the political economy of inflation bargaining structure or central bank independence the causes of inflation are commonly analyzed as the function of either the organization of wage bargaining or the independence of the central bank although these explanations are widely treated as competing recent evidence suggests that there may be merit to both arguments this paper presents a game theoretic model of wage bargaining and monetary policy making that shows why the two institutional causes are not only complementary but elements of a more encompassing logic the empirical superiority of this synthesizing model is demonstrated by reanalyzing data used in al marhubi and willett 1995 and by presenting new evidence

redistribution of funds for teaching and research among universities the case of north rhine westphalia abstract this paper reports on a real application of a performance and success based system for redistribution of funds for teaching and research among universities in north rhine westphalia after a precise description of the decision situation we show how goal programming and distance minimization were applied in order to find a solution on the basis of real data some comments on the results and the quality of the redistribution process conclude the paper

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

the anti inflationary influence of corporatist structures and central bank independence the importance of the hump shaped hypothesis many studies have found strong negative correlations between central bank independence and inflation but the casual significance of this relationship is often challenged we find that the negative relationship remains even when a number of other explanatory variables are considered special attention is given to the role of corporatism following calmfors and driffell it is argued that both high and low levels of centralization should be associated with lower inflation we present empirical support for his hump shaped hypothesis and find that the inclusion of corporatism does not diminish the significance of central bank independence

efficiency and equity in private and public education a nonparametric comparison we present a nonparametric approach for 1 efficiency and 2 equity evaluation in education firstly we use a nonparametric data envelopment analysis model that is specially tailored to assess educational efficiency at the pupil level the model accounts for the fact that typically minimal prior structure is available for the behavior objectives and feasibility set under evaluation it allows for uncertainty in the data while it corrects for exogenous environmental characteristics that are specific to each pupil secondly we propose two multidimensional stochastic dominance criteria as naturally complementary aggregation criteria for comparing the performance of different school types private and public schools while the first criterion only accounts for efficiency the second criterion also takes equity into consideration the model is applied for comparing private but publicly funded and public primary schools in flanders our application finds that no school type robustly dominates another type when controlling for the school environment and taking equity into account more generally it demonstrates the usefulness of our nonparametric approach which includes environmental and equity considerations for obtaining fair performance comparisons in the public sector context

on the performance of universities in north rhine westphalia germany government s redistribution of funds judged using dea efficiency measures abstract in fandel and gal 2001 fandel g gal t 2001 redistribution of funds for teaching and research among universities the case of north rhine westphalia european journal of operational research 130 111 120 a solution for a real process of redistributing funds for teaching and research among the universities in north rhine westphalia in germany according to specific criteria was presented the solution was based on aggregated proportional data and was determined by a negotiation process now that the absolute data with respect to the different subject areas of the universities are available it is studied to which extent the results of the redistribution can be justified by the relative efficiency measures using data envelopment analysis moreover the inefficiencies or slacks respectively in the usage of personnel give reasons to reallocate the staff among the universities or to reduce it correspondingly

a theory of ambiguity credibility and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information this paper develops a positive theory of credibility ambiguity and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information the monetary policymaker maximizes his own politically motivated objective function that is positively related to economic stimulation through monetary surprises and negatively related to monetary growth the relative importance he assigns to each target shifts stochastically through time his current preference trade off is known to him but not to the public when choosing the state contingent path of money growth for the present and the future the policymaker compares the benefits from current stimulation with the costs associated with higher future inflation expectations current monetary growth conveys information to the public about future money growth because there is persistence in the policymaker s objectives although expectations are rational information is imperfect because monetary control procedures are imprecise as a result the public cannot correctly distinguish persistent changes of emphasis on different policy objectives from transitory monetary control errors the public becomes aware of changes gradually by observing past monetary growth credibility is defined in terms of the speed with which the public recognizes changes in the objectives of the policymaker credibility is lower the noisier monetary control and the more stable the objectives of the policymaker looser monetary control and a higher degree of time preference on the part of the policymaker induce him to produce higher and more variable monetary growth when the policymaker is free to determine the accuracy of monetary control he does not always choose the most effective control available in spite of the fact that monetary surprises always have an expected value of zero the reason is that ambiguous control procedures enable the policymaker to generate positive surprises when he cares more than on average about economic stimulation he leaves the inevitable negative surprises for periods in which he cares more about inflation prevention this result provides an explanation for the fed s preference for ambiguity recently documented by goodfriend 1986 the policymaker is more likely to pick more ambiguous control procedures the more uncertain his objectives and the higher his time preference the paper also provides a theoretical underpinning for the well documented crosscountry positive correlation between the level and the variability of inflation

operational research in education operational research or techniques have been applied from the early stages of the discipline to a wide variety of issues in education at the government level these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions how to measure it and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings local governments as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation may also need to make decisions regarding for example the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones as well as the day to day logistics of getting pupils to schools issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses this survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government managers and consumers of education and the or techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions

on the determinants of school district efficiency competition and monitoring abstract a number of researchers have asserted that inefficiency in the u s school system arises from a lack of incentives for public schools to behave efficiently this paper uses a shephard input distance function to model educational production and a switching regressions estimation to explore the relationship between school district efficiency and two existing incentive mechanisms competition and voter monitoring we find evidence that ease of monitoring enhances both technical and allocative efficiency of urban school districts and that increased competition reduces allocative inefficiency in communities above a competitive threshold we find no evidence that competition is related to technical inefficiency

estimating technical and allocative efficiency in the public sector a nonparametric analysis of dutch schools abstract public sector output provision is influenced not only by discretionary inputs but also by exogenous environmental factors in this paper we extended the literature by developing a conditional dea estimator of allocative efficiency that allows a decomposition of overall cost efficiency into allocative and technical components while simultaneously controlling for the environment we apply the model to analyze technical and allocative efficiency of dutch secondary schools the results reveal that allocative efficiency represents a significant 37 percent of overall cost efficiency on average although technical inefficiency is still the dominant part furthermore the results show that the impact of environment largely differs between schools and that having a more unfavorable environment is very expensive to schools these results highlight the importance of including environmental variables in both technical and allocative efficiency analysis

determinants of inflationary performance corporatist structures vs central bank autonomy studies by economists have shown that countries with autonomous central banks experience lower inflation than others banian laney and willett 1983 and bade and parkin 1987 one reason for this may be that countries with autonomous central banks are less likely to monetize their deficits burdekin and wahar 1990 studies by political scientists have used measures of the strength of corporatist structures to explain macroeconomic outcomes cameron 1984 however neither economics nor political science research has employed measures of both central bank autonomy and the strength of corporatist structures to explain comparative inflation rates the present paper tests whether measures of corporatist structures and central bank autonomy explain the comparative inflation performance of eighteen industrialized countries this issue is of great importance for students of piecemeal monetary reform in countries where the central banking structure is susceptible to reorganization the results of this paper should inform parties who are active in the reformation and reorganization of central banks in lesser developed and nascent market economics throughout the world

comparing school ownership performance using a pseudo panel database a malmquist type index approach in this paper we propose a different way of using the malmquist index that allows us to further analyze the relative performance divergences between two groups of decision making units dmus over time when only a pseudo panel database is available to do this we extend the camanho and dyson 2006 one period malmquist type index cdmi for a pseudo panel database with a new pseudo panel malmquist index ppmi to illustrate the methodology we apply it to examine how the performance gap between public and private government dependent secondary schools in the basque country spain performed across three pisa waves 2006 2009 and 2012 the results suggest that performance is persistently and significantly higher for private government dependent schools than for public schools

anticipating the consequences of school reform a new use of dea we use dea type linear programming techniques to simulate a basic component of educational reform eliminating restrictions on the allocation of school personnel our technique allows us to identify potential output gains or equivalently potential cost savings from reform we can also identify which personnel groups are likely to gain and lose under this reform when we apply our model to a sample of texas school districts we find evidence that the educational establishment has substantial economic rents to protect from school reform and that the primary beneficiaries of reform are likely to be affluent school districts with few minority students the technique which relies on the relationship between the direct and indirect distance functions can be easily generalized to measure the potential gains from removing other input restrictions such as union work rules environmental regulations or deed restrictions

nonparametric analysis of educational costs abstract traditional economic analyses of the public sector that assume cost minimization are not consistent with political models of bureaucracy if costs are not minimized then estimated cost functions will be biased the purpose of this paper is to provide a flexible nonparametric technique based on farrell type efficiency measures to estimate public sector costs standard indices need to be modified to fit the special nature of public sector service provision which is characterized by an influence of exogenous variables on cost a useful by product is an index of environmental harshness faced by local governments for illustrative purposes this technique is applied to a sample of new york state school districts it is found that nearly 64 of districts are cost inefficient spending on average 1200 per pupil above the cost minimizing level in addition it is estimated that the average school district faces environmental cost of over 1700 per pupil

measuring teaching efficiency in higher education an application of data envelopment analysis to economics graduates from uk universities 1993 data envelopment analysis dea is applied to 2547 economics graduates from uk universities in 1993 in order to assess teaching efficiency following a methodology developed by education economics 10 2 2002 183 207 each individual s efficiency is decomposed into two components one attributable to the university at which the student studied and the other attributable to the student himself from the former component a measure of each institution s teaching efficiency is derived and compared to efficiency scores derived from a conventional dea applied using each economics department as a decision making unit dmu the results suggest that efficiencies derived from deas performed at an aggregate level include both institution and individual components and are therefore misleading thus the unit of analysis in a dea is highly important moreover an analysis at the individual level can give institutions insight into whether it is the students own efforts or the institution s efficiency which are a constraint on increased efficiency this has implications for the choice of strategy for improving efficiency

combining the assumptions of variable and constant returns to scale in the efficiency evaluation of secondary schools our paper reports on the use of data envelopment analysis dea for the assessment of performance of secondary schools in malaysia during the implementation of the policy of teaching and learning mathematics and science subjects in the english language ppsmi the novelty of our application is that it makes use of the hybrid returns to scale hrs dea model this combines the assumption of constant returns to scale with respect to quantity inputs and outputs teaching provision and students and variable returns to scale vrs with respect to quality factors attainment levels on entry and exit and socio economic status of student families we argue that the hrs model is a better informed model than the conventional vrs model in the described application because the hrs technology is larger than the vrs technology the new model provides a tangibly better discrimination on efficiency than could be obtained by the vrs model to assess the productivity change of secondary schools over the years surrounding the introduction of the ppsmi policy we adapt the malmquist productivity index and its decomposition to the case of hrs model

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

output decision under demand uncertainty with stochastic production function a contingent claims approach this paper presents a contingent claims analysis of output decisions for the firm facing technological and demand uncertainty the paper reveals that i the optimal output level increases with the higher interest rate when the firm is subject to demand and technological uncertainty ii the effect of demand volatility and production lead time on the optimal output level could be either positive or negative iii the optimal project value decreases with the higher demand volatility iv the optimal project value decreases with the longer production lead time when the firm is subject to demand uncertainty and v the optimal project value decreases with the higher interest rate when the firm is subject to demand uncertainty it increases with the higher interest rate however when the firm is subject to both demand and technological uncertainty some important managerial implications are discussed

reputation and efficiency a non parametric assessment of america s top rated mba programs abstract widely publicized reports of fresh mbas getting multiple job offers with six figure annual salaries leave a long lasting general impression about the high quality of selected business schools while such spectacular achievement in job placement rightly deserves recognition one should not lose sight of the resources expended in order to accomplish this result in this study we employ a measure of pareto koopmans global efficiency to evaluate the efficiency levels of the mba programs in business week s top rated list we compute input and output oriented radial and non radial efficiency measures for comparison among three tier groups the schools from a higher tier group on average are more efficient than those from lower tiers although variations in efficiency levels do occur within the same tier which exist over different measures of efficiency

performance assessment in higher education in britain all public sector organisations in the uk have witnessed changes in funding arrangements during the 1980s as part of the government s drive to make them more accountable to the tax payer the development of performance indicators is seen as an essential step to ensure that such organisations provide value for money this paper examines the possibility of constructing measures of the performance of uk universities a methodology is developed in the framework of production theory and uses multiple regression techniques to estimate the relationship between the outputs and inputs of universities around 80 of the inter university variation in four output measures can be explained by corresponding variations in several input measures this highlights the need to take into account the inputs available to a university when comparing its output performance with that achieved by other institutions the problems of interpreting an array of performance indicators are also clearly demonstrated

cost and learning efficiency drivers in australian schools a two stage network dea approach this article explore performance issues in australian public schools using a two stage dea network model which accounts simultaneously for both cost and learning efficiency levels in the cost efficiency stage different types of expenses and investments are employed to support a given number of students teachers and administrative staff in the learning efficiency stage these groups of individuals help to produce important outputs related to performance in student tests and school rankings results indicate that australian public schools are heterogeneous policy implications are also discussed

econometric efficiency analysis a policy oriented review abstract the econometric approach to the construction of production cost and other frontiers and the measurement of efficiency relative to these frontiers historically has had a strong policy orientation this distinguishes the approach from the mathematical programming approach which has had a managerial decision making orientation geared to solving allocation problems within the public or private organization in this paper i review the development of the econometric approach to efficiency analysis i then discuss a small number of empirical studies chosen to illustrate the application of the econometric approach to a collection of public policy issues for which the notion of efficiency measurement is of prime importance examples are drawn from the areas of 1 agricultural productivity 2 labor market efficiency and equity 3 the measurement of the standard of living 4 the establishment of quality of service standards and 5 the valuation of environmental disamenities

the effect of competition on the efficiency of secondary schools in england abstract in this paper we calculate the technical efficiencies based upon multiple outputs school exam performance and attendance rates of all secondary schools in england over the period 1993 1998 we then estimate models to examine the determinants of efficiency in a particular year and the determinants of the change in efficiency over the period our results suggest that the greater the degree of competition between schools the more efficient they are the strength of this effect has also increased over time which is consistent with the evolution of the quasi market in secondary education competition is also found to be an important determinant of the change in efficiency over time there is however some evidence of conditional convergence between schools

political and monetary institutions and public financial policies in the industrial countries institutions and policies vittorio grilli donato masciandaro and guido tabellini why do countries as similar as the industrialized oecd countries go through such different experience in terms of public deficits and debts or in terms of inflation the answer cannot come from macroeconomic policy responses to different disturbances nor from the principles of optimal taxation but rather from politics this article focuses on the role that particular institutions exert in providing constraints and incentives which shape the actions of policymakers the electoral process and political traditions affect the ability of governments to deal with deficits and mounting debts what seems to matter most it is found is the effect of the durability of governments governments with short horizons act myopically and never quite tackle the hard choices such governments typically exist in countries with an electoral system favouring many small political parties central bank independence promotes low inflation with no apparent costs in terms of real economic performance irrespective of the political institutions in fact there is no link between monetary and fiscal discipline these findings carry powerful implications for countries facing high indebtedness or stubborn inflation but also for the construction of the european economic and monetary union

efficiency measurement in the stochastic frontier model abstract deterministic models of technical efficiency assume that all deviations from the production frontier are due to inefficiency critics argue that no allowance is made for measurement error and other statistical noise so that the resulting efficiency measure will be contaminated the stochastic frontier model is an alternative that allows both inefficiency and measurement error advocates argue that the stochastic frontier models should be used despite other potential limitations because of the superior conceptual treatment of noise as will be demonstrated in this paper however the assumed shape of the error distributions is used to identify a key production function parameter therefore the stochastic frontier models like the deterministic models cannot produce absolute measures of efficiency moreover we show that rankings for firm specific inefficiency estimates produced by traditional stochastic frontier models do not change from the rankings of the composed errors as a result the performance of the deterministic models is qualitatively similar to that of the stochastic frontier models