preferential trading arrangements as strategic positioning abstract we analyze a three country model of trade negotiations in which countries can form bilateral free trade areas bilateral customs unions or a trilateral preferential trading arrangement and can continue negotiating after reaching an agreement in contrast to the literature on multilateral bargaining the set of agreements can form a nonpartitional network while in contrast to the network literature players can reach multilateral agreements patient enough countries only reach bilateral agreements if insiders gain more than outsiders which allows them to manipulate the status quo in subsequent negotiations however a hub and spoke pattern may then emerge and insiders then dissipate the advantages of strategic positioning we also use variants on the model to explain why a us commitment not to bargain bilaterally sustained progress at gatt negotiations and the rarity of open access preferential trading arrangements

the tale of two research communities the diffusion of research on productive efficiency abstract the field of theoretical and applied efficiency analysis is pursued both by economists and people from operational research and management science each group tends to cite a different paper as the seminal one recent availability of extensive electronically accessible databases of journal articles makes studies of the diffusion of papers through citations possible research strands inspired by the seminal paper within economics are identified and followed by citation analysis during the 20 year period before the operations research paper was published the first decade of the operations research paper is studied in a similar way and emerging differences in diffusion patterns are pointed out main factors influencing citations apart from the quality of the research contribution are reputation of journal reputation of author number of close followers colleagues cadres of proteges ph d students and extent of network invisible college such factors are revealed by the citing papers in spite of increasing cross contacts between economics and operations research the last decades co citation analysis reveals a relative constant tendency to stick to own camp references

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

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis reply to fare and grosskopf fare and grosskopf this issue claim that a single abatement factor suffices for modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production models and that the kuosmanen 2005 technology that uses multiple abatement factors is larger than necessary this article demonstrates by a numerical example that a single abatement factor does not suffice to capture all feasible production plans and that its use leads to the violation of convexity one of the maintained assumptions of the model we also prove that the kuosmanen technology is the correct minimum extrapolation technology under the stated axioms

do big countries win tariff wars yes it is widely believed that tariffs invite retaliation and that the postretaliation equilibrium l eaves all countries worse off than they would be at free trade the a uthors present a simple pure exchange model with two countries and t wo goods and show which endowment patterns are consistent with this belief they find that if one country is substantially bigger than th e other it can expect to gain from a tariff war despite retaliation the model can be extended to show that the advantage obtained by bei ng part of a large trading unit can help explain the formation of cus toms unions copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

degree of scale economies and congestion a unified dea approach abstract there are increasing concerns about how increase in congestion can adversely affect output as well as about the relative benefit cost ratio or return on investment associated with alternative projects or policies to address those problems regardless of what policy strategies are used to address congestion the fact remains that we cannot assess the economic benefits of congestion reduction strategies unless we are able to measure the extent to which congestion affects productivity in general and scale economies in particular this paper makes a novel attempt to suggest a method in a non parametric framework to measure scale elasticity in production in the presence of congestion

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

one sided elasticities and technical efficiency in multi output production a theoretical framework one of the concepts that have sparked considerable interest in the theory of production and efficiency is that of returns to scale rts economics researchers typically define rts using the notion of elasticity considerable research activity on rts has also been observed by management science researchers who utilize the methodology of data envelopment analysis dea to gain insights on rts in this paper we present a theoretical framework that integrates existing economics and management science literature on rts and provides a solid foundation for research work in this area our framework defines discusses and proposes an approach to measure input and output oriented elasticities and one sided rts we demonstrate how the work done in dea is a special case of our framework and discuss the conditions under which the resulting two left hand and the two right hand elasticities can be equal future research directions are also discussed

corporate social responsibility and firm productivity evidence from the chemical industry in the united states prior research suggests that participating in corporate social responsibility csr activities can lead to higher future productivity however the empirical evidence is still scarce the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between csr and future firm productivity in the u s chemical industry specifically this study examines the relationship between csr in year t and firm productivity in year t 1 t 2 and t 3 we use data envelopment analysis a non parametric method to measure firm productivity results from the regression analysis support a significantly positive relationship between csr and future firm productivity suggesting that csr can lead to higher productivity in the chemical industry the findings add to the validity of the proposition in prior research

measurement of returns to scale using non radial dea models abstract there are some specific features of the non radial data envelopment analysis dea models which cause some problems for the returns to scale measurement in the scientific literature on dea some methods were suggested to deal with the returns to scale measurement in the non radial dea models these methods are based on using strong complementary slackness conditions from optimization theory however our investigation and computational experiments show that such methods increase computational complexity significantly and may generate as optimal solutions contradicting optimization theory in this paper we propose and substantiate a direct method for the returns to scale measurement in the non radial dea models our computational experiments documented that the proposed method works reliably and efficiently on the real life data sets

nonparametric production technologies with weakly disposable inputs abstract in models of production theory and efficiency analysis the inputs and outputs are assumed to satisfy some form of disposability in this paper we consider the assumption of weak input disposability it states that any activity remains feasible if its inputs are simultaneously scaled up in the same proportion as suggested in the literature the shephard technology incorporating weak input disposability could be used to evaluate the effect of input congestion we show that the shephard technology is not convex and therefore introduces bias in evaluation of congestion to address this we develop an alternative convex technology whose use in the evaluation of congestion removes the noted bias we undertake a further axiomatic investigation and obtain a range of production technologies all of which exhibit weak input disposability but are based on different progressively relaxed convexity assumptions apart from the evaluation of input congestion such technologies should also be useful in applications in which some inputs are closely related or are overlapping and therefore satisfy only the weak input disposability assumption incorporated in the new models

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

optimal tariff equilibria with customs unions the authors construct a model of customs unions in which countries charge optimal tariffs customs unions internalize the externality that exists whenever two countries import the same good also customs unions make several countries into one large unit with more market power big customs unions can improve their members welfare relative to the free trade the authors model of customs unions separates the effects of tariff reduction from the effects of policy coordination the movement from nash equilibrium to a free trade association improves global resource allocations moving from a free trade association to a full customs union has ambiguous resource allocation effects

nonparametric efficiency analysis under uncertainty using data envelopment analysis abstract production and cost frontiers of a firm in an industry are directly affected by the uncertainty of market demand and the uncertainty of input availability the nonparametric approach of data envelopment analysis dea is generalized here in both static and dynamic directions by incorporating these uncertainties the paper addresses an extension of the convex hull method of dea for determining a production frontier in the presence of demand and supply uncertainty of outputs and inputs respectively this is illustrated by an empirical application to the computer industry

further discussion on linear production functions and dea abstract the purpose of the current paper is to clarify the misunderstanding in using the constant returns to scale crs model in data envelopment analysis dea to estimate returns to scale rts classification by illustrating the following two different assumptions a all decision making units dmus are assumed to be compared to a crs frontier in the ccr model i e all dmus are assumed to be capable of operating under crs and b all dmus exhibit crs several incorrect points about rts estimation raised by chang k p and guh y y 1991 european journal of operational research 52 215 223 and chang k p 1997 european journal of operational research 97 597 599 are examined it is shown that the assumption a does not mean that the rts classification cannot be estimated the crs frontier assumption cannot change the rts nature of each dmu since the ccr model mixes a technical efficiency and a scale efficiency it is possible and meaningful to use the ccr results to determine the rts classification finally the infeasibility of chang and guh s 1991 treatment of non archimedean infinitesimal is discussed

decomposing technical efficiency and scale elasticity in two stage network dea abstract the constant returns to scale assumption maintained by neoclassical theorists for justifying the black box structure of production technology in long run does not necessarily allow one to infer that there are no scale benefits available in its sub technologies most of real life production technologies are multi stage in nature and the sources of increasing returns lie in the sub technologies it is therefore imperative to estimate the scale economies of a firm not only for the network technology but also for the sub technologies to accomplish this two approaches are suggested in this contribution based on the premise concerning whether a network technology construct considers allocative inefficiency the first approach which is ours makes use of a single network technology for two interdependent sub technologies the second approach which is due to kao and hwang 2011 however assumes complete allocative efficiency by considering two independent sub technology frontiers one for each sub technology the distinction between these two approaches is important from a policy point of view since the network efficiencies revealed from these two approaches have distinctive causative factors that do not permit them to be used interchangeably

measuring efficiencies and returns to scale of nippon telegraph telephone in production and cost analyses this article provides a theoretical framework related to data envelopment analysis dea in which an analytical relationship among eight different efficiency concepts is defined and explored in terms of production and cost analyses this article extends the theoretical basis into the measurement of scale economies se and returns to scale rts a unique feature of the se rts measurement is that the proposed approach is based upon the measurement regarding not only production activity but also cost performance as an important case study this article applies the dea based approach to measure the eight efficiency concepts and se rts of nippon telegraph telephone ntt this study finds that ntt has maintained high se and increasing rts in the operations of 39 annual periods from 1953 through 1992

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

global and local scale characteristics in convex and nonconvex nonparametric technologies a first empirical exploration the purpose of this contribution is to empirically implement and supplement the proposals made by podinovski 2004b to explore the nature of both global and local returns to scale in nonconvex nonparametric technologies in particular we both propose a simplified method to compute the global returns to scale and employ some secondary data sets to investigate the frequency of the special case of global sub constant returns to scale furthermore when determining global returns to scale using both convex and nonconvex technologies we verify how often the resulting information is concordant or conflicting finally besides comparing the fdh and dea evolution of ray average productivity for some typical individual observations we introduce in the literature two original methods for the determination of local returns to scale in nonconvex technologies

returns to scale and scale elasticity in data envelopment analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide mathematical characterizations of the data envelopment analysis dea based scale elasticity that is computable for both frontier and nonfrontier units in order to accomplish this we first review existing frontier results extend them formally to the nonfrontier case and then analyze how the scale elasticity behaves we also study how shadow pricing can be done as an application of the scale elasticity and show how upper and lower scale elasticity bounds can be obtained finally we provide an illustrative example for the clarification and verification of our results

marginal values and returns to scale for nonparametric production frontiers we present a unifying linear programming approach to the calculation of various directional derivatives for a very large class of production frontiers of data envelopment analysis dea special cases of this include different marginal rates the scale elasticity and a spectrum of partial and mixed elasticity measures our development applies to any polyhedral production technology including to name a few the conventional variable and constant returns to scale dea technologies their extensions with weight restrictions technologies with weakly disposable undesirable outputs and network dea models furthermore our development provides a general method for characterization of returns to scale rts in any polyhedral technology the new approach effectively removes the need to develop bespoke models for the rts characterization and calculation of marginal rates and elasticity measures for each particular technology

promoting sustainable palm oil viewed from a global networks and flows perspective abstract global demand for palm oil is increasing to fulfil worldwide needs for cooking oil food ingredients biofuels soap and other chemicals in response palm oil production is rapidly expanding which promotes economic growth in producing countries but also leads to serious environmental and social problems such as destruction of tropical forests climate change and threats to small holder livelihoods for these reasons palm oil production and use have become highly controversial however the global character of palm oil production and consumption the number of different actors involved and its multiple uses makes promotion its sustainability highly complex individual nation states can no longer control and regulate a global flow like palm oil and alternative governing networks appear involving private companies and ngos acknowledging the roles of such governance networks with different forms of power means that relying only on economic and political power to explain current dynamics in the palm oil sector is inadequate in global networks like palm oil supply encompassing transnational material flows and multiple actors the relevance of each actor relates to his position in the network power in global palm oil supply is therefore not only related to their position in the vertical supply chains but also to their role in the horizontal networks new forms of power in networks arise from steering the networks programming and from connecting different networks switching in the multiple networks that compose global palm oil provision today different programmers and switchers play critical roles this is briefly illustrated in this paper on the basis of different cases of active steering in global palm oil provision

alternative measures of environmental technology structure in dea an application abstract the nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea literature on environmental efficiency ee considers handling undesirable outputs in two alternative ways either in their original forms with the assumption that these are weakly disposable or in various translated forms with the assumption that these are strongly disposable choosing a particular approach implies adoption of a particular distinct treatment of undesirable outputs and hence yields a distinct set of ee estimates to explore the effects of the interplay between choice of ee measure and specific treatment of undesirable outputs this paper attempts to generate all possible output oriented ee measures based on these two alternative approaches furthermore guided by the argument that slacks are important in identifying properly the efficiency behavior of firms it proposes two new alternative slacks based formulations of ee one based on the range directional model and the other on the generalized proportional distance function model using a confected data set of ten firms and a real life data set of 22 oecd countries our empirical analysis reveals that first ee scores are influenced not only by the choice of disposability assumption for undesirable outputs but also by the way these are treated in various translated forms second the choice of any particular treatment of undesirable outputs plays no role in influencing the rankings of firms and third our two new alternative ee formulations are at the least viable alternatives to existing ee measures in ranking firms according to their eco efficiency behavior

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

stochastic models and variable returns to scales in data envelopment analysis stochastic data envelopment analysis dea models were developed by taking random disturbances into account for the possibility of variations in input output data structure the stochastic efficiency measure of a decision making unit dmu is defined via joint probabilistic comparisons of inputs and outputs with other dmus and can be characterized by solving a chance constrained programming problem deterministic equivalents are derived for both situations of multivariate symmetric random disturbances and a single random factor in the production relationships an analysis of stochastic variable returns to scale is developed

dea duality on returns to scale rts in production and cost analyses an occurrence of multiple solutions and differences between production based and cost based rts estimates this article discusses the concept of rts returns to scale in the framework of dea data envelopment analysis production and cost analyses focusing on an occurrence of multiple solutions and how to deal with such a difficulty dual relationships between production based and cost based rts estimates are also theoretically discussed in this study

scale characterizations in a dea directional technology distance function framework abstract the present study extends prior research on data envelopment analysis dea based returns to scale in view of the fact that the standard methods are very restrictive the extension is made in the context of the directional technology distance function that generalizes the shephard input and output distance functions the two main results in this extended setting are as follows first we show how banker s most productive scale size mpss concept is characterized second we obtain scale elasticity measures and examine the properties and the relationships with standard scale elasticity measures

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

is there a prison size dilemma an empirical analysis of output specific economies of scale abstract we advocate a nonparametric multi output framework to estimate output specific economies of scale and we apply this model to male prisons in england and wales over the sample period 2009 2012 to estimate output specific returns to scale in prisons we consider not only the cost per place but also qualitative outputs such as purposeful out of cell activity and successful reintegration furthermore we introduce environmental heterogeneity using the characteristics of the prison ers england and wales offers a unique example to study economies of scale in prisons as the uk has started to build new super size prisons in order to replace the most outdated prisons

a world away and close to home the multi scalar making of indonesia s energy landscape abstract indonesia is the world s largest producer of palm oil a feedstock for agrofuels and an important source of direct nutritional energy for human consumption the country is also an important global supplier of coal petroleum and natural gas while per capita fossil energy consumption is relatively low for biomass and fossil fuel based energy indonesia has been transforming its energy landscape in order to provide for foreign demand the landscape both in literal and in the figurative sense simultaneously forms and is formed by the material resource flows required for society s biophysical reproduction i e the social metabolism in the context of the ongoing energy transition both are subject to change in our analysis of indonesia s palm oil production we find that the drivers shaping the country s resource use as well as its energy landscape are located at a spatial temporal and functional distance from where they take effect the energy landscape and resource use patterns are formed across levels of scale from the subnational to the global energy policy confined to the framework of the sovereign nation state cannot effectively address the complex drivers of increasingly detrimental environmental change associated with energy transitions nor can it trigger a sustainability transition

radial and non radial decompositions of profit change with an application to indian banking abstract grifell tatje and lovell grifell tatje e lovell c a k 1999 profits and productivity management science 45 1177 1193 made significant contributions to the literature on the extended radial dea framework by decomposing profit change into six mutually exclusive components their approach however poses two basic problems first the radial estimates on these components might give conflicting signals about the direction of profit change after the full radial efficiencies are achieved when slacks are present second evaluations of these components using base period prices as weights can be potentially misleading to address these concerns we first introduce non radial dea models and then provide a few strong theoretical arguments in favor of using as weights either current period prices or an average price covering both periods to value the contributions of each of these components the indian banking sector is taken as a case study to illustrate the radial and non radial decompositions of profit change so as to empirically examine the role of competition on profit change and its drivers our broad empirical results are as follows first radial and non radial models yield diametrically opposite results on the contributions of various components second the increasing efficiency change trends in all ownership groups after 2002 indicate that the government reform process instituted on the banking industry has had a favorable effect on the performance of the indian banking sector third despite the fact that nationalized banks are the oldest banks their output and resource allocation behaviors do not reflect their learning experience

oil palm boom contract farming and rural economic development village level evidence from indonesia summary contracts between companies and local communities have been used in indonesia for over 20 years to involve smallholder farmers in the emerging palm oil industry impacts of these contracts have not been analyzed systematically here data from a village survey spanning a time period from 1992 to 2012 are used to evaluate effects on rural economic development panel regression models with village fixed effects show that contracts have significantly contributed to wealth accumulation contracts signed before 1999 were more beneficial than contracts signed afterward which is due to more public sector support and infrastructure investments during the earlier period contracts have contributed to decreasing inter village inequality not only because poorer villages were more likely to adopt a contract but also because they benefited more from contract adoption than richer ones the results suggest that well designed contracts can be important for smallholder farmers to benefit from the oil palm boom the village level approach has clear advantages to evaluate direct and indirect economic effects but it also has drawbacks in terms of analyzing environmental effects and issues of intra village inequality more research with various approaches is needed to better understand the multifaceted implications of oil palm contracts for sustainable rural development

welfare and integration this article argues that the terms of trade and volume of trade taxonomy from the theory of tariffs constitutes an attractive alternative to viner s trade diversion and creation effects for the analysis of preferential trading arrangements in applications of the alternative approach the article establishes that results by lipsey and riezman on large versus small preunion trade flows for choice of partners are not contradictory and that under some conditions a small country s optimal strategy is to seek membership of multiple free trade areas

swimming upstream local indonesian production networks in globalized palm oil production summary when agricultural commodities in developing countries experience an economic boom they offer potential pathways out of poverty while creating environmental and social problems while recent research provides insights into the governance of international supply chains it provides less analysis of the local production networks creating critical problems indonesia is now the world s largest exporter of crude palm oil this paper analyses processes of oil palm development in three oil palm districts it considers how policy models regime interests and agribusiness strategies shape local production networks generate local outcomes and affect the possibilities of tackling issues associated with this boom

returns to scale productive efficiency and optimal firm size evidence from taiwan s firm data by using taiwan s census firm data this paper estimates and tests the variable returns to scale hypothesis for aggregate manufacturing and two digit industries an efficiency measure is constructed to further examine the size efficiency relations among two digit industries analysis indicates that increasing returns exist at the aggregate manufacturing level and its magnitude is higher for exporting firms than for non exporting firms moreover trade is beneficial only for small firms however the property of increasing returns diminishes for most of the industries at the two digit level particularly for the exporting firms this sharp comparison between aggregate and two digit level results suggests that trade is conducive to productivity and provides an indication of the specific form of technology spillovers among firms and across industries further investigation of the relationship between productive efficiency and firm size renders the result that optimal firm size is small for exporting firms i

returns to scale in different dea models abstract this paper discusses returns to scale rts in data envelopment analysis dea for each of the presently available types of models the bcc and ccr models are treated in input oriented forms while the multiplicative model is treated in output oriented form this distinction is not pertinent for the additive model which simultaneously maximizes outputs and minimizes inputs in the sense of a vector optimization quantitative estimates in the form of scale elasticities are treated in the context of multiplicative models but the bulk of the discussion is confined to qualitative characterizations such as whether rts is identified as increasing decreasing or constant this is discussed for each type of model and relations between the results for the different models are established the opening section describes and delimits approaches to be examined the concluding section outlines further opportunities for research

measurement of simultaneous scale and mix changes in inputs and outputs using dea facets and rts abstract we show a new use of the efficient facets in dea specifically once we have identified all facets of the dea technology we are able to estimate the potential changes in some inputs and outputs while fixing other inputs and outputs ranges of simultaneous scale and mix changes in inputs and outputs while proportionally increasing or decreasing other inputs and outputs and finally the rts the proposed algorithms are applied to corporate planning processes of chemical companies

the legal environment and incentives for change in property rights institutions summary land conflicts in many parts of the world indicate pressures for change in the property rights institutions governing land acquisition and land use whether or not institutional change occurs depends on the incentives and capacities of political actors this article argues that the legal environment is one factor influencing incentives for institutional change three case studies of land governance in southeast asia s palm oil industry illustrate three types of legal environment rule by law legalism legal pluralism and lawlessness or routinized illegality the cases show that the legal environment shapes modes of resistance to property reallocations in the palm oil industry rule by law legalism supports legalized modes of resistance through the court system in contrast legal pluralism and lawlessness favor the use of political strategies to contest property reallocations the mode of resistance in turn determines whether actors acquiring property have incentives to gain legal cover or whether investing in political resources is more rewarding although the effectiveness of resistance is largely determined by the distribution of political resources the mode of resistance helps explain whether there is demand for property rights institutions that offer generalized legal certainty in property protection path dependence arising from the legal environment therefore influences the direction of institutional change

the efficiency of german universities some evidence from non parametric and parametric methods due to tight public budget constraints the efficiency of publicly financed universities in germany is receiving increasing attention in the academic as well as in the public discourse against this background we analyse the efficiency of 72 public german universities for the years 1998 2003 applying data envelopment and stochastic frontier analysis contrary to earlier studies we account for the faculty composition of universities which proves to be an essential element in the efficiency of higher education our main finding is that east german universities have performed better in total factor productivity change compared to those in west germany however when looking at mean efficiency scores over the sample period west german universities still appear at the top end of relative efficiency outcomes

on alternative optimal solutions in the estimation of returns to scale in dea zhu and shen european journal of operational research 81 1995 590 show that alternative optimal solutions in the estimation of returns to scale rts are caused by a particular linear dependency among a set of extreme efficient dmus when one employs the concept of most productive scale size european journal of operational research 17 1984 35 in data envelopment analysis dea this paper demonstrates that the presence of weakly efficient dmus may also lead to alternative optima and extends the results of zhu and shen to the entire frontier necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of multiple optimal solutions for constant returns to scale crs dmus are established

estimating returns to scale in dea this paper addresses issues of returns to scale in data envelopment analysis starting with the model developed by banker but avoiding banker s conclusions on returns to scale the paper shows how two close variants inputs and outputs oriented of the banker charnes cooper model can be used to provide precise estimates of returns to scale the estimation of returns to scale for each unit is done by testing the existence of solutions in four regions defined in the neighborhood of the analyzed unit numerical examples and graphs are used to illustrate the proposed procedures

conservation versus equity can payments for environmental services achieve both this paper investigates the trade off between conservation and equity considerations in the use of payments for environmental services pes that implicitly incorporate different distributive justice principles using a public good experiment with heterogeneous participants we compare the effects on additional area conserved and distribution of earnings of two pes schemes an equal payment and a payment based on rawls distributional principle which we refer to as maxi min payment scheme the main findings of the framed field experiment conducted in jambi province indonesia indicate that the introduction of a maxi min pes scheme can function as a multi purpose instrument it realigns the income distribution in favor of low endowed participants and does not necessarily need to be compromised by lower environmental additionality at the group level

greener than thou the political economy of fish ecolabeling and its local manifestations in south africa summary developing country governments and industries have been reluctant to support ecolabels fearing their potentially protectionist effects this reluctance has been countered by international organizations such as fao and ecolabel initiatives with assurances of transparency non discrimination and technical assistance the analysis of the marine stewardship council msc label shows that developing country fisheries and small scale ones in particular have been marginalized furthermore the msc certification of the hake industry in south africa illustrates that ecolabeling is sought in the context of competitive pressures and specific political economies not simply on the basis of value free science and systemic management this article concludes that developing country producers need dedicated systems of standards and verification procedures not only special flexibilities

a note on returns to scale in dea abstract this brief note adds computational convenience and efficiency to the article by banker and thrall on returns to scale in dea by modifying one of their suggestions to avoid the need for examining all alternate optima in order to reach a decision

3 3 theory of customs unions abstract four recent models those of berglas corden meade and riezman which have extended the theory of customs union to 3 3 dimensions are reviewed the reasons for both apparent and real differences among the welfare propositions from these models are explained some new extensions are derived the main conclusions are that the family of 3 3 models introduce several effects which cannot be present in 3 2 models and that the distinctions among the models are due mostly to diverse assumptions concerning the trilateral pattern of trade which are not readily apparent

efficiency effectiveness and productivity of marketing in services abstract how can a service firm right size marketing expenses and yet strive to maximize revenue this paper represents the first attempt to model these efficiency and effectiveness issues using a 49 unit asia pacific hotel chain as illustration we employ a triangular dea model with total expenses controlling for number of rooms as the raw input marketing expenses as intermediate output input and revenues from room rentals and f b as final outputs we infer that efficiency tails off when more than 12 of the budget is expended on marketing activities in terms of effectiveness we find that all the units rated as relatively inefficient can accrue increasing returns to scale in revenues from marketing activities by contrast in the productivity stage linking the raw inputs to the revenues we observe mostly decreasing returns to scale our results highlight the crucial role of marketing in service organizations

environmental entitlements dynamics and institutions in community based natural resource management abstract while community based natural resource management cbnrm now attracts widespread international attention its practical implementation frequently falls short of expectations this paper contributes to emerging critiques by focusing on the implications of intracommunity dynamics and ecological heterogeneity it builds a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions regularized patterns of behavior between individuals and groups in society in mediating environment society relationships grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis the framework explores how differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their well being further insights are drawn from analyses of social difference new dynamic ecology new institutional economics structuration theory and landscape history the theoretical argument is illustrated with case material from india south africa and ghana

sustainability governance of chains and networks a review and future outlook this paper reviews the extent to which sustainability governance has been integrated into the literature on sustainable chains and networks the analysis brings together four main approaches to chains and network studies supply chain management scm global commodity chains gcc global value chains gvcs and global production networks gpns to examine how and the extent to which sustainability and sustainability governance are conceptualised and incorporated into their analytical frameworks the results point to a shift in this combined literature from conceptualising the formation of global chains and networks as sites of inequality under conditions of globalisation towards a renewed vision on the potential of chains as a site for social and environmental reform overall however we conclude that the literature on global chains and networks has not adequately conceptualised distinct modes of sustainability governance in response we offer an amended typology for identifying how firm and non firm actors govern sustainability in chains of chains and through chains in globalised commodity production and consumption the paper finishes with an exploration of the research frontiers challenges and continuing potential of chain and network studies to understand the governance of sustainability and a call for further academic debate on the kinds of integrated governance arrangements necessary for future sustainability reform through hybridised public private economic practice

new developments in applied general equilibrium analysis 1 introduction john piggott 2 hidden challenges in recent applied general equilibrium exercises john whalley 3 the measurement of waste and welfare in applied general equilibrium models erwin diewert 4 sensitivity analysis for linearized computable general equilibrium models adrian pagan and john shannon 5 the european economic community general equilibrium computations and the economic implications of membership john spencer 6 economic interdependence in the pacific basin a general equilibrium approach glenn harrison and larry kimbell 7 regional impacts of tariffs in canada preliminary results from a small dimensional numerical general equilibrium model richard jones john whalley and randall wigle 8 agricultural protection and market insulation policies applications of a dynamic multisectoral model tony chisholm and rodney tyers 9 a general equilibrium model of taxation that uses micro unit data with an application to the impact of instituting a flat rate income tax joel slemrod 10 consumption taxes foresight and welfare a computable general equilibrium analysis charles ballard and larry goulder 11 special purpose versions of a general purpose multisectoral model tax issues and the australian wine industry tony meagher brian parmenter russel rimmer and ken clements 12 general equilibrium analysis of economic policy dale jorgenson and daniel slesnick 13 the welfare cost of interest rate ceilings in developing countries a general equilibrium approach hasan imam 14 general equilibrium with price rigidities trien nguyen 15 short run macroeconomic closure in applied general equilibrium modelling experience from orani and agenda for further research russel cooper keith mclaren and alan powell 16 new developments in the application of general equilibrium models to economic history john james

can bilateral trade agreements help induce free trade there has been growing debate about whether bilateral trade agreements are damaging multilateral efforts to eliminate barriers to international trade this paper develops a model in which trading blocs always charge optimal tariffs and make trade agreements based on strategic considerations we ask a very simple question does the fact that trading blocs can form bilateral trade agreements make free trade less likely to occur the answer is that it depends on the size distribution of the trading blocs if there is one large trading bloc along with some smaller ones then bilateral trade agreements allow the smaller trading blocs to coalesce and block the monopoly power of large trading blocs in this case bilateral trade agreements facilitate the attainment of free trade not allowing customs unions leads to more not less protection if trading blocs are of roughly equivalent size then bilateral trade agreements allow groups of trading blocs to more effectively monopolize world trade in which case they may make free trade less likely these results suggest that a policy that inhibits the formation of trading blocs may be harmful we also compute the welfare effects of trade agreements to get some idea of how empirically important these issues are

endogenous trade bloc formation in an asymmetric world this paper investigates how variations in endowments and the structure of preferences impact on the coalition formation decisions of asymmetric countries there exist relatively few general results on the relationship between country characteristics and trade bloc formation here new light is shed on this issue by systematically simulating bloc formation and by explicitly analysing the blocking behaviour of coalitions a general equilibrium model of world trade is implemented with equilibrium coalition formation being modelled using the equilibrium concept of the core it is found that global free trade is observed when all countries are similar customs unions tend to form between countries with adjacent consumer preferences or with adjacent endowments of their export commodity finally in contrast to the existing literature but consistent with observed behaviour it is found that free trade areas often pareto dominate customs unions provided consumer preferences differ sufficiently

optimal weights in dea models with weight restrictions abstract according to a conventional interpretation of a multiplier dea model its optimal weights show the decision making unit under the assessment denoted dmu o in the best light in comparison to all observed dmus for multiplier models with additional weight restrictions such an interpretation is known to be generally incorrect specifically if weight restrictions are linked or nonhomogeneous and the meaning of optimal weights in such models has remained unclear in this paper we prove that for any weight restrictions the optimal weights of the multiplier model show dmu o in the best light in comparison to the entire technology expanded by the weight restrictions this result is consistent with the fact that the dual envelopment dea model benchmarks dmu o against all dmus in the technology and not only against the observed dmus our development overcomes previous concerns about the use of weight restrictions of certain types in dea models and provides their rigorous and meaningful interpretation

evaluating the dynamic performance of energy portfolios empirical evidence from the dea directional distance function abstract in recent years the complex global energy commodity market has led to increased uncertainty for energy investment returns and tremendous challenges for investors to design appropriate energy portfolios therefore we employ four popular portfolio methods to determine energy portfolios based on daily fossil fuel futures prices during 2006 2015 moreover we use the dea window analysis method and dea directional distance function to comprehensively evaluate the dynamic performance of these energy portfolios based on the efficiency perspective the empirical results indicate that first to increase investment returns the mean variance method that exclusively emphasizes the maximization of returns shows the best performance however in order to decrease the volatility and risk of investment returns the mean variance method that aims to resist risk more than make profits and the bootstrap historical simulation value at risk var method have the best performance second when the global financial crisis broke out in the second half of 2008 and energy markets experienced a sharp downturn in the second half of 2014 the dea efficiency of energy portfolios appeared relatively lower than those of their neighboring periods regardless of which portfolio method is employed finally the average dea efficiencies of energy portfolios are all higher than those of single energy investment throughout the sample period except when the equally weighted method and the information entropy comprehensive index method are used meanwhile the mean variance method that prefers profit making to risk resisting possesses the highest average dea efficiency among various methods concerned

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

piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces linear programming formulations for piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces are derived from a set of basic properties postulated for the underlying production possibility sets unlike the piecewise linear model of banker charnes and cooper banker r d a charnes w w cooper 1984 models for the estimation of technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis management sci 30 september 1078 1092 this approach permits the identification of increasing marginal products and estimation of the classical s shaped production functions methods are also provided for estimating technical inefficiencies and other production characteristics such as rates of substitution and transformation marginal products returns to scale and most productive scale sizes on the basis of observed production data the results of a simulation study are reported to illustrate the usefulness of this estimation method in empirical applications when there are a priori reasons to expect increasing marginal products in some regions of the production function a modified model is provided to extend this analysis to the situation of non competing outputs addressed by the bi extremal model of banker charnes cooper and schinnar banker r d a charnes w w cooper a schinnar 1981 a bi extremal principle for frontier estimation and efficiency evaluation management sci 27 december 1370 1382

geographically discriminatory trade arrangements a bstract an eight region numerical general equilibrium model of global trade is used to investigate the impacts of various geographically discriminatory trade policy arrangements gdas on regional trade and welfare results suggest that the important factors determining gains and losses in any gda are such issues as whether initial levels of protection are asymmetric the relative sizes of participating regions and the pattern of trade between participating and non participating countries results also appear to confirm the implication of wonnacott and wonnacott 1981 that the gain from reducing a partner s tariff is typically a more important consideration in evaluating potential benefits from a customs union than the traditional concerns of trade creation and trade diversion

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

returns to scale in convex production technologies the notion of returns to scale rts is well established in data envelopment analysis dea in the variable returns to scale production technology the rts characterization is closely related to other scale characteristics such as the scale elasticity most productive scale size mpss and global rts types indicative of the direction to mpss in recent years a number of alternative production technologies have been developed in the dea literature most of these technologies are polyhedral and hence are closed and convex sets examples include technologies with weakly disposable undesirable outputs models with weight restrictions and production trade offs technologies that include several component production processes and network dea models for most of these technologies the relationship between rts and other scale characteristics has remained unexplored the theoretical results obtained in this paper establish such relationships for a very large class of closed convex technologies of which polyhedral technologies are an important example

most productive scale size versus demand fulfillment a solution to the capacity dilemma abstract the field of economics associates capacity planning with economic scale size and finds the characteristics of the production function whereas the operations management community focuses on demand fulfillment to reduce the loss of sales or inventory for profit maximization however there is a troublesome capacity trade off for firms that need to achieve economic scale size and demand fulfillment simultaneously in particular a firm s demand is variable and some of the variation is random this study proposes a multi objective mathematical program with data envelopment analysis dea constraints to set an efficient target which shows a trade off between the most productive scale size mpss benchmark and a potential demand fulfillment benchmark the study also employs the minimax regret mmr approach and the stochastic programming sp technique to address target variations caused by demand fluctuations the result shows how capacity planning via the proposed models can help managers address the capacity dilemma

returns to scale and most productive scale size in dea with negative data abstract non parametric evaluation of returns to scale of production units in standard dea models becomes problematic when their underlying technologies involve negative data the methodology recently offered by allahyar and rostamy malkhalifeh 2015 hence after called arm model is of some help to deal with this issue however there are two shortcomings underlying the arm model first it may not be capable of locating all the production units exhibiting constant returns to scale and second it is also not able to determine most productive scale size in order to deal with these two shortcomings the current paper contributes to the dea literature in two ways first it makes a unifying attempt to propose a general non radial dea model to determine both the most productive scale size and the returns to scale characterizations of production units in the presence of negative data second the proposed model can be adapted in a dynamic dea technology setting to determine growth efficiency and returns to growth behavior of production units facing hyper competition in a new economy

ratio based rts determination in weight restricted dea models abstract this paper provides computationally efficient approaches for determining to which returns to scale rts class a unit belongs in weight restricted data envelopment analysis dea models a non traditional computational algorithm is introduced the suggested approach is based on the calculation of certain ratios within the data set and offers obvious computational advantages over the traditional approaches involving the solution of standard dea models some theorems and algorithms are given computational advantages of the provided results are discussed and one of the algorithms is illustrated using real world data

preferential trading agreements an investigation abstract a three country general equilibrium model of international trade in an arbitrary number of goods is constructed and the welfare effects of the formation of a preferential trading club e g customs union free trade area are analyzed

mixed partial elasticities in constant returns to scale production technologies abstract recently podinovski and forsund 2010 developed a linear programming approach to the analysis and calculation of a class of mixed partial elasticity measures in variable returns to scale vrs production technologies in the current paper we extend their approach to the constant returns to scale crs technologies and formulate linear programs required for the computation of elasticity measures among other results obtained in this paper we prove a new result valid in both vrs and crs technologies that allows us to identify the reason why the corresponding elasticity measure is undefined at the unit this removes the need for a preliminary sorting of the units into those units where the elasticity measure applies and those where it does not

how often are propositions on the effects of regional trade agreements theoretical curiosa this paper uses computational techniques to assess whether or not various propositions that have been advanced as plausible in the literature on regional trade agreements may actually hold the idea is to make probabilistic statements as to whether propositions of interest might hold rather than to restrict assumptions so they unambiguously hold our aim is to blend theory and numerical simulation and go beyond the ambiguous analytically derived propositions that dominate the theoretical literature so as to assess the likelihood of propositions holding for particular model specifications

palmed off incentive problems with joint venture schemes for oil palm development on customary land the oil palm boom has prompted governments and plantation companies to find ways to incorporate customary landholders in large scale plantation developments this paper examines the joint venture model that has been widely promoted in sarawak malaysia principal agent theory is used to analyze the structural relations between the actors in joint venture projects the landholders the government agency that acts as their trustee and the private investor the analysis shows that unequal access to information and influence has compromised the stated objectives of the joint venture schemes leaving customary landholders vulnerable to significant exploitation and losses thus there has been a systematic failure to achieve the anticipated developmental outcomes

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis with undesirable outputs environmental economics and natural resources group at wageningen university in the netherlands weak disposability of outputs means that firms can abate harmful emissions by decreasing the activity level modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis has caused some confusion this article identifies a dilemma in these approaches conventional formulations implicitly and unintentionally assume all firms apply uniform abatement factors however it is usually cost effective to abate emissions in those firms where the marginal abatement costs are lowest this article presents a simple formulation of weak disposability that allows for non uniform abatement factors and preserves the linear structure of the model

in the market but not of it fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification as market based social change summary this paper discusses two well known market based social change initiatives fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification which harness market forces to pursue social and environmental objectives a serious challenge for both is to operate in the conventional market without undermining their original objectives a global commodity chain analysis approach is combined with insights from economic sociology embeddedness theory to explore the social cultural and organizational factors shaping the initiatives governance structures both initiatives are seen to move along opposite organizational trajectories but face similar pressures from conventional market logics practices and dominant actors a preliminary framework is proposed for comparative assessment focusing on distribution of benefits how conventional market institutions may be questioned and how internal governance manages diverse stakeholder interests and influence

a simple derivation of scale elasticity in data envelopment analysis in this paper we suggest a simple derivation of the formulae for the scale elasticity in the variable returns to scale technology as used in data envelopment analysis our development is consistent with the existing literature but the proof is much shorter and applies to the general case without any simplifying conditions

cost revenue and profit efficiency measurement in dea a directional distance function approach abstract estimation of efficiency of firms in a non competitive market characterized by heterogeneous inputs and outputs along with their varying prices is questionable when factor based technology sets are used in data envelopment analysis dea in this scenario a value based technology becomes an appropriate reference technology against which efficiency can be assessed in this contribution the value based models of tone 2002 are extended in a directional dea set up to develop new directional cost and revenue based measures of efficiency which are then decomposed into their respective directional value based technical and allocative efficiencies these new directional value based measures are more general and include the existing value based measures as special cases these measures satisfy several desirable properties of an ideal efficiency measure these new measures are advantageous over the existing ones in terms of 1 their ability to satisfy the most important property of translation invariance 2 choices over the use of suitable direction vectors in handling negative data and 3 flexibility in providing the decision makers with the option of specifying preferable direction vectors to incorporate their preferences finally under the condition of no prior unit price information a directional value based measure of profit inefficiency is developed for firms whose underlying objectives are profit maximization for an illustrative empirical application our new measures are applied to a real life data set of 50 us banks to draw inferences about the production correspondence of banking industry

how reasonable are assumptions used in theoretical models computational evidence on the likelihood of trade pattern changes abstract in theoretical literature it is common to make the assumption that in a multi country multi good world the direction of trade import and export by commodity ispredetermined and fixed for each good for each country we consider a simple three country three good pure exchange model with ces preferences we compute free tradecompetitiveequilibria three countrynon cooperativenashequilibria andcustomsunionequilibria for randomised parameterizations and find that trade pattern changes betweenfree trade and customs union equilibria in around 35 of cases jel classification f10 f13 f15 jusqu a quel point est ce que les postulats utilis es dans les mod eles th eoriques sontraisonnables r esultats calcul es sur la vraisemblance de changements dans les patterns decommerce dans la litt erature th eorique sp ecialis ee il est assez commun de postuler que dans un monde a plusieurs pays et a plusieurs biens la direction du commerce impor tations et exportations ventilees par biens est pr ed etermin ee et fixe pour chaque bien etchaque pays les auteurs examinent le cas d un modele simple d echange pur a trois pays et trois biens ou les pr ef erences ont des elasticit es constantes de substitution on calcule les equilibres concurrentiels de libre echange les equilibres non coop eratifs de trois pays a la nash et des equilibres d unions douani eres pour certaines param etrisations al eatoires il semble qu il y a changement dans les patterns de commerce dans 35 des cas quand onpasse d equilibres de libre echange a des equilibres d unions douani eres