teacher quality in educational production tracking decay and student achievement growing concerns over the inadequate achievement of u s students have led to proposals to reward good teachers and penalize or fire bad ones the leading method for assessing teacher quality is value added modeling vam which decomposes students test scores into components attributed to student heterogeneity and to teacher quality implicit in the vam approach are strong assumptions about the nature of the educational production function and the assignment of students to classrooms in this paper i develop falsification tests for three widely used vam specifications based on the idea that future teachers cannot influence students past achievement in da ta from north carolina each of the vams exclusion restrictions are dramatically viola ted in particular these models indicate large effects of 5th grade teachers on 4th grade t est score gains i also find that conventional measures of individual teachers value added fade out very quickly and are at best weakly related to long run effects i discuss implic ations for the use of vams as personnel tools

teacher testing teacher education and teacher characteristics school officials and legislators have long been concerned with the possibility of declining teacher quality see e g sean corcoran et al 2002 beginning in the 1960 s states began testing prospective teachers in a direct effort to ensure that teachers meet minimum standards for basic skills and subject knowledge by 1999 41 states required applicants to pass some sort of standardized certification test as a theoretical matter however the impact of such testing is ambiguous test requirements may establish a minimum achievement standard as their proponents hope on the other hand testing and other certification requirements may deter some qualified applicants from teaching if these requirements are perceived as costly this is the barriers to entry story first noted in the occupational licensing context by milton f friedman and simon kuznets 1945 another concern with job applicant testing is the possibility of an adverse impact on minority candidates who usually do worse on tests see david autor and david scarborough 2003 for a recent study paralleling increased state involvement in teacher certification is the increase in teachers educational credentials especially in public schools for example in 1971 over two thirds of public school teachers had a b a while only 27 percent had a master s or education specialist s degree by 1991 however over half of public school teachers 52 6 percent had a master s or education specialist s degree in contrast the proportion of private school teachers

handling unobserved site characteristics in random utility models of recreation demand abstract this paper presents a new random utility model of recreation demand that addresses the unobserved characteristics of recreation sites most random utility recreation demand models implicitly assume that all relevant site characteristics are observed by the researcher or allow for the possibility of unobserved characteristics in a restrictive manner unlike traditional approaches the proposed model avoids the bias unobserved site characteristics can cause in welfare estimates and the travel cost parameter monte carlo simulations motivate the proposed model by showing that it provides more efficient parameter estimates in contrast existing methods yield less efficient estimates and biased standard errors that overstate precision an empirical application to recreational fishing in wisconsin illustrates the potential importance of this modeling innovation in this application controlling for unobserved characteristics is important for a range of model specifications

a utility consistent combined discrete choice and count data model assessing recreational use losses due to natural resource damage abstract a two stage budgeting approach can often be taken when analyzing consumer choice situations in this paper we examine the particular situation where a consumer makes purchases of a discrete commodity of which there are a number of brands in the first stage the consumer decides how many purchases to make in the second stage the consumer decides how to allocate these purchases across brands our econometric approach to this type of situation uses a utility consistent combined discrete choice and count data model the second stage which is specified as a multinomial choice model produces a price index for the commodity which is used to estimate the first stage which is specified as a count data model we apply the model to recreational demand behavior in alaska in order to estimate the welfare losses suffered by recreational users due to the exxon valdez oil spill these results may provide useful input to government agencies attempting to estimate the appropriate level of taxes fines or regulations for deterring damage to the environment

effects of local and civil environmental regulation on green total factor productivity in china a spatial durbin econometric analysis this paper employs metafrontier malmquist luenberger index and a spatial durbin model to investigate the influence of both local and civil environmental regulation and its spatial spillover effect on green total factor productivity in 273 cities of china in 2003 2013 according to city political attribute and regional differences this article divides the sample city into six categories the results show that effect of local environmental regulation on green total factor productivity is significantly positive in high political attribute cities a1 and a2 zone but negative effects in lower political attribute cities b2 and b3 zone moreover the race to the top results in significantly positive spatial spillover effects from local environmental regulation on green total factor productivity in high political attribute cities a1 and a2 zone while the race to the bottom causes significantly negative spatial spillover effects in lower political attribute cities b2 and b3 zone as for civil environmental regulation it has positive direct and indirect effects in promoting green total factor productivity we further find that environmental regulation inhibits the original technological innovation of enterprises which suggests that government should reduce market intervention improve enterprise flexibility of market change and promote enterprises to carry out the original technological innovation thus the government and citizen should make targeted pollution reduction policies for the green total factor productivity increase

an analysis of congestion measures and heterogeneous angler preferences in a random utility model of recreational fishing the potential importance ofcongestion effects on the management andrationing of recreational facilities andservices in the presence of heterogeneouspreferences were highlighted nearly twenty fiveyears ago by freeman and haveman 1977 whilethere have been a number of theoretical modelsextending and expanding upon this work mcconnell 1988 anderson 1993 empiricalresearch evaluating such impacts is limited evidence of the potential impacts of congestionon resource usage is of obvious importance especially for natural resource managers whounderstand that congestion can be an effectiverationing device and because users likelydiffer in both their preferences for use andaversion to congestion it is the objective ofthis research to compare alternative measuresof congestion for explaining site choice withina random utility modeling framework thecongestion measures differ with respect to thetime horizon over which they are assumed to beformulated and the measure of central tendencyused to represent them furthermore weinvestigate how the response to thesecongestion measures may differ across twodistinct angler types and the implications ofthose differences on the per trip willingnessto pay for stock enhancement

a repeated nested logit model of atlantic salmon fishing participation and site choice for atlantic salmon fishing are modeled in the context of a repeated three level nested logit model consumer s surplus measures are derived for different levels of species availability in the penobscot river the most important salmon river in new england for comparison six other travel cost models are estimated these include restrictive cases of the nested logit model a partial demand model and two single site demand models comparisons across these models indicate the importance of modeling the participation decision including income effects and of adopting a nested logit structure rather than a single level logit structure

making real progress toward more sustainable societies using decision support models and tools introduction to the special volume academics politicians professionals and the general public are aware that without stewarding our planet s natural resources man is on the pathway towards a global collapse over the next three decades mankind is expected to consume an estimated 140 billion tons of minerals ores fossil fuels and biomass per year three times current consumption social welfare and human wellbeing are threatened with the scarcity of natural resources consequently nations and their societies are also at risk of collapse the readers of this special volume will find a compilation of scholarly research papers with real life applications that take the challenge of proposing decision making models and tools to address sustainability challenges in integrative ways the main focus of this special volume is integration of sustainability dimensions economic social environmental ethical and time into decision support models and to identify pathways to achieve more sustainable societies the majority of the research in this special volume 74 percent focuses on environmental and economic dimensions only 26 percent integrated social dimensions with them methodologically a range of mathematical models and tools are presented to support prescriptive decision making with some descriptive models integrated to support decision makers in solving practical problems across a variety of industries and scenarios the breadth and complexity of issues facing organizations and society requires innovative applications of these methodologies the concerns cover a spectrum ranging from energy to solid waste management a multitude of levels from broad based policy concerns to strategic inter organizational sustainable supply chain management and significantly shop floor operational issues are also covered the variety of problems and solutions exemplifies the potential for modelling and operations research for addressing some of our world s most pressing concerns

measuring unified efficiency of chinese fossil fuel power plants intermediate approach combined with group heterogeneity and window analysis abstract as a newly proposed method intermediate approach has several unique features relative to conventional radial and non radial approaches this study contributes to the dea literature by combining intermediate approach with group heterogeneity in a time horizon this extended methodology has two important advantages since it can separate inefficiency related to different production frontiers originated from heterogeneity issue and provide steady results of time effects across periods empirically this method is used to examine unified efficiency of chinese fossil fuel power plants at provincial levels from 2005 to 2015 all provinces are classified into two regional groups our main findings are as follows first there exists significant group heterogeneity between coastal and inland provinces where coastal provinces outperform inland provinces second there are considerable differences in unified efficiency measures across provinces for most observations best practice gap ratio is the most important driving factor furthermore the relative importance of three decomposed indicators varies sharply across provinces finally the concept of managerial disposability should attract sufficient attention when designing environmental policies thus there should be more combined contributions from eco technology advancements along with managerial efficiency improvements by corporate leaders and policy makers this can a new direction for china s environmental policy

would higher salaries keep teachers in high poverty schools evidence from a policy intervention in north carolina abstract for a three year time period beginning in 2001 north carolina awarded an annual bonus of 1800 to certified math science and special education teachers working in public secondary schools with either high poverty rates or low test scores using longitudinal data on teachers we estimate hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program s implementation across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers and across eligible and barely ineligible schools results suggest that this bonus payment was sufficient to reduce mean turnover rates of the targeted teachers by 17 experienced teachers exhibited the strongest response to the program finally the effect of the program may have been at least partly undermined by the state s failure to fully educate teachers regarding the eligibility criteria our estimates most likely underpredict the potential outcome of a program of permanent salary differentials operating under complete information

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

efficiency evaluation of china s provincial power systems based on the dynamic network slacks based measure model abstract a power system contains generation transmission and distribution divisions policy reforms and management mechanisms may affect the environmental efficiency of certain divisions or the integrated power system this study applied the dynamic network slacks based measure dnsbm model to analyze the environmental efficiency of both the power systems and their divisions of provincial administrative areas in china and investigated the effects of the external environmental factors it employed scenario analysis to further explore the feasibility of separating the distribution from the transmission division the results indicate that 1 the dnsbm model takes the internal structure of the power system into account and provides a new perspective to seek the sources of the system and division efficiencies 2 customer density and energy consumption intensity have significant impacts on the system and division efficiencies while the power generation structure only affects the environmental efficiency of the generation division 3 the scenario analysis shows that the policy of separating power plants from grids improved the system efficiency to which the improvement in generation division is the main contributor and separating distribution from transmission may have great potential for enhancing the efficiencies of power systems

a structural equations approach to modeling consumptive recreation demand abstract in this analysis we develop a two equation structural model of a count travel cost model of recreational angling demand and angling success by modeling the two equations jointly we avoid the difficulties associated with the usual approach which estimates the demand for recreational fishing sites assuming the existence of an exogenous measure of fishing quality our analysis explicitly develops the joint log likelihood function that combines the two processes we estimate our model using full information maximum likelihood methods

measurement error in recreation demand models the joint estimation of participation site choice and site characteristics abstract in the demand for recreational fishing sites an important explanatory variable differentiating sites is the unobserved expected catch rate since the observed catch rate is subject to sampling variability using the average of a site s observed catch rates causes the parameter estimator on catch to be biased downward we develop and demonstrate a solution to this errors in variables problem when there are repeated measurements on the catch rate consistent and efficient estimates of both the demand parameters and the expected catch rates are obtained by simultaneously estimating them by maximum likelihood an empirical example demonstrates the importance of simultaneous estimation

a metafrontier approach for measuring an environmentally sensitive productivity growth index this paper presents an alternative environmentally sensitive productivity growth index to incorporate group heterogeneities into a conventional malmquist luenberger productivity growth index the p

dea malmquist productivity measure new insights with an application to computer industry abstract data envelopment analysis dea measures the relative efficiency of decision making units dmus with multiple inputs and multiple outputs dea based malmquist productivity index measures the productivity change over time the dea based malmquist productivity index can be decomposed into two components one measuring the technical change and the other measuring the frontier shift in the current study we provide an extension to the dea based malmquist approach by further analyzing these two malmquist components our proposed new approach not only reveals patterns of productivity change and presents a new interpretation along with the managerial implication of each malmquist component but also identifies the strategy shifts of individual dmus based upon isoquant changes we can make judgments on whether or not such strategy shifts are favorable and promising the approach is illustrated with a set of fortune global 500 computer and office equipment companies from 1991 to 1997

green efficiency and environmental subsidy evidence from thermal power firms in china abstract to achieve green development ample environmental subsidies have been invested into many energy intensive firms such as thermal power firms in china investigations of the effects of this kind of subsidy can help to provide specific and important implications for ongoing regulations unlike previous studies on the national regional or sectoral level this paper measures green efficiency and its compositions of thermal power firms and studies the impact of environmental subsidies on green efficiency by using the classical slacks based measure and tobit model the results show that the average green efficiency ranges from 0 509 to 0 663 during 2010 2015 which is much lower than the general efficiency the green scale efficiency is the main reason for the low green efficiency thus indicating large room for improvement environmental subsidies negatively affect green efficiency and its decompositions from 2010 to 2013 the negative effect becomes weak and insignificant in 2014 and the environmental subsidies start to significantly promote green efficiency and its decompositions in 2015 according to our findings some implications relating to improving green scale efficiency increasing the intensity of environmental subsidies to firms and strengthening their supervision are proposed

using performance on the job to inform teacher tenure decisions the notion that some high stakes need to be attached to direct measures of teachers class room performance as a control for quality in the work force is an idea gaining traction in public education one such proposal prescribes low ering the barriers to entry into teaching while simultaneously being more selective about which teachers are retained when they become eligible for tenure robert gordon thomas j kane and douglas o staiger 2006 eric a hanushek 2009

an efficiency approach to choice set formation theory and application to recreational destination choice an unresolved debate in behavioural choice research surrounds specifying individual choice sets to overcome the limitations of deterministic and probabilistic approaches in a framework consistent with individual optimizing behaviour this study develops an efficient frontiers approach to the choice set problem in the context of revealed preference destination choice stochastic frontier models relating costly inputs to utility generating outputs are estimated to measure the efficiency of sites choice sets are then formed by retaining sites that exceed alternative efficiency thresholds choice set composition site choice efficiency and probability of selection and consumer surplus are evaluated in the case of fishery site choice in maine

searching for effective teachers with imperfect information teaching may be the most scrutinized occupation in the economy over the eaching may be the most scrutinized occupation in the economy over the past four decades empirical researchers many of them economists have past four decades empirical researchers many of them economists have accumulated an impressive amount of evidence on teachers the heteroaccumulated an impressive amount of evidence on teachers the heterogeneity in teacher productivity the rise in productivity associated with teaching geneity in teacher productivity the rise in productivity associated with teaching credentials and on the job experience rates of turnover the costs of recruitment credentials and on the job experience rates of turnover the costs of recruitment the relationship between supply and quality the effect of class size and the monetary the relationship between supply and quality the effect of class size and the monetary value of academic achievement gains over a student s lifetime since the passage value of academic achievement gains over a student s lifetime since the passage of the no child left behind act along with a number of state level educational of the no child left behind act along with a number of state level educational initiatives the data needed to estimate individual teacher performance based on initiatives the data needed to estimate individual teacher performance based on student achievement gains have become more widely available however there have student achievement gains have become more widely available however there have been relatively few efforts to examine the implications of this voluminous literature been relatively few efforts to examine the implications of this voluminous literature on teacher performance in this paper we ask what the existing evidence implies on teacher performance in this paper we ask what the existing evidence implies for how school leaders might recruit evaluate and retain teachers for how school leaders might recruit evaluate and retain teachers we begin by summarizing the evidence on fi ve key points referring to existing we begin by summarizing the evidence on fi ve key points referring to existing work and to evidence we have accumulated from our research with the nation s work and to evidence we have accumulated from our research with the nation s two largest school districts los angeles and new york city first teachers display two largest school districts los angeles and new york city first teachers display considerable heterogeneity in their effects on student achievement gains the stanconsiderable heterogeneity in their effects on student achievement gains the standard deviation across teachers in their impact on student achievement gains is on dard deviation across teachers in their impact on student achievement gains is on the order of 0 1 to 0 2 student level standard deviations which would improve the the order of 0 1 to 0 2 student level standard deviations which would improve the

the decomposition of total factor co2 emission efficiency of 97 contracting countries in paris agreement abstract greenhouse gas reduction requires joint efforts from the global society while improving co2 emission efficiency is a centrally important means to realize emission reduction targets therefore it is of strategic importance to identify main influential factors to co2 emission efficiency of different countries by considering the technology heterogeneity the originality herein lies in that applying the modified decomposition method of metafrontier malmquist luenberger index mml to define the priority of contracting countries in paris agreement to improve emission efficiency in this study 97 contracting countries of paris agreement are divided into 4 groups according to levels of income low income countries lower middle income countries upper middle income countries and high income countries and studied with their input and output data during 1990 2014 as samples the empirical results reveal that the paths for the contracting countries of paris agreement to improve the efficiency are different first lower middle income group can be facilitated through increasing factor input to increase the mml index considering the highest increase in scale efficiency 2 78 second low income group should eliminate the excessive concentration of inputs by enhancing the energy management efficiency third in terms of the significant advancement of high income group s mml index brought by technology advancement and the abnormal drop of brunei darussalam s mml related to technology decay this analysis emphasized that the advancement and innovation of energy technology are the main force for total factor co2 emission efficiency improvement

pulled away or pushed out explaining the decline of teacher aptitude in the united states logic suggests that a teacher s value added is related to her academic aptitude it is therefore troubling that teachers aptitude has declined significantly in the united states since 1960 as demonstrated by sean corcoran et al 2002 combining longitudinal surveys they find a marked fall in teachers propensity to be in the top achievement quartile there are two main hypotheses for the decline in teacher aptitude first greater pay parity with males in nonteaching occupations may have drawn able women out of teaching second unionization may have compressed pay benefits and nonmonetary returns to aptitude in teaching and thereby pushed out high aptitude people in short there is a pull hypothesis pay parity in alternative opportunities and a push hypothesis pay compression in teaching the hypotheses are not mutually exclusive we need not choose between them instead we try to apportion blame to do this we need variation in the timing and size of the pull and push factors fortunately such variation exists among u s states our econometric identification relies on variation in labor markets and unionization laws among states at a point in time and within each state over time

do alternative opportunities matter the role of female labor markets in the decline of teacher quality abstract this paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented using standardized test scores undergraduate institution selectivity and positive assortative mating characteristics as indicators of quality in contrast the quality of young women becoming professionals increased the roy model of self selection highlights how occupational differences in the returns to skill determine teacher quality estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality

estimation and welfare calculations in a generalized corner solution model with an application to recreation demand the kuhn tucker model of wales and woodland 1983 provides a utility theoretic framework for estimating preferences over commodities for which individuals choose not to consume one or more of the goods due to the complexity of the model however there have been few applications in the literature and little attention has been paid to the problems of welfare analysis within the kuhn tucker framework this paper provides an application of the model to the problem of recreation demand in addition we develop and apply a methodology for estimating compensating variation relying on monte carlo integration to derive expected welfare changes

non parametric efficiency progress and regress measures for panel data methodological aspects this purely methodological paper deals with the role of time in non parametric efficiency analysis using both fdh and dea technologies it first shows how each observation in a panel can be characterized in efficiency terms vis a vis three different kinds of frontiers i contemporaneous ii sequential and iii intertemporal these are then compared with window analysis next frontier shifts outward and inward interpreted as progress or regress are considered for the two kinds of technologies and computational methods are described in detail for evaluating such shifts in either case these are also contrasted with what is measured by the malmquist productivity index finally an alternative way of identifying progress and regress independent of the frontier notion and referring instead to some benchmark notion is extended here to panel data

spatial search and fishing location choice methodological challenges of empirical modeling recent work in ecology emphasized the spatial patchiness of marine resources fish and shellfish populations often occur in clumps or discrete patches of habitat with different population levels and dynamics in each patch patches are linked through a set of complex biological and oceanographic factors this new view has given rise to spatial marine management proposals including permanent marine reserves and rotating spatial closures reserve proposals are particularly popular among ecologists because closed areas can presumably augment the biomass in areas that were overharvested due to stochas

discussion of morey and waldman s measurement error in recreation demand models abstract morey and waldman have proposed a method for handling measurement error in site attributes such as catch rates in models of anglers choice of fishing sites we discuss the properties of this method and compare these properties with those of the standard estimation procedure we show that i both methods are biased and ii the standard procedure is consistent whenever morey and waldman s procedure is consistent as well as under more general conditions in particular morey and waldman s procedure is inconsistent if any site attributes are omitted from the model whereas the standard procedure is consistent in the presence of omitted site attributes as long as the impact of these attributes on the dependent variable is uncorrelated with included variables a condition shared by all regression models

sea bass angling in ireland a structural equation model of catch and effort abstract the relationship between angling effort and catch is well recognised in particular that effort influences catch rates but increased catch which can be considered an attribute of fishery quality may influence effort in terms of number of fishing trips this suggests bi directional feedback between catch and effort in many travel cost applications little attention has been given to this endogeneity problem in this paper we expand the application of structural equation models to address this issue by jointly estimating demand effort and catch functions using a cross section dataset of sea bass anglers we propose two separate joint models first we include expected catch as an explanatory variable in the demand equation in the second we reverse the causality and use the expected number of fishing days as a covariate in the catch function the two approaches produce similar model estimates and perform better at predicting anglers catch and effort than standard models the findings confirm that sea bass angling is highly valued with a consumer surplus of about 282 318 per angler per day though this is likely to be biased upwards furthermore higher catches result in more days fished on average in a 2 1 ratio whereas on average an additional fishing day results in 3 4 additional bass caught

a comprehensive review of data envelopment analysis dea approach in energy efficiency the main aim of this review article is to review of dea models in regarding to energy efficiency this paper reviewed and summarized the different models of dea that have been applied around the world to development of energy efficiency problems consequently a review of 144 published scholarly papers appearing in 45 high ranking journals between 2006 and 2015 have been obtained to achieve a comprehensive review of dea application in energy efficiency accordingly the selected articles have been categorized based on year of publication author s nationalities scope of study time duration application area study purpose results and outcomes results of this review paper indicated that dea showed great promise to be a good evaluative tool for future analysis on energy efficiency issues where the production function between the inputs and outputs was virtually absent or extremely difficult to acquire

joint estimation of catch and other travel cost parameters some further thoughts abstract e r morey and d m waldman propose and use an estimator that jointly estimates catch rates and the parameter on those catch rates it is designed for situations where there is limited catch data for some of the sites in the choice set and takes advantage of the fact that trip patterns reflect variations in catch rates anglers do not like to fish at sites with few fish k train d mcfadden and r johnson note that this estimator is particularly sensitive to omitted variable bias and suggest an alternative estimator but their estimator effectively eliminates poor sites from the choice set

effects of regulations on expected catch expected harvest and site choice of recreational anglers the use of public lands and waterways is often subject to environmental regulations designed to limit the depletion of resource stocks such regulations may influence expectations of quality destination choice and consumer surplus this paper examines the effects of environmental regulations on recreational anglers the empirical application develops a joint model of expected catch and expected harvest in conjunction with a random utility model of site choice findings for maine anglers indicate that regulations have sizable effects on catch and harvest site choice and welfare

measuring the efficiency of grid companies in china a bootstrapping non parametric meta frontier approach abstract the unbundling policy reform of power industry has become a worldwide trend since 1980s there are quite many studies focusing on the efficiency changes of transmission and distribution sectors in european and latin american countries while few reports on china s issues have been found this paper employs a nonparametric frontier estimation combined with meta frontier and bootstrapping method to measure the productive efficiency and changes in the decomposition index for china s 31 grid companies from 2004 to 2013 in addition it further employs tobit regression model to analyze the influences of relevant policies and heterogeneity factors such as natural conditions and economic development the results indicate that the grouping approach extends the application of non parametric data envelopment analysis which may decrease the assumption of homogeneity for the decision making units and provide better efficiency estimates by increasing the credibility of the evaluation results overall productive efficiency increased during the whole study period with technology progress the main contributor to this improvement efficiency trends fluctuated with changes in economic development and power supply situation and the economics and customer density had positive effects on productive efficiency while the influence of clean power proportion is negative

teacher accountability reforms and the supply and quality of new teachers abstract in recent years states have sought to increase accountability for public school teachers by implementing a package of reforms centered on high stakes evaluation systems we examine the effect of these reforms on the supply and quality of new teachers leveraging variation across states and time we find that accountability reforms reduced the number of newly licensed teacher candidates and increased the likelihood of unfilled teaching positions particularly in hard to staff schools evidence also suggests that reforms increased the quality of newly hired teachers by reducing the likelihood new teachers attended unselective undergraduate institutions decreases in job security satisfaction and autonomy are likely mechanisms for these effects

teacher pay and school productivity exploiting wage regulation abstract the impact of teacher pay on school productivity is a central concern for governments worldwide yet evidence is mixed in this paper we exploit a feature of teacher labour markets to determine the impact of teacher wages teacher wages are commonly set in a manner that results in flat wages across heterogeneous labour markets this creates an exogenous gap between the outside labour market and inside regulated wage for teachers we use the centralised wage regulation of teachers in england to examine the effect of pay on school performance we use data on over 3000 schools containing around 200 000 teachers who educate around half a million children per year we find that teachers respond to pay a ten percent shock to the wage gap between local labour market and teacher wages results in an average loss of around 2 in average school performance in the key exams taken at the end of compulsory schooling in england

modeling recreation demand in the presence of unobservable travel costs toward a travel price model an important issue in the application of travel cost models is the construction of a travel cost variable this paper develops an econometric approach that views travel costs as an unobserved latent variable the latent variable approach utilizes indicators to capture the role of individual travel costs in recreational demand models the latent variables approach has at least two advantages over conventional approaches one the indicators can include both traditional components such as time and distance and non traditional components such as the scenic beauty second the estimation procedure results in each indicator being valued in dollar terms

environmental efficiency and abatement cost of china s industrial sectors based on a three stage data envelopment analysis abstract china has gained the reputation of global factory due to its phenomenal industrial growth over the past decades at the same time its industrial energy consumption has resulted in serious environmental problems accordingly there is an urgent and critical need to reduce industrial carbon emissions at a minimum cost without hampering the country s economic development the dual targets for carbon emission intensity and amount from the 12th five year 2011 2015 plan make it necessary to investigate the environmental efficiency and reduction costs of different sectors this study employs a three stage data envelopment analysis model based on a directional distance function approach with radial and non radial slacks of desirable and undesirable outputs considered to measure the environmental efficiency and marginal co2 emission abatement costs of china s 37 two digit industries during 2005 2014 based on the environmental efficiency and abatement cost of the industrial sectors we reached the following conclusions first the adjusted estimates differ significantly from the results that do not consider the influence of environmental factors and it is essential to consider the heterogeneity of industries in proposing emission reduction strategies in addition the stimuli for the smelting and pressing of metal industries result in cost reduction and the supervision on the top nine emitters and the equipment manufacturing industries should be strengthened finally the industrial sectors with large abatement potential are classified into short term and long term key target industries according to the emission abatement cost analyses

sustainability of energy production and use in iran abstract the issue of oil and gas policies in iran is rather complex in the present investigation it is aimed to formulate plans for increasing the capacity of the country s energy production analysis of energy consumption pattern over last decades is indicative of inefficient usage the low energy prices in iran do not reflect economic costs further distortions exist in the tariff structures of most energy sources and in their relative prices it is recognized that price reform is a key policy element for promotion of energy conservation and fuel substitution with renewable energies mitigation policies in the energy sector are crucial to iran s overall policies emission of greenhouse gases can be reduced from 752 156 to 560 791 gg co 2 equivalents in 2010 by implementing the policies proposed for the energy sub sectors enhancing energy efficiency including combined cycle power generation has proved to be the most economic option for greenhouse gases reduction in energy sector iran s energy consumption pattern is unsustainable and consumption oriented

eco efficiency change in power plants using a slacks based measure for the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index abstract malmquist luenberger index is a popular index deployed for evaluating eco efficiency and productivity change over a certain period when both desirable and undesirable factors are jointly produced in some production processes however conventional data envelopment analysis dea models used for computing this index are unable to distinguish the various technologies employed by the decision making units when heterogeneity exists in the technology the meta frontier malmquist luenberger approach is adopted to evaluate eco efficiency and productivity change over a period when undesirable outputs are incorporated in the analysis of efficiency in this paper a new slacks based dea measure is developed and used to compute the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index this approach is then deployed to evaluate 48 iranian thermal power plants productivity change in three different categories steam gas and combined cycle over an eight year period of restructuring in the power industry this technique enables the calculation of eco efficiency change of thermal power plants operating under different technologies as well as the technology gap ratios and measures the extent to which the efficiency frontiers of individual categories of power plants deviate from the meta frontier the results reveal that the last years of the restructuring period saw a greater rate of productivity growth compared to the initial years and evidence of significant eco efficiency improvements over the period in all the three types of the thermal power plants finally it is expected that the findings in this study aid policy makers and power industry regulators in developing sustainable energy policies towards environmental protection and planning power plant operations

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

do public schools hire the best applicants despite a surplus of candidates for most teaching jobs a strong academic record does little for an applicants job prospects this does not appear to result from lukewarm interest on the part of such applicants or choosiness about the positions they accept administrators lack of interest in these candidates may reflect the weakness of competitive pressures in public education policies intended to improve teacher quality need to consider incentives on both the demand and supply sides of the market

an expected profit model for monetizing fishing location choices abstract we develop and analyze the properties of a new type of discrete choice model which jointly estimates the expected value of catch and location choice this model implicitly monetizes location choices and can be used to predict costs and effort redistribution of creating marine protected areas or of implementing other policy changes that either increase travel costs or alter expected revenue we illustrate our approach by considering the closing of the steller sea lion conservation area in the united states bering sea to pollock fishing

eco efficiency analysis of power plants an extension of data envelopment analysis abstract in public discussion on environmental policy the notion of eco efficiency is often used the joint production of goods and undesirable outputs such as pollutants which may not be freely disposable without costs causes difficulties to measure the overall performance of the firm because of the absence of market prices for the undesirable outputs we are not able to estimate the environmental costs some of the measurement and evaluation difficulties can be overcome by employing data envelopment analysis dea as the efficiency measurement vehicle we propose the use of two different approaches in the first approach we start by decomposing the problem into two parts 1 the problem of measuring technical efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the inputs and 2 the problem of measuring so called ecological efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the undesirable outputs separately those two efficiency indicators are then combined in the second approach we treat pollutants as the inputs in the sense that we wish to increase desirable outputs and decrease pollutants and inputs the approaches are applied to the problem of measuring the efficiency of 24 power plants in a european country

dea approach for unified efficiency measurement assessment of japanese fossil fuel power generation this study discusses a new dea data envelopment analysis approach to measure the unified operational and environmental efficiency of energy firms it is widely known that they produce not only desirable good outputs e g electricity but also undesirable bad outputs e g co2 as a result of their plant operations the proposed approach incorporates an output separation desirable and undesirable outputs for the performance evaluation of energy firms in addition to the output separation this study separates inputs into energy and non energy inputs consequently the proposed approach incorporates not only the output separation but also the input separation within a computational framework of dea non radial measurement this study compares the proposed approach with other previous dea approaches used for the performance evaluation of energy firms after the methodological comparison this study applies the proposed approach for measuring the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation this empirical study confirms that the implementation of kyoto protocol 2005 has not been effective on the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation during the observed period 2004 2008 although the empirical result is inconsistent with the current japanese environmental policy under kyoto protocol it contains policy implications for guiding the future direction of japanese environmental policy on the electric power industry

rationed access and welfare case of public resource lotteries pressures on public lands and waterways are resulting increasingly in the rationing of public access by lottery upon accounting for the uncertainties of random rationing discrete choice models lend themselves to analyzing participation in public resource lotteries and estimating welfare changes key to valuing lotteryrationed rights is accounting for changes in access probabilities that result from policy changes the empirical application models the discrete choices of more than 18 000 participants in a new mexico lottery system for elk harvest rights welfare estimates are obtained from simulated policy changes that affect individually and jointly the access probability and indirect utility