measuring technical efficiency abstract the theoretical consideration of technical efficiency has existed since koopmans koopmans t c 1951 an analysis of production as an efficient combination of activities in koopmans t c ed activity analysis of production and allocation cowles commission for research in economics monograph no 13 wiley new york defined it as production possibilities for which it is not possible to increase any output without simultaneously increasing any input ceteris paribus the non parametric approach to efficiency calculation known as data envelopment analysis is not based on this definition but rather on the radial index of farrell farrell m j 1957 the measurement of productive efficiency journal of the royal statistic society ser a 120 253 281 even after farrell efficiency is achieved there may exist additional slack in individual inputs and or outputs implying that farrell s index does not necessarily measure koopmans inefficiency various measures have been proposed to solve this problem this paper discusses shortcomings of these alternative measures and introduces a new relative measure of technical efficiency using simulated data it is shown that the new measure outperforms existing measures in the majority of cases

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

technical efficiency shadow price and substitutability of chinese industrial so2 emissions a parametric approach abstract in china s transition process towards sustainable development fighting against the rising so2 emission has become a great and urgent challenge based on a parametric quadratic directional distance function this paper investigates the inefficiency level shadow price and substitution elasticity of chinese industrial so2 emission from 1998 to 2011 the results show a u shape for the technical inefficiency indicating an efficiency improvement before 2005 but it getting worse since then which is that the east area displays a declining trend while the west goes up and the middle follows the national pattern at the east middle west region level as of the shadow price and morishima elasticity both the national and regional levels hold an increasing trajectory the shadow price is continuously increased a lot during the whole period implying to control additional so2 emission become more costly the positive morishima substitution elasticity suggests there may exist the win win opportunities for so2 regulation moreover the large regional disparity highlights the needs to adopt a differentiated regional policy

are football managers as efficient as coaches performance analysis with ex ante and ex post inputs in the premier league there is a controversy on sport performance literature about what type of inputs might explain more deeply the performance of sports clubs inputs specification controversy by one side several p

financial sustainability and poverty outreach within a network of village banks in cameroon a multi dea approach abstract microfinance institutions face a double bottom line they perform financial tasks by giving microcredits to their customers and support projects aiming at reducing poverty in doing so they have to be financially self sufficient and to target poor people excluded from the traditional financial systems however a trade off may exist between financial sustainability and poverty outreach for these institutions by using a multi dea approach this paper shows that even if a trade off exists for 15 of the mc 2 mutuelles communautaires de croissance in cameroon there is no trade off for 46 of them in order to increase without trade off financial and social performance of inefficient mc 2 a benchmarking approach combing dea and performance indicators has been developed dea is used for identifying best practices and setting benchmarking goals performance indicators are used for characterizing areas needing improvements and following the evolution of mc 2 toward their goals i e for implementing benchmarking complementarity of both approaches provides a tool box for improving financial and social efficiency and reducing the trade off between financial sustainability and poverty outreach of microfinance institutions

advanced x efficiencies for ccr and bcc models towards peer based dea controlling abstract classical ccr and bcc dea models follow a general concept they allow each dmu to evaluate its in efficiency in the most favorable way and then propose input reduction and or output raise so as to follow its best practice units a first step beyond this self appraisal is the consideration of x efficiencies thus evaluating dmus with optimal weights of a peer doing this for all possible peers yields a cross efficiency matrix either for ccr or for bcc models this matrix might help to find a fair peer for the remaining dmus in a second step recent contributions analyze for ccr models how such x evaluated dmus might improve their efficiency with respect to a peer s weight system in these models even free variation of inputs outputs is possible rather than reduction and or raise such models will be portrayed here and generalized for variable returns to scale the remaining discomfort which a dmu might feel with the choice for peer among business rivals leads to the concept of a virtual peer vp this paper proposes such a peer as a consensual option for all dmus now for either return to scale ccr and bcc for an input or output oriented focus and by free variation of inputs and outputs they can meet the requirements of vp the dmus pay a heavy price however the peer controls their respective weights and even their activities he is a dictator

productivity and efficiency change and shareholder value evidence from the spanish banking sector productivity change and shareholder value have been analysed in the banking sector in the last few years although it should be noted that these two important aspects have been studied separately in this regard the main contribution of our study is to link these two lines of research by verifying whether those banks characterized by higher levels of efficiency and productivity change have a higher shareholder value to measure changes in efficiency and productivity we use the malmquist nonparametric technique which is calculated from data envelopment analysis dea linear programming approach the malmquist total factor productivity index enables separation of the catching up effect i e changes over time in technical efficiency from technological change i e the shift of best practice frontier over time due to technological progress our results for a sample of listed spanish banks in the period 2000 to 2004 confirm that those banks with higher efficiency and productivity changes have a higher

the impact of environmental expenditures on performance in the u s chemical industry abstract this study analyzes chemical industry companies with environmental expenditures to determine which ones have better financial performance in addition this study uses data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of firms with and without environmental expenditures this study also utilizes the malmquist productivity index mpi to analyze firms productivity change and a bootstrap method to test whether the indexes are statistically significant finally this study divides chemical industry companies into three main categories based on their products the results of this study provide significant evidence of a relationship between environmental expenditures and financial performance the findings suggest that firms with environmental expenditures have better efficiency and productivity hence the study encourages companies in the industry to put more effort into protecting the environment that can be through practicing cleaner production to create higher benefits

strategic corporate social responsibility and economic performance this article proposes a novel corporate social responsibility csr index based on a data envelopment analysis dea model acknowledging the argument that companies might favour those csr dimensions that provide strategic competitive advantages we argue that the index can capture companies strategic approach to csr furthermore our findings reveal a neutral relationship between this strategic csr index and economic performance as measured by return on assets roa and tobin s q when controlling for firm unobserved heterogeneity and past economic performance by contrast an equally weighted index of the same csr indicators is found to be negatively related with roa which reinforces our claim that this specific dea based index is a measure of strategic csr

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

cost efficiency of french rugby clubs this article analyses the cost efficiency of french first league rugby clubs using a stochastic frontier model the frontier estimation confirmed that the model fits the data well with all coefficients correctly signed and in line with the theoretical requirements the results show that one of the clubs is operating efficiently with the majority of clubs clustered around 20 inefficiency policy implications are derived

regulatory reforms and productivity an empirical analysis of the japanese electricity industry the japanese electricity industry has experienced regulatory reforms since the mid 1990s this article measures productivity in japan s steam power generation sector and examines the effect of reforms on the productivity of this industry over the period 1978 2003 we estimate the luenberger productivity indicator which is a generalization of the commonly used malmquist productivity index using a data envelopment analysis approach factors associated with productivity change are investigated through dynamic generalized method of moments gmm estimation of panel data our empirical analysis shows that the regulatory reforms have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power generation sector in japan

hypercongestion in production correspondences an empirical exploration this empirical contribution reviews the rather limited existing literature measuring congestion in production it first compares current ways to measure congestion using nonparametric specifications of technologies in particular it focuses on the magnitude and incidence of the congestion detected in empirical studies using traditional radial efficiency measures thereafter it shows the limitations of this radial measurement and how alternative measurement schemes may reveal higher amounts of congestion then the new more general methodology of measuring s congestion is presented in particular we first present a numerical example to illustrate the way the s disposable technologies allow to capture more extreme forms of congestion by setting empirically determined upper bounds to the wasting of inputs then an empirical illustration is presented based on an existing sample of data a final section concludes

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

cost efficiency of electric grid utilities in china a comparison of estimates from sfa mle sfa bayes and stoned cnls with the purpose of estimating the range of cost efficiency levels of the power grid sector in china we assembled a data set including 23 provincial power grid companies spanning from 2005 to 2009 and conducted an empirical study based on the sfa mle sfa bayes and stoned cnls methodologies empirical results show that the average values of efficiency from different models vary from 0 85 to 0 92 depending especially on the assumptions underlying inefficiency content further results demonstrate that there is exogenous technical progress during the sample period and per capita gdp of the province is negatively related to the costs of the electric grid company located in the corresponding province we hope this empirical study will contribute to the debate on an efficiency based regulation scheme which was introduced to the chinese electric grid sector on a pilot base in 2014

the political economy of ownership housing markets and the welfare state the major economic story of the last decade has been the surge and collapse of house prices worldwide yet political economists have had little to say about how this critical phenomenon affects citizens welfare and their demands from government this article develops a novel theoretical argument linking housing prices to social policy preferences and policy outcomes i argue that homeowners experiencing house price appreciation will become less supportive of redistribution and social insurance policies since increased house prices both increase individuals permanent income and the value of housing as self supplied insurance against income loss political parties of the right will responding to these preferences cut social spending substantially during housing booms i test these propositions using both microdata on social preferences from panel surveys in the usa the uk and a cross country survey of 29 countries and macrodata of national social spending for 18 countries between 1975 and 2001

a dynamic multi stage data envelopment analysis model with application to energy consumption in the cotton industry abstract data envelopment analysis dea is a non parametric method for evaluating the relative efficiency of homogenous decision making units dmus with multiple inputs and outputs in this paper we present a dynamic multi stage dea dms dea approach to evaluate the efficiency of cotton production energy consumption in the proposed model the farms which consume resources i e fertilizers seeds and pesticides to produce cotton are assumed to be the dmus inputs not consumed during a planning period are carried over to the next period in the planning horizon initially a dms dea model is used to determine the overall efficiency of the dmus with dynamic inputs next the efficiency score of each dmu is calculated for each time period in the planning horizon we demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method and exhibit the efficacy of the procedures and algorithms with a real life case study of energy consumption in the cotton industry

using dea to evaluate 29 canadian textile companies considering returns to scale in this research we use data envelopment analysis dea to evaluate the performance of 29 canadian textile companies in 1994 using the charnes cooper and rodes ccr model in dea we first obtain the results of efficiency scores and returns to scale of 29 canadian textile companies we then focus on the returns to scale to examine the possibility of utilizing the inefficient inputs by either further expansion or vertical integration we develop a mathematical model to consider the trade off between reducing and not reducing the input surplus we use the cone ratio model to find the optimal level of vertical utilization the computational results are based on real data from the canadian textile companies

assessing eco efficiency through the dea analysis and decoupling index in the latin america countries abstract this study was developed according to a two step approach in the first step we provide an investigation of the changes in eco efficiency under constant and variable return to scale while on a second step the evaluation of the decoupling elasticity will be given the impacts of energy economic and environmental determinants inputs on the performance indicators of eco efficiency were calculated as the inverse of the carbon intensity ratio of the gdp over the co2 emissions both from the world development indicators database the changes in eco efficiency and the decoupling elasticity between co2 emissions and economic growth changes data was used for 16 latin america countries according to five year periods from 1994 to 2013 for all the five time span considered it is worth noting that the degree of technical efficiency for the latin america countries is lower than the degree of technological efficiency thus indicating that a portion of the overall inefficiency is due to the fact that these countries are producing below the production frontier rather than to an inefficient use of technology on average the results have confirmed that the technological scale change in energy production is the dominant factor influencing the optimal production frontier in the sample of countries under analysis complementarily according to the mixed results from the decoupling analysis we may conclude that the increase decrease of the co2 per capita emissions was due to other economic and environmental factors rather than to a negative positive effect of the gdp growth rate

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

exploring the existence of kuznets curve in countries environmental efficiency using dea window analysis abstract this paper using data envelopment dea window analysis and generalized method of moments gmm estimators examines the existence of a kuznets type relationship between countries environmental efficiency and national income specifically it measures the environmental efficiency of 17 oecd countries by constructing environmental efficiency ratios for the time period 1980 2002 the analysis with the application of dynamic panel data reveals that there isn t a kuznets type relationship between environmental efficiency and income allowing for dynamic effects we find that the adjustment to the target ratio is instantaneous we also find that increased economic activity does not always ensure environmental protection and thus the path of growth is important in addition to the growth itself

strategic planning of optimal resource allocation in response to global financial crisis a study of international tourist hotels this study is principally designed to examine the changes in the efficiency effective resource allocation and future operation strategies of taiwan s international tourist hotel in global economic downturn at first we set up critical input and output factors and construct an assessment model using data envelopment analysis dea for analysis of relative efficiency further we apply an allocative efficiency model for additional considerations of each input cost and analyse proper and effective resource allocation finally there are significant changes in overall efficiency of international tourist hotels under global financial crisis we can also reach an effective allocation of the overall resources in such cases lowering cost has become a key issue for sustainable operation of international tourist hotel finally the greatest contribution of this study is to further classify the competitiveness and optimal cost allocation of taiwan s international tourist hotels into seven categories based on the

measuring technical efficiency and productivity growth a comparison of sfa and dea on norwegian grain production data this article compares data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis to assess efficiency and productivity growth of norwegian grain producers previous studies have dealt with either one of them and less of both for the assessment of productivity growth or regress malmquist productivity indices are derived from both approaches the data cover a 10 year period we find consistency between the approaches to the extent that 1 there are potentials for efficiency improvements but the magnitudes depends on the model applied and by segmentation of the data set 2 there has been a productivity improvement in the sector on average in the interval 30 38 in the period studied and 3 technical change has had the greatest impact on productivity indicating that producers have a tendency to catch up with the front runners in general policy makers are warned not to be indifferent with respect to the approach used for efficiency and productivity measurement as these may give different results