efficiency in the factoring industry the efficiency and productivity in the italian factoring industry between 1993 and 1997 is investigated using dea the factoring industry is an important part of many financial systems and it has established itself as a major source of finance and credit management for a growing number of companies however as far as the authors are aware no studies have applied frontier methodologies to examine the efficiency and productivity of this industry this paper focuses on the italian market the second largest in the world after the uk the results suggest that there are substantial cost savings to be had in the italian factoring industry the mean cost inefficiency in the italian factoring industry over the period 1993 1997 ranged between 14 and 22 these inefficiencies are mainly generated by allocative rather than technical inefficiencies scale and technical inefficiencies seem to be similar in magnitude and the supposed importance of the latter typically found in the banking efficiency literature are n

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

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

comparative performance analysis between conventional and islamic banks empirical evidence from oic countries this article investigates the performance of islamic ibs versus conventional banks cbs around the recent financial crisis in 18 oic organization of islamic conference countries the study primarily employs two dominant frontier approaches of efficiency measurement in banking literature the study also estimates the soundness score of the banks by using z score methodology and attempts to explore the relationship between efficiency and financial stability of banks the results based on the data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier analysis sfa approaches report that cbs are more efficient than their islamic counterparts on the contrary z score reports that ibs were financially more stable than cbs however the dominance of ibs has been drastically lost afterwards this might be originated by the decrease of z score of ibs in bahrain kuwait and uae which were found as main front runners among ibs in terms of financial stability to the best of authors knowledge it is the first s

non stationary stochastic inventory lot sizing with emission and service level constraints in a carbon cap and trade system firms worldwide are taking major initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains in response to the growing governmental and consumer pressures in real life these supply chains face stochastic and non stationary demand but most of the studies on inventory lot sizing problem with emission concerns consider deterministic demand in this paper we study the inventory lot sizing problem under non stationary stochastic demand condition with emission and cycle service level constraints considering carbon cap and trade regulatory mechanism using a mixed integer linear programming model this paper aims to investigate the effects of emission parameters product and system related features on the supply chain performance through extensive computational experiments to cover general type business settings and not a specific scenario results show that cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation have significant impacts on total cost and emission irrespective of level of demand variability while the impact of product s demand pattern is significant only at lower level of demand variability finally results also show that increasing value of carbon price reduces total cost total emission and total inventory and the scope of emission reduction by increasing carbon price is greater at higher levels of cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation the analysis of results helps supply chain managers to take right decision in different demand and service level situations

shareholder value efficiency in european banking abstract this paper advances the studies of hughes j p lang w w mester l j moon c g pagano m s 2003 do bankers sacrifice value to build empires managerial incentives industry consolidation and financial performance journal of banking and finance 27 417 447 by developing a new measure of bank performance which we refer to as shareholder value efficiency a bank producing the maximum possible economic value added eva given particular inputs and outputs is defined as shareholder value efficient this new efficiency measure is estimated using the stochastic frontier method focussing on the french german italian and uk banking systems over the period 1997 2002 and includes both listed and non listed banks we find that european banks are on average 36 shareholder value inefficient shareholder value efficiency is found to be the most important factor explaining value creation in european banking whereas cost and profit efficiency only have a marginal influence

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

efficiency and risk in taiwan banking sbm super dea estimation in this study we adopt the two data envelopment analysis dea methods including banker charnes cooper bcc and slacks based measure sbm super efficiency to investigate whether a bank s technical efficiency index s results incorporating account risk and not incorporating account risk differ significantly the information is obtained from 43 taiwanese banks for the period 1998 to 2002 we also employ the nonradial and slacks based malmquist total factor productivity tfp index to measure the impact of productivity change on the panel data our empirical results from the dea approach are summarized as follows 1 loan quality factors have an impact on a bank s efficiency in general the bank with a higher degree of problem loans drops down its efficiency by incorporating account risk however the bank with a lower degree of problem loans increases its efficiency by incorporating account risk 2 super efficiency provides a good framework for ranking efficient units 3 based on the nonradial an

sustainable operations the cutting stock problem with usable leftovers from a sustainable perspective abstract this paper proposes a mathematical model and two heuristic procedures to solve the cutting stock problem with usable leftovers relating the implications of the model with aspects considering sustainability in terms of environmental economic and social issues the possibility of generating leftovers that can be used or sold reduces raw material waste during the cutting process and consequently increases companies profits by reducing waste and increasing profits companies can become more competitive in the market they can also integrate environmental aspects into their operational strategies and therefore create a better self image and profitability generating more jobs and contributing to a stronger local economy we believe that the model is more likely to be adopted by smaller companies which generally face numerous barriers but at the same time have a significant social impact generating income and jobs based on the knowledge of the authors this is the first study that relates a cutting problem with its implications for sustainability computational tests were performed and the obtained results are discussed considering the win win approach to sustainability

on the consistency of aggregate production frontiers abstract this paper investigates the consistency of efficiency frontier methods applied at the aggregate level we estimate eight aggregate production frontiers on a sample of 93 countries depending on three methodological choices for the specification of the frontier the choice of the approach technique stochastic frontier approach or data envelopment analysis the specification of human capital as an input and the nature of returns to scale we observe some differences on the descriptive statistics of the distributions of the efficiency scores but also a very high significant and positive correlation between scores rankings regardless of the methodological choices made our results tend then to suggest the consistency of the efficiency techniques at the aggregate level

is corruption grease grit or a gamble corruption increases variance of productivity across countries the effect of corruption on economic growth has attracted interest in empirical development economics the conventional view of corruption as impediment for growth has been challenged by the grease on the wheels hypothesis we take a new perspective on the issue and suggest corruption as macro risk referred to as a gamble hypothesis using cross country data and two alternative indicators of corruption we find corruption to be a significant driver of heteroscedasticity in total productivity this supports the new gamble hypothesis we also note some misleading interpretations in the previously published frontier applications to avoid these shortcomings we apply a flexible semi nonparametric estimator

scale and scope economies in the multi product banking firm abstract the multi product nature of the banking firm is examined utilizing the translog cost function this analysis indicates that contrary to conventional wisdom natural monopoly scale economies and product specific decreasing costs are not robust characterizations of the banking industry there is however evidence that the cost function is characterized by economies of scope the implications of these results are discussed and extensions of this approach suggested

scale economies in banking a restructuring and reassessment the issue of scale economies in banking has a rich history most earlier studies report modest operating cost scale economies for small institutions those with less than about 50 million of deposits in 1968 dollars but are unclear where these economies might end if at all unfortunately these studies are limited in four important respects first those that were well specified did not measure the total cost of banking operations but concentrated on estimating scale economies for individual banking functions e g demand deposits separately from commercial loans second an average cost curve that could take a u shape over the full range of banks was not fitted either because larger banks were not included or because of the functional form used cobb douglas consequently the optimum or minimum cost size of a bank or office could not be determined third the variables measuring the costs of branching were misspecified fourth the branch

trends in relationship lending and factors affecting relationship lending efficiency abstract this paper investigates the efficiency of relationship managers at the canadian imperial bank of commerce cibc one of canada s largest banks data envelopment analysis dea efficiency scores are analyzed using regression the results demonstrate that managers are less efficient when facing larger numbers of loans or smaller loans m berlin and l j mester on the profitability and cost of relationship lending working paper no 97 43 the wharton school university of pennsylvania 1997 show that credit smoothing is generally suboptimal a more complete explanation is obtained by taking a micro level focus other results indicate that banks may improve profitability by reserving relationship lending for loans of larger size tests of relationships between efficiency and nonperforming loans and of the skimping hypothesis are conducted

output and productivity in banking concepts in banking output and the empirical literature on bank productivity which employs output concepts are critically surveyed for output the national accounts production and intermediation approaches are compared as regards productivity both partial and total factor productivity measures and the dea and parametric approaches to the latter are assessed among the most striking results is the prevalence of technical inefficiency in banking but it is also suggested that measurement techniques have often outpaced the theory of what is to be measured notably in fields such as joint production risk and competition alternative approaches to address these issues are suggested

resolving the deposit dilemma a new dea bank efficiency model abstract one of the weaknesses of current bank efficiency models is a disagreement as to the role of deposits in the bank production process some models view deposits as an input while others view them as an output such disparity of approaches results in inconsistent efficiency estimates in this study we propose an alternative data envelopment analysis dea bank efficiency model that treats deposits as an intermediate product thus emphasizing the dual role of deposits in the bank production process consequently the effect of the amount of deposits on bank efficiency depends on the efficiency at both stages of the bank production process the main advantage of our model is that it does not require a researcher to make a judgment call as to whether having more production approach or less intermediation approach deposits is better for bank efficiency our unified framework has the potential to produce more consistent efficiency estimates

a goal programming method of stochastic allocative data envelopment analysis abstract allocative data envelopment analysis adea is a version of data envelopment analysis dea which measures relative efficiency for a group of similar operating units with known input prices by using the actual input values adea provides information to managers on the minimum cost method of operation for each unit a major criticism of dea methods is that they are deterministic and have no means of allowing for uncertainty this paper applies the goal programming approach introduced by banker 1991 to allocative efficiency and develops the stochastic adea model a two stage solution method is introduced which is needed because of the existence of alternate optimal solutions regarding which units are found to be significantly inefficient we propose that identifying the significantly inefficient units is most useful to managers because it best facilitates improved efficiency the concept of a minimum frontier is introduced and used to define the significantly inefficient units we also show how bounds can be imposed which allow the ambiguity of the noise inefficiency trade off to be eliminated from the objective function the use of bounds also allows the identification of the significantly inefficient unit based on the amount of uncertainty present for each operating unit as a result of optimizing cost this method has the important advantage of being ideally suited for multiple outputs

malmquist indices of productivity growth during the deregulation of norwegian banking 1980 89 productivity growth during the deregulation of the norwegian banking industry is studied within the framework of data envelopment analysis which explicitly allows for multiple outputs introducing malmquist indices for productivity growth total growth can be decomposed into frontier growth and change in each bank s distance to the frontier both the total growth index and its components can be consistently chained over time we find productivity regress at the average bank prior to the deregulation but rapid growth when deregulation took place deregulation also led to less dispersion of productivity levels within the industry

the effects of shared atm networks on the efficiency of turkish banks this study investigates whether forming shared atm networks has yielded positive benefits for banks in turkey by increasing their productive efficiency using a data envelopment analysis dea approach pure technical and scale efficiency scores of turkish banks are estimated and analysed for the period 2000 2003 the results suggest that although it is possible to realize positive effects through atm sharing arrangements there are multiple factors that determine which banks realize such benefits the geographical distribution of shared atms between urban and rural markets and the level of competition between banks within urban areas are shown to be important determinants of differences in bank efficiency this discrepancy between the gains associated with atm sharing may have important implications concerning the adoption and sharing of new technology by banks in developing countries

competition and efficiency in the dutch life insurance industry the lack of available prices in the dutch life insurance industry makes competition an elusive concept that defies direct observation therefore this article investigates competition by analysing several factors which may affect the competitive nature of a market and various indirect measurement approaches after discussing various supply and demand factors which may constitute a so called tight oligopoly we establish the existence of scale economies and the importance of cost x inefficiency since severe competition would force firms to exploit available scale economies and to reduce x inefficiencies both scale economies and x inefficiencies turn out to be substantial although more or less comparable to those found for insurers in other countries and to other financial institutions further we apply the boone indicator a novel approach to measuring the effects of competition this indicator points to limited competition in comparison to other sectors in the netherlands further investigations of submarkets should reveal where policy measures in order to promote competition might be appropriate

an examination of cost subadditivity and multiproduct production in large u s banks this paper examines the subadditivity of costs for a sample of the largest commercial banks in the u s we introduce into the bank production literature the grid approach developed by evans and heckman 1984 we estimate two models of the bank cost function one where deposits are treated as outputs while in the other deposits are treated as inputs the models are estimated using the commonly used translog and the more flexible miniflex laurent viewed narrowly the findings imply that cost complementarities are not the raison d etre for multiproduct production in the largest commercial banks subadditive costs however are sufficient but not necessary for multiproduct production it is quite possible for multiproduct production to be optimal when output are produced independently levy and haber 1986 and teece 1980 1982 it is only required that inputs be shareable as opposed to joint copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

modelling production cost scenarios for biofuels and fossil fuels in europe competitive production costs compared to conventional fuels are imperative for biofuels to gain market shares as current tax advantages for biofuels are only temporary comparing production costs of different biofuels with fossil fuels is a challenge due to the complexity of influencing factors the objective of this research paper is threefold 1 to project future bio fuel feedstock prices based on the crude oil price development the price index for agricultural products growth in world population growth in wealth per capita income and change in energy consumption per capita 2 to simulate production costs under consideration of likely economies of scale from scaling up production size and technological learning and 3 to compare different biofuels and fossil fuels by scenario analysis a calculation model for biofuel production is used to analyse projected production costs for different types of biofuels in europe for 2015 and 2020 unlike engineering oriented bottom up approaches that are often used in other biofuel studies the macro economic top down approach applied in this study enables an economic comparison and discussion of various fuel types based on reference scenarios of crude oil prices of 50 100 150 and 200 per barrel depending on the specific raw material prices as well as the conversion costs the analysis delivered a differentiated view on the production costs and thus on the competitiveness of each individual type of fuel the results show that 2nd generation biofuels are most likely to achieve competitive production costs mid to long term when taking into account the effects from technological learning and production scale size as well as crude oil price scenarios between 50 and 200 per barrel for both reference years in all crude oil price scenarios bioethanol from lignocellulosic raw materials as well as biodiesel from waste oil are associated with high cost saving potentials which enable them to outperform fossil fuels and 1st generation biofuels

technical scale and allocative efficiencies in u s banking an empirical investigation a nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall technical pure technical allocative and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks the sample was drawn from the federal deposit insurance corporation tapes on the reports of condition and reports of income call reports for the year 1986 the results indicated a low level of overall efficiency the main source of inefficiency was technical in nature rather than allocative separate efficiency frontiers were constructed to test the effect of branching however the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and non branching banks were not found to be different

mergers and technical efficiency in spanish savings banks a stochastic distance function approach abstract the aim of this paper is to test the temporal variation of technical efficiency of spanish savings banks during the period 1985 1998 furthermore we test whether merged and non merged firms have different levels and temporal patterns of technical efficiency a stochastic output distance function r w shephard theory of cost and production functions princeton university press princeton nj is employed to accommodate multiple output technology the distance function provides the advantage that it does not need information about prices so it can accommodate the multi product nature of the financial sector only using the quantities as data an important point when the assumptions about perfectly competitive markets are unlikely to be met the temporal variation of efficiency is modeled extending the battese and coelli journal of productivity analysis 3 1992 153 169 approach in two ways relaxing the monotonicity of the temporal variation pattern of the efficiency term and allowing for different patterns of efficiency change between merged and non merged firms

efficiency and credit rating in taiwan banking data envelopment analysis estimation in this article we use the data envelopment analysis to measure the efficiency of banks before and after credit rating is taken into consideration and we also employ the malmquist productivity index to measure the total factor productivity changes from 2001 to 2003 the results are as follows 1 there is a positive relationship between the efficiency scores and credit rating and thus the credit rating can be a representative to evaluate the performance and quality of a bank 2 we use the wilconxon two sample test of nonparametric statistic to test the influences of credit rating the empirical result shows that the credit rating is proven to influence the efficiency of banks 3 the efficiency scores improve in both investment grade above tw bbb and speculation grade under tw bbb when credit rating is taken into consideration the empirical results show that the efficiency scores of banks with a high credit rating improved relatively more when compared to banks with a lower credit rating

evaluating the cost efficiency of the italian banking system what can be learned from the joint application of parametric and non parametric techniques abstract research on bank efficiency has developed in two separate streams econometric studies and data envelopment analysis a linear programming technique these two branches of literature have developed quickly but separately in this paper these two approaches have been tested on a common panel of 270 italian banks and this has suggested the following i econometric and linear programming results do not differ dramatically when based on the same data and conceptual framework ii when differences arise they can be explained by going back to the intrinsic features of the models moreover some findings on italian banks may be of interest also to the international reader i efficiency scores show a high variance ii the banking system is split in two between northern and southern banks iii there is a direct rather than inverse relationship between productive efficiency and asset quality iv the efficiency of italian banks did not increase over the period 1988 1992

cost efficiency in bangladesh banking does financial reform matter abstractthis article estimates the cost efficiency of the commercial banks of bangladesh in the context of financial reform employing the single stage stochastic frontier analysis sfa model the study uses a unique balanced panel data set comprising bank level annual data from the dominant commercial banks in bangladesh for the period 1983 2012 the results show that bank cost has fallen due to financial deregulation our results from the data envelopment analysis do not vary significantly that we obtained from the sfa in addition the presence of politically linked directors on the bank board has an adverse effect on efficiency these findings suggest that further reforms aiming at removing all sorts of political influence should continue to ensure competitive environment in order to achieve cost efficiency in the financial sector of the country

multi source capacitated lot sizing for economically viable and clean biofuel production abstract excessive water usage and co2 emissions resulting from industrial systems and processes have significantly raised environmental concerns although biofuels help to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions the biofuel industry itself consumes a considerable amount of water and produces co2 emissions during ethanol production in this paper we develop a mixed integer linear programming milp capacitated lot sizing model for analyzing the economic and environmental feasibility of ethanol production using multiple biomass sources the model minimizes the cost of ethanol production while penalizing its possible adverse environmental impacts such as co2 emissions and excessive water usage the overall cost of ethanol production includes production setup and inventory holding costs with penalties for environmental impacts minus the income from ethanol tax credits and electricity generated from waste heat we perform a sensitivity analysis and analyze results to improve our understanding of the economic viability of ethanol production and associated environmental effects results show that switchgrass is the most profitable and preferred biomass type when there is an unlimited supply of all biomass sources while wheat and corn become more preferable in the case of a limited biomass supply compared to low and medium demand cases when there is high demand total costs increase significantly due to multiple production setup costs excessive water usage and co2 emissions under limited biomass supply the solution of the proposed model also indicates that if ongoing technology investments in the conversion rate succeed the total cost of ethanol production can decrease by up to 21 percent finally results show that the proposed milp model provides valuable insights and strategies for future investors decision makers and the government to achieve sustainable and economically viable biofuel production using various biomass types

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

explaining efficiency differences among large german and austrian banks cost efficiency scale efficiency and productivity change are estimated by data envelopment analysis and cost efficiency is regressed on explanatory variables no evidence is found for average productivity responding to deregulation over the period studied state owned banks are found to be more cost efficient likely owing to cheaper funds and cooperative banks to be about as cost efficient as private banks increasing economies of scale but decreasing economies of scope provide rationale for m as among banks with similar product portfolios interbank and capital market funding is found to be more cost efficient than deposits when the cost of retail networks is controlled

price smoothing under capacity constraints this paper examines monopolistic pricing decisions under production and storage capacity constraints which firms may well encounter in practice but which have generally been ignored in earlier price inventory analyses if these capacity constraints are present they evidently influence firms pricing decisions these constraints should therefore be formally modelled for a more complete theory of price behavior the paper addresses the issue of whether or not inventories will lead to an asymmetry in price behavior amihud and mendelson 2 and reagan 15 have noted that inventory adjustments moderate downward price adjustments in periods of low demand but do not moderate upward price adjustments in periods of high demand when stockouts occur these analyses are in contrast to blinder 4 wherein a possible symmetric role of inventories and unfilled orders in dampening price adjustments is considered blinder argues that stockouts may not be empirically significant abel 1 observes however that casual empiricism may lead one to think that stockouts are rather

technical scale and allocative efficiencies of turkish banking industry this paper investigates input and output efficiency in the turkish banking industry to understand the impact of size international variables ownership control and governance on profit cost allocative technical pure technical and scale efficiency measures employing a non parametric approach along with a parametric approach we estimate the efficiency of turkish banks over the 1988 1996 period this period allows us to account for the changes in the macro economy and regulatory treatment of the turkish banking industry over time our results suggest that the heterogeneous characteristics of banks have significant impact on their efficiency moreover cost and profit efficiencies of the turkish banks have exacerbated over time results also indicate that the dominant source of inefficiency in turkish banking is due to technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency which is mainly attributed to diseconomies in scale to the extent that they chose an inefficient level of production bank management is responsible for scale inefficient operations however increasing demand for banking services in the nineties fueled by the state s increasing demand for funds to finance chronic budget deficits and high growth policies and the oligopolistic nature of the turkish banking market do not justify scale adjustments our policy suggestions are that the government implement financial reform packages that foster competition in the banking market and that the industry devise incentive schemes to improve managerial efficiency

institutions freedom and technical efficiency the impact of institutions on economic performance is currently the subject of much research in this study we use panel data to estimate a stochastic production frontier and the sources of inefficiency for a broad set of countries a maximum likelihood procedure is used to estimate the parameters for the stochastic production frontier and the determinants of inefficiency simultaneously our results show that institutions that promote greater economic freedom in turn promote efficiency

the relative efficiencies of market and planned economies are planned economies systematically more or less productive than market economies this question provoked heated intellectual debate since the time of hayek 11 keynes 16 lange 19 lange and taylor 20 and lerner 22 the collapse of the communist systems of east europe since 1989 closed the debate planned economies were without doubt less efficient in utilizing economic resources than market economies but how much less efficient this question is of obvious scientific interest but it has not been answered some work addressing the broad question of comparative efficiency has been done by bergson 4 5 6 marer 25 26 moroney 28 and others all indicate comparatively lower efficiency in planned economies but none addresses the question by how much our contribution here is to answer this question using a novel methodology we estimate aggregate frontier production functions for two groups of countries 7 centrally planned economies in east europe and 17 predominantly market economies in west europe estimating frontier production functions enables two types of comparisons that have not

interactions between members of a marketing production channel under seasonal demand abstract key decisions in a marketing production channel faced with a seasonal demand include production and pricing decisions for the manufacturer and processing and pricing decisions for the retailer in such situations a variety of contracts are possible including contracts under which the manufacturer charges a constant price throughout the season or the retailer processes at a constant rate throughout the season also possible are channel structures in which the manufacturer and retailer cooperate to make decisions jointly the main objective of the present paper is to compare optimal policies under all the situations described above we show that having a constant manufacturer s price or a constant processing rate does not have a significant impact upon the retailer s price or inventory decisions however if the demand is not highly seasonal a constant processing rate contract will result in higher production and processing rates and a lower manufacturer s price compared to a constant manufacturer s price contract also a centralized channel involving joint decision making will lead to a lower price at the retail level and higher production and processing rates hence issues such as channel coordination and contracts between manufacturers and retailers which have received significant attention in the marketing literature have implications for the production area as well

on the sources of heterogeneity in banking efficiency literature one learns two main lessons from studying the great quantity of banking efficiency literature these lessons regard the heterogeneity in results and the absence of a comprehensive review aimed at understanding the reasons for this variability surprisingly although this issue is well known it has not been systematically analyzed before in order to fill this gap we perform a meta regression analysis mra by examining 1 661 efficiency scores retrieved from 120 papers published over the period 2000 2014 the meta regression is estimated by using the random effects multilevel model reml because it controls for within study and between study heterogeneity the analysis yields four main results firstly parametric methods yield lower levels of banking efficiency than nonparametric studies this holds true even after controlling for the approach used in selecting the inputs and outputs of the frontier secondly we show that banking efficiency is highest when using the value added approach followed by estimates from studies based on the intermediation method whereas those based on the hybrid approach are the lowest thirdly efficiency scores also depend on the quality of studies and on the number of observations and variables used in the primary papers as far as the effects of sample size dimension and quality of papers are concerned there are significant differences in sign and magnitude between parametric and nonparametric studies finally cost efficiency is found to be higher than profit and production efficiency interestingly mra results are robust to the potential outliers in efficiency and sample size distributions

a stochastic production planning model with a dynamic chance constraint abstract this paper deals with the optimal production planning for a single product over a finite horizon the holding and production costs are assumed quadratic as in holt modigliani muth and simon hmms 7 model the cumulative demand is compound poisson and a chance constraint is included to guarantee that the inventory level is positive with a probability of at least at each time point the resulting stochastic optimization problem is transformed into a deterministic optimal control problem with control variable and of the optimal solution is presented the form of state variable inequality constraints a discussion the optimal control production rate is obtained as follows if there exists a time t 1 such that t 1 o t where t is the end of the planning period then i produce nothing until t 1 and ii produce at a rate equal to the expected demand plus a correction factor between t 1 and t if t 1 is found to be greater than t then the optimal decision is to produce nothing and always meet the demand from the inventory