modeling economies of scale the case of us electric power companies modeling and validating the existence of technical progress within the neoclassical production function specification has been facilitated through the translog functional form however attempts to separate out the effects of technical progress and returns to scale has been limited this study develops and presents a model for testing the existence of these two separate effects using data from a sample of us electric power companies the analysis found that for these electric utilities there existed increasing returns to scale and technical progress that was energy using but capital neutral however scale effects were found to be a dominant factor in lessening the impact of declining average productivity

sulfur dioxide control by electric utilities what are the gains from trade title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances among electric utilities this market offers firms facing high marginal abatement costs the opportunity to purchase the right to emit so2 from firms with lower costs and this is expected to yield cost savings compared to a command and control approach to environmental regulation this paper uses econometrically estimated marginal abatement cost functions for power plants affected by title iv of the caaa to evaluate the performance of the so2 allowance market specifically we investigate whether the much heralded fall in the cost of abating so2 compared to original estimates can be attributed to allowance trading we demonstrate that for plants that use low sulfur coal to reduce so2 emissions technical change and the fall in prices of low sulfur coal have lowered marginal abatement cost curves by over 50 percent since 1985 the flexibility to take advantage of these chan

solving empirical bioeconomic models a rangeland management application an empirical bioeconomic model was developed for private ranches conducting firewood cattle and hunting enterprises on california s hardwood rangelands hunting forage cattle and oak firewood production functions were derived nonlinear optimal control was used to solve for two state and four control variables to give optimal time pathways for oak density and cattle stocking risk was considered through use of chance constraints rainfall variability and price expectations commercial hunting is shown to be the dominant economic value on these rangelands inclusion of stochastics shifts production away from cattle to less risky firewood and hunting enterprises

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

a caveat on the measurement of productive efficiency abstract the correspondence between used performance measures and enterprise objectives such as profit maximization and cost minimization is fundamental for manufacturing companies this paper identifies and critically examines a minimal set of relevant properties that a productivity index needs to satisfy to rightly assess performance development of a decision making unit commonly applied and suggested productivity measurement techniques such as partial efficiencies total factor productivity tfp index number approaches integrated partial efficiencies and operational competitiveness ratings are analyzed in order to assess the alignment with superior objectives there is a considerable spread in the results of this class of models and the interpretation may prove difficult or misleading as these apparently less complicated productivity measures increasingly are employed as a component in evaluation of manufacturing efficiency the question is of high managerial relevance in particular the paper points out inconsistencies with properties related to commensurability monotonicity and implications of maximizing behavior based on this viewpoint issues such as the consistency with profit maximization will be shown extra interest the paper also provides a critique of previous work in non parametric efficiency analysis where properties have been postulated or based on other arguments the findings suggest that there is no globally superior measurement technique to be found in this class and that care should be taken when evaluating managerial performance not to penalize rational behavior

dynamic data envelopment analysis modeling intertemporal behavior of a firm in the presence of productive inefficiencies abstract this study extends data envelopment analysis dea to a dynamic framework our dynamic dea not only provides a measure of dynamic productive efficiency but can also be used as a nonparametric alternative to the econometric modeling of the intertemporal behavior of a firm

forward curves scarcity and price volatility in oil and natural gas markets the role of inventory in explaining the shape of the forward curve and spot price volatility in commodity markets is central in the theory of storage developed by kaldor kaldor n 1939 speculation and economic stability the review of economic studies 7 1 27 and working working h 1949 the theory of the price of storage american economic review 39 1254 1262 and has since been documented in a vast body of financial literature including the reference paper by fama and french fama e f and k r french 1987 commodity futures prices some evidence on forecast power premiums and the theory of storage journal of business 60 55 73 on metals the goal of this paper is twofold i validate in the case of oil and natural gas the use of the slope of the forward curve as a proxy for inventory the slope being defined in a way that filters out seasonality ii analyze directly for these two major commodities the relationship between inventory and price volatility in agreement with the theory of storage we find that i the negative correlation between price volatility and inventory is globally significant for crude oil ii this negative correlation prevails only during those periods of scarcity when the inventory is below the historical average and increases importantly during the winter periods for natural gas our results are illustrated by the analysis of a 15 year database of us oil and natural gas prices and inventory

on the technical in efficiency of a profit maximum abstract in general production theoretical analysis aims at identifying an enterprise s technically efficient production alternatives according to the principles of economy achieving technical efficiency is considered as a prerequisite for a producer s further optimization behaviour and therefore as a matter of rationality we will show in our article however that it might be economically unfounded to focus only on technically efficient production alternatives using a nonlinear inequality constrained optimization framework we demonstrate that a profit maximizing production may imply technical inefficiency i e in graphical terms depending on the topology of the profit function the optimal input output combination may be located in the interior of the producer s production possibilities set in order to show this we establish mathematical and economic conditions for the profit maximization approach to yield a technically efficient or inefficient solution respectively in fact inefficient solutions emerge when input or output prices are not strictly positive over the entire domain and or the objective function is non monotonic we highlight some non pathological economic situations that are likely to set the stage for technically inefficient profit maxima and provide an example that illustrates how an enterprise can make use of this approach in order to improve profits by choosing technically inefficient production points in spite of those optimal inefficiencies economic environments with positive prices and technical efficiency of the optimum shall remain the normal case

a theory of collective reputations with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality the paper is a first attempt at modelling the idea of group reputation as an aggregate of individual reputations a member s current incentives are affected by his past behaviour and because his track record is observed only with noise by the group s past behaviour as well the paper thus studies the joint dynamics of individual and collective reputations and derives the existence of stereotypes from history dependence rather than from a multiplicity of equilibria or from the existence of a common trait as is usually done in the literature it shows that new members of an organization may suffer from an original sin of their elders long after the latter are gone and it derives necessary and sufficient conditions under which group reputations can be rebuilt last the paper applies the theory to analyse when a large firm can maintain a reputation for quality 1 collective reputations collective reputations play an important role in economics and the social sciences countries ethnic racial or religious groups are known to be hard working honest corrupt hospitable or belligerent some firms enjoy substantial rents from their reputations for producing high quality products some departments are reported to treat their faculty or students fairly the paper is a first attempt at modelling the idea of group reputation as an aggregate of individual reputations a member s current incentives are affected by her past behaviour and because her track record is observed only with noise by the group s past behaviour as well the paper studies the joint dynamics of individual and collective reputations in a model in which current generations are progressively replaced by new ones and derives the existence of stereotypes from history dependence rather than from a multiplicity of equilibria or from the existence of a common trait as is usually done in the literature see section 2 for a detailed comparison with the literature it shows that new members of an organization may suffer from an original sin of their elders long after the latter are gone and it derives necessary and sufficient conditions under which group reputations can be rebuilt last the paper applies the theory to analyse when a large firm can maintain a reputation for quality let us spell out the building blocks of our theory in more detail a a group s reputation is only as good as that of its members each member is characterized by individual traits such as talent diligence or honesty past individual behaviour conveys information about these traits and generates individual reputations

applied cost allocation the dea aumann shapley approach this paper deals with empirical computation of aumann shapley cost shares for joint production we show that if one uses a mathematical programing approach with its non parametric estimation of the cost function there may be observations in the data set for which we have multiple aumann shapley prices we suggest to overcome such problems by using lexicographic goal programing techniques moreover cost allocation based on the cost function is unable to account for differences between efficient and actual cost we suggest to employ the notion of rational inefficiency in order to supply a set of assumptions concerning firm behavior these assumptions enable us to connect inefficient with efficient production and thereby provide consistent ways of allocating the costs arising from inefficiency

a study on the persistence of farrell s efficiency measure under a dynamic framework abstract this article introduces a sequence of four systematic methods to examine the extent to which the economic efficiency of taiwan s commercial banks persists and to uncover the potential dynamic link between bank performance and various financial indicators quasi fixed inputs are explicitly incorporated in the dea model to account for possible adjustment costs regulation or indivisibilities among the four methods the dynamic panel data model and the markov model appear to be exploited for the first time in the area of the dea approach evidence is found that bank efficiency exhibits moderate persistence over the sample period implying that the given sample banks fail to adjust their production techniques in a timely manner regulatory authorities and bank managers are suggested to be aware of the level of undesirable non performing loans due to their close relationship with bank performance

managing local commons theoretical issues in incentive design local commons encompass a wide range of resources whose shared feature is the need for some form of collective management in what follows we shall be concerned mainly with the problems of implementing a collective management plan whatever the mechanisms invoked many recent contributions to the literature have stressed that relatively informal collective management of common property resources can in the right circumstances avoid the severe resource degradation predicted by the tragedy of the commons nevertheless both empirical and theoretical arguments suggest that cooperative behavior may be only partial and the incentives of short term self interest only partially held in check under what circumstances then can more formal implementation mechanisms make good the deficiency and given that formal incentives are typically stronger than informal ones are there any reasons why informal incentives might nevertheless sometimes be preferred

hicks neutrality and trade biased growth a taxonomy abstract notions of input neutral technical change and neutral productivity growth are compared and constrasted three natural conjugate neutrality pairs each corresponding to a notion of input neutral technical change and neutral productivity growth are considered and their structural implications are deduced necessary and sufficient conditions for a technology to satisfy the various neutralities jointly are developed journal of economic literature classification numbers 069 039 049

dynamic efficiency measurement theory and application nonparametric dynamic measures of production efficiency are developed in the context of an adjustment cost technology and intertemporal cost minimization bounds on each efficiency measure are derived for each firm using a nonparametric revealed preference approach long run efficiency measures indicate the relative efficiency of both variable and dynamic factors while short run measures of efficiency indicate whether variable inputs are employed efficiently in the production process the efficiency measures are temporal in nature by describing the degree of efficiency of the firm at a particular point along its adjustment path the empirical implementation is illustrated for a balanced panel of pennsylvania dairy operators during 1986 1992

stochastic rangeland use under capital constraints the stocking density on kazakhstan s extensive rangelands is well below traditional levels to analyze dynamic flock performance we develop a stochastic dynamic programming model for livestock systems with stochastic forage production the model contains continuous five state and 12 control variables allowing improved characterization of the biophysical relationships and economic tradeoffs inherent in such systems most kazakhstan herders have restricted access to capital the model indicates that the cost of capital strongly affects flock size and productivity we conclude that capital constraints are important to explaining the current low stocking density improving capital markets in rural areas warrants policy attention

optimal pest control in greenhouse production of ornamental crops in this study we develop a conceptual bioeconomic model of floriculture production with aesthetic benefits wherein optimal decision rules depend on an intertemporal economic objective to maximize profits subject to economic and biological processes necessary conditions of the model identify optimal trajectories e g simultaneous single or cycling controls that define decision rules and economic thresholds for profit maximizing growers producing crops with aesthetic attributes the necessary conditions also highlight intertemporal trade offs between aesthetic benefits and expected future net benefits of arthropod stocks which have important policy implications the model is applied to the greenhouse production system of ivy geranium

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

common pool resource appropriation under costly cooperation abstract in addition to the usual fixed costs we introduce variable costs in a community s effort to cooperate in extracting from a common pool resource using a standard supervision mechanism these variable costs are shown to be an increasing function of individual members incentives to default the model explains why we frequently observe communities that all cooperate and have relatively similar resource endowments and yet achieve very different levels of extraction

optimal management of game and forage resources in a private fee hunting enterprise the paper formulates a bioeconomic model of a private fee hunting enterprise to examine the optimal management of this agroecological system under a wide range of bioeconomic circumstances an empirical application demonstrates that the economic viability of the enterprise concerning managers and the sustainability of the underlying biological resources concerning public regulators depend critically on the initial endowment of resources and on the existence of publicly mandated or self imposed restrictions on maximum allowable hunting rates perhaps surprising is the implication that in some circumstances regulators may be able to promote resource sustainability by relaxing hunting controls

coping with asymmetries in the commons self governing irrigation systems can work many analysts presume that the appropriators of a common pool resource are trapped in a hobbesian state of nature and cannot themselves create rules to counteract the perverse incentives they face in managing the resource the logical consequence of this view is to recommend that an external authority the government take over the commons but considerable empirical evidence from field and experimental settings holds that appropriators frequently do constitute and enforce their own rules and that these rules work our research agenda is to develop a coherent understanding of the set of conditions that enhance or detract from self organizing capabilities when individuals differ substantially from one another for the sake of concreteness this paper focuses on the asymmetry present in most irrigation systems between those who are physically near the source of water the head enders and those who are physically distant from it the tail enders this paper first explores the interaction between head end and tail end farmers particularly their decisions about whether to devote resources to the upkeep of the irrigation system and how bargaining between the parties can benefit all sides finally we examine empirical evidence from a study of irrigation institutions in nepal and discuss the broader practical significance of our findings

do mergers improve efficiency evidence from restructuring the us electric power sector abstract this paper analyses the performance impact of the merger wave which took place in the us electricity industry during the period 1994 2003 it does so by analyzing the impact on operating and total cost in electricity distribution while there are past studies of efficiency and productivity effects as well as of prices profits and other outcomes this study differs in several ways first the database consists of many merging and non merging firms rather than only a few on which to base inferences second all of these mergers arise in a single industry greatly facilitating controlled comparison third we have data on the several years of pre merger and post merger efficiency of the specific merging units unlike virtually all past studies finally we employ a powerful nonparametric technique data envelopment analysis to measure the efficiency of each operating unit the results indicate that electricity mergers are not consistent with improved cost performance

cooperative equilibria in finite horizon noncooperative supergames abstract it is well known that cooperative outcomes can be supported by noncooperative equilibrium strategy combinations in games that are infinitely repeated however the example of the repeated prisoner s dilemma has led people to conclude that such cooperative outcomes cannot be sustained if the game is repeated finitely often in this paper it is proved that the belief about finitely repeated games is false conditions are given that allow the existence of cooperative outcomes in finitely repeated games that are supported by subgame perfect noncooperative equilibrium strategies

measuring factor adjustment costs i estimate adjustment costs for labor and capital from the euler equations for factor demand for both factors i find relatively strong evidence against substantial adjustment costs my estimates use annual data from two digit industries my results support the view that rents arising from adjustment costs are relatively small and are not an important part of the explanation of the large movements of the values of corporations in relation to the reproduction costs of their capital i investigate the potential effects of three types of specification error 1 aggregation over time 2 aggregation over firms with heterogeneous demand shocks and 3 estimation of a convex adjustment cost technology in the presence of nonconvex discrete adjustment costs i find that the likely biases from these specification errors are relatively small

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

regulating endangered species endangered species timothy swanson one important issue at the earth summit in rio de janeiro was the preservation of diverse biological resources or biodiversity to date the regulation of endangered species has been based on the premise that over exploitation is the principal problem this diagnosis has led to a wide range of attempts to destroy demand for wildlife by means of bans on trade and consumption of the products of endangered species this approach misses the fundamental cause of the problem terrestrial species compete for land land use primarily reflects human decisions about its allocation even over exploitation is the result of human allocation decisions species that are overexploited are those for which society chooses not to invest in their management species that survive are thus those in which humans chose to invest whilst extinction should be interpreted as disinvestment in species or their ancillary resources habitat management trade bans do not address this fundamental cause of extinction the paper sets out how demand should be constructively managed to encourage continuing investment in endangered species

collusive equilibria in oligopolies with finite lives abstract it is generally accepted that collusive agreements cannot be sustained in oligopolies with finite lives in this paper it is shown that provided the number of competitors is neither too small nor too large the most restrictive output i e the monopoly output can be sustained as a perfect nash equilibrium if the number of firms is too small only sequences of the nash equilibria of the constituent market game can appear as perfect nash equilibria if the number of firms is too large the power of the cartel falls sharply

efficiency a dynamic approach abstract most firms work with a technology less efficient than the best available in a dynamic context this is perfectly rational since it is uneconomical to scrap old capital equipment as soon as a new and better model appears in the market in a dynamic context we would expect a difference between the observable technology of a firm and the technological frontier a sort of rational inefficiency in this paper we construct an equilibrium growth model that allows us to calculate the size of this particular inefficiency and we discuss how it relates to the efficiency measures in the widely used farell model

on the uniqueness of equilibrium in cournot oligopoly and other games abstract in an average surplus sharing game such as a cournot oligopoly a group of agents share a production process each contributes an amount of input to the process and output is divided in proportion to the amount of input contributed uniqueness of the equilibrium is needed for any type of comparative static analysis however general uniqueness results for concave games have restrictive assumptions on preferences and technology specifically the conditions needed for uniqueness become more difficult to meet as the number of players increases a new theorem for uniqueness with easily interpretable conditions is given which is independent of the number of players journal of economic literature classification numbers c70 c72 d43

common property and collective action in economic development abstract a fundamental issue in many ldcs is the degree to which natural resource mismanagement is caused by common property arrangements this view has led to widespread attempts to privatize forests rangelands and water resources many of these efforts have failed to stop overuse and have contributed to inequality in resource distribution this paper seriously questions this approach and describes a number of reasons why common property may continue to be both efficient and equitable complementing and combining with private rights in a way consistent with the resource endowments of village economies a theoretical approach is outlined showing that the tragedy of the commons is an unsatisfactory model of common property an alternative model is presented together with a call for research into institutional alternatives in resource management

multi output efficiency with good and bad outputs abstract cherchye de rock dierynck roodhooft and sabbe 2013 introduced a dea methodology that is specially tailored for multi output efficiency measurement the methodology accounts for jointly used inputs and incorporates information on how inputs are allocated to outputs in this paper we present extensions that render the methodology useful to deal with undesirable or bad outputs in addition to desirable or good outputs interestingly these extensions deal in a natural way with several limitations of existing dea approaches to treat undesirable outputs we also demonstrate the practical usefulness of our methodological extensions through an application to us electric utilities

regulation efficiency and granger causality abstract this paper examines whether financial performance granger causes productive efficiency improvements in current period financial performance provide firms with funds to initiate changes that can enhance future period efficiency and profits returns to equity and the rate base are used as measures of financial performance data envelopment analysis is used to compute regulated farrell measures of cost technical and allocative efficiency the data sample is a panel of 20 us interstate natural gas pipeline companies from 1977 to 1987 results indicate that improvements in financial performance productive efficiency did not statistically contribute to enhancing productive efficiency financial performance

a dynamic efficiency model using data envelopment analysis abstract changes in productivity due to technological progress or regress are incorporated in models of data envelopment analysis dea in two ways either through a network technology or in terms of a capacity variable or capital input embodying technical progress the second way is analyzed here in terms of time varying capital inputs due to the changes in input prices over time this provides an optimal control theoretic view of the time path of capital inputs which minimizes a discounted sum of total input costs for each dmu the cost of risk aversion and the adjustment cost of input price fluctuations may then be minimized in an extended dea model framework these extensions of the dea model are analyzed here and illustrated by an empirical application to international airlines data

the competitive externalities and the optimal seignorage this study analyzes the inflation tax in an economy with several competing decisionmakers who can effectively print more money via the central bank the author derives the sequential rational expectation equilibrium and shows that the presence of competing decisionmakers increases the inflation rate and may put the economy on the wrong side of the inflation tax laffer curve the analysis is interpreted for a country consisting of several states or provinces where the centralized government system is weak similar results apply to the case of competing ministers in an economy where the central bank is weak copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

symmetric tragedies commons and anticommons an anticommons problem arises when there exist multiple rights to exclude in a lengthy law review paper michael a heller has examined the tragedy of the anticommons especially in regard to disappointing experiences with efforts to shift from socialist to market institutions in russia in an early footnote heller suggests that a formal economic model of the anticommons has not been developed this paper responds to heller s challenge we analyze the anticommons problem in which resources are inefficiently underutilized rather than overutilized as in the familiar commons setting the two problems are shown to be symmetrical in several respects we present an algebraic and geometric illustration and extend the discussion to several applications of greater importance we suggest that the construction is helpful in understanding the sources of major value wastage in modern regulatory bureaucracy the navigation of the danube is of very little use to the different states of bavaria austria and hungary in comparison of what it would be if any of them possessed the whole of its course till it falls into the black sea adam smith the wealth of nations 1776 bk 1 ch 3

rational inefficiency adjustment costs and sequential technologies abstract in this paper we propose a novel approach to estimate the rational inefficiency of decision making units in the presence of adjustment costs using sequential definitions of the production technology we show how cost inefficiency can be decomposed into rational and residual inefficiency as well as inefficiency caused by technical change furthermore we estimate lower bounds for the unobserved adjustment costs based on unexploited cost reductions due to rational inefficiency these adjustment costs are used to evaluate the feasibility of exploiting cost reductions caused by residual inefficiency we demonstrate the empirical applicability of our model by estimating and decomposing the cost inefficiency of u s coal fired power plants using panel data which cover the period between 1994 and 2009

a theory of debt and equity diversity of securities and manager shareholder congruence this paper shows how the optimal financial structure of a firm complements incentive schemes to discipline managers and how the securities return streams determine the claim holders incentives to intervene in management the theory rationalizes 1 the multipucity of securities 2 the observed correlation between return streams and control rights of securities and 3 the partial congruence between managerial and equity holder preferences over policy choices and monetary rewards as well as the low level of interference of equity in management the theory also offers new prospects for a reappraisal of the earlier corporate finance literature

majoritarian management of the commons yong j yoon this article analyzes usage of a common property resource the commons under collectivization as compared with more familiar privatization institutional arrangements particular emphasis is on majority decision rules when separate majority coalitions may authorize simultaneous usage of a common resource total value is dissipated but the interdependencies introduced by possible membership in differing coalitions to an extent reduce the incentives for exploitation the formal analysis is analogous to that familiar in cournot nash duopoly oligopoly models but with differing efficiency implications the argument has relevance for differential benefit public spending from general tax sources as well as other applications jel d7 h00 02 i introduction the operation and management of common property resources the commons have been exhaustively examined in economics and political science both in formal analyses and in practical application 1 however the full range of institutional alternatives has not been covered even at a level of stylized interaction models our purpose in this article is to fill in at least some of the gaps here and specifically to examine the predicted results that emerge when usage decisions are collectivized under majoritarian voting rules to our knowledge this analysis has not been undertaken we shall in section ii first summarize the classic analysis along with the familiar institutional reform suggested as a solution to the tragedy this solution privatization is analyzed under several institutional variants in section iii we then shift attention in section iv to arrangements under which usage of the commonly shared resource or facility is chosen by some predesignated collective decision rule specifically we concentrate analysis on the predicted results in several majority rule environments we analyze thoroughly the case in which different majority coalitions make usage decisions separately and simultaneously the analysis incorporates recognition on the part of any member of a specific majority of the prospect for membership in alternative majority coalitions we demonstrate that instead of full dissipation the level of usage that emerges in the limit is structurally analogous to the outcome in the cournot nash duopoly model even if the efficiency implications differ in the two settings ii the classic model summarized the familiar tragedy of the commons lends itself to stylized illustration an immobile but renewable resource exists a common pasture aquifer fishing ground and has economic value if used effectively through the application of units of complementary mobile resources that are themselves valued in their alternative market opportunities there are no assigned ownership rights to the immobile resource or facility free and open access may dissipate most or even all of the potential value consider figure 1 the productivity of mobile complementary resource units as applied elsewhere in the economy e g steers grazed on the open range beyond the commons is set at w a value assumed constant the quantity of such inputs applied on the commonly used facility is measured along the abscissa in figure 1 the marginal and average productivity curves for the units of applied complementary resource are shown as mp and ap total value is maximized when q sub m units are applied at which point marginal product values are equalized as between this usage and other opportunities the maximal value of the commonly used resource is the area under the mp curve above w if entry to usage is open and if the institutional structure is such as to allow for decentralized decisions on the part of many potential users rational choices made separately will generate a full behavioral equilibrium at q sup where average product per unit of the complementary resource is equalized as between the commons and other uses

growth and convergence of the oecd countries a multi sector production frontier approach abstract kumar and russell 2002 henderson and russell 2005 and badunenko henderson and russell 2013 have proposed a production frontier methodology to analyze the economic growth and the convergence of growth rates across countries they see two main advantages to this methodology 1 it reconstructs the world production frontier without relying on any particular typically unverifiable assumptions on any aspects of the growth process and 2 it allows to decompose labor productivity growth into several parts in this paper i extend the previous approach by considering a multi sector setting this setting allows to propose a more realistic and complete country level analysis while keeping the same advantages as with the previous methodology i also tackle the criticism of less reliable data at the sector level than at the country level by showing how the multi sector approach can easily be adapted i apply it to the oecd countries from 1995 to 2008 the results confirm the non neutrality of technological change i also find that capital accumulation plays the biggest role in the increase of output labor productivity while technological change and human capital accumulation also play an important role but it is twice as small as capital accumulation interestingly these results suggest the emergence of two groups eastern and central european countries and the eu15 and korea the two groups seem to diverge over time

the efficiency of conventional fuel power plants in south korea a comparison of parametric and non parametric approaches abstract the efficiencies of the 64 conventional fuel power plants operating in south korea were determined by data envelopment analysis dea approaches as well as by a stochastic frontier method the banker charnes and cooper bcc dea efficiencies were introduced into an econometric estimate of a standard production function model leading to a corrected factors version of the model with significant improvement of the statistical explanation of our data a statistical analysis of the dea efficiencies was carried out and these were compared to efficiencies revealed by a stochastic frontier method