a nonparametric cost approach to scale efficiency starting with farrell fieldhouse 1962 a host of notiparametric models have been developed for calculation of scale efficiency a common property of these models is that they are specified in terms of input output data duality theory has taught us that technological characteristics may be analyzed from either the primal or the dual cost side the purpose of this paper is to introduce a nonparametric dual method of calculating scale efficiency

equivalence and implementation of alternative methods for determining returns to scale in data envelopment analysis abstract this paper discusses alternative methods for determining returns to scale in dea the methods for estimating returns to scale in dea as developed by banker 1984 banker charnes and cooper 1984 and banker and thrall 1992 are proved to be conceptually equivalent to the two stage methods of fare grosskopf and lovell 1985 when their assumptions apply here the emphasis is on the ccr model of dea and very simple methods are introduced for determining returns to scale locally with this model by reference to banker s concept of most productive scale size

a fresh look at the productivity and efficiency changes of uk airlines this article uses the bootstrapped malmquist index methodology to measure and test the extent of efficiency and productivity changes in the uk airline sector the aim of the bootstrap method is to overcome the statistical limitations of the data envelopment analysis dea method generally used to measure the distance functions of the malmquist index in applying the method we use input output data on a sample of major uk airlines for the period 2004 2007 results showed that most airlines have witnessed significant decrease in their productivity efficiency scale and technology measures using a second stage tobit regression this article attributed the sources of productivity and efficiency changes to factors such as stage length load factor and airline size this article also discussed the negative impacts of oil price using illustrations from the uk and other international airlines

does asymmetric information matter in the early insurance market evidence from the auto insurance market in the late 1960s the performance of automobile insurance declined dramatically in japan in spite of rapid growth in the diffusion rate and the premiums were sharply raised several times in order to improve the situation this observation indicates the possible presence of adverse selection death spiral and provides an ideal situation for assessing informational asymmetry using bodily injury liability bil insurance data from 46 japanese prefectures over the period 1966 to 1975 this article tests two hypotheses of adverse selection i high risk drivers were more likely to join the bil insurance market and ii sharp premium increases drove low risk policyholders away various empirical analyses show that there is little evidence for either type of adverse selection we also test whether a risk misperception hypothesis can explain our results and find some evidence that the population density have a significantly positive impact on the demand for bil insurance an earlier version of this artic

estimation of returns to scale using data envelopment analysis a comment banker 1984 introduced the idea that the sum of the intensity variables in the dea activity analysis model can be used to identify returns to scale a counterexample in chang and guh 1991 shows that banker s method may fail this prompted banker and thrall 1992 to develop an alternative approach to estimate scale efficiency using dea seemingly unaware of the work by byrnes fare and grosskopf 1984 fare grosskopf and lovell 1985 1994 and fare and grosskopf 1985 etc on the same topic their new approach is very similar to the methodology originated in these references the purpose of this comment is to make our method known and to contrast it to the banker and thrall 1992 approach

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

central local relations in china during the reform era the economic and institutional dimensions abstract central local relations are a core but problematic issue in china s reform process the conventional wisdom is that the economic reforms have considerably weakened control by the central government over economic activities in the localities political implications are derived directly from these economic observations the prevalent view is that the economic reforms have reduced the political control of the center and indeed have called into question the viability of china as a single political entity this article disputes these views it shows that economic decentralization has been accompanied by a strengthening of china s unitary political system this has direct bearings on local economic conduct because of the political and institutional constraints local officials surrender tax revenues to the central government and curb their inflationary investment demand

do institutions matter for regional development rodriguez pose a do institutions matter for regional development regional studies this paper discusses whether institutions matter for regional development and how to integrate them in regional development strategies it is found that while institutions are crucial for economic development generating an institution based regional development strategy is likely to be undermined by the lack of definition of what are efficient institutions problems related to the measurement of institutions to their space and time variability to the difficulties in establishing the right mix of formal and informal institutions and to the endogeneity between institutions and economic development make one size fits all approaches to operationalizing institutions difficult the paper posits that in order to overcome these problems it is crucial to distinguish between the institutional environment and institutional arrangements that is to target not the institutions which shape the unique character of any territ

measuring technical efficiency abstract the theoretical consideration of technical efficiency has existed since koopmans koopmans t c 1951 an analysis of production as an efficient combination of activities in koopmans t c ed activity analysis of production and allocation cowles commission for research in economics monograph no 13 wiley new york defined it as production possibilities for which it is not possible to increase any output without simultaneously increasing any input ceteris paribus the non parametric approach to efficiency calculation known as data envelopment analysis is not based on this definition but rather on the radial index of farrell farrell m j 1957 the measurement of productive efficiency journal of the royal statistic society ser a 120 253 281 even after farrell efficiency is achieved there may exist additional slack in individual inputs and or outputs implying that farrell s index does not necessarily measure koopmans inefficiency various measures have been proposed to solve this problem this paper discusses shortcomings of these alternative measures and introduces a new relative measure of technical efficiency using simulated data it is shown that the new measure outperforms existing measures in the majority of cases

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

technical efficiency shadow price and substitutability of chinese industrial so2 emissions a parametric approach abstract in china s transition process towards sustainable development fighting against the rising so2 emission has become a great and urgent challenge based on a parametric quadratic directional distance function this paper investigates the inefficiency level shadow price and substitution elasticity of chinese industrial so2 emission from 1998 to 2011 the results show a u shape for the technical inefficiency indicating an efficiency improvement before 2005 but it getting worse since then which is that the east area displays a declining trend while the west goes up and the middle follows the national pattern at the east middle west region level as of the shadow price and morishima elasticity both the national and regional levels hold an increasing trajectory the shadow price is continuously increased a lot during the whole period implying to control additional so2 emission become more costly the positive morishima substitution elasticity suggests there may exist the win win opportunities for so2 regulation moreover the large regional disparity highlights the needs to adopt a differentiated regional policy

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

industrial eco efficiency in china a provincial quantification using three stage data envelopment analysis abstract the coordinated development of industrialization and the ecological environment is vital to achieve ecological civilization in china integratively considering the economy energy and resources and environment this study aims to measure the industrial eco efficiency of 30 provinces autonomous regions and municipalities in china between 2005 and 2013 a three stage data envelopment analysis dea modeling approach is adopted to eliminate interference of the external environment and statistical noise with industrial eco efficiency measurement the results show that regional industrial eco efficiency in china is affected by the factors of the environmental regulation technological innovation level of economic development and industrial structure after eliminating the impacts of external environment and statistical noise china s national average industrial eco efficiency declines by 30 between 2005 and 2013 the industrial eco efficiency of the 30 provinces increases but at different rates of growth the variation of overall regional industrial eco efficiency is primarily caused by scale efficiency furthermore all the 30 provinces are classified into four groups to interpret the causes of variation and differences of regional industrial eco efficiency in general the management and technology level and the economy of scale of industries should be improved simultaneously even though specific opportunities for industrial eco efficiency improvement vary across provinces in china

are football managers as efficient as coaches performance analysis with ex ante and ex post inputs in the premier league there is a controversy on sport performance literature about what type of inputs might explain more deeply the performance of sports clubs inputs specification controversy by one side several p

price elasticity and adverse selection in the demand for supplementary health insurance probit regression estimates show the effects of the price of insurance anticipated medical expenditures and other factors on reported decisions about purchasing hypothetically offered supplementary insurance policies the demand estimates can characterize how much supplemental insurance would be purchased under different tax policies affecting health insurance purchases although eliminating the current tax subsidy to insurance is shown to decrease demand the results indicate a substantial demand for supplementary insurance even in the absence of present tax incentives however our results on adverse selection raise concerns about the potential stability of supplemental insurance markets

impact of varying medigap insurance coverage on the use of medical services of the elderly a recursive model is estimated for the demand for medigap insurance coverage and for expected total medical care expenditures it is found that higher levels of coverage are associated with increased expenditures through higher probabilities of incurring a medical expense and increased levels of expenditures those with poor health had a smaller likelihood of having insurance than those with better health status contrary to the notion of adverse selection however those in poor health status who obtained health insurance tended to purchase more insurance coverage than those with better health status consistent with adverse selection non whites were at a disadvantage in terms of the probability of having medigap insurance and expected medical expenditures

measuring and forecasting regional environmental and economic efficiency in italy abstractenvironmental and economic efficiency has being receiving growing attention among researchers in general terms this concept is related to the capability of the economic systems to employ natural resources efficiently so as to increase economic and human wealth this clearly implies that both the economic and ecological aspects of decisions ought to be considered bearing this in mind this article considers economic and ecological performance together by applying data envelopment analysis and the malmquist productivity index to investigate the efficiency of the 20 italian regions from 2004 to 2011 the results reveal that the northern regions have been more efficient than the southern ones highlighting the strong geographical differences between the two furthermore this article uses the grey system theory to forecast regional economic and environmental efficiency the results of the forecasting analysis show that the north south duality remains strong and will possibly increase since the r

nonparametric estimation of education productivity incorporating nondiscretionary inputs with an application to dutch schools in this paper we develop a malmquist productivity index for public sector production characterized by the influence of environmental variables we extend johnson and ruggiero 2011 to the more general case of variable returns to scale to further decompose the malmquist productivity index into technical efficiency scale and environmental change we apply our model to analyze productivity of dutch schools using 2002 2007 data the results indicate that the environment influences the productivity index as well as the technical efficiency scale and environmental change components we see that schools with a moderate classification of environment have the highest productivity numbers in line with expectations schools with the worst environment also perform worse and would perform better with an improved environment

financial sustainability and poverty outreach within a network of village banks in cameroon a multi dea approach abstract microfinance institutions face a double bottom line they perform financial tasks by giving microcredits to their customers and support projects aiming at reducing poverty in doing so they have to be financially self sufficient and to target poor people excluded from the traditional financial systems however a trade off may exist between financial sustainability and poverty outreach for these institutions by using a multi dea approach this paper shows that even if a trade off exists for 15 of the mc 2 mutuelles communautaires de croissance in cameroon there is no trade off for 46 of them in order to increase without trade off financial and social performance of inefficient mc 2 a benchmarking approach combing dea and performance indicators has been developed dea is used for identifying best practices and setting benchmarking goals performance indicators are used for characterizing areas needing improvements and following the evolution of mc 2 toward their goals i e for implementing benchmarking complementarity of both approaches provides a tool box for improving financial and social efficiency and reducing the trade off between financial sustainability and poverty outreach of microfinance institutions

advanced x efficiencies for ccr and bcc models towards peer based dea controlling abstract classical ccr and bcc dea models follow a general concept they allow each dmu to evaluate its in efficiency in the most favorable way and then propose input reduction and or output raise so as to follow its best practice units a first step beyond this self appraisal is the consideration of x efficiencies thus evaluating dmus with optimal weights of a peer doing this for all possible peers yields a cross efficiency matrix either for ccr or for bcc models this matrix might help to find a fair peer for the remaining dmus in a second step recent contributions analyze for ccr models how such x evaluated dmus might improve their efficiency with respect to a peer s weight system in these models even free variation of inputs outputs is possible rather than reduction and or raise such models will be portrayed here and generalized for variable returns to scale the remaining discomfort which a dmu might feel with the choice for peer among business rivals leads to the concept of a virtual peer vp this paper proposes such a peer as a consensual option for all dmus now for either return to scale ccr and bcc for an input or output oriented focus and by free variation of inputs and outputs they can meet the requirements of vp the dmus pay a heavy price however the peer controls their respective weights and even their activities he is a dictator

productivity and efficiency change and shareholder value evidence from the spanish banking sector productivity change and shareholder value have been analysed in the banking sector in the last few years although it should be noted that these two important aspects have been studied separately in this regard the main contribution of our study is to link these two lines of research by verifying whether those banks characterized by higher levels of efficiency and productivity change have a higher shareholder value to measure changes in efficiency and productivity we use the malmquist nonparametric technique which is calculated from data envelopment analysis dea linear programming approach the malmquist total factor productivity index enables separation of the catching up effect i e changes over time in technical efficiency from technological change i e the shift of best practice frontier over time due to technological progress our results for a sample of listed spanish banks in the period 2000 to 2004 confirm that those banks with higher efficiency and productivity changes have a higher

economies of scale and scope in the provision of diagnostic techniques and therapeutic services in portuguese hospitals this article analyses the provision of auxiliary clinical services that are typically carried out within the hospital we estimate a flexible cost function for three of the most important cost wise diagnostic techniques and therapeutic services in portuguese hospitals clinical pathology medical imaging and physical medicine and rehabilitation our objective in carrying out this estimation is the evaluation of economies of scale and scope in the provision of these services for all services we find evidence of economies of scale and some evidence of economies of scope we also find evidence of diminishing returns to management whereby larger hospitals appear to have surpassed their optimal size these results have important policy implications and can be related to the ongoing discussion of where and how should hospitals provide these services

the impact of environmental expenditures on performance in the u s chemical industry abstract this study analyzes chemical industry companies with environmental expenditures to determine which ones have better financial performance in addition this study uses data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of firms with and without environmental expenditures this study also utilizes the malmquist productivity index mpi to analyze firms productivity change and a bootstrap method to test whether the indexes are statistically significant finally this study divides chemical industry companies into three main categories based on their products the results of this study provide significant evidence of a relationship between environmental expenditures and financial performance the findings suggest that firms with environmental expenditures have better efficiency and productivity hence the study encourages companies in the industry to put more effort into protecting the environment that can be through practicing cleaner production to create higher benefits

strategic corporate social responsibility and economic performance this article proposes a novel corporate social responsibility csr index based on a data envelopment analysis dea model acknowledging the argument that companies might favour those csr dimensions that provide strategic competitive advantages we argue that the index can capture companies strategic approach to csr furthermore our findings reveal a neutral relationship between this strategic csr index and economic performance as measured by return on assets roa and tobin s q when controlling for firm unobserved heterogeneity and past economic performance by contrast an equally weighted index of the same csr indicators is found to be negatively related with roa which reinforces our claim that this specific dea based index is a measure of strategic csr

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

globalisation competition and the politics of local economic development the study of urban politics in the us is now dominated by issues of local economic development these are situated analytically with respect to a more global space economy this is the new urban politics the central logic of the new urban politics is one of cities or communities competing for mobile capital this competition supposedly has adverse distributional consequences for those living in cities or communities three areas of critical contention are focused on the identity of the competing agents the concept of firm competition underpinning the central idea of mobile capitals and the distributional consequences of the competition for those capitals serious problems in abstraction and in the concept of capital adopted in this literature are identified

cost efficiency of french rugby clubs this article analyses the cost efficiency of french first league rugby clubs using a stochastic frontier model the frontier estimation confirmed that the model fits the data well with all coefficients correctly signed and in line with the theoretical requirements the results show that one of the clubs is operating efficiently with the majority of clubs clustered around 20 inefficiency policy implications are derived

health insurance and the demand for medical care evidence from a randomized experiment we estimate how cost sharing the portion of the bill the patient pays affects the demand for medical services the data come from a randomized experiment a catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out of pocket price the price elasticity is approximately 0 2 we reject the hypothesis that less favorable coverage of outpatient services increases total expenditure for example by deterring preventive care or inducing hospitalization

the global and local dimensions of place making remaking shanghai as a world city shanghai the largest socialist industrial city in china is now experiencing dramatic restructuring under global and local forces this paper provides a preliminary account of remaking this city into a world city the case study suggests the tremendous and pervasive impact of globalisation on the city in transitional economies although it is still not comparable with a truly global city the growth of inward investment particularly its penetration into real estate development has exerted direct impacts on the urban structure it is argued that however that this global influence can only be realised through the coincidence of indigenous changes in the political economy system specifically the willingness of the central government to give more autonomy to local governments the new policy to set up a window for china s open policy the incentive for making money from selling the space the injection of public money into infrastructure and fierce promotional development strategies all contributed to the process of urban restructuring the effect of combined global and local changes has led to an extremely optimistic growth atmosphere and a building boom since the mid 1990s shanghai highlights the local as well as the global dimensions of urban change in the post socialist economies

regulatory reforms and productivity an empirical analysis of the japanese electricity industry the japanese electricity industry has experienced regulatory reforms since the mid 1990s this article measures productivity in japan s steam power generation sector and examines the effect of reforms on the productivity of this industry over the period 1978 2003 we estimate the luenberger productivity indicator which is a generalization of the commonly used malmquist productivity index using a data envelopment analysis approach factors associated with productivity change are investigated through dynamic generalized method of moments gmm estimation of panel data our empirical analysis shows that the regulatory reforms have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power generation sector in japan

measuring efficiency with a linear economic model this paper modifies and interprets data envelopment analysis dea using a linear economic model this approach is similar to the cone input output and assurance region approaches to dea but it is implemented so that the multipliers are measured in the same units across all linear optimization problems this approach allows one to interpret alternatives as profit maximizing organizations and the dea multipliers as prices that are comparable across the alternatives this is a useful extension of the assurance region concept but more important is that our approach enhances communication with decision makers the improved communication is illustrated by applying the model to the siting of a long term health care facility this application is interesting because the multiplier bounds make practical sense and because the problem has dimensions that sometimes lead to interpretation problems with the traditional dea model for example the site characteristics do not result from coordinated decisions some s

hypercongestion in production correspondences an empirical exploration this empirical contribution reviews the rather limited existing literature measuring congestion in production it first compares current ways to measure congestion using nonparametric specifications of technologies in particular it focuses on the magnitude and incidence of the congestion detected in empirical studies using traditional radial efficiency measures thereafter it shows the limitations of this radial measurement and how alternative measurement schemes may reveal higher amounts of congestion then the new more general methodology of measuring s congestion is presented in particular we first present a numerical example to illustrate the way the s disposable technologies allow to capture more extreme forms of congestion by setting empirically determined upper bounds to the wasting of inputs then an empirical illustration is presented based on an existing sample of data a final section concludes

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

cost efficiency of electric grid utilities in china a comparison of estimates from sfa mle sfa bayes and stoned cnls with the purpose of estimating the range of cost efficiency levels of the power grid sector in china we assembled a data set including 23 provincial power grid companies spanning from 2005 to 2009 and conducted an empirical study based on the sfa mle sfa bayes and stoned cnls methodologies empirical results show that the average values of efficiency from different models vary from 0 85 to 0 92 depending especially on the assumptions underlying inefficiency content further results demonstrate that there is exogenous technical progress during the sample period and per capita gdp of the province is negatively related to the costs of the electric grid company located in the corresponding province we hope this empirical study will contribute to the debate on an efficiency based regulation scheme which was introduced to the chinese electric grid sector on a pilot base in 2014

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

demand for medical care by the elderly a finite mixture approach summary in this article we develop a finite mixture negative binomial count model that accommodates unobserved heterogeneity in an intuitive and analytically tractable manner this model the standard negative binomial model and its hurdle extension are estimated for six measures of medical care demand by the elderly using a sample from the 1987 national medical expenditure survey the finite mixture model is preferred overall by statistical model selection criteria two points of support adequately describe the distribution of the unobserved heterogeneity suggesting two latent populations the healthy and the ill whose fitted distributions diaer substantially from each other 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

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

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

a dynamic multi stage data envelopment analysis model with application to energy consumption in the cotton industry abstract data envelopment analysis dea is a non parametric method for evaluating the relative efficiency of homogenous decision making units dmus with multiple inputs and outputs in this paper we present a dynamic multi stage dea dms dea approach to evaluate the efficiency of cotton production energy consumption in the proposed model the farms which consume resources i e fertilizers seeds and pesticides to produce cotton are assumed to be the dmus inputs not consumed during a planning period are carried over to the next period in the planning horizon initially a dms dea model is used to determine the overall efficiency of the dmus with dynamic inputs next the efficiency score of each dmu is calculated for each time period in the planning horizon we demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method and exhibit the efficacy of the procedures and algorithms with a real life case study of energy consumption in the cotton industry

the isomorphism of local development policy a case study of the formation and transformation of national development zones in post mao jiangsu china it is often the case although it has not been well documented that local governments aiming for economic growth tend to formulate and implement very similar or even identical policies this phe

efficiency of hospitals in germany a dea bootstrap approach various attempts to assess the performance of german hospitals have generated a wide range of estimates regarding their efficiency these attempts were based on different often rather small data sets consisting of heterogeneous hospitals the techniques applied range from simple benchmarking approaches to studies which employ data envelopment analysis dea some studies report dramatic differences in efficiency and propose savings potentials of 50 others find an average efficiency in excess of 95 and characterize almost 75 of their observations as fully efficient this study presents results for two datasets representative of two segments of the german hospital system these segments comprise all hospitals that have one internal medicine and one surgery department the hospitals are located in the old federal states of germany none of the hospitals provides tertiary care dea can be applied because all hospitals offer a comparable quality and range of services the results were estimated with a d

the adjusted spherical frontier model with weight restrictions abstract this paper presents the asfm lp model a parametric data envelopment analysis dea model for allocating resources commonly called inputs this model considers that a fair allocation of inputs is one that maximizes the dea ccr efficiencies of the decision making units dmus the main assumption of the asfm lp is the predefined spherical shape of the efficiency frontier we have demonstrated that our method extends the existing parametric model asfm to allow the introduction of weight restrictions which has great importance in practical applications of dea numeric examples are presented to show the application of the method

a scale elasticity measure for directional distance function and its dual theory and dea estimation abstract in this paper we focus on scale elasticity measure based on directional distance function for multi output multi input technologies explore its fundamental properties and show its equivalence with the input oriented and output oriented scale elasticity measures we also establish duality relationship between the scale elasticity measure based on the directional distance function with scale elasticity measure based on the profit function finally we discuss the estimation issues of the scale elasticity based on the directional distance function via the dea estimator

testing the accuracy of dea estimates under endogeneity through a monte carlo simulation endogeneity and the distortions on the estimation of economic models that it causes is a usual problem in the econometrics literature although non parametric methods like data envelopment analysis dea are among the most used techniques for measuring technical efficiency the effects of such problem on efficiency estimates have received little attention the aim of this paper is to alert dea practitioners about the accuracy of their estimates under the presence of endogeneity for this first we illustrate the endogeneity problem and its causes in production processes and its implications for the efficiency measurement from a conceptual perspective second using synthetic data generated in a monte carlo experiment we evaluate how different levels of positive and negative endogeneity can impair dea estimations we conclude that although dea is robust to negative endogeneity a high positive endogeneity level i e the existence of a high positive correlation between one input and the true efficiency level might bias severely dea estimates

testing scale efficiency in dea models a bootstrapping approach this paper presents a method for estimation and test of firm specific scale efficiency using data envelopment analysis dea the use of a simple bootstrap algorithm is proposed to perform firm specific inference for scale efficiency an empirical application using swedish hospital data is provided it is found that about 40 of the departments were scale efficient according to the original results however for about one third of those departments the hypothesis of scale efficiency could be rejected

improving the accuracy of dea efficiency analysis a bootstrap application to the health care foodservice industry this article analyses the efficiency of health care foodservice operations and its determinants using a data envelopment analysis dea bootstrapping approach the purpose of using the bootstrapping approach is two fold first to obtain the bias corrected estimates and the confidence intervals of dea efficiency scores and second to overcome the correlation problem of dea efficiency scores and to provide consistent inferences in explaining the determinants of health care foodservice efficiency the approach was implemented on a sample of 89 health care foodservice operations the results showed the presence of inefficiency in the sample with an average efficiency level of 72 6 further the results from analysing the determinants of health care foodservice operations provided policy implication regarding the factors that might improve the efficiency of health care foodservice operations

using dea to evaluate 29 canadian textile companies considering returns to scale in this research we use data envelopment analysis dea to evaluate the performance of 29 canadian textile companies in 1994 using the charnes cooper and rodes ccr model in dea we first obtain the results of efficiency scores and returns to scale of 29 canadian textile companies we then focus on the returns to scale to examine the possibility of utilizing the inefficient inputs by either further expansion or vertical integration we develop a mathematical model to consider the trade off between reducing and not reducing the input surplus we use the cone ratio model to find the optimal level of vertical utilization the computational results are based on real data from the canadian textile companies

measuring the efficiency of health systems of oecd countries by data envelopment analysis abstractthis study aims to assess the efficiency of health sectors of 34 oecd countries by employing input oriented data envelopment analysis dea method both under constant and variable returns to scale assumptions in the analysis the number of doctors number of patient beds and health expenditure per capita were used as input variables and life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rate were used as outputs at the first stage dea analysis was performed for 34 countries and at the second stage outlier 8 countries were eliminated to form a more homogeneous group and to achieve more accurate results 11 of the 26 countries were found to have efficient health systems and there is room for efficiency improvements in health sector in the remaining 15 countries

global linkages the chinese high tech community and industrial cluster development the semiconductor industry in wuxi jingsu the development of industrial clusters in china has become a subject of international interest but attention has primarily focused on government efforts to attract fdi to promote industrial clusters and regional development the local process which supports the rise and growth of clusters driven by the domestic firms has been relatively ignored in this debate thus this article considers the analytical framework of strategic coupling and uses a case study of the wuxi semiconductor industry to investigate the cluster formation dynamics and effects driven by domestic rather than fdi firms with the mediating role of the transnational chinese technical community the state and domestic firms it concludes that the rise and growth of the semiconductor domestic led cluster in wuxi is not dependent on fdi but instead results from the dynamic interplay of several elements effects of technology spillover from the government funded research institutions as well as mutual competition and co operation in tech

assessing eco efficiency through the dea analysis and decoupling index in the latin america countries abstract this study was developed according to a two step approach in the first step we provide an investigation of the changes in eco efficiency under constant and variable return to scale while on a second step the evaluation of the decoupling elasticity will be given the impacts of energy economic and environmental determinants inputs on the performance indicators of eco efficiency were calculated as the inverse of the carbon intensity ratio of the gdp over the co2 emissions both from the world development indicators database the changes in eco efficiency and the decoupling elasticity between co2 emissions and economic growth changes data was used for 16 latin america countries according to five year periods from 1994 to 2013 for all the five time span considered it is worth noting that the degree of technical efficiency for the latin america countries is lower than the degree of technological efficiency thus indicating that a portion of the overall inefficiency is due to the fact that these countries are producing below the production frontier rather than to an inefficient use of technology on average the results have confirmed that the technological scale change in energy production is the dominant factor influencing the optimal production frontier in the sample of countries under analysis complementarily according to the mixed results from the decoupling analysis we may conclude that the increase decrease of the co2 per capita emissions was due to other economic and environmental factors rather than to a negative positive effect of the gdp growth rate

the measurement of productive efficiency a reconsideration the purpose of this paper is to generalize the farrell indexes of productive efficiency to nonhomothetic production technologies and at the same time maintain the cost interpretation of the farrell measures since the generalized indexes rely heavily on recent developments in the estimation of frontier cost and production functions several frontier models are reviewed in addition to generalized indexes of technical allocative and overall productive efficiency a variety of single factor efficiency measures are discussed the applicability of the proposed efficiency measures is illustrated with a numerical example of electric power generation

exploring the existence of kuznets curve in countries environmental efficiency using dea window analysis abstract this paper using data envelopment dea window analysis and generalized method of moments gmm estimators examines the existence of a kuznets type relationship between countries environmental efficiency and national income specifically it measures the environmental efficiency of 17 oecd countries by constructing environmental efficiency ratios for the time period 1980 2002 the analysis with the application of dynamic panel data reveals that there isn t a kuznets type relationship between environmental efficiency and income allowing for dynamic effects we find that the adjustment to the target ratio is instantaneous we also find that increased economic activity does not always ensure environmental protection and thus the path of growth is important in addition to the growth itself

small is not that beautiful after all measuring the scale efficiency of tunisian high schools using a dea bootstrap method allocation of resources to schools in a centrally managed state system as the tunisian one should depend on the performance of the individual institutions the optimal size is of crucial importance in this context and we need accurate measurement for sound policies this article discusses and implements a nonparametric statistical test procedure for organization scale efficiency this procedure allows us to test whether the observed scale efficiency is optimal or not using a smooth bootstrap methodology for efficiency measures estimated using data envelopment analysis dea methods because school principals do not control for the size of their institution i e the capital available at decision time the scale efficiency measures are defined so as to include quasi fixed inputs the results show that scale efficiency measures are subject to sampling variation we also found that the schools that are scale efficient are usually mid sized and large schools when size is measured by the number of students

efficiency subsidies and environmental adaptation of animal farming under cap the purpose of this article is to model the interaction between the targets of the current cap environmental adaptation subsidies and efficiency q1 of animal farming to this end we first have to identify the production frontier and relative efficiency level for each animal oriented farm in the sample the production frontier and efficiency index for each type of farm assuming no specific production functions are identified using data envelope analysis dea techniques we then address the relationship between relative efficiency farm size and environmentally friendly behavior by carrying out a nonparametric regression of efficiency on economic size a proxy for the degree of environmental appropriateness and regional dummies calculations of the efficiency of the farms including direct subsidies are compared with the counterfactual exercise in the case in which direct subsidies are not considered finally we look for relations between subsidies and factors such as farm size efficiency and environmentally friendly behavior one key result shows that on average direct payments generally tend to increase efficiency however in most of the cases the mean efficiency decreases as the percentage of direct payments rises direct payments are found to be positively related to environmentally friendly production at least in germany however in general the direct payment system is not sufficient to offset the fact that the less environmentally friendly farms as well as the larger farms are more efficient

local governments as industrial firms an organizational analysis of china s transitional economy despite widespread skepticism about government ownership in transitional economies china s rapid industrial growth has been led by public enterprises kornai s theory of soft budbet constraints born of the failure of earlier hungarian reforms fosters such skepticism but it assumes as fixed organizational characteristics that in fact vary widely across government jurisdictions local governments with smaller industrial bases have clearer financial incentives and constraints fewer nonfinancial interests in enterprises and a greater capacity to monitor them in china s vast public sector the fastest growth in output and productivity has occurred where government ownership rights are clearest and most easily enforced which enables officials to manage public industry as a diversified market oriented firm

strategic planning of optimal resource allocation in response to global financial crisis a study of international tourist hotels this study is principally designed to examine the changes in the efficiency effective resource allocation and future operation strategies of taiwan s international tourist hotel in global economic downturn at first we set up critical input and output factors and construct an assessment model using data envelopment analysis dea for analysis of relative efficiency further we apply an allocative efficiency model for additional considerations of each input cost and analyse proper and effective resource allocation finally there are significant changes in overall efficiency of international tourist hotels under global financial crisis we can also reach an effective allocation of the overall resources in such cases lowering cost has become a key issue for sustainable operation of international tourist hotel finally the greatest contribution of this study is to further classify the competitiveness and optimal cost allocation of taiwan s international tourist hotels into seven categories based on the

accounting for technological differences in modelling the performance of airports a bayesian approach this article uses the innovative bayesian random coefficient frontier model to account for technological differences in the efficiency measurement of uk airports in separating cost efficiency from technological differences the model provides more accurate efficiency measures for airports policy makers the input output data used in testing the model reflect on recent figures from the uk airport industry and as a result link the efficiency measures with the current industry trends such as the increase in oil price airport capital investments and market expansion results from the model estimation showed that the model fits the data well with all coefficients correctly signed and in line with the theoretical requirements the average cost efficiency for 2007 was around 73 73 indicating that uk airports are not operating close to a full efficiency level this article attributed the sources of inefficiencies to the current industry trends and discussed the importance of heterogeneity in future policy f

impact of input substitution and output transformation on data envelopment analysis decisions abstractdata envelopment analysis dea can aid managerial decision making because it offers an opportunity to measure organizational performance in a holistic manner aggregating data from partial indicators into a single comprehensive measure however there are some methodological hazards associated with the use of dea that are especially relevant to managerial decisions but which have been largely ignored in the literature herein we identify and show the impact of a ubiquitous methodological hazard in dea modelling the economic assumptions regarding input substitutions and output transformations

an international comparison of hospital efficiency does institutional environment matter the consensus among many health economists is that no meaningful performance differences exist among for profit and non profit hospitals in the us but this topic has continued to be a matter of academic judicial and public policy interest a similar debate has ensued internationally regarding the potential efficiency gains from privatization of public enterprises in this paper we examine empirical evidence from the public highly regulated norwegian hospital sector and the private highly competitive and unregulated california hospital sector to ascertain whether institutional environment and level of market competition significantly affect the degree of productive efficiency in hospitals we compare and discuss the productive efficiency of four similar sets of hospitals operating in different institutional and competitive environments the four samples are carefully matched in the dimensions of sample size hospital size and average lengths of stay heterogeneity in output definition is used to co

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

insurance companies in mozambique a two stage dea and neural networks on efficiency and capacity slacks this article analyses the efficiency of mozambique insurance companies using a dea model two dea models are used and a bootstrap approach adopted furthermore the efficiency scores are predicted based on neural networks the results reveal that mozambique insurance companies output increasing potentials are severely constrained particularly in terms of the ceded reinsurance increasing potentials policy implications are derived

reform and openness why china s economic reforms have delayed democracy most theories that seek to explain democratization look to changes in the economy as the precursor to significant political liberalization locating the main causal factor in either severe economic crisis or rapid economic growth in the chinese context by contrast the communist party has extricated itself from the socialist social contract with the urban working class without losing its grip on political power moreover china has maintained a rapid pace of economic growth for over twenty five years without significant political liberalization comparative analysis of china s post 1978 reform policies yields insights both across types of socialist transition comparing china with eastern europe and russia and across time comparing china with other high growth east asian economies a key factor in china s ability to reform the economy without sacrificing political control is the timing and sequencing of its foreign direct investment fdi liberalization there are two key variables that are important to this comparative analysis china s pattern of ownership diversification and china s mode of integration into the global economy the article relates these two variables to the success of economic change without political liberalization in particular how fdi liberalization has affected relations between workers and the ruling communist party reform and openness in this context resulted in a strengthened chinese state a weakened civil society especially labor and a delay in political liberalization

on the in efficiency of swiss hospitals the efficiency of hospitals is of interest to health insurers government authorities and hospital management itself however econometric methods for determining in efficiency have severe drawbacks since hospitals are multiproduct firms and because the duality between production and cost functions cannot be assumed in this work non parametric deterministic data envelopment analysis dea is used to measure the relative inefficiency of 89 swiss hospitals covering the years 1993 1996 310 observations special attention is given to the role of patient days in the production of health the findings depend on whether patient days are viewed as an input of patient time or as an output as in previous studies while the probability of a unit being inefficient cannot be explained using the available data the degree of overall inefficiency is shown to significantly depend on the financial incentives faced by management in particular due to subsidization private hospitals do not seem to be less inefficien

data envelopment analysis models of investment funds abstract this paper develops theory missing in the sizable literature that uses data envelopment analysis to construct return risk ratios for investment funds it explores the production possibility set of the investment funds to identify an appropriate form of returns to scale it discusses what risk and return measures can justifiably be combined and how to deal with negative risks and identifies suitable sets of measures it identifies the problems of failing to deal with diversification and develops an iterative approximation procedure to deal with it it identifies relationships between diversification coherent measures of risk and stochastic dominance it shows how the iterative procedure makes a practical difference using monthly returns of 30 hedge funds over the same time period it discusses possible shortcomings of the procedure and offers directions for future research

performance and efficiency in colombia s power distribution system effects of the 1994 reform we assess evolution in performance efficiency and productivity of colombia s power distribution utilities before and after the 1994 regulatory reform that introduced electricity market activities for the power sector in 12 distribution companies from 1985 to 2001 performance is evaluated contrasting changes in mean and median by wilcoxon rank sum and pearson tests on financial and other performance indicators technical efficiency is measured by means of data envelopment analysis dea the nature of the dataset allows the estimation of malmquist productivity index and its evolution in time results show a recovery after the reform in the main performance indicators of profitability partial input productivity and output plant efficiency and productivity increased after the reform mainly in the largest utilities used as benchmarks in the dea efficiency scores measures meanwhile the less efficient power distribution companies did not improved after the reform and were not able to undertake plant restructuring to catch up in plant efficiency with respect to the pareto efficient input allocations econometric results on dea efficiency scores suggest a positive effect of policy reform

demand for medigap insurance by the elderly a micro simulation analysis in this paper a micro simulation model is developed to explain and estimate the optimum medigap insurance coverage for elderly with different levels of insurance premium subsidy the medigap risk exposure is estimated from the 1977 national medical care expenditure utilization survey utilizing the gamma distribution the theory of expected utility maximization is assumed and the model for health insurance demand is operationalized for hypothetical parameters for risk aversion the price elasticity of demand the loading fee and the subsidy with the risk aversion parameter at 0 0005 the price elasticity of medical care demand at 0 5 loading costs at 9 without any subsidy the optimal medigap coinsurance rate is 0 78 and with a premium subsidy of 60 the co insurance rate falls to 12 the hypothetical price elasticity of demand for medigap insurance is estimated to be between 0 44 and 1 02 more than half of the increase in medical expenditure resulting from an increase in premium subsidy from

economic of scale in school operation evidence from canada 1983 economic of scale in school operation evidence from canada applied economics vol 15 no 3 pp 323 340