show that quality has a negative impact on cost efficiency and a positive one on profit efficiency thus hotel management should implement strategies that increase the value of their services as a way to achieve sustainable competitive advantages

firm size and export behaviour an indian case study in the context of indian industry this article argues that in the presence of capital market imperfections and sub optimal contractual arrangements small firms face higher transaction or selling costs in the domestic market one of the strategic responses by small firms towards overcoming the mobility barriers imposed by high transaction costs in the domestic market is to break into the competitive world market small firms that could realise a critical level of production efficiency and possible information externalities that arise through inter firm linkages might be the ones that could succeed in exports the empirical observations derived from the analysis of firm level survey data provide reasonable support to the main arguments

the real bills doctrine versus the quantity theory a reconsideration two competing monetary policy prescriptions are analyzed within the context of overlapping generations models the real bills prescription is for unfettered private intermediation or central bank operations designed to produce the effects of such intermediation the quantity theory prescription in contrast is for restrictions on private intermediation designed to separate money from credit although our models are consistent with quantity theory predictions about money supply and price level behavior under these two policy prescriptions the models imply that the quantity theory prescription is not pareto optimal and the real bills prescription is

a clower constraint model of unbacked money abstract the stylized monetary facts 1 money growth causes inflation 2 inflation is bad 3 money demand depends upon the nominal interest rate 4 the real interest rate equals a parametrically fixed rate of time preference and 5 investment depends upon the real interest rate are produced in a grandmont younes modified clower constraint model of money inflation is distorting but is no one s intertemporal rate of substitution inflation discourages trade but not investment as a by product the friedman hypothesis that the optimal deflation equals the rate of time preference is confirmed in the model

competition or compensation supplier incentives under the american and japanese subcontracting systems two fundamentally different subcontracting systems arise as distinct solutions to the quality control problem facing an input buyer the american system involves competitive bidding on each contract large orders and inspections the japanese system involves repeat purchases from a supplier who earns a premium small orders and no inspections both systems may coexist as local solutions but the global optimum is determined by the ratio of set up to inspection costs this suggests that the adoption of flexible manufacturing equipment and rising product complexity may be responsible for the shift from the american to the japanese system observed in many industries copyright 1997 by american economic association

small enterprise and firm level technical efficiency in the indonesian garment industry this paper examines technical efficieny in the indonesian garment industry based on the country s 1986 census of small industry drawing on a sample of 2250 firms our analysis suggests that inter firm variations in efficiency are very considerable the paper then investigates the correlates of these variations finding in particular a positive correlation between technical efficiency and each of export orientation financial integration and female participation in the workforce it is also found that there is a significant level of labour capital substitution in the industry

a cointegration analysis of the impact of the age structure of the population on the household saving rate in japan this paper analyzes the impact of the age structure of the population on japan s household saving rate by applying cointegration techniques to time series data for the 1955 1993 period it finds th

firm heterogeneity persistent and transient technical inefficiency a generalized true random effects model this paper considers a panel data stochastic frontier model that disentangles unobserved firm effects firm heterogeneity from persistent time invariant long term and transient time varying short term technical inefficiency the model gives us a four way error component model viz persistent and time varying inefficiency random firm effects and noise we use bayesian methods of inference to provide robust and efficient methods of estimating inefficiency components in this four way error component model monte carlo results are provided to validate its performance we also present results from an empirical application that uses a large panel of us commercial banks

productivity and technical choice applications to the textile industry abstract this paper analyzes past choices of technology and present levels of productivity in the philippines cotton spinning and weaving industries detailed engineering and economic information are used to assess the costs of alternative technologies to estimate levels of productivity relative to international standards of best practice and to analyze the sources of productivity short falls high costs of production are due both to inappropriate technological choices and to low productivity in the use of the technologies chosen the major sources of low productivity are lack of sufficient firm level specialization among product varieties and deficient firm level technological capabilities inadequate labor skills are not a major problem the discussion emphasizes the general applicability of the analysis wherever low productivity is likely to be a problem

small firms in economic theory this is the fourth of a series of critical survey articles the aim of the series is to report on recent developments to provide an assessment of alternative approaches and to suggest lines of future inquiry it is intended that the articles will be accessible not only to other academic researchers but also to students and others more practically involved in the economy future survey articles will include warren samuels on institutional economics and philip arestis on post keynesian

life cycle individual thrift and the wealth of nations this paper provides a review of the theory of the determinants of individual and national thrift that has come to be known as the life cycle hypothesis lch of saving applications to some current policy issues are also discussed part i deals with the state of the art on the eve of the formulation of the lch some 30 years ago part ii sets forth the theoretical foundations of the model in its original formulation and later amendment calling attention to various implications distinctive to it and sometimes counter intuitive it also includes a review of a number of crucial empirical tests both at the individual and the aggregate level part iii reviews some applications of lch to current policy issues though only in sketchy fashion as space constraints prevent fuller discussion this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

demography national savings and international capital flows this paper addresses the relationship between age distribution national savings and the current account balance the results point to substantial demographic effects with increases in both the youth and old age dependency ratios associated with lower savings rates they also point to differential effects on savings and investment and thus to a role for demography in determining the current account balance the estimated demographic effect on the current account balance exceeds 6 percent of gdp over the last three decades for a number of countries and given expected demographic trends is likely to be substantially larger over the coming decades copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

enjoying the quiet life under deregulation evidence from adjusted lerner indices for u s banks abstract the quiet life hypothesis posits that firms with market power incur inefficiencies rather than reap monopolistic rents we propose a simple adjustment to lerner indices to account for the possibility of forgone rents to test this hypothesis for a large sample of u s commercial banks we find that adjusted lerner indices are significantly larger than conventional lerner indices and trending upward over time instrumental variable regressions reject the quiet life hypothesis for cost inefficiencies however lerner indices adjusted for profit inefficiencies reveal a quiet life among u s banks

fostering the capital goods sector in ldcs abstract the conventional arguments in favour of the production of capital goods by ldcs are based on comparative advantage the possibility of designs appropriate to indigenous factor proportions and the externalities conferred on other sectors these and other arguments are inducing the governments of many middle income countries to more intensively foster the development of the machinery sector this paper examines the analytic and empirical bases of the conventional arguments and finds a considerably more complex picture than that contained in earlier studies

opportunity cost trade policies and the efficiency of firms abstract this paper analyzes the effects of trade policies on the technological effort of a firm entering a new market in the context of a developing country we depart from previous literature by bringing into focus the opportunity cost of technological effort a firm that spends time in acquiring a more efficient technology delays the commercialization of its products thus incurring an opportunity cost in terms of profits forgone protection increases both the opportunity cost and the benefits from technological effort in the case of linear demand function and constant returns to scale technology protection is shown to unambiguously reduce the protected firm s technological effort export subsidy is also shown to reduce technological effort when the potential level of exports under free trade is high

efficiency measurement in swedish dairy farms an application of rotating panel data 1976 88 this paper introduces a new specification of technical inefficiency in panel data models first the overall technical inefficiency is decomposed into a persistent component and a residual component second a multistep procedure is used to estimate the parameters of the production function as well as persistent and residual technical inefficiency the advantage of this multistep procedure is that the parameter estimates are robust to distributional assumptions on the error components distributional assumptions are required in the final stage to estimate the residual component of technical inefficiency the model is used to examine technical efficiency in swedish dairy farms during the period 1976 to 1988

recent progress in applied bayesian econometrics abstract bayesian methods are widely used by theoretical econometricians and statisticians but have not won widespread acceptance from applied researchers after briefly describing the basic of the bayesian approach we discuss several issues relating to the empirical application of bayesian methods the existing bayesian empirical literature is also partially summarized the remainder of the paper offers a non technical survey of some recent computational advances in bayesian econometrics the overall goal is to persuade economists that bayesian methods are both computationally feasible and easy to implement in empirical research

return to tourist destination is it reputation after all in this paper the hypothesis that repeated purchases in the tourism markets could be considered as a consequence of asymmetrical information problems is studied this hypothesis is analysed with the case study of the island of tenerife using the estimation of a count data model it was found that the length of the stay and the information obtained from previous visits and or relatives and friends might increase the return to a destination suggesting the presence of a reputation mechanism as proposed by shapiro 1983 the determinants of the willingness to return were also estimated confirming the main results

a price discrimination analysis of monetary policy monetary policy is analysed within a model that appeals to legal restrictions on private intermediation to explain the coexistence of currency and interest bearing default free bonds the interaction between such legal restrictions and monetary policy is illustrated in a version of the overlapping generations model the model shows that legal restrictions and the use of both currency and bonds permit the government to levy a nonlinear inflation tax and that such a tax may be better in terms of the pareto criterion than a linear inflation tax

technical efficiency measurement within the manufacturing sector in cote d ivoire a stochastic frontier approach this article analyses the productive performance in four manufacturing sectors of the ivorian economy textiles and garments metal products food processing wood and furniture to appraise the productive performance econometric production frontier models are estimated illustrating the maximum output attainable from a given quantity of inputs the frontier and firm efficiency scores are derived from stochastic production functions estimated on cross sectional data the stochastic specification of the models allows for the decomposition of the error term into two components one the normal random effect and the other to account for technical inefficiency that we explain by various exogenous variables describing the economic and institutional environment firm size proves to be a statistically significant determinant of the productive performance across the four sectors the positive impact of being large compensates the negative effect of a formal institutional status in an environment where government

political violence and farm household efficiency in colombia abstract this article estimates farm household levels of technical efficiency and their determinants in colombia with particular reference to political violence i e guerrilla fronts homicides kidnappings and forced population displacements an input oriented stochastic frontier is estimated simultaneously with a technical inefficiency model that incorporates an index of political violence at the local level using survey data from 822 farm households the findings show that household productivity is lower in areas with high political violence due mainly to disruptions in rural labor markets and in the operation of large farms should political violence be eliminated the ensuing increases in the farrell s technical efficiency indexes of farm households in the sample would increase substantially pointing to significant peace dividends for rural households in colombia

the meta production function approach to technological change in world agriculture abstract an alternative meta production function for agriculture is estimated with the cross section data for 43 countries and three years 1960 1970 and 1980 constructed and used by kawagoe hayami and ruttan and hayami and ruttan in their studies by allowing for country specific efficiency factors and using a flexible functional form the transcendental logarithmic production function strikingly different results from those of kawagoe hayami and ruttan are obtained in particular it is found that elasticity of output with respect to machinery is variable and the degree of local returns to scale is not constant and increases with the usage of machinery

using cross section data to adjust technical efficiency indexes estimated with panel data this article proposes a procedure to incorporate cross sectional information in the estimation of technical efficiency indexes obtained from panel data a conventional index of technical efficiency is estimated in a first stage using panel data on inputs and outputs the individual effects from the first stage are then adjusted using cross sectional information obtaining a corrected technical efficiency index the model is applied to a panel of eighty two spanish dairy farms where only cross sectional information about input quality is available an analysis of variance is performed between some variables and both the corrected and the uncorrected indexes finding that the conclusions derived from the two analyses are different

total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 1978 this article total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 78 was reprinted with permission from the december 1982 issue of the economic journal this article proposes a methodology that decomposes total factor productivity change into two distinct elements technological progress and changes in technical efficiency technological progress is defined as the change in the best practice production frontier all other productivity change is attributed to technical efficiency change the article provides a theoretical framework for decomposing total factor productivity growth as well as a specification and estimation of the deterministic frontier production function it employs a programming technique to estimate a flexible functional form of the production frontier the paper then applies this technique to empirical data from yugoslavia of the period from 1965 to 1978 it concludes that for yugoslavia improvements to technical efficiency comprise the dominant contribution to total factor productivity change this agrees with accumulating evidence that in many developing economies productivity gain due to technological mastery of imported technology is substantial

economies of scale technical change and persistent and time varying cost efficiency in indian banking do ownership regulation and heterogeneity matter abstract banks with different ownership types adjust differently to changes in regulatory environments although this topic has been widely studied all the previous studies fail to control for bank heterogeneity bank specific effects in estimating cost structure and efficiency we propose a model where we control for bank heterogeneity and introduce persistent and time varying inefficiency additionally we incorporate determinants of both persistent and time varying inefficiency as well as production risks furthermore our model allows estimation of different technologies for different ownership types jointly we use this model to analyze the effect of regulation in indian banking we find that private banks have not exhausted their economies of scale foreign banks are operating under diseconomies of scale especially after the reforms and scale economies of state owned banks are unaffected by regulation banks of all ownership types have enjoyed technical progress however foreign banks have benefited the most followed by state owned banks only state banks were able to improve their cost efficiency while private banks and especially foreign banks were lagging behind their cost frontiers

technical efficiency and farm size a conditional analysis the relationship between technical efficiency and size might be affected by farm heterogeneity we analyse this relationship conditional on a set of control variables these control variables are chosen using a production model where technical efficiency is introduced as a parameter as a result technical efficiency affects both the input demand and the output supply of a profit maximising producer the empirical application explores these issues using panel data of dairy farms in spain

firm size age and efficiency evidence from kenyan manufacturing firms translog stochastic frontier production functions are estimated using an unbalanced panel of 235 kenyan manufacturing firms in the food wood textile and metal sectors the sectors are estimated individually in order to investigate whether technical efficiency is systematically related to the size and age of firms the evidence suggests that firm size has a positive and significant effect in the wood and textile sectors the age effect is less systematic but is insignificant in all sectors except textiles

fdi trade and spillover efficiency evidence from china s manufacturing sector using firm data from the 1995 third industrial census of china this paper finds that the presence of foreign ownership has a positive and significant effect on domestic firms productivity moreover trading with more advanced countries helps china gain access to new technology and information which improves its productivity and enables it to compete in international markets it is found that china s imports from oecd and the four asian tigers and exports to oecd have positive effects on domestic firms productivity by dividing industries into high technology gap and low technology gap groups it is found that the spillover effects of fdi are larger for the low technology gap group than for the high technology gap group however the estimation results of the trade induced technology spillover effect support the technology gap learning theory and the significance of importing appropriate technology

microfoundations for stochastic frontiers the purpose of the paper is to propose microfoundations for stochastic frontier models previous work shows that a simple bayesian learning model supports gamma distributions for technical inefficiency in stochastic frontier models the conclusion depends on how the problem is formulated and what assumptions are made about the sampling process and the prior after the new formulation of the problem it turns out that the distribution of the one sided error component does not belong to a known family moreover we find that without specifying a utility function or even the cost inefficiency function the relative effectiveness of managerial input can be determined using only cost data and estimates of the returns to scale the point of this construction is that features of the inefficiency function u z can be recovered from the data based on the solid microfoundation of expected utility of profit maximization but the model does not make a prediction about the distribution

panel data stochastic frontier model with determinants of persistent and transient inefficiency abstract in this paper we consider a stochastic frontier panel data model in which the random firm effects are separated from the persistent and transient technical inefficiency the model is extended to accommodate factors that can explain both persistent and transient technical inefficiency we derive formulas to estimate both types of inefficiency and compute marginal effects of the determinants on each type of inefficiency our simulation results show that both biases and mean square errors decrease with an increase in sample size nt to illustrate the working of our model we also provide results from an empirical application using data from 40 advanced industrialized newly industrialized transition and emerging economies observed from 1995 2006

explaining electricity demand and the role of energy and investment literacy on end use efficiency of swiss households abstract this paper estimates the level of transient and persistent efficiency in the use of electricity in swiss households using the newly developed generalized true random effects model gtrem an unbalanced panel dataset of 1994 swiss households from 2010 to 2014 collected via a household survey is used to estimate an electricity demand frontier function we further investigate whether energy and investment literacy have an influence on the household electricity consumption the results show significant inefficiencies in the use of electricity among swiss households both transient 11 and persistent 22 we note that the high persistent inefficiency is indicative of structural problems faced by households and systematic behavioral shortcomings in residential electricity consumption these results indicate a considerable potential for electricity savings and thus reaching the reduction targets defined by the swiss federal council as part of the energy strategy 2050 wherein end use efficiency improvement is one of the main pillars the results support a positive role of energy and in particular investment literacy in reducing household electricity consumption policies targeting an improvement of these attributes could help to enhance efficiency in the use of energy within households

estimation of growth convergence using a stochastic production frontier approach abstract in this paper we estimate stochastic world production frontiers econometrically taking country heterogeneity into account from the estimated frontier we obtain estimates of technical change technological catch up efficiency improvement convergence and scale related components of total factor productivity tfp growth

the measurement of productive efficiency a reconsideration the purpose of this paper is to generalize the farrell indexes of productive efficiency to nonhomothetic production technologies and at the same time maintain the cost interpretation of the farrell measures since the generalized indexes rely heavily on recent developments in the estimation of frontier cost and production functions several frontier models are reviewed in addition to generalized indexes of technical allocative and overall productive efficiency a variety of single factor efficiency measures are discussed the applicability of the proposed efficiency measures is illustrated with a numerical example of electric power generation

measurement of energy efficiency based on economic foundations abstract energy efficiency policy is seen as a very important activity by almost all policy makers in practical energy policy analysis the typical indicator used as a proxy for energy efficiency is energy intensity however this simple indicator is not necessarily an accurate measure given changes in energy intensity are a function of changes in several factors as well as true energy efficiency hence it is difficult to make conclusions for energy policy based upon simple energy intensity measures related to this some published academic papers over the last few years have attempted to use empirical methods to measure the efficient use of energy based on the economic theory of production however these studies do not generally provide a systematic discussion of the theoretical basis nor the possible parametric empirical approaches that are available for estimating the level of energy efficiency the objective of this paper therefore is to sketch out and explain from an economic perspective the theoretical framework as well as the empirical methods for measuring the level of energy efficiency additionally in the second part of the paper some of the empirical studies that have attempted to measure energy efficiency using such an economics approach are summarized and discussed

a general index of technical change this paper outlines a procedure for estimating a general index of technical change within the context of a quite general production technology specifically when panel data are available for firms in an industry time specific dummies can be combined in a nonlinear estimation procedure to yield a general index of technical change that may be both nonneutral and scale augmenting this approach offers numerous advantages over the traditional time trend representation of technical change for example the general index can serve as the basis for analysis of the determinants of technical change results for a sample of 30 electric utilities over the period 1951 78 show that the productivity decline of the 1970s can be attributed primarily to sulphur oxide restrictions and secularly declining capacity utilization due to rapidly increasing peak load demands

firm size and technical efficiency applications of production frontiers to indian survey data abstract this paper is an empirical investigation of the relationship between relative technical efficiency and firm size in four indian manufacturing industries a frontier translog production function is used to derive measures of technical inefficiency at the enterprise level given the properties of the estimated production frontier these indices of technical efficiency are also indices of total factor productivity tfp which is the single most widely accepted measure of productive efficiency variations in technical efficiency are correlated with several explanatory variables including size of firm firm size is found to be positively associated with relative productive efficiency in only one of the four industries

the estimation and decomposition of tourism productivity this paper estimates a total factor productivity index that allows for a rich decomposition of productivity in the tourism industry we account for two important characteristics first the heterogeneity between multiple tourism destinations and second the potential endogeneity in inputs importantly we develop our index at the macro level focusing on cross country comparisons using the bayesian approach we test the performance of the model across various priors we rank tourism destinations based on their tourism productivity and discuss the main sources of productivity growth we also provide long run productivity measures and discuss the importance of distinguishing between short run and long run productivity measures for future performance improvement strategies

trait making for labour intensive technology in sub saharan africa abstract empirical evidence indicates that the use of labour intensive techniques in african industry would create not only more employment but also more value added relative to competing capital intensive alternatives the evidence also indicates however that it is the latter rather than the former techniques which tend to dominate much of the industrial sector in sub sahara we argue here that this apparently paradoxical situation can be understood once one takes into account the amount of institutional change or institutional trait making that would need to accompany the introduction of labour intensive techniques on a large scale using a number of concepts advanced by hirschman and drawing mainly on cases from the road construction industry in africa we describe exactly which traits need to be made and how this can best be accomplished

productive efficiency of specialty and conventional coffee farmers in costa rica accounting for technological heterogeneity and self selection a steep decline in coffee prices at the producer level led to considerable pressure for farmers in costa rica and producer countries all over the world one possible reaction was moving to specialty markets where price pressure was perceived to be lower we use original survey data from 2002 2003 and 2003 2004 to analyze the factors influencing participation in specialty markets and to estimate separate production functions for specialty and conventional coffee farmers allowing for farm specific inefficiencies applying a sample selection framework we find significant selection bias in the sub sample of specialty farmers and evidence for the overestimation of efficiency if this bias is not adequately controlled for among the most important factors that influence farm specific efficiency levels in the two sub samples are the availability of additional income activities experience in coffee cultivation and membership in cooperatives based on the results we derive policy recommendations to improve farmers production performance and ability to cope with the effects of the coffee crisis these policy measures include the provision of extension services with respect to farm management skills the creation of income opportunities in rural areas and the support of farmer owned cooperatives

the measurement and sources of technical inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry production function models are estimated with a time series of cross section data on indonesian weaving establishments the sources of technical inefficiency are investigated three firm attributes are identified as being potentially related to firm efhciency tbey are firm ownership age and size the importance of these attributes as sources of inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry is investigated and the implications of the find ings discussed

innovation and wage effects of international outsourcing abstract we investigate the effects of increased outsourcing of production to a low wage country such international outsourcing lowers the marginal cost of production and thus increases profits creating greater incentives for innovation a reduction in the resource requirement in adapting technology relative to improving products or an expansion in the portion of production that can be outsourced generates a greater extent of international outsourcing a lower relative wage and a faster rate of innovation an increase in production taxes in the north production subsidies in the south or a subsidy to adapting technologies has similar effects

technology creation in semi industrial economies abstract technological activities in the semi industrial economies of latin america leading to the adaptation of imported technologies as well as the development of new products and processes have been both an involuntary byproduct of manufacturing activities and the result of deliberate decisions to set up technological research facilities technological research reported by latin american firms is shown to be largely complementary to production and carried out to reap the extra benefits of protection external effects are thus disregarded since the benefits from industrial production suffice to induce the requisite adaptive research the paper suggests that the as yet not well understood interaction between industrial and technological development be studied by focusing on technology as information and engineers as its processors looking at the learning stages from using imports to the creation of new products and examining these processes in terms of a progression toward increasing technological complexity

input substitution in manufacturing for three ldcs translog estimates and policy implications demand and subsititution elasticities from a translog cost model are estimated for the manufacturing sectors of india pakistan and bangladesh conventional formulae for the standard errors of the estimated elasticities are checked by a bootstrap experiment and their validity is confirmed for the moderate sized samples of india and pakistan the elasticity estimates indicate a high degree of substitutability among capital labour and energy resources in manufacturing sectors of these countries the result yields important policy implications for employment expansion through changing relative resource prices and the ability of these three economies to adjust to energy price shocks without serious impairment to economic growth

technological regimes and sources of entrepreneurship this paper concerns the technological determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour by applying a typology of technological regimes which describes the nature of the technological environment in which firms operate this paper examines the sources and obstacles to entrepreneurial entry related to the process of technical change two major points are suggested first innovation in technologies of high or increasing opportunities is not always associated with entrepreneurial behaviour but can enhance the competitive advantage of existing firms second opportunities for entrepreneurship are shaped by the nature of knowledge underlying different technologies these points are illustrated using u s patent statistics classified by technical field and sector of firm s principal product activity different combinations of sources of technological entry barriers and technological opportunity are identified in science based technologies chemical technologies core technologies in complex systems product engineering technologies and process engineering technologies this paper argues that such a characterisation of the dynamics of knowledge accumulation is important for interpreting the variety of dynamics of industrial competition

interest rates in a credit constrained economy when households face credit constraints in an economy with inside as well as outside money stationary equilibrium real interest rates are below the household rate of time preference they also depend significantly upon household risk aversion the demand for inside versus outside money bank costs bank reserves inflation and the marginal productivity of capital and capital depreciation rates in addition changes in financial variables affect per capita capital and output to a greater extent when households are credit constrained copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

productivity growth measurement and decomposition under a dynamic inefficiency specification the case of german dairy farms abstract standard parametric models for efficiency and total factor productivity growth measurement either impose strict structures on the time evolution of efficiency scores or no structure at all when the data capture a sector in turbulent periods both specifications may be inappropriate the dynamic stochastic frontier model takes a middle way in terms of the time structure it imposes on efficiency scores we apply the dynamic stochastic frontier model to the case of german dairy farms in a period that is characterized by high milk price volatility the model is able to capture time specific efficiency and total factor productivity growth shocks that may have been induced by this high volatility furthermore the dynamic stochastic frontier model is favored by the data when compared to a model that imposes a very restrictive time structure on efficiency and two models that do not impose any time structure at all