ipo underpricing and flotation methods in taiwan a stochastic frontier approach adopting stochastic frontier analysis this article studies the pricing model and underpricing phenomenon of the initial public offerings ipos in taiwan and further elucidates the potential impact of offering mechanisms on underpricing the sampling period is from 1996 to 2003 in which 647 ipos are selected empirical results suggest that issuing firms with greater earning potentials less risk or less asymmetric information have lower underpricing furthermore the variables included to explain underpricing are mostly significant especially the proxy variable for flotation method observed mean ipo underpricing is 20 59 in the sample period compared to 17 12 for the subgroup using the auction method this statistically significant difference implies that the introduction of the auction method can help reduce ipo underpricing

an examination of economic efficiency of russian crop production in the reform period this article examines economic efficiency ee of crop production of russian corporate farms for 1993 1998 ee declined over the period due to declines in both technical and allocative efficiency technical efficiency te results indicate that output levels could have been maintained while reducing overall input use by an average of 29 31 in 1998 depending on the method used while the allocative efficiency ae results show that costs could have been reduced about 30 the ee scores show that russian corporate farms could have increased efficiency by reducing the use of all inputs particularly fertilizer and fuel russian agriculture inherited machinery intensive technology from the soviet era which may be inappropriate given the relative abundance of labor in the post reform environment investment constraints have prevented the replacement of old machinery intensive technology with smaller scale machines that allow for a more labor using technology jel classification p2 q1

estimating the causal effect of water scarcity on the groundwater use efficiency of rice farming in south india abstract there is no consensus among researchers on the influence of scarcity on common pool resource use some suggest that scarcity leads to prudent use whereas others suggest that it will cause over extraction of resources this issue is particularly of interest for developing countries where natural resources are becoming scarce at an alarming rate this paper investigates the causal association between water scarcity and groundwater use efficiency in a rice based cropping system in south india where groundwater is increasingly becoming a scarce resource contextualization of the work is done under the premise of reported contradictions concerning the scarcity efficiency nexus using a two stage approach the causality is estimated first farm level groundwater use efficiency gwue scores are calculated using non parametric efficiency analysis and then these inefficiencies are linked to farm level scarcity indicators using the inverse probability weighting method our results showed a negative causal association between farm level water scarcity and gwue indicating the existence of competitive appropriation behavior in the face of scarcity hence policy measures to conserve groundwater should include supply enhancement to remove the threat of immediate scarcity on farm to avoid inefficient pumping in addition to demand management measures and improved governance

profit efficiency among basmati rice producers in pakistan punjab farm specific profit inefficiency among basmati rice producers was estimated from a variable coefficient profit frontier the mean level of inefficiency at farm resources and price levels was 28 with a wide range 5 87 average loss of profit was rs 1 222 per hectare socioeconomic factors related to profit loss were the farm household s education nonagricultural employment and a credit constraint institutional determinants of profit loss were a water constraint and the late application of fertilizer punjab wide benefits of increasing farmer s profit efficiency are large a 25 reduction in profit loss among basmati rice producers may generate over rs 240 million in extra profits each rice season rice is a major export commodity for pakistan generating about 2 5 billion pakistan rupees rs annually or 20 of foreign exchange earnings from commodity trade in the early 1980s two varieties dominate in pakistan s international trade in rice basmati 370 a high quality long grained aromatic variety and the medium long grained irri 6 distinct export markets exist for these rices over 90 of the basmati is exported to oil rich middle eastern nations while the mediumlong varieties are mainly marketed in southeast asia in 1983 the export price of basmati was about rs 7 900 per ton while the price of medium long grained varieties averaged rs 2 700 per ton pakistan has a comparative advantage in the international market for basmati but probably not for medium long grained rices azhar and mamhud historically pakistan had a near monopoly in international trade in basmati but now faces increased competition from thailand and the united states efferson therefore pakistan must strive to increase the efficiency of basmati production to retain its comparative advantage and competitive edge in foreign rice markets basmati 370 is a pure line selection made in

measurement of economic efficiency in pakistani agriculture farm efficiency and the question of how to measure it is an important subject in developing countries agriculture there are three distinct approaches to measurement based on cost profits and production functions farrell developed the concept of technical efficiency based on input and output relationships technical inefficiency arises when actual or observed output from a given input mix is less than the maximum possible allocative inefficiency arises when the input mix is not consistent with cost minimization advances have been made in the frontier cost function literature using flexible functional forms bauer greene 1980 forsund knoxlovell and schmidt and schmidt an approach using systems of equations based on cost profit and distance functions was developed to incorporate all available information on multiproduct farms kumbhakar schmidt fare grosskopf and nelson hayes the present study uses a cost function approach and combines the concepts of technical and allocative efficiency in the cost relationship any errors in the production decision translate into higher costs for the producer at the same time the stochastic nature of production implies that the theoretical cost function is stochastic 2 two distinct approaches are used first we use the stochastic frontier approach in which translog cost function is specified and estimated without using share equations the derived measure of inefficiency is then related to socioeconomic demographic and farm size variables second we use a behavioral approach in which translog cost function again is estimated but this time as a function of the shadow prices of the inputs the cost share equations are estimated jointly with a cost equation incorporating all cross equation restrictions moreover the input use inefficiency is introduced through the parameters and these are related to the structural variables this approach permits us to obtain a farm specific measure of allocative inefficiency

comparing frontier methods for economic environmental trade off analysis abstract this paper uses a mechanistic frontier approach as a reference to evaluate the ability of conventional parametric sfa and non parametric dea frontier approaches for analyzing economic environmental trade offs conventional frontier approaches are environmentally adjusted through incorporating the materials balance principle the analysis is worked out for the flemish pig finishing case which is both representative and didactic results show that on average sfa and dea yield adequate economic environmental trade offs both methods are good estimators for technical efficiency cost allocative and environmental allocative efficiency scores are less robust due to the well known methodological advantages and disadvantages of sfa and dea for particular firms sfa dea and the mechanistic approach may yield different economic environmental trade offs one has therefore to be careful when using conventional frontier approaches for firm specific decision support the mechanistic approach allows for optimizing performances per average present finisher which is the production unit in pig finishing conventional frontier methods do not allow for this optimization since the number of average present finishers varies along the production functions since the mechanistic production function is based on underlying growth feed uptake and mortality functions additional firm specific indicators can also be calculated at each point of the production function

technical efficiency and productivity of maize producers in eastern ethiopia a study of farmers within and outside the sasakawa global 2000 project abstract this paper investigates the technical efficiency of two samples of maize producers in eastern ethiopia one involving farmers within the sasakawa global 2000 project and the other involving farmers outside this program the study uses stochastic frontier production functions in which the technical inefficiency effects are assumed to be functions of the age and education of the farmers together with the time spent by extension advisers in assisting farmers in their agricultural production operations for the cross sectional data obtained for the 1995 96 agricultural year cobb douglas stochastic frontiers are found to be adequate representations of the data given the specifications of the translog stochastic frontiers for farmers within and outside the project the empirical results indicate that farmers within the sg 2000 project are more technically efficient than farmers outside the project relative to their respective technologies the mean frontier output of maize for farmers within the sg 2000 project is significantly greater than that for the farmers outside the project

technical efficiency of us dairy farms and federal government programs in this article technical efficiency te of dairy farms is estimated and analysed with two methodologies data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier analysis sfa using dea the te scores for different states are determined further logistic regression is applied to te scores to explain how known technical and policy variables affect a farm s probability of being efficient the second methodology employs sfa to estimate and analyse te scores two federal milk policies are considered in this research marketing policy and milk income loss policy federal milk marketing program has shown a significant and negative impact on te with both methods payments under the milk income loss program have shown a positive significant impact in sfa analysis both methodologies produced similar outcomes on regional impacts and on the significance of several considered variables categorical representation of some variables in graphs provided some additional insights of their effects on te

farm household efficiency in bangladesh a comparison of stochastic frontier and dea methods this study compares estimates of technical efficiency obtained from the stochastic frontier approach and the data envelopment analysis dea approach using farm level survey data for rice farmers in bangladesh technical inefficiency effects are modelled as a function of farm specific socioeconomic factors environmental factors and irrigation infrastructure the results from both the approaches indicate that efficiency is significantly influenced by the factors measuring environmental degradation and irrigation infrastructure

costly reversible investment with fixed costs an empirical study the analysis presented here applies a generalized version of the friction model to costly reversible investment with fixed costs of investment the analysis investigates three u s industries the computer and office equipment industry the automobile industry and the airline industry five different investment models are compared because some models are nonnested the analysis employs vuong s test of model selection the analysis shows that the investment model with costly reversibility and fixed costs is the best among the models in addition the analysis suggests the existence of convex adjustment costs of investment

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

optimal robust bilateral trade risk neutrality a risk neutral seller and buyer with private information bargain over an indivisible item we prove that optimal robust bilateral trade mechanisms are payoff equivalent to non wasteful randomized posted prices

an application of the dea double bootstrap to examine sources of efficiency in bangladesh rice farming in this article we examine sources of technical efficiency for rice farming in bangladesh the motivation for the analysis is the need to close the rice yield gap to enable food security we employ the dea double bootstrap of simar and wilson 2007 to estimate and explain technical efficiency this technique overcomes severe limitations inherent in using the two stage dea approach commonly employed in the efficiency literature from a policy perspective our results show that potential efficiency gains to reduce the yield gap are greater than previously found statistically positive influences on technical efficiency are education extension and credit with age being a negative influence

price distortions and resource use efficiency in indian agriculture a restricted profit function approach this paper develops a generalized profit function that incorporates price distortions resulting from imperfect market conditions sociopolitical and institutional constraints as well as technical and allocative inefficiency the model is applied to test 1 the appropriateness of the neoclassical profit function and 2 the effect of education and farm size on allocative performance using farm level data from indian agriculture empirical results reject the neoclassical profit maximization hypothesis based on market prices in favor of the general model with price distortions and therefore help to improve allocation of inputs and output farm size is found to reduce price distortions only for small farmers copyright 1992 by mit press

market deregulation trade liberalization and productive efficiency in bangladesh agriculture an empirical analysis the impact of trade liberalization and of market deregulation in general on the performance of agriculture remains contentious and empirical issue in the literature following the random coefficient frontier modelling framework this paper attempts to contribute to this debate by computing the farm specific productive efficiency indices in bangladesh agriculture before and after reform it also examines the impact of some farm specific and policy variables on productive efficiency the empirical results show that there are wide variations in productive efficiency across farms and regions and the average efficiency of all regions increased modestly by 8 percentage points from the pre reform to post reform period the efficiency differentials are largely explained by farm size infrastructure households off farm income and the reduction of government anti agricultural bias in relation to trade and domestic policies the implication of these results suggests the need for further policy reform to augment p

factors affecting the technical efficiency among smallholder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon abstract this paper estimates technical efficiency among small holder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon and identifies sources of inefficiency using detailed survey data obtained from 450 farmers over 15 villages throughout 2001 2002 growing season we find that the mean levels of technical efficiency are 77 73 and 75 respectively for groundnut monocrop maize monocrop and maize groundnut farming systems suggesting existence of substantial gains in output and or decreases in cost with available technology and resources the efficiency differences are explained significantly by credit soil fertility social capital distance of the plot from the access road and extension services policy recommendations are drawn from these findings

measuring and explaining scale efficiency with the parametric approach the case of greek tobacco growers estimates of technical and scale inefficiencies of tobacco farms in greece during the period 1991 1995 are obtained by using the parametric approach the degree of technical efficiency was found to be lower than the degree of scale efficiency and thus a greater portion of overall inefficiency is due to producing below the production frontier than to producing at an inefficient scale in addition the vast majority of farms in the sample exhibited suboptimal scale implying that output should be expanded to reach the optimal scale empirical results are provided to determine the impact of various socioeconomic demographic and geoclimatic indicators on technical and scale efficiency

profit efficiency among bangladeshi rice farmers abstract production inefficiency is usually analyzed by its three components technical allocative and scale efficiency in this study we provide a direct measure of production efficiency of the bangladeshi rice farmers using a stochastic profit frontier and inefficiency effects model the data which are for 1996 include seven conventional inputs and several other background factors affecting production of modern or high yielding varieties hyvs of rice spread across 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the results show that there are high levels of inefficiency in modern rice cultivation the mean level of profit efficiency is 77 suggesting that an estimated 23 of the profit is lost due to a combination of technical allocative and scale inefficiency in modern rice production the efficiency differences are explained largely by infrastructure soil fertility experience extension services tenancy and share of non agricultural income

bank reforms and efficiency in vietnamese banks evidence based on sfa and dea abstractthis study examines the cost efficiency of vietnamese banks from 2000 to 2014 in the first stage and the selection and dynamic effects of two governance reforms foreign partial acquisition and listing on the stock exchange on the efficiency in the second stage empirical results from the two stage stochastic frontier analysis sfa are highly consistent with those from the two stage data envelopment analysis dea specifically the first stage efficiency estimation indicates that the cost efficiency shows a slightly upward trend over the period 2000 2014 with the cost efficiency score being 0 93 and state owned banks outperforming joint stock banks jsbs the mixed process seemingly unrelated regression estimator which controls the potential endogeneity of public listing and foreign acquisition in the second stage shows that selection effects occur in the vietnamese banking system banks selected by the strategic foreign investors for partial acquisition and banks selected for public listin

estimating technical efficiency of australian dairy farms using alternative frontier methodologies technical efficiency is estimated and examined for a cross section of australian dairy farms using various frontier methodologies bayesian and classical stochastic frontiers and data envelopment analysis the results indicate technical inefficiency is present in the sample data also identified are statistical differences between the point estimates of technical efficiency generated by the various methodologies however the rank of farm level technical efficiency is statistically invariant to the estimation technique employed finally when confidence credible intervals of technical efficiency are compared significant overlap is found for many of the farms intervals for all frontier methods employed the results indicate that the choice of estimation methodology may matter but the explanatory power of all frontier methods is significantly weaker when interval estimate of technical efficiency is examined

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

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

economic efficiency and frontier techniques abstract most of the literature related to the measurement of economic efficiency has based its analysis either on parametric or on non parametric frontier methods the choice of estimation method has been an issue of debate with some researchers preferring the parametric and others the non parametric approach the aim of this paper is to provide a critical and detailed review of both core frontier methods in our opinion no approach is strictly preferable to any other moreover a careful consideration of their main advantages and disadvantages of the data set utilized and of the intrinsic characteristics of the framework under analysis will help us in the correct implementation of these techniques recent developments in frontier techniques and economic efficiency measurement such as bayesian techniques bootstrapping duality theory and the analysis of sampling asymptotic properties are also considered in this paper

elasticity of substitution and technical efficiency evidence from the us electricity generation abstractthe implications of national or regional energy policies for technical efficiency and environmental outcomes in electricity generation depend on fossil fuel input substitution this study u

technical efficiency and scale efficiency in the italian banking sector a non parametric approach measures of technical and scale efficiencies are derived in the italian banking industries by implementing non parametric data envelopment analysis on a cross section of 174 italian banks taken in 1991 the methodology of the parametric and non parametric approaches to measure efficiency are discussed the existence of both technical and allocative efficiency is established this result is robust to modifications in the specification of inputs and outputs suggested by the intermediation approach and by the asset approach in implementing both the intermediation and the asset approach the traditional specification of inputs is modified to allow an explicit role for financial capital in addition regression analysis is used on a bank specific measure of inefficiency to investigate determinants of banks efficiency efficiency is best explained by productive specialization size and to a lesser extent by location