the internal market and hospital efficiency a stochastic distance function approach the uk internal market was one of the first european attempts to introduce a competitive mechanism in the provision of hospital services the assumption was that competition would have led hospitals to increase efficiency in the use of their resources the aim of this paper is to analyse the effectiveness of this kind of reform by measuring the changes in technical efficiency of a panel of 52 acute scottish hospitals observed from 1991 92 to 1996 97 the time period covers the whole duration of the internal market and the sample contains a different mix of both trusts and non trusts where the former embed the proper working of the reform the selected model is a stochastic output distance function that includes an interaction dummy variable to allow for parameters to change over time the results show a structural break after which hospitals change not only the way in which they provide their services but also the kind of services they provide favouring the quicker treatment of patients on a day basis

productivity gains from rice genetic enhancements in west africa countries and ecologies abstract many critics claim that public research in west africa has failed to develop technological innovations to improve productivity and stimulate economic development in the agricultural sector using griliches method of estimating the impact of a research induced supply shift this study finds that rice varietal improvement generated a producer surplus gain of approximately us 360 million in 1998 in the seven most important rice producing countries of west africa eighty one percent of this gain has occurred in the irrigated and rainfed lowland ecologies which occupy just 12 and 35 of total regional rice area respectively by contrast approximately us 5 6 million is invested annually in regional varietal improvement research

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

ten years of jibs at rutgers graduate school of management with the winter 1984 issue of jibs rutgers graduate school of management completes 2 terms or 10 years of publication of jibs this has been a challenging but rewarding experience for me and my staff at rutgers we take pride in the progress we have achieved after starting with meager and inadequate resources to make the journal of international business studies the outstanding refereed professional journal in the field this achievement was possible only through the dedicated efforts and cooperation of several score of individuals more than we can mention in this note including our small staff members of the editorial board section and other editors other reviewers many officers of the academy of international business authors who submitted manuscripts and various scholars who advised us on the editorial policies and thrust of the journal

incorporating contextual information in public sector efficiency analyses a comparative study of nsw local government using the planning and regulatory function of 173 nsw local governments several approaches for incorporating contextual or non discretionary inputs in data envelopment analysis dea are compared non discretionary inputs or factors beyond managerial control in this context include the population growth rate and distribution the level of development and non residential building activity and the proportion of the population from a non english speaking background the approaches selected to incorporate these variables include discretionary inputs only non discretionary and discretionary inputs treated alike and differently categorical inputs adjusted dea and endogenous dea the results indicate that the efficiency scores of the five approaches that incorporated non discretionary factors were significantly positively correlated however it was also established that the distributions of the efficiency scores and the number of councils assessed as perfectly technically efficient in the six approa

poverty productivity and production environment a review of the evidence abstract this paper reviews the state of knowledge about the key issues needing to be understood to satisfactorily resolve a long standing debate within the consultative group for international agricultural research cgiar system the debate revolves around the effects on various populations particularly the poor of different allocations of research effort between marginal and favoured production environments this paper specifically focuses on what is known about the geographical distribution of the rural poor across agro ecological zones and over time variations in the income generating activities including non agricultural activities engaged in by the poor are examined and the ways in which specific technology packages affect the economic well being of different types of households both directly and indirectly

x efficiency and scale economies in policing a comparative study using the distribution free approach and dea this study uses both parametric and nonparametric techniques to analyse scale economies and relative efficiency levels in policing in england and wales both techniques suggest the presence of significant scale effects in policing and considerable divergence in relative efficiency levels across police forces

measuring hospital performance a non parametric approach abstract in this paper a technique for assessing the relative performance of firms is introduced and applied to a sample of hospitals in california hospitals are compared on the basis of their relative technical efficiency the reference technology is constructed from observed outputs and inputs including physicians using programming techniques and efficiency is assessed relative to the frontier of the technology using measures similar to those suggested by farrell the technique used here imposes no prespecified functional form allows for multiple outputs and inputs allowing for differences in case mix and yields information on the productive performance of individual hospitals this technique can also be used to determine whether different types of hospitals use different technologies our results although illustrative rather than definitive suggest that ownership affects efficiency as measured here public and nfp hospitals have different best practice frontiers and public hospitals appear to use relatively fewer resources these results could reflect differences in quality of care by ownership

efficiency analysis for exogenously fixed inputs and outputs we evaluate by means of mathematical programming formulations the relative technical and scale efficiencies of decision making units dmus when some of the inputs or outputs are exogenously fixed and beyond the discretionary control of dmu managers this approach further develops the work on efficiency evaluation and on estimation of efficient production frontiers known as data envelopment analysis dea we also employ the model to provide efficient input and output targets for dmu managers in a way that specifically accounts for the fixed nature of some of the inputs or outputs we illustrate the approach using real data for a network of fast food restaurants

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

economies of scale and input substitution in public libraries abstract a translog cost function is applied to 1988 data for 194 indiana public libraries to measure economies of scale and input substitution elasticities book circulation measures library output and costs include noncapital expenditures scale economies exist for libraries with circulations up to 55 000 per year larger libraries exhibit constant returns to scale labor books and supplies services are all substitutes with inelastic own price and cross price elasticities

computer use and productivity growth in us federal government agencies 1987 92 we examine the impact of information technology it on productivity in the public sector econometrically using data from the bls federal productivity measurement program and from computer intelligence infocorp and by interviewing some government officials we estimate a production function for government services that includes it capital as an input and find a strong positive relationship across federal agencies between productivity growth and computer intensity growth during the period 1987 92 controlling for growth in compensation and other outlays per employee and in the number of employees our estimates are consistent with the hypothesis that there are excess returns to it capital

value for money german local government efficiency in a comparative perspective in this article we investigate the cost efficiency of german local governments in the state of baden wurttemberg in 2004 using a stochastic frontier approach besides being the first study on german data we add two elements to the literature first we provide a comparative perspective allowing us to embed our results in the broader literature second unlike most previous studies we explicitly account for exogenous or nondiscretionary influences when estimating municipal efficiency scores the results suggest that disregarding such exogenous factors can lead to significant and systematic bias in the estimated inefficiency levels particularly underestimation of efficiency occurs for municipalities with high tourist activity while the reverse is true for municipalities with high unemployment

local resource reallocation considering practical feasibility a centralized data envelopment analysis approach abstractmany studies have addressed resource allocation issues by using centralized data envelopment analysis models however few of them provided a local resource reallocation plan which may be carried out more easily this article proposes two models to get such plans the first one considers an acceptable percentage of changes in resources to ensure practical feasibility the second one further considers a situation where resources can only be allowed to shift within specific units the proposed models are applied to an empirical study based on a hospital system in taiwan to demonstrate the practical feasibility of the suggested plans we compare our reallocation suggestions to a plan that can make the whole system be perfectly efficient the main conclusion is that the plans derived from our models are more practically feasible than that with perfect efficiency

explaining differences in efficiency a meta study on local government literature this paper reviews the literature on local government efficiency by meta reviewing 360 observations retrieved from 54 papers published from 1993 to 2016 the meta regression is based on a random effect model estimated with the 2 step random effects maximum likelihood reml technique proposed by gallet and doucouliagos 2014 results indicate that the study design matters when estimating a frontier in local government we find that studies focusing on technical efficiency provide higher efficiency scores than works evaluating cost efficiency the same applies when using panel data instead of cross section data interestingly studies that use the free disposal hull fdh approach yield on average higher efficiency scores than papers employing the data envelopment analysis dea method thereby suggesting that in this literature the convexity hypothesis of the production set is a matter finally the efficiency of local government increases with the level of development of the analysed countries and is positively related to the national integrity of the legal system the opposite holds when considering the corruption

the econometrics of damage control why specification matters the contribution of damage control agents to production differs fundamentally from that of standard inputs lands labor capital this paper develops an econometric model based on the key characteristics of damage control agents and examines its properties it demonstrates that standard production function specifications overestimate damage control agent productivity and have erroneous implications for the evolution of damage control agent productivity and use in response to changing environments e g the spread of pest resistance it also proposes several alternative specifications and discusses methods for estimating them

a household hedonic model of rice traits economic values from farmers in west africa abstract new crop varieties often have been promoted in developing countries based upon superior yield vis a vis locally available varieties this research presents a hedonic price model for upland rice by drawing upon the input characteristics and consumer good characteristics model literature model specification tests determine that a combination of production and consumption characteristics best explains the willingness to pay for new upland rice varieties the household model specification determined that five traits explain the willingness to pay for new rice varieties plant cycle length plant height grain colour elongation swelling and tenderness yield was not a significant explanatory variable of the willingness to pay for seed the implications of this model are two fold first varietal development and promotion must include post harvest characteristics in addition to production traits when determining which varieties to promote for official release secondly non yield production characteristics such as plant height and cycle length are significant factors in producer s assessments of the value of a new variety overall this paper provides an alternative explanation for limited adoption of modern upland rice varieties in west africa varietal evaluation programs have focused too narrowly on yield evaluation and have not promoted varieties with superior non yield characteristics than locally available varieties

an economic analysis of soybean integrated pest management the type of pest management strategy a farmer chooses is influenced by the amount of risk associated with alternative strategies this paper examines the attractiveness of alternative pest management strategies used on a representative virginia soybean farm probability distributions of net revenue associated with alternative pest control options are simulated and then compared using generalized stochastic dominance criteria results suggest risk averse and in some cases risk preferring farmers would prefer strategies which incorporate an integrated pest management approach to pest control rather than one which relies completely on chemical pest control

the efficiency of the spanish police service an application of the multiactivity dea model in this paper the efficiency of the spanish police service is analysed using data envelopment analysis dea the analysis concentrates on the police activities related to the solving of crimes the theoretical and empirical study of the police production function under this dimension leads to a consideration of the units analysed as centres which carry out their activities with nonidentical technologies and using common inputs accordingly the multiactivity dea model developed by mar molinero journal of the operational research society 47 1996 1273 9 is applied one that is designed to estimate the efficiency of institutions which face several production functions using shared inputs the results demonstrate the important differences that exist between the centres with respect to the distinct activities analysed both as regards the efficiency rates and the factors which determine them

competition and productivity growth the case of the u s telephone industry i introduction there are few empirical studies on the relative performance of firms in competitive and monopolistic markets this contrasts with the large body of literature that compares the performance of privately owned and governmental firms one reason for the scarcity of studies of the former type is that competitive and monopolistic firms rarely coexist in the same industry and country 1 this makes it difficult to distinguish between industry and market structure effects on the other hand relying on intercountry comparisons as for example caves christensen and swanson 1981 do for u s and canadian railroads renders the analysis potentially sensitive to country effects the telephone industry in the united states offers one of the best opportunities for empirical analysis of the consequences of competition and monopoly some new entry in the long distance telephone market was allowed by the early 1960s while entry and competition in the local telephone market had yet to materialize by the beginning of the 1990s hence it is appropriate to focus on differences in performance between at t long lines and the regional monopolies 2 since there may be differences in initial conditions between the local service and long distance markets comparisons of performance should control for such differences both markets however clearly employ very similar technology this holding other relevant conditions constant should lead to similar changes in productivity to sharpen the analysis we focus on differences in the annual rate of productivity growth and not the level while local exchange carriers lecs still largely maintain their monopolistic position rapid technological advance in telecommunications is changing the established market structure in the local telephone industry the recent u s telecommunications act of 1996 was aimed at eliminating legal barriers that have suppressed technically feasible local competition certainly some competition in local telephone markets is under way is such competition socially justified and an appropriate objective of public policy the effect of competition on productivity growth holds at least part of the answer we need to know whether competitive markets are likely to raise efficiency in assessing how much effort should go into reducing entry barriers and increasing competition in the local telephone markets still another policy issue on which our study has a bearing is the relation of firm scale to costs for example in the context of recent mergers of regional telecommunication companies are reductions in costs and increases in productivity a plausible expectation competitive effects in the telephone industry have been examined mainly through aggregate time series data thus oum 1990 using chessler s competition index for long distance service concludes there have been positive effects of competition on productivity whereas crandall 1991 using a time dummy finds the results inconclusive 3 at the firm level denny fuss and waverman 1981 and kiss 1983 decompose total factor productivity tfp growth for bell canada through estimated cost functions nadiri and prucha 1989 measure productivity growth for the u s bell system with several alternative cost models but none of these careful firm level studies focuses on competitive effects ying and shin 1993 on the other hand do examine the spillover effect of the at t divestiture on cost saving by the regional companies their interesting study which shows positive spillover effects does not however permit strong conclusions because of the shortness of the period examined 1976 87 ii the state of competition in the u s telephone industry before the divestiture of at t the u s telephone industry consisted of several vertically integrated common carriers at t accounted for about 80 of industry revenues through a group of 22 operating companies plus the at t long lines

redistribution of social benefits from advances in extension and research in the tanzanian maize industry abstract this study determined consumer and producer welfare gains from advances in extension and research in the maize industry of tanzania to determine how a national taxing schedule should be determined it was found that for an off farm marketable surplus of 40 consumers and producers gain equally while for an off farm marketable surplus of 60 consumers realize 75 of the welfare benefits this suggests that consumers and producers should share equally in a revenue generating tax for funding maize research and extension programs however for large producers with a marketable surplus of 60 or more their tax should decrease proportionally to the amount sold alternatively if taxed equally large scale producers should receive some form of compensation through direct government payments

letter from the editor in chief exit stage left contains six articles and two research notes several of the papers offer new insights on research methods and metrics in international business ib studies beugelsdijk hennart slangen and smeets demonstrate and explain why fdi stocks are a biased measure of mne affiliate activity a new metric to measuring crossborder distance is proposed by berry guillen and zhou jensen li and rahman critique the proxies developed from cross national firm level surveys of corruption how political connections can create problems for the accuracy of analysts forecasts in countries varying in their levels of public corruption is examined by chen ding and kim blomkvist kappen and zander explore the innovation creating role played by foreign subsidiaries within the multinational s network li and li use real options theory to explore the tradeoffs between flexibility and commitment in mode of entry strategies the issue concludes with two research notes gao and pan examine the dynamic process of sequential entries ellis wraps up the issue by returning to the general theme of research methods and metrics in ib reseach with an analysis of the importance of effect sizes and a call for authors to evaluate the substantive as well as the statistical significance of their ib research

income distribution effects of the green revolution in india a review of empirical evidence abstract this paper examines the impact of the green revolution on selected dimensions of income distribution in india by reviewing the indian empirical evidence i the indian empirical studies suggest a wide diffusion of modern varieties mvs among farmers over time irrespective of farm size and tenurial status but the pace of diffusion of mvs of a given crop among farms across the regions and over the years has certainly revealed a tendency to be interlinked with the nature and level of their regions development in physical and institutional infrastructure ii through prospects of increased demand for labour the green revolution has undoubtedly exerted a favourable impact on the absolute income status of the landless labourer notwithstanding the fact that the owners of land and capital have gained relatively more than the labourers in the increased production due to mvs iii the impact of mvs on regional income differences has been one of increasing the gap mainly due to an interplay between differentials in levels of physical and infrastructural development of regions and product location specificity characteristics of mvs

technical change in senegal s irrigated rice sector impact assessment under uncertainty abstract this paper addresses the prospects for technical change in the irrigated rice sector of senegal and measures ex ante the economic returns to recent research efforts in 1994 three new rice varieties were released to farmers in the senegal river valley srv the major irrigated rice region in senegal the productivity advantage of the new varieties is based primarily on early maturity which permits double cropping the seeds are also higher yielding than existing cultivars we use a conventional akino and hayami 1975 am j agric econ 57 1 10 partial equilibrium model adapted to the senegalese situation to assess the social benefits of research and compare those to its costs in calculating the internal rate of return irr to account for uncertainty regarding the future values of model variables we use simulation which allows us to generate a distribution of all possible outcomes of the irr we find that rice research is almost certain to have a very high payoff over the 1995 2004 period the expected value of the irr is calculated to be 121 per year with a 97 5 probability that it lies above annual capital costs of 18

estimating the benefits of plant breeding research methodological issues and practical challenges impact assessment studies consistently show that the benefits generated by plant breeding are large positive and widely distributed numerous case studies have concluded that investment in plant breeding research generates attractive rates of return compared to alternative investment opportunities that welfare gains resulting from the adoption of modern varieties mvs reach both favoured and marginal environments and that benefits are broadly shared by producers and consumers but just how reliable are the results of studies that estimate the benefits of plant breeding research this article reviews methods used to estimate the benefits of plant breeding research and discusses theoretical and empirical issues that often receive inadequate attention in applied impact assessment work our objective is not to question the validity of the theoretical frameworks commonly used to estimate the benefits of plant breeding research but rather to examine problems that can arise when the widely accepted theoretical frameworks are used for empirical analysis most of these problems can be grouped into three basic categories 1 problems associated with measuring adoption and diffusion of mvs 2 problems associated with estimating benefits attributable to adoption of mvs and 3 problems associated with assigning credit among the various plant breeding programmes that participated in developing the mvs

fifty years of methodological trends in jibs why future ib research needs more triangulation we analyze methodological trends in empirical research in jibs from 1970 2019 our results point to the prevalence of the following patterns there has been an increase in the use of 1 large scale longitudinal cross national datasets 2 complex analytical techniques including the incorporation of multiple analytical techniques within the same study but 3 a decline in the diversity of methods in use we relate these trends to the underlying social technical and communicative conventions in the journal during the 50 year period the observed patterns are consistent with theory that posits scientific fields entrench a dominant paradigm over time resulting in a restricted set of methodological options being selected such restrictions jeopardize the quality of research because the study of any phenomenon requires the use of multiple methodological procedures to avoid the systematic biases errors omissions and limitations introduced by any single option therefore we propose the use of triangulation as a strategy for building methodological alternatives into research designs institutionalization of this principle in the field of international business has the potential to enhance both the rigor and scope of inquiry of future research

cross country comparisons of technical efficiency of health production a demonstration of pitfalls it has been proposed that cross country comparisons of the technical efficiency of health production estimated using data envelopment analysis dea have useful applications for policy makers in theory such an analysis utilizes measures of the socioeconomic determinants of health relevant to all social policy not just health policy using oecd and who data this article critically analyses a number of outstanding theoretical questions regarding the use of dea in this setting it concludes that until such questions are addressed the resultant implications for policy will be based on misleading information

efficiency measures and productivity indexes in the context of university library benchmarking data envelopment analysis dea has attracted considerable attention during the last few decades as an intuitively clear method for performance assessment theoretical developments have taken turns with empirical efficiency studies in this paper we empirically analyse performance differences across university libraries from different countries from a cross section and a longitudinal perspective we use the malmquist index approach to disentangle environmental efficiency from technical efficiency te to highlight performance differences eventually induced by environmental factors beyond the control of library management as well as to decompose productivity changes over time into changes in te and changes in technology in our cross section analysis we found that north american na libraries are more productive at higher input levels than the european libraries from germany and austria at which we looked in this contribution moreover the largest na libraries are still able to improve performance as t

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

paradox lost firm level evidence on the returns to information systems spending the productivity paradox of information systems is is that despite enormous improvements in the underlying technology the benefits of is spending have not been found in aggregate output statistics one explanation is that is spending may lead to increases in product quality or variety which tend to be overlooked in the aggregate statistics even if they increase output at the firm level furthermore the restructuring and cost cutting that are often necessary to realize the potential benefits of is have only recently been undertaken in many firms our study uses new firm level data on several components of is spending for 1987 1991 the dataset includes 367 large firms which generated approximately 1 8 trillion dollars in output in 1991 we supplemented the is data with data on other inputs output and price deflators from other sources as a result we could assess several econometric models of the contribution of is to firm level productivity our results indicate that is spending has made a substantial and statistically significant contribution to firm output we find that the gross marginal product mp for computer capital averaged 81 for the firms in our sample we find that the mp for computer capital is at least as large as the marginal product of other types of capital investment and that dollar for dollar is labor spending generates at least as much output as spending on non is labor and expenses because the models we applied were similar to those that have been previously used to assess the contribution of is and other factors of production we attribute the different results to the fact that our data set is more current and larger than others explored we conclude that the productivity paradox disappeared by 1991 at least in our sample of firms

did the green revolution concentrate incomes a quantitative study of research reports abstract a review of more than 300 studies on the green revolution published during 1970 1989 shows that about 80 of those studies which had conclusions on the distributional effects of the new technology found that inequality increased both interfarm and interregional this evidence diverges from the position of action agencies which support and participate in this technological strategy toward agricultural and rural development an evaluation of the studies using their results as data for a statistical analysis reveals that the authors conclusions on the question of whether income concentration increased depended on such structural and methodological characteristics as the regional origin of authors location of the study area methodology followed and the geographic extension of the study area for example studies done by western developed country authors those employing an essay approach and those looking at a multicountry region are most likely to conclude that income inequalities increased by contrast work done by asian origin authors with study areas located in india or the philippines and using the case method are more likely to conclude that increasing inequality is not associated with the new technology

the economic and poverty impacts of maize research in west and central africa this article assembles the results of three multicountry surveys on variety performance and adoption patterns to measure the impacts of maize research in west and central africa from 1981 to 2005 and uses cost data since 1971 to compute social rates of return on public investments in maize research in the region adoption of modern varieties increased from less than 5 of the maize area in the 1970s to about 60 in 2005 yielding an aggregate rate of return on research and development r d investment of 43 the estimated number of people moved out of poverty through adoption of new maize varieties rose gradually in the 1980s to more than one million people per year since the mid 1990s over half of these impacts can be attributed to international maize research at iita and cimmyt the article concludes with a discussion of strategic options to enhance the impacts of maize research in the region

impacts of food crop improvement research evidence from sub saharan africa abstract the paper reviews and summarizes evidences of impacts of crop improvement research of major food crops in africa it provides evidence of increased availability of improved varieties of major food crops to farmers in africa increased food production in regions where adoption has occurred and positive returns to research investment indicating that agricultural research in africa has had productivity increasing impacts on its agriculture however research impacts vary considerably across countries and regions within a country as a result of agroclimatic factors and policy environment which affects the supply of seeds and other inputs and the continuity and stability of research investments the paper points to a number of important issues both internal and external to the agricultural research system organization that need to be addressed if agricultural research is to provide a stimulus for modernizing african agriculture given the small size of food crop production area in many african countries it is important for research systems to take full advantage of research spill ins from regional and international research organizations there is a great potential to increase the efficiency of research systems by improving the coordination among members of national research systems and continuing improvements in collaborations between narss and regional and international organizations

nursing home care in the netherlands a nonparametric efficiency analysis abstract this paper analyzes the technical efficiency of dutch nursing homes with respect to the use of labor inputs by means of data envelopment analysis dea in addition the determinants of the efficiency scores are investigated using censored regression analysis special attention is paid to checking the robustness of the results to using different versions of dea and to the econometric specification of the censored regression models fifty percent of the nursing homes are fully efficient according to the theoretically preferred frontier with constant or decreasing returns to scale there is some evidence of a trade off between labor input efficiency and the quality of care

rising trends and variability of rice prices threats and opportunities for sub saharan africa abstract nearly 40 of the rice consumed in africa is imported that is about one third of all rice traded in world markets with such high dependence on imports africa is highly exposed to international market shocks with sometimes grave consequences for its food security and political stability as attested by events during the 2008 food crisis in this paper it is argued that africa can turn the rising trends in world markets to a historical opportunity to realize its large potential for rice production after a review of the policy responses of african countries to the 2008 global rice crisis the opportunities and challenges for enhancing domestic rice supply are discussed the competitiveness of rice production in africa is analyzed for selected countries and rice ecologies the potential for increasing paddy production is illustrated using a spreadsheet simulation that considers alternative rice sector development scenarios reducing the yield gap and expanding cultivated rice areas under lowland and irrigated hold the greatest potential for substantially increasing paddy production in africa

measuring performance in primary care econometric analysis and dea we use data from the health service indicators database to compare different methods of measuring the performance of english family health services authorities fhsas in providing primary care a variety of regression and data envelopment analysis methods are compared as summary efficiency measures of individual fhsa performance the correlation of the rankings of fhsas across dea and regression methods across two years of data and across three different specifications of the technology of primary care are examined efficiency scores are highly correlated within variants of the two methods and across years for a given method inter method correlations are smaller and correlations across different specifications of the primary care production process are negligible and sometime negative

economic returns to crop management research in a post green revolution setting returns to research studies have neglected research on crop management cmr which may account for half of all crop research because cmr enhances the efficiency of input use returns to cmr are hypothesized to increase in settings characterized by high input levels and high yields a method is developed to estimate returns to cmr and this method is applied to wheat research in a post green revolution setting in northwest mexico the results suggest that returns to cmr are positive over a range of model assumptions

information technology efficiency and productivity evidence from korean local governments this study evaluates the performance of korean local government by measuring their technical efficiency te and total factor productivity tfp growth and more importantly examining the impact of information technology it on this performance the study is different from received analysis in that a unique measure of the state of it the informatization index is used to investigate the impact of it on both te and tfp growth empirical analyses are conducted on data from 222 korean local governments for the period 1999 to 2001 in particular data envelopment analysis techniques are applied to calculate te scores and tfp growth rates for sampled local governments the empirical findings confirm the positive impact it has in improving technical efficiency and accelerating productivity growth the estimated coefficients are correctly signed with other regional characteristics controlled for when te scores and tfp growth rates are regressed on the index in addition the findings indicate that economies o

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

measuring production efficiency of acute hospitals in scotland 1991 94 validity issues in data envelopment analysis data envelopment analysis is a potentially useful technique for measuring production efficiency and is being increasingly applied to health care services as with other areas however some fundamental concerns need to be addressed before data envelopment analysis can be accepted widely as a routine tool these include issues of validity and specification error this paper suggests a broad framework for assessing validity which should be developed further and gives illustrative examples of the problems in a real application within health care data from 75 scottish acute hospitals for three years from 1991 94 are analysed internal validity is assessed by examining the effect on the results obtained of the choice of inputs and outputs selected for analysis external validity is assessed by examining differences in the results obtained from the data for each of the three years in both cases it is concluded that there is a disturbing lack of concordance between the different results obtained caution mu

modernization of a peasant crop in colombia evidence and implications abstract the survival of the small farm sector in the process of agricultural modernization in latin america has been a concern for many authors and institutions it is generally believed that the small farm sector is bypassed in the process of agricultural development the authors analyze modernization of bean maize cropping systems in southern colombia prices production practices and profitability are compared for 1975 and 1989 by means of a production function the effects of allocative efficiency technical efficiency and technical change on productivity and profitability are analyzed the observed changes reflect very well the price trends over the period between 1975 and 1989 total factor productivity increased by 50 bean maize producers almost doubled returns to land and labor increased technical efficiency had most effect on profitability followed by technical change allocative efficiency had more impact on yields than on profitability because it was associated with high input costs considerable opportunities for further productivity increases were identified conclusions on the nature of the modernization process are drawn implications for agricultural policy research and the role of the small farm in agricultural development are derived

evaluating efficient public good provision theory and evidence from a generalised conditional efficiency model for public libraries abstract provision of most public goods e g health care libraries education police fire protection utilities can be characterized by a two stage production process in the first stage basic inputs e g labor and capital are used to generate service potential e g opening hours materials which is then in the second stage transformed into observed outputs e g school outcomes library circulation crimes solved as final outputs are also affected by demand side factors conflating both production stages likely leads to biased inferences about public productive in efficiency and its determinants hence this paper uses a specially tailored fully non parametric efficiency model allowing for both outlying observations and heterogeneity to analyse efficient public good provision in stage one only we thereby employ a dataset comprising all 290 flemish public libraries our findings suggest that ideological stance of the local government wealth and density of the local population and source of library funding i e local funding versus intergovernmental transfers strongly affect library productive efficiency

assessing school efficiency in portugal using fdh and bootstrapping this study explores a new data set that contains information both on inputs and outputs for a sample of portuguese secondary schools an fdh reference technology is used to determine radial technical efficiency scores and slacks although it is known that there is no reason to assume convexity in the study of education efficiency frontiers this is the first study ever to use fdh at the school level effectively relaxing the convexity assumption a two stage approach is used whereby the significant environmental variables that explain fdh efficiency scores and slacks are identified for the purpose of statistical inference the first application of the bootstrapping algorithms suggested by simar and wilson 2003 is conducted the study concludes that the unemployment rate access to health care services adult education and living infrastructures are determinants of school efficiency the differences between the coast and the interior of portugal seem to be more relevant as far as school efficiency is

investigating productivity change and hospital size a nonparametric frontier approach the study obtains measures of the productive efficiency of larger and smaller northern ireland hospitals during the 1986 92 pre trust period the measures provide insights into how these hospitals were responding to the pressures for increased efficiency prior to trust status they also constitute a useful benchmark for evaluating productivity change under the post 1992 trust status environment a nonparametric frontier approach is used to measure productivity change and to decompose this into technical change or shifts in the best practice frontier and efficiency change or change in how far a hospital is from the frontier the latter change in efficiency is also decomposed into changes in scale efficiency pure technical efficiency and input congestion the findings indicate that smaller hospitals starting from a less efficient base achieved greater productivity gains than larger hospitals over 1986 92 for smaller hospitals this was due to progressive shifts in the best practice frontier outw

measurement of hospital efficiency using a latent class stochastic frontier model this article analyses the technical efficiency of portuguese hospitals from 1997 to 2008 with the latent class frontier model enabling the identification of different segments in the cost frontier it is found that there are three statistically significant segments in the sample leading to the conclusion that no common health policy can be applicable to all the hospitals analysed calling rather for policies conceived for each hospital segment identified the health policy based in the identified segments enables a more accurate and cost effective management of resources

efficiency in the provision of public services a data envelopment analysis of uk public library systems this study assesses the relative efficiency of public library services by examining the relationship between library inputs and library outputs in multi outlet library systems differences in the size of the area and population served are reflected in differences in the number of outlets and mix of outlet types using a data envelopment analysis which controls for the accessibility of library resources this study derives technical and overall efficiency scores for 99 uk public library systems the data are survey observations for 1995 1996 over the decade leading up to the survey library services had been subject to a protracted period of budget restraint and contraction in most areas of activity the distribution of efficiency scores is skewed implying that although many library systems are efficient or near efficient there is a tail of inefficient operations inefficiency is mainly but not exclusively associated with over subscription to serial publications many library systems are scale ineffic

technological progress for sustaining food population balance achievement and challenges the growth in land productivity in rice cultivation has slowed down substantially since the early 1990s due to technological progress reaching its limit in the irrigated ecosystem and nonavailability of suitable technologies for the unfavorable rainfed environments this development raises concern regarding the world s ability to meet the food population balance in the coming decades rice research must deal with a number of difficult problems to meet the challenge raising the yield ceilings of the current available rice varieties protecting the past yield gains in the irrigated ecosystem and using biotechnology tools to develop high yielding varieties for the rainfed systems that are tolerant to drought submergence and problem soils the speed and extent of meeting these challenges depends on the level of resources that can be mobilized to support crop improvement research in the public sector

a time of agric rethinking the failure of agricultural programs in 1970s ghana summary recent interest in a new green revolution in africa has revived debate about state intervention in agricultural markets and biotechnology these debates take for granted that the first wave of green revolution interventions in africa failed to influence small scale food farmers this essay uses oral historical and documentary evidence from ghana s northern region to revisit the evidentiary basis of this assessment tracing how the production of aggregate data and changing interpretive frameworks in the 1970s and 1980s allowed policymakers to ignore the experiences of farmers the essay advocates for the role of micro historical analysis in assessing africa s recent agricultural past

a comparative application of data envelopment analysis and translog methods an illustrative study of hospital production this paper compares inferences about hospital cost and production correspondences from two different estimation models 1 the econometric modeling of the translog cost function and 2 the application of data envelopment analysis dea while there are numerous examples of the application of each approach to empirical data this paper provides insights into the relative strengths of the estimation methods by applying both models to the same data the translog results suggest that constant reruns are operant whereas the dea results suggest that both increasing and decreasing returns to scale may be observed in different segments of the production correspondence in turn suggesting that the translog model may be averaging diametrically opposite behavior on the other hand by examining the rate of output transformation both models agree that patient days devoted to care of children are more resource intensive than those devoted to adults or to the elderly in addition we compare estimates of technical efficiencies of individual hospitals obtained from the two methods the dea estimates are found to be highly related to the capacity utilization but no such relationship was found for the translog estimates this comparative application of different estimation models to the same data to obtain inferences about the nature of underlying cost and production correspondences sheds interesting light on the strengths of each approach and suggests the need for additional research comparing estimation models using real as well as simulated data

frontier estimation how useful a tool for health economics the journal is pleased to publish in this issue three papers that apply frontier estimation techniques to hospitals and nursing homes together with an exchange over the usefulness of those techniques in the health care context the papers represent the current state of the art with respect to applications of frontier estimation in health care because of the growing popularity of the technique no doubt in part from its availability in standard software packages it seems useful to take this opportunity to appraise its usefulness one might begin by asking usefulness for what assuming one could define a frontier with certainty how would one use such knowledge a straightforward application in health care appears to be to reimbursement because both data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier estimation specify the least cost mix of inputs for a given output both methods can in principle be used to determine whether a given firm hospital or nursing home is efficient and if the answer to that question is no the magnitude of any inefficiency it is not a large step from that information to the notion that a regulator should reduce the firm s budget by the amount of the measured inefficiency indeed vitaliano and toren mention the boren amendment s requirement that the medicaid program reimburse hospitals and nursing homes at the cost incurred by an efficiently operated

environmental impacts of technological change in bangladesh agriculture farmers perceptions determinants and effects on resource allocation decisions this article measures the impact of modern technology adoption in raising farmers environmental awareness and the impact of farmers environmental awareness on resource use by utilizing survey data from 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the econometric analysis is based on the application of the tobit model explaining farmers environmental awareness in the first stage and a profit function examining environmental awareness and resource use relationships in the second stage results reveal that the level and duration of involvement with modern technology raises farmers environmental awareness and that farmers environmental awareness reduces resource use including chemicals farmers who are aware of the adverse environmental impacts of modern agricultural technology use lower amounts of all inputs in order to avoid further environmental damage therefore efforts to raise farmers environmental awareness are expected to enhance intangible benefits accruing from a relatively less chemical intensive environment

the efficiency of immunization of infants by local government the paper makes use of data envelopment analysis dea to measure the cost and production efficiency of local government programmemes for childhood immunization in urban and rural settings in australia model specification is tested for validity methods are used for ranking efficient units and advanced statistical methods are used to establish confidence intervals around the efficiency estimates given the small data set the cost and production models are valid and it is concluded that while neither urban nor rural programmes are particularly efficient there is more room for improvement in rural programmes ways of changing methods of delivery are suggested which may increase efficiency

the economics of wheat research in developing countries the one hundred million dollar puzzle abstract currently 1 150 scientists are carrying out wheat improvement research in developing countries with an annual budget of around 100 million because of the recent reduction in agricultural research budgets this study marshalls evidence from 71 wheat research programs in 35 developing countries to address the following puzzle what is the optimal size type and location of wheat research programs in the developing world the analysis reveals that if research spillins are taken into consideration almost half of the wheat improvement programs in developing countries are inefficient the efficiency of wheat research in many national agricultural research systems can be increased by reducing the size of research programs consolidating state and federal research programs and shifting from wheat breeding research to capturing spillins from other countries and from the international maize and wheat improvement center cimmyt