total factor carbon emission performance of the chinese transportation industry a bootstrapped non radial malmquist index analysis this paper proposes a non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index nmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time this index enables the consideration of non radial slacks in the conventional malmquist co2 emission index mcpi the nmcpi is calculated based on a non radial directional distance function derived by several data envelopment analysis dea models furthermore nmcpi could be decomposed into an efficiency change ec index and technological change tc index a bootstrapping approach is conducted to introduce statistical inferences into the nmcpi and its decompositions based on the proposed indices the dynamic co2 emission performance change and its decompositions of the chinese regional transportation industry from 2002 to 2010 are investigated the empirical results demonstrate that the total factor carbon emission performance of the transportation industry as a whole decreased by 32 8 over the period and this reduction was primarily caused by technological decline

estimating griliches k shifts griliches k shift a crucial parameter in the welfare evaluation of technological change is shown to be equal to the radial rate of technological change plus a vector of commodity bias parameters obtained from the distance function the analysis permits decomposition of sectoral productivity growth into productivity growth by commodity the k shifts estimated for wheat corn soybeans and beef in u s agriculture indicate a decrease in the marginal cost of production of corn soybeans and wheat during the 1950 1993 years

convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions among g7 countries a tar panel unit root approach the subject of this paper is the examination the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions of the g7 countries during the 1960 2005 period in a nonlinear panel analysis framework in this approach first the linearity of the series was tested and when the linearity was rejected the threshold autoregressive tar panel unit root test which splits the data into two regimes was employed to examine the stationarity properties of the series because the null of linearity was rejected in the first step we tested the stationarity of the series using the tar panel unit root test in the tar panel unit root test we found that the united kingdom was the transition country whose per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions determined the switch from one regime to the other the results showed that convergence existed in the first regime and divergence in the second when we tested whether absolute or conditional convergence existed we found that the per capita co2 emissions were conditionally converging in the first regime

productivity growth and biased technological change in hydroelectric dams abstract this paper analyses productivity growth and the nature of technical change in a sample of portuguese hydroelectric generating plants over the period 2001 to 2008 in a first step we employ the luenberger productivity indicator to estimate and decompose productivity change a malmquist productivity index is also used for a comparative purpose the results paint a picture of mixed productivity performance in the portuguese energy sector the first decomposition underlines that in average the productivity variation is explained by the technological change then in a second step we analyse the nature of this technical change by using the recent concept of parallel neutrality briec et al 2006 we observe a global shift in the best practice frontier as well as in the evidence of input bias in technical change

technical and environmental efficiencies and best management practices in agriculture an input distance function idf is estimated to empirically evaluate and analyse the technical and environmental efficiencies of 210 farms located in the chaudiere watershed quebec where water quality problems are particularly acute because of the production of undesirable outputs that are jointly produced with agricultural products the true idf is approximated by a flexible translog functional form estimated using a full information maximum likelihood method technical and environmental efficiencies are disaggregated across farms and account for spatial variations our results show that there is a significant correlation between the two efficiencies the idf is used to compute the cumulative malmquist productivity index and the fisher index the two indices are used to measure changes in technology profitability efficiency and productivity in response to the adoption of two selected best management practices bmps whose objective is to reduce water pollution we found significant differences acro

budget constrained frontier measures of fiscal equality and efficiency in schooling equality and efficiency are key issues in educational reform here the authors analyze the efficiency and equality consequences of various school finance reforms using a cost indirect output distance function this function readily models multiple output production under conditions of budgetary constraint and provides a natural measure of performance that is closely related to farrell type measures of efficiency the analysis suggests that despite school district inefficiency finance reforms can affect student achievement however any potential gains in output from redistribution are dwarfed by the potential gains from increased efficiency more strikingly the analysis demonstrates that budgetary reforms designed to equalize expenditures could actually increase the inequality of student achievement

alternative regulatory methods and firm efficiency stochastic frontier evidence from the u s electricity industry the use of incentive regulation and other alternative regulatory programs in u s electricity markets has grown during the past two decades within a stochastic frontier framework i investigate the effect of individual programs on the technical efficiency of a large set of coal and natural gas generation units i find that those programs tied directly to generator performance and those that modify traditional fuel cost pass through programs to provide a greater incentive to reduce fuel costs are associated with greater efficiency levels other programs have no statistical association with efficiency levels

whether crop diversification is energy efficient an empirical analysis from bangladesh abstract this study examines whether crop diversification provides economy in energy use and improves technical energy efficiency using a large survey data of 2075 farms from 20 sub districts of 17 districts in bangladesh by applying a stochastic input distance function approach the results reveal that cereal production significantly increases energy use by 0 14 for every one percent increase in output renewable source of energy constitutes 59 6 of total inputs and labour energy alone constitutes 39 significant output complementarity exists between cereal and oilseed enterprises but competition exist between jute with pulse and or oilseed enterprises the mean technical energy efficiency is estimated at 68 implying that energy output can be increased by 32 by eliminating inefficiency diversification amongst enterprises is associated with energy inefficiency implying that specialization into cereals improves efficiency large farms are inefficient whereas large family size improves efficiency the key policy implication is that diversification of crop enterprises must maintain cereal i e rice wheat maize as the main base and then add non cereal crops e g oilseeds in order to improve energy economy also diversification within cereals from rice monoculture to wheat and or maize will significantly improve technical energy efficiency

the impact of the 1999 cap reforms on the efficiency of the cop sector in spain the cereal oilseeds and protein crop sector cop occupies a prominent position within the european union s agricultural sector within spain the cop sector accounts for almost a third of total agricultural guidance and guarantee fund expenses and half of the utilized agricultural area uaa the cop sector is not only relevant because of its physical and economic magnitude but also because of the political attention it receives the common agricultural policy cap reforms that occurred during the 1990s paid special attention to this sector this article aims to determine the impacts of agenda 2000 on a sample of spanish cop farmers production decisions by using an output oriented stochastic distance function the distance function allows for an assessment of the reform motivated changes on total output input used input composition and crop mix it also permits an assessment of the impacts of the reform on farms technical efficiency results show that the reform has shifted the production frontier inward and changed output composition in favor of voluntary set aside land with respect to input composition agenda 2000 induced a decrease in land fertilizers pesticides and other inputs in favor of labor in addition agenda 2000 has had a negative impact on technical efficiency

technical efficiency and impacts of deregulation an analysis of three functions in u s electric power utilities during the period from 1992 through 2000 the main purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of deregulation on technical efficiency and its changes over time for large scale u s electric power utilities during the period from 1992 through 2000 we analyze the efficiency of three individual functions i e generation transmission distribution and general administration and the deregulatory impacts on each of them in order to implement the analysis we estimate an input distance function by using a stochastic frontier analysis the results indicate that there is a significant impact of deregulation on efficiency in the generation and general administration functions while no effects are observed in the transmission distribution function

stochastic divergence or convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions re examining the evidence this paper revisits the time series literature on the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions and examines the robustness of previous results using a sample of oecd countries for the period 1950 2002 we employ a battery of stationarity and unit root tests including those that allow for cross sectional dependencies within the panel we also correct for inaccuracies in previous studies that could result in a trend stationary series being labelled as converging even if it were actually diverging from the international average the body of evidence provided by our analysis suggests that per capita co2 emissions have not converged among oecd countries during the period under consideration this finding is of importance to both climate change policy makers and to those who construct climate change models

the distribution of foreign exchange price changes trading day effects and risk measurement this study investigates the nature of price changes in a variety of major and minor foreign exchange markets the results suggest that the log of price changes over one trading day intervals seems to follow a non normal stable distribution function different measures of location and to lesser extent scale are present for different days of the week dollar denominated price changes are high on mondays and wednesdays and low on thursdays and fridays for all currencies the wednesday thursday result is consistent with the settlement procedures used in foreign exchange transactions in the dollar the friday monday result is consistent with an increase in demand for the dollar prior to the weekend this study offers some previously unavailable results on the nature of price changes in a certain set of speculative markets in particular this is a study of the distributional characteristics of daily and weekly price changes for a number of major and minor foreign exchange markets the results document the existence of non normal stable distributions for price changes in foreign exchange markets these price change distributions differ by day of the week in ways that are only partly attributable to the institutional structure of the market the results of the study are interpreted within the context of understanding how foreign exchange markets operate and within the context of prior studies of stock market data concerned with summarizing the probability distribution of price changes for different intervals including days of the week since bachelier s 1 original treatise that contained the proposition that speculative market prices follow a process that could be described by a normal distribution there have been numerous alternative attempts to describe the stochastic processes which characterize speculative market prices these studies have not resulted in any generalized description of the probability distribution of price changes in such markets indeed the evidence suggests substantial differences in the process among various types of financial instruments the failure to achieve consensus can be traced to the lack of robustness in the statistical procedures employed to estimate processes and to differences in the underlying institutional or economic arrangements which are unique to that market the possibility of differences in the information set used to assess value or differences in technology for transmitting information makes it important to secure additional

club convergence in carbon dioxide emissions we examine convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among 128 countries for the period 1960 2003 by means of a new methodology introduced by phillips and sul econometrica 75 6 1771 1855 2007a contrary to previous studies our approach allows us to examine for evidence of club convergence i e identify groups of countries that converge to different equilibria our results suggest convergence in per capita co2 emissions among all the countries under scrutiny in the early years of our sample however there seem to be two separate convergence clubs in the recent era that converge to different steady states interestingly we also find evidence of transitioning between the two convergence clubs suggesting either a slow convergence between the two clubs or a tendency for some countries to move from one convergence club to the other

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a bayesian robust structural model we address international convergence in carbon dioxide emissions per capita and per value added derived from emission inventories based on production and consumption patterns we propose a bayesian structural model that accounts for heteroscedasticity and endogeneity between emissions and economic growth and tests for the existence of group specific convergence via shrinkage priors we find evidence for country specific conditional convergence in all emission inventories implying a half life of 2 7 3 1 years for production based emissions and 3 6 4 7 years for consumption based emissions when testing for global convergence without allowing for individual specific convergence paths the half life of hbox co 2 per capita increases to 15 26 years whereas emission intensities show a half life of 44 45 years our results highlight the current incompatibility between emission targets and economic growth and the need for faster diffusion of green technologies moreover there is no evidence for specific convergence dynamics in the european union the oecd or the countries that are subject to binding emission constraints specified in the kyoto protocol the institutional frameworks implemented in industrialized countries did not induce faster convergence among developed economies

tracking the stepwise effects of regulatory reforms over time a back door approach most of the literature on the efficiency effects of regulatory reforms ignores the gradual nature of the implementation of these reforms this article describes a new simple data manipulation that minimizes data requirements to measure econometrically the impact on efficiency of each stage of multi stages regulatory reforms the approach can easily be implemented using standard stochastic frontier software programs it is illustrated with data on the spanish port system which went through a two stage reform during the 1990s

convergence of per capita co2 emissions across the globe insights via wavelet analysis abstract this paper examines the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions for 162 countries across the globe covering all income groups high income oecd high income non oecd middle income and low income countries as categorized by the world bank the incidence of stochastic convergence is analysed by making use of recently developed wavelet based unit root tests the existing studies on this subject make use of conventional unit root tests using time series and or panel data a serious drawback of these tests is that they analyse the stochastic behaviour of any series in time domain only whereas the stochastic process may behave differently across different frequencies as well thus wavelet methods are an obvious solution as they consider frequency dimension as well in addition to time dimension when analyzing the stochastic behaviour of any data series and hence these methods encompass the conventional unit root testing methodologies by providing a clear and complete picture of the stochastic process our empirical findings based on latest available time series annual data from 1960 to 2010 lend support in favor of convergence among 38 countries including 18 high income oecd countries 2 high income non oecd countries 13 middle income countries and 5 low income countries while for the rest of 124 countries the co2 emission series is found to be non stationary suggesting the divergence in these countries these findings are in contrast with the most of the existing studies which may be due to the use of wavelet based unit root tests that are of course better alternatives some policy implications evolve from the empirical findings

the spanish beef sector in the 1990s impact of the bse crisis on efficiency and profitability the beef sector has undergone a series of changes as a result of successive food scares and agricultural policy reforms the purpose of the paper is to analyse technical efficiency and profitability in spanish livestock enterprises during the 1990s focusing on the possible impact of the bse crisis and the 1992 cap reform on each of these variables the main findings reveal the existence of technical inefficiency during the sample period some factors have a positive impact others a negative impact on efficiency as far as the effects of cap reform and the bse crisis are concerned the results show the ineffectiveness of agricultural policy regulation to promote efficiency in the sector and the improvement in the efficiency as a consequence of the bse crisis the profitability analysis reveals the importance of direct subsidies however in their absence a large percentage of holdings is unable to remunerate either own or rented factors analysis shows therefore that there are two counteracting effec

a dual measure of economies of scope a derivative based measure of economies of scope is obtained by exploiting the duality between the shadow cost function and the input distance function this is a useful measure when the econometric estimation of a cost function is not viable

foreign direct investment spillovers and technical efficiency in the indonesian pharmaceutical sector firm level evidence the spillovers of foreign direct investment fdi on domestic firms performances have been highly debated for many years this article contributes to this debate by analysing spillovers effects on technical efficiency of indonesian pharmaceutical sector using a unique unbalanced panel of highly disaggregated at five digit international standard industrial classification isic 210 firms over the period 1990 1995 1001 observations the stochastic production frontier spf and the data envelopment analysis dea based on malmquist productivity indices mpi have been used to test the spillovers effects of fdi on technical efficiency the empirical results from the spf show that foreign firms are more efficient than domestic competitors and the presence of the former increases the inefficiency of the latter similarly the results from the mpi demonstrate that fdi has a negative and significant impact on technical efficiency changes in domestic competitors but generate positive spillovers to domestic s

ranking efficiency units in dea using bootstrapping an applied analysis for slovenian farm data this article explores how data envelopment analysis dea along with a smoothed bootstrap method can be used in applied analysis to obtain more reliable efficiency rankings for farms the main focus is the smoothed homogeneous bootstrap procedure introduced by simar and wilson 1998 to implement statistical inference for the original efficiency point estimates two main model specifications constant and variable returns to scale are investigated along with various choices regarding data aggregation the coefficient of separation cos a statistic that indicates the degree of statistical differentiation within the sample is used to demonstrate the findings the cos suggests a substantive dependency of the results on the methodology and assumptions employed accordingly some observations are made on how to conduct dea in order to get more reliable efficiency rankings depending on the purpose for which they are to be used in addition attention is drawn to the ability of the slice model implemented in gams to enable researchers to overcome the computational burdens of conducting dea with bootstrapping

per capita carbon dioxide emissions convergence or divergence understanding and considering the distribution of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions is important in designing international climate change proposals and incentives for participation i evaluate historic international emissions distributions and forecast future distributions to assess whether per capita emissions have been converging or will converge i find evidence of convergence among 23 member countries of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd whereas emissions appear to be diverging for an 88 country global sample over 1960 2000 forecasts based on a markov chain transition matrix provide little evidence of future emissions convergence and indicate that emissions may diverge in the near term i also review the shortcomings of environmental kuznets curve regressions and structural models in characterizing future emissions distributions

multi period efficiency and malmquist productivity index in two stage production systems abstract conventional two stage data envelopment analysis dea models measure the overall performance of a production system composed of two stages processes in a specified period of time where variations in different periods are ignored this paper takes the operations of individual periods into account to develop a multi period two stage dea model which is able to measure the overall and period efficiencies at the same time with the former expressed as a weighted average of the latter since the efficiency of a two stage system in a period is the product of the two process efficiencies the overall efficiency of a decision making unit dmu in the specified period of time can be decomposed into the process efficiency of each period based on this decomposition the sources of inefficiency in a dmu can be identified the efficiencies measured from the model can also be used to calculate a common weight global malmquist productivity index mpi between two periods in that the overall mpi is the product of the two process mpis the non life insurance industry in taiwan is used to verify the proposed model and to explain why some companies performed unsatisfactorily in the specified period of time

systematic departures from the frontier a framework for the analysis of firm inefficiency departures from a production or cost frontier may reflect the systematic effect of conditions that contribute to inefficiency to test whether some portion of frontier function departures can be systematically explained the frontier inefficiency error component is modeled as a function of various causal factors and a random component the functional form of the inefficiency error term model is chosen to assure strict one sidedness preliminary empirical results generated from electric utility data suggest the superiority of including both systematic and random components in the inefficiency error term

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

on the stationarity of co2 emissions in oecd and brics countries a sequential testing approach abstract this study examines the non stationary properties of the per capita carbon dioxide emissions of 29 selected oecd countries plus brazil china india and south africa over the period 1960 2014 following a sequential testing procedure we analyze the historical path of the variable regarding the possible presence of abrupt ruptures and then carry out appropriate unit root tests the results show that the co2 emissions per capita are better characterised by a random walk for all the different countries furthermore the break dates and the growth rate were estimated as well for each country under study finally we decompose the carbon emissions into a secular or trend component and a cyclical component and propose a chronology of cycles in growth rates

sectoral change catching up and slowing down oecd post war economic growth revisited abstract regression analysis of gdp growth since 1950 on pooled oecd cross sections indicates uniform technological catch up in all sectors but lower marginal labour productivity in agriculture the decline in opportunities to reallocate labour explains some of the post 1973 productivity slowdown

provision of environmental output within a multi output distance function approach this paper redefines technical efficiency by incorporating provision of environmental goods as one of the outputs of the farm the proportion of permanent and rough grassland to total agricultural land area is used as a proxy for the provision of environmental goods stochastic frontier analysis was conducted using a bayesian procedure the methodology is applied to panel data on 215 dairy farms in england and wales results show that farm efficiency rankings change when provision of environmental outputs by farms is incorporated in the efficiency analysis which may have important political implications

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

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

convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the eu legend or reality abstract designing appropriate environmental and energy policies in order to meet the kyoto protocol s carbon dioxide co 2 reduction targets in the european union eu requires a detailed examination and thorough understanding of co 2 emission trends across the eu member states this paper investigates whether co 2 emissions have converged across 22 european countries over the 1971 to 2006 period the bayesian shrinkage estimation method is employed to do this work and the results reveal the following first the hypothesis of absolute convergence in per capita co 2 emissions is supported and a slight upward convergence is observed second the fact that countries differ considerably in both their speed of convergence and volatility in emissions makes it possible to identify different groups of countries third the results with respect to convergence do not vary much once the share of industry in gdp is accounted for in a conditional convergence analysis however a decreasing share of industry in gdp seems to contribute to a decline in per capita emissions these findings may carry important implications for both national and eu environmental policies

decomposition of productivity growth using distance functions the case of dairy farms in three european countries within an output distance function framework the total factor productivity growth index is decomposed into four components technical change technical and allocative efficiency and scale component we estimate stochastic translog output distance functions using panel data from dairy farms over the period 1991 94 for three european countries germany the netherlands and poland results indicate that the change in the productivity growth index in germany 6 and poland 5 are mainly dictated by the technical change component in contrast the productivity growth index in the netherlands 3 is influenced by allocative efficiency components

stochastic convergence in per capita co2 emissions an approach from nonlinear stationarity analysis abstract this paper studies stochastic convergence of per capita co 2 emissions in 28 oecd countries for the 1901 2009 period the analysis is carried out at two aggregation levels first for the whole set of countries joint analysis and then separately for developed and developing states group analysis a powerful time series methodology adapted to a nonlinear framework that allows for quadratic trends with possibly smooth transition between regimes is applied this approach provides more robust conclusions in convergence path analysis enabling a robust detection of the presence and if so the number of changes in the level and or slope of the trend of the series b inferences on stationarity of relative per capita co 2 emissions conditionally on the presence of breaks and smooth transitions between regimes and c estimation of change locations in the convergence paths finally as stochastic convergence is attained when both stationarity around a trend and convergence simultaneously hold the linear approach proposed by tomljanovich and vogelsang 2002 is extended in order to allow for more general quadratic models overall joint analysis finds some evidence of stochastic convergence in per capita co 2 emissions some dispersion in terms of convergence is detected by the group analysis particularly among developed countries this is in accordance with per capita gdp not being the sole determinant of convergence in emissions with factors like search for more efficient technologies fossil fuel substitution innovation and possibly industry outsourcing also having a crucial role

scope economies and technical efficiency of cocoa agroforesty systems in ghana a number of studies have addressed issues relating to the physiological environmental and economic values of trees in cocoa farming systems however to date little has been done to quantitatively examine the effect of crop diversity on cocoa farming efficiency this study therefore sets out to first investigate whether and to what extent crop diversity defined as the mixing of cocoa with other crop species on farmers plots affects productivity on cocoa farms secondly it sought to establish whether there are economies of scope i e cost complementarities from the sharing of farm inputs by crops on the same plots our results indicate that diversified i e multi crop cocoa farms are more efficient than single i e mono crop farms furthermore our estimate for the economies of scope parameter indicates possibilities for cost complementarities between production of cocoa and other crops on the same plot we advocate further investigation on the issue of scope economies to determine which crop combinations offer better cost complementarities and also meet biodiversity conservation objectives

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

the role of environmental factors in growth accounting this paper explores a relatively new methodology the directional distance function method to analyse productivity growth the method allows us to explicitly evaluate the role that undesirable outputs of the economy such as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have on the frontier production process which we specify as a piecewise linear and convex boundary function we decompose productivity growth into efficiency change catching up and technology change innovation we test the statistical significance of the estimates using recently developed bootstrap methods we also explore implications for growth of total factor productivity in the oecd and asian economies copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

explaining the inefficiency of electrical distribution companies peruvian firms this paper investigates the extent to which the structural reform of the peruvian electricity market implemented in the 1990s has improved the efficiency of the distribution companies and it evaluates the influence on efficiency of firm specific explanatory variables to do this we rely on data from 14 distribution companies between 1996 and 2006 the results indicate that the incentives generated by the reform process led to the firms becoming more efficient moreover the time trend and private management of the distribution companies are variables that positively affect the levels of efficiency whereas the lower network densities are then the greater the inefficiency

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

efficiency in new zealand sheep and beef farming the impacts of regulatory reform in this study we consider the impacts of dramatic regulatory reform during the 1980s on the efficiency of farms in new zealand using unbalanced panel data a translog distance function representing the multiple output and input technology and incorporating nonneutral regulatory impacts is used for the analysis determinants of technical inefficiency including a regulatory variable a time term and a debt equity ratio are also incorporated in a one step model estimated by maximum likelihood stochastic production frontier methods we find evidence of regulatory induced changes in output composition toward beef and deer and away from wool and especially lamb but little associated technical inefficiency these patterns motivated investment in complementary capital land and beef deer livestock inputs firms that were more flexible in their adaptation toward these new mixes adjusted to regulatory changes with less upheaval so any existing inefficiency appears linked to debt equity levels

fixed effect estimation of highly mobile production technologies we consider fixed effect estimation of a production function where inputs and outputs vary over time space and cross sectional unit we exploit variability in the spatial dimension to identify time varying individual effects without parametric assumptions on the effects while estimation is unbiased asymptotics along the spatial dimension allow estimation of robust standard errors and asymptotic normality of the marginal products also if inference on the estimates of the individual effects is warranted then spatial asymptotics provide asymptotic normality while precluding an incidental parameters problem caused by asymptotics along the time or crosssectional dimensions we apply our results to a production function of bottom trawler fishing vessels in the flatfish fisheries of the bering sea we find significant spatial variability of output catch which we exploit in estimation of a harvesting function we conclude that vessel individual effects did not change across the period 2002 to 2004 we apply the theory of ranking and selection to determine that individual effects are not statistically significant across vessels

flexible exchange rates prices and the role of news lessons from the 1970s recent experience with flexible exchange rate systems has led to renewed interest in the operation of foreign exchange markets as reflected in many recent studies of the principal determinants of exchange rates the 1970s witnessed the dramatic alteration of the international monetary system from a regime of pegged exchange rates which prevailed for about a quarter of a century since the bretton woods conference into a regime of flexible though managed rates as a consequence of the emergence of the new legal and economic system traders national governments and international organisations were confronted with new economic problems choices and instruments during the 1970s ex change rates fluctuated widely and inflation rates accelerated the international monetary system had to accommodate extraordinarily large oil related shocks which affected trade flows in goods and assets huge oil payments had to be recycled uncertainties concerning future developments in international politics reached new heights and the prospects for the world economy got gloomier these developments placed unprecedented pressures on the markets for foreign exchange as well as on other asset markets they were associated with a large slide in the value of the us dollar and resulted in speeding up the creation of new institutions like the european monetary system which provided the formal framework for the management of exchange rates among members

convergence of carbon emissions at the household level in china a distribution dynamics approach abstract since household carbon emissions hces have become a new growing source and a significant contributor to global emissions the reduction of hces is crucial to formulate targeted and effective emission mitigation policies we need to fully understand the characteristics of the distribution and evolution of per capita hces and their urban rural and regional heterogeneity this paper explores the transitional dynamics of per capita hces in china by employing the distribution dynamics approach with panel data compiled at the household level we find that the overall per capita hces are unimodal distribution in the long run and the distribution dynamics of the per capita hces between the urban and rural areas or among the regional subgroups are quite different however the speed of convergence has accelerated over time moreover our findings indicate that the per capita hces in the urban areas will achieve convergence to an emission level much higher than that of the rural areas meantime the per capita hces in northeast china will converge to an emission level much higher than those of the other three regions these findings provide valuable insights for policymakers in implementing differentiated environmental policies for different regions and between urban and rural households in china

firm size and productivity evidence from the electricity distribution industry in brazil in this paper we apply stochastic frontier analysis through a distance function to investigate the impact of firm size on productivity development in electricity distribution we use a sample of seventeen brazilian firms from 1998 to 2005 and decompose productivity into technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical change moreover a further step is to decompose the technical change measurement into several components the results indicate that firm size is important for industry s productivity and therefore a key aspect to consider when making decisions that affect the market structure in the electricity distribution industry

a generalized production frontier approach for estimating determinants of inefficiency in u s dairy farms this article investigates farm level efficiency of u s dairy farmers by estimating their technical and allocative efficiency technical inefficiency is assumed to be composed of a deterministic component that is a function of some farm specific characteristics and a random component by doing this we extend the stochastic frontier methodology in which determinants of technicial inefficiency are explicitly introduced in the model given the inputs variations in efficiency of farms are then explained by both deterministic and random components of technical inefficiency the empirical results indicate that a levels of education of the farmer are important factors determining technical inefficiency and b large farms are more efficient technically than small and medium sized farms both technical and allocative inefficiency are found to decrease with increase in the level of education of the farmer

off farm labour and the structure of us agriculture the case of corn soybean farms while the growing importance of off farm earnings suggests large benefits accrue to farmers from efforts to expand off farm income opportunities economic well being also depends on greater efficiency to comprehensively gauge the economic health of farm operator households off farm income is interpreted as an output along with corn soybeans livestock and other crops to accomplish this task two related methodologies were used first using 2000 data a multi activity cost function was set up to analyse labour allocation decisions within the farm operator household and also to estimate returns to scale and scope second using 1996 2000 data an input distance function approach was followed to estimate returns to scale cost economies and technical efficiency and the relative performance of farm operator households with and without off farm wages and salaries compared the cost function and input distance function results both suggest that off farm outputs and inputs can be modelled in a multi activi

the ecu as international money abstract the ecu is compared with alternative foreign currencies to determine how adequately it performs the various functions of international money for the period april 1979 through december 1984 it is found that for most european economic agents the ecu was superior to the sdr the us dollar and a representative foreign currency the netherlands guilder as a unit of account as a store of value and as a means of deferred payment an examination is made of the distribution of the series of exchange rate changes so that appropriate statistical methods are employed in making a final assessment about the variability of the ecu

impact of liquidity risk on variations in efficiency and productivity a panel gamma simulated maximum likelihood estimation abstract the objective of this study is to assess the importance of short and long run liquidity or debt risk on technical inefficiency and productivity an alternative panel estimator of normal gamma stochastic frontier model is proposed using a simulated maximum likelihood estimation technique empirical estimates indicate a difference in the parameter coefficients of gamma stochastic production function and heterogeneity function variables between the pooled and the swamy arora panel models the results from this study show short and long run risk or variations in liquidity or debt servicing ratio play an important role in explaining the variance in efficiency and productivity

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

technical efficiency and productivity analysis in indonesian provincial economies this article estimates inefficiency and total factor productivity tfp across indonesian provinces from 1993 to 2000 indonesia is a large emerging market economy but provinces within the country due to the island structure of the country are more distinct from one another compared to other countries we use a stochastic frontier methodology to estimate inefficiency and tfp we find that tfp fell by an average rate of 7 5 across provinces due to the decrease in technical efficiency in fact the majority of output growth within indonesia is explained by the accumulation of inputs in this sense economic growth within indonesia does not appear to be sustainable without reversing these trends

multi output nonfrontier primal measures of capacity and capacity utilization this article implements an econometric approach for generating primal capacity output and utilization measures for fisheries in situations where regulatory environmental and resource conditions affect catch levels but are not independently identified in the data frontier based capacity models may interpret such impacts as production inefficiency however if such inefficiencies are unlikely to be eliminated the implied potential output increases may be unrealistic we develop a multi output multi input stochastic transformation function framework that permits various assumptions about how output composition may change when operating at full capacity we apply our model to catcher processor vessels in the alaskan pollock fishery

malmquist productivity indexes and fisher ideal indexes comment fare and grosskopf i992 henceforth abbreviated as fg showed that under some conditions the productivity index defined as the geometric mean of two input based malmquist productivity indexes is equal to the quotient of the fisher input quantity index and the fisher output quantity index both fisher indices can be computed from observed prices and quantities these conditions appear to be so strong that they will almost certainly never be fulfilled in practice this is shown by a careful inspection of fg s proof however under slightly milder but more plausible conditions it can be shown that the quotient of the fisher input index and the fisher output index is a reasonable approximation of the productivity index consider a firm at two time periods t o i with different technologies which are modelled by the input correspondences lt y x x can produce y x c rn yce rm it is assumed that the sets lt y are closed and convex and that inputs are strongly disposable the vectors x yt wt pt t o i denote observed inputs observed outputs observed input prices and observed output prices respectively the productivity index is defined as

parametric decomposition of output growth using a stochastic input distance function midmore peter karagiannis g tzouvelekas v parametric decomposition of output growth using a stochastic input distance function american journal of agricultural economics 2004 86 4 pp 1044 1057

corruption and inefficiency theory and evidence from electric utilities we investigate the determinants of the efficiency of firms with a focus on the role of corruption we construct a simple theoretical model where corruption increases factor requirements of firms because it diverts managerial effort away from factor coordination we then exploit a unique dataset comprising firm level information on 80 electricity distribution firms from 13 latin american countries for the years 1994 to 2001 as predicted by the model we find that more corruption in the country is strongly associated with more inefficient firms in the sense that they employ more inputs to produce a given level of output the economic magnitude of the effects is large the results hold both in models with country and firm fixed effects the results survive several robustness checks including different measures of output and efficiency and instrumenting for corruption other elements associated with inefficiency are public ownership inflation and lack of law and order but corruption appears to play a separate and more robust role

time trends and persistence in the global co2 emissions across europe we analyze the evolution across time of co2 emissions in the european union eu using advanced econometric techniques in time series analysis we estimate the time trends along with the orders of integration of series corresponding to global co2 emissions in eu member states using both parametric and semiparametric methods the results show that there is a significantly negative trend only in the case of the uk this being also a country where the trend shows mean reversion at the other extreme spain italy greece and bulgaria are some of the countries where co2 emissions show positive trends and orders of integration that are substantially above unity moreover we examine the co2 emissions of the eu as a whole china and the us finding some support for mean reversion only in the second case therefore there is less urgent need for policy reforms in the u k and somehow china than in the rest of the eu or the us

subequilibrium in the north american steel industries a study of short run biases from regulation and utilisation fluctuations the purpose of this paper has been to develop a short run framework for assessment of various biases including technical output or scale utilization and regulatory biases to address questions about the impacts of exogenous shocks on firm behavior this framework was then used to assess issues about the effects of regulation utilization output demand fluctuations and technical change on the structure of the steel industry the theoretical development as well as the application to the u s and canadian steel industries indicate the wide ranging applications of such a framework copyright 1988 by royal economic society

the measurement and sources of technical inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry production function models are estimated with a time series of cross section data on indonesian weaving establishments the sources of technical inefficiency are investigated three firm attributes are identified as being potentially related to firm efhciency tbey are firm ownership age and size the importance of these attributes as sources of inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry is investigated and the implications of the find ings discussed

convergence of carbon dioxide performance across swedish industrial sectors an environmental index approach the overall objective of the paper is to analyze convergence of co2 emission intensity across manufacturing sectors in sweden our approach differs from previous work on carbon convergence in that

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

sources of productivity growth using the fare primont decomposition an empirical application to the irish beef sector several competing methodologies for tfp estimation have been developed in the past decades a popular approach in the literature is index number computation the most widely implemented tfp indices

a non parametric analysis of productivity the case of u s and japanese manufacturing a nonparametric analysis of technology technical change and productivity is presented in the context of cost minimizing behavior a number of nonparametric tests concerning the existence and nature of technical change are applied to u s and japanese manufacturing data nonparametric measures of technical change are presented copyright 1990 by american economic association

efficiency and technical progress sources of convergence in the spanish regions the paper analyses the contribution of efficiency as a mechanism of labour productivity convergence taking as the unit of analysis the spanish regions in the period 1964 1993 using the stochastic frontier approach a translogarithmic production function is estimated for the different sectors of the spanish regional economy demonstrating on this basis the existence of substantial differences in efficiency between sectors as well as between regions with regard to convergence the results obtained indicate that at aggregate level the convergence observed in labour productivity is explained by the faster growth of the capital labour ratio of the initially poorer regions and the contribution of technical change and the efficiency hence by the convergence of tfp however the information by sectors shows different results thus on the one hand the importance of the convergence in production per employee is seen in all sectors except agriculture and on the other it is observed that technical change is a

the evolution and main determinants of productivity in brazilian electricity distribution 1998 2005 an empirical analysis abstract this paper estimates changes in the productivity of the brazilian electricity distribution sector using data envelopment analysis dea on a panel of 18 firms from 1998 to 2005 the study decomposes the productivity change of these distribution firms in terms of technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical progress this exercise aims to help the understanding of the main determinants of the evolution of productivity focusing its relationship with the restructuring process implemented in the 1990s tfp index records a yearly positive growth rate of 1 3 in the whole period under analysis for all firms technical change was the main component behind this evolution with an average growth of 2 1 per year while technical efficiency presented a yearly negative performance of 0 8 the results prove that in general terms the incentives generated in the reform process do not seem to have led the firms to behave in a more efficient manner

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data this paper tests the convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions for a collection of developed and developing countries using data spanning the period 1870 2002 for this purpose three recently developed panel unit root tests that permit for dependence among the individual countries are employed the results lend strong support in favor of convergence for the panel as a whole estimates of the speed of this convergence is also provided