on the comparative performance of socially responsible and islamic mutual funds this is the first study to provide comprehensive analyses of the relative performance of both socially responsible investment sri and islamic mutual funds the analysis proceeds in two stages in the first the performance of the two categories of funds is measured using partial frontier methods in the second stage we use quantile regression techniques by combining two variants of the free disposal hull fdh methods order m and order in the first stage of analysis and quantile regression in the second stage we provide detailed analyses of the impact of different covariates across methods and across different quantiles in spite of the differences in the screening criteria and portfolio management of both types of funds variation in the performance is only found for some of the quantiles of the conditional distribution of mutual fund performance we established that for the most inefficient funds the superior performance of sri funds is significant in contrast for the best mutual funds this evidence vanished and even islamic funds perform better than sri these results show the benefits of performing the analysis using quantile regression

incorporating contextual information in public sector efficiency analyses a comparative study of nsw local government using the planning and regulatory function of 173 nsw local governments several approaches for incorporating contextual or non discretionary inputs in data envelopment analysis dea are compared non discretionary inputs or factors beyond managerial control in this context include the population growth rate and distribution the level of development and non residential building activity and the proportion of the population from a non english speaking background the approaches selected to incorporate these variables include discretionary inputs only non discretionary and discretionary inputs treated alike and differently categorical inputs adjusted dea and endogenous dea the results indicate that the efficiency scores of the five approaches that incorporated non discretionary factors were significantly positively correlated however it was also established that the distributions of the efficiency scores and the number of councils assessed as perfectly technically efficient in the six approa

local government efficiency determinants and spatial interdependence we analyse the determinants of local government efficiency taking into account the presence of spatial interactions among neighbouring municipalities to do so first we estimate an efficiency inde

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

public sector efficiency leveling the playing field between oecd countries in this paper we seek a robust methodology for the measurement of the relative public sector efficiency of 19 oecd countries over the period 1980 2000 we estimate relative efficiency scores for five disaggregated accounts of public spending as well as for aggregate public spending then we use a semi parametric econometric method to isolate the impact of government inefficiency from the inefficiency arising from the socioeconomic environment and luck to verify the validity of our index we use it to examine a number of well established relationships in the public choice literature which have only been tested using local government data

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

value for money german local government efficiency in a comparative perspective in this article we investigate the cost efficiency of german local governments in the state of baden wurttemberg in 2004 using a stochastic frontier approach besides being the first study on german data we add two elements to the literature first we provide a comparative perspective allowing us to embed our results in the broader literature second unlike most previous studies we explicitly account for exogenous or nondiscretionary influences when estimating municipal efficiency scores the results suggest that disregarding such exogenous factors can lead to significant and systematic bias in the estimated inefficiency levels particularly underestimation of efficiency occurs for municipalities with high tourist activity while the reverse is true for municipalities with high unemployment

public sector technical inefficiency in large u s cities abstract technical inefficiency is the extent to which production is below the maximum possible given the mix of chosen inputs controlling for the determinants of local property value that a local government cannot change a city produces local property value through the expenditure and revenue choices that it makes if a city is generating the highest attainable market value of aggregate property within its boundaries given the local fiscal choices that it has made then it is producing local government in a technically efficient manner in this paper using the concept of the stochastic frontier production function we measure technical inefficiency in the local public sector based upon a comparison of local property values the specification introduced allows the random component associated with the presence of technical inefficiency to depend on factors that have been suggested as limiting or enhancing technical inefficiency using a sample of 49 u s central cities we find that large city governments in the united states are operating at different degrees of technical inefficiency and the degree of technical inefficiency varies inversely with measured levels of competitive pressures

estimating a brand level demand system for american cheese products to evaluate unilateral and coordinated market power strategies the advantage of this method compared to baker and bresnahan p 432 is that it does not constrain the conduct of the manager in their analysis they assume that the manager proportionally varies the quantity of each brand market shares remain constant once one has the unilateral total and fully collusive elasticities one can analyze the this paper was presented at the assa winter meetings atlanta ga january 2002 papers in these sessions are not subjected to the journal s standard refereeing process ronald w cotterill is professor of agricultural economics at the university of connecticut department of agricultural and resource economics he is currently director of the food marketing policy center and editor of agribusiness an international journal pierre o samson completed a master of science degree in agricultural economics at the university of connecticut in 2000

explaining differences in efficiency a meta study on local government literature this paper reviews the literature on local government efficiency by meta reviewing 360 observations retrieved from 54 papers published from 1993 to 2016 the meta regression is based on a random effect model estimated with the 2 step random effects maximum likelihood reml technique proposed by gallet and doucouliagos 2014 results indicate that the study design matters when estimating a frontier in local government we find that studies focusing on technical efficiency provide higher efficiency scores than works evaluating cost efficiency the same applies when using panel data instead of cross section data interestingly studies that use the free disposal hull fdh approach yield on average higher efficiency scores than papers employing the data envelopment analysis dea method thereby suggesting that in this literature the convexity hypothesis of the production set is a matter finally the efficiency of local government increases with the level of development of the analysed countries and is positively related to the national integrity of the legal system the opposite holds when considering the corruption

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

are hospitals seasonally inefficient evidence from washington state efficiency measurement has been one of the most extensively explored areas of health services research over the past two decades despite this attention few studies have examined whether a provider s efficiency varies on a monthly quarterly or other sub annual basis this article presents an empirical study that looks for evidence of seasonal inefficiency using a quarterly panel of general acute care hospitals from washington state we find that hospital efficiency does vary over time however the nature of this dynamic inefficiency depends on the type of efficiency being measured our results suggest that technical and cost efficiency vary by quarter allocative and scale efficiency also vary on a quarterly basis but only if the data are jointly disaggregated by quarter and another firm specific factor such as size or operating status thus future research corporate decisions and government policies designed to improve the efficiency of hospital care need to account for seasonal trends in hospi

on the determinants of local government performance a two stage nonparametric approach abstract this article analyzes the efficiency of local governments in the comunitat valenciana spain and their main explanatory variables the analysis is performed in two stages firstly efficiency is measured via nonparametric activity analysis techniques specifically we consider both data envelopment analysis dea and free disposable hull fdh techniques the second stage identifies some critical determinants of efficiency focusing on both political and fiscal policy variables in contrast to previous two stage research studies our approach performs the latter attempt via nonparametric smoothing techniques rather than econometric methods such as ols or tobit related techniques results show that efficiency scores especially under the nonconvexity assumption fdh are higher for large municipalities thus there is empirical evidence to suggest that resources may be better allocated by large municipalities however the inefficiency found is not entirely attributable to poor management as second stage analysis reveals both fiscal and political variables to be explicably related to municipality performance moreover the explanatory variables impact on efficiency is robust to the chosen technique either convex dea or nonconvex fdh

fiscal decentralization and government size numerous studies have attempted to model the possible factors contributing to universal growth in public sectors this paper analyzes one device that appears capable of controlling some of that growth fiscal decentralization the results reported here also support the use of monopoly government assumptions in models of public policy

public sector efficiency in transition and beyond evidence from czech local governments this article provides the first comparison of public sector efficiency in and beyond transition we compare the comprehensive efficiency scores of 202 local governments in the czech republic in the transition period of 1995 1998 and the post transition period of 2005 2008 and identify the period specific determinants of local government efficiency we observe convergence to the best practice frontier but also a growing efficiency gap between small and large governments in both periods municipal size and the main fiscal variables qualitatively affect efficiency in the same direction and in line with the fiscal stress hypothesis left wing ideology is only robustly associated with cost inefficiency in the transition period the geographic distances begin to matter for efficiency only in the post transition period

competition in the political arena and local government performance competition reduces rent extraction in private sector firms in this article we empirically assess whether it similarly disciplines politicians by evaluating local level governments performance in flanders the results indicate that electoral competition measured via the number of parties competing in elections significantly positively affects the productive efficiency of municipal policy intertemporal competition measured as the volatility of election outcomes over time has a similar but weaker positive effect these beneficial effects are mitigated by the fact that competition may lead to more fragmented governments which is shown to work against their productive efficiency overall though the beneficial effects outweigh the unfavourable ones in our sample

analisis de la eficiencia del gasto municipal y de sus determinantes en este estudio se analizo la eficiencia del gasto local en 1686 municipalidades del pais para elano 2003 mediante la interpretacion de las actividades publicas locales como un proceso de produccion que transforma inputs en outputs bradford et al 1969 y fisher 1996 se establecieron para ello diversas fronteras de produccion construidas a partir de los mejores resultados dentro de grupos de municipalidades y luego se estimo la eficiencia relativa como la distancia a dichas fronteras se utilizaron cinco metodologias para la estimacion de las fronteras de produccion i 3 no parametricas free disposal hull fdh y data envelopment analysis dea crs ydea vrs y ii dos parametricas una deterministica y otra estocastica las cuales se estimaron a traves de las diez categorias de municipalidades cuatro provinciales y seis distritales definidas mediante una metodologia de conglomerados finalmente a partir del empleo de modelos de regresion de tipo tobit se analizaron los determinantes fiscales socioeconomicos y demograficos de los niveles de eficiencia encontrados los resultados obtenidos son diversos y varian segun la categoria del municipio analizado a pesar que fue posible identificar algunas buenas practicas municipales los resultados a nivel nacional son preocupantes puesto que indican que se podria alcanzar la misma provision de bienes y servicios municipales con 57 6 menos recursos entre los principales determinantes de este gasto ineficiente se encontraron las transferencias de los recursos del foncomun y del canon sobre todo a nivel distrital mientras que uno de los factores que permitio una provision mas eficiente de los servicios publicos locales fue la participacion ciudadana aproximada por la presencia de los consejos de coordinacion local en el marco de la promulgacion del decreto supremo 068 2006 pcm en octubre de 2006 por el cual se establece la culminacion de las transferencias de competencias y funciones inicialmente programadas para el periodo 2006 2010 hacia fines del ano 2007 los resultados obtenidos resaltan la necesidad de concentrar mayores esfuerzos para mejorar la eficiencia del gasto a nivel local in this study we analyzed the efficiency of the spending of 1686 peruvian municipalities for the year 2003 through the evaluation to the municipal public activities as a process of production which transforms inputs in outputs bradford et al 1969 and fisher 1996 in doing so we established several best practice production frontiers in order to estimate the extent of municipal spending that seems to be wasted relative to that frontier five methodologies for the production frontier estimations were used i three non parametric i free disposal hull fdh and data envelopment analysis dea crs and dea vrs and ii two parametric one deterministic and the other stochastic which were estimated through ten categories of municipalities four groups of provincial and six of district municipalities defined through a cluster methodology finally using tobit regression models we analyzed the fiscal socioeconomics and demographic determinants of the efficiency levels we found different levels of efficiency and although we identified some good practices the result at the national level is matter of concern because the same results could have been obtained with 57 6 less resources among the main determinants of this inefficiency spending the foncomun and canon transfers were found mainly at the district municipal level one of the factors that allowed for a more efficient provision of local services was the civil participation represented in the study by the local coordination council the results of the study show that there is a need to make more efforts to improve the local government spending even more so after the promulgation of the supreme decree 068 2006 pcm in october 2006 by virtue of which the culmination of the competences and function transfers process initially programmed for 2006 2010 brought forward to the end of 2007

benchmarking urban energy efficiency in the uk this study asks what is the best way to measure urban energy efficiency there has been recent interest in identifying efficient cities so that best practices can be shared a process known as benchmarking previous studies have used relatively simple metrics that provide limited insight on the complexity of urban energy efficiency and arguably fail to provide a fair measure of urban performance using a data set of 198 urban uk local administrative units three methods are compared ratio measures regression residuals and data envelopment analysis the results show that each method has its own strengths and weaknesses regarding the ease of interpretation ability to identify outliers and provide consistent rankings efficient areas are diverse but are notably found in low income areas of large conurbations such as london whereas industrial areas are consistently ranked as inefficient the results highlight the shortcomings of the underlying production based energy accounts ideally urban energy efficiency benchmarks would be built on consumption based accounts but interim recommendations are made regarding the use of efficiency measures that improve upon current practice and facilitate wider conversations about what it means for a specific city to be energy efficient within an interconnected economy

distribution of cost and profit efficiency evidence from indian banking this paper uses the nonparametric dea methodology to estimate cost and profit efficiency of indian banks during the post reform period the results show considerable variation in average levels of profit efficiency across various ownership categories of banks in general state owned banks are found to be more efficient than their private counter parts further efficiency tends to be low among the small banks assets up to rs 50 billion indicating that at the existing scale of operations these banks are operating far below the efficient frontier we also examine the distribution of efficiency using nonparametric kernel density estimates the analysis reveals a rightward shift of the efficiency distribution over the years a major part of this shift comes from the state owned banks based on the conditional distribution the study finds strong evidence of ownership explaining the efficiency differential of banks additionally bank size and product mix are also found to be important although to a lesser extent

estimating technical and allocative efficiency in the public sector a nonparametric analysis of dutch schools abstract public sector output provision is influenced not only by discretionary inputs but also by exogenous environmental factors in this paper we extended the literature by developing a conditional dea estimator of allocative efficiency that allows a decomposition of overall cost efficiency into allocative and technical components while simultaneously controlling for the environment we apply the model to analyze technical and allocative efficiency of dutch secondary schools the results reveal that allocative efficiency represents a significant 37 percent of overall cost efficiency on average although technical inefficiency is still the dominant part furthermore the results show that the impact of environment largely differs between schools and that having a more unfavorable environment is very expensive to schools these results highlight the importance of including environmental variables in both technical and allocative efficiency analysis

anticipating the consequences of school reform a new use of dea we use dea type linear programming techniques to simulate a basic component of educational reform eliminating restrictions on the allocation of school personnel our technique allows us to identify potential output gains or equivalently potential cost savings from reform we can also identify which personnel groups are likely to gain and lose under this reform when we apply our model to a sample of texas school districts we find evidence that the educational establishment has substantial economic rents to protect from school reform and that the primary beneficiaries of reform are likely to be affluent school districts with few minority students the technique which relies on the relationship between the direct and indirect distance functions can be easily generalized to measure the potential gains from removing other input restrictions such as union work rules environmental regulations or deed restrictions

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

estimation of the efficiency of structural funds a parametric and nonparametric approach this article seeks to perform an analysis of the efficiency of the application of the structural funds in the regions classified as objective 1 over the period 2000 to 2006 applying the techniques known as data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier in the first place we are going to identify which are the most efficient regions finally we will analyse the extent to which certain factors have repercussions on the efficiency such as country geographical location and contribution of agriculture of gross domestic product gdp and the result indicates that some of these variables have significantly influences of technical efficiency

the future of microeconomic theory the question of what constitutes good economic theory is analyzed current good and bad aspects of its methodologies are discussed interdisciplinary work that goes beyond the social sciences is advocated the future predictions are presented concerning research in game theory and the economics of information finally the importance of technology and the need for microeconomists to understand it better are argued

energy efficiency measurement in agriculture with imprecise energy content information abstract measuring energy efficiency is crucial when planning energy reduction policies however decision makers are understandably reluctant to act in the absence of solid data and results supporting a policy position this paper proposes a methodology to measure the energy efficiency of farms based on the data envelopment analysis dea approach in a manner similar to the cost framework we decompose energy efficiency measurements into technical and allocative efficiencies in energy contents of inputs in this study we replace input prices used in traditional economic efficiency measurements by their energy content we use the energy efficiency model to explore the optimal input mix that produces the current outputs at minimum energy consumption we demonstrate that this decomposition can help policy makers design accurate energy policies however the uncertainty of the data and more particularly the energy content of the inputs leads us to recommend using the methodologies to calculate the bounds of efficiency to obtain more plausible and robust results based on our analysis energy efficiency is not a fixed value and policy makers should consider it with caution we use a 2007 database of french farms specialised in field crops for empirical illustration

the determinants of efficiency in municipal governments this article investigates efficiency in the municipal sector of the region of murcia spain with that aim data of 31 municipalities 69 of the response rate have been collected services analysed are police culture sports green areas refuse collection and water supply ratios of efficiency have been related to other control variables such as economic level size of the municipality decentralization political sign and financial situation a weak positive relation between economic level and efficiency arises some weak evidence also exists that public management of refuse collection is more efficient than private in water supply public management by means of a company controlled by the local government is clearly more efficient than private it also seems that the higher the tax burden the greater the efficiency in providing services

antitrust economic analysis in food marketing channels a global perspective antitrust enforcement concerning monopolies mergers and cartels is converging across all market oriented economies in the world this convergence is based upon neoclassical economic analysis of industrial organization the role of empirical economic analysis however has not converged as rapidly as the conceptual model because different countries have different enforcement institutions and strategies this article explains how antitrust enforcement has evolved over time from public agencies to a market for enforcement that admits private parties private party law suits and especially class action law suits on behalf of groups such as farmers and consumers is a mechanism for redressing the often superior legal and economic resources that defendant corporations have and public agencies do not have enforcement and the role of empirical analysis are compared in the united states and other countries examples of enforcement from different countries illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches finally some insights explain how economists function in enforcement and the attributes required for success

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

portfolio choice in research and development we analyze the effects of a winner take all patent mechanism on the riskiness of the research strategies chosen by competingfirms as well as on thefirms incentives to duplicate research projects nash equilibrium choices are compared with the social optimum in a oneshot simultaneous move game in which competitors choose the riskiness or correlation of their research performances we show that neither society nor firms have any preference for correlation per se while the divergence between social and privately optimal levels of risk depends on skewness characteristics of the probability distribution over discovery dates and on levels of risk aversion

estimating the degree of market power in the beef packing industry a technique for assessing the degree of monopoly power developed by appelbaum 1979 1982 is extended here to permit measurement of monopsony power as well data from the u s beef packing industry are examined the results reveal small but statistically significant monopoly monopsony price distortions in slaughter cattle and wholesale beef markets but in spite of a recent trend toward heightened concentration in the industry give no indication that performance has become appreciably less competitive of late this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

exploring the nexus between banking sector reform and performance evidence from newly acceded eu countries abstract the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between banking sector reform and bank performance measured in terms of efficiency total factor productivity growth and net interest margin accounting for the effects through competition and bank risk taking to this end we develop an empirical model of bank performance which is consistently estimated using recent econometric techniques the model is applied to bank panel data from ten newly acceded eu countries the results indicate that both banking sector reform and competition exert a positive impact on bank efficiency while the effect of reform on total factor productivity growth is significant only toward the end of the reform process finally the effect of capital and credit risk on bank performance is in most cases negative while it seems that higher liquid assets reduce the efficiency and productivity of banks

rice prices and income distribution in thailand a non parametric analysis rice is a staple crop in thailand significantly entering both household production and consumption this paper examines the effect of rice prices on the distribution of real income across households taking into account household characteristics and geographical location the data set is a large scale survey of 11 893 households simple nonparametric techniques for regression and density estimation are used these methods depend on few assumptions and generate flexible graphical results that are directly informative about the problem at hand the main results are that higher rice prices should benefit all rural households but the largest benefits accrue to rural households in the middle of the income distribution copyright 1989 by royal economic society

a goal programming constrained regression review of the bell system breakup the recently implemented court decision to break up bell american telephone telegraph co to accord with u s anti trust laws represents a highly significant policy decision which is proving to be influential in other countries as well as the u s the telecommunication industry is of such size and importance that even relatively small economies that might be lost with bell s breakup as a natural monopoly could involve substantial welfare losses to consumers and producers studies commissioned by the u s justice department that approached this topic by econometric methods reported that the evidence failed to support the contention that bell was a natural monopoly here a goal programming constrained regression as developed in the management science literature uses the same functional form and the same data but nevertheless reverses the main findings of the econometric studies in every one of the 20 years covered this kind of difference in results obtained by two different methods of analysis poi

persistence of technological leadership emerging technologies and incremental innovation in a model of competitive innovation i derive theoretical conditions for an entrant to displace the incumbent firm by innovating in an undeveloped substitute emerging technology the main result presents conditions on profitability and innovation speed that yield a markov perfect equilibrium in which the entrant pursues the emerging technology while the incumbent chooses to persist with the established technology and collect short run profits notably this result does not require the entrant s superiority to the incumbent for innovation finally when the model is calibrated to hard drive industry data its predictions are consistent with the observed outcomes

public sector efficiency the roles of political and budgetary institutions fiscal capacity and democratic participation the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether efficiency in public service provision is affected by political and budgetary institutions fiscal capacity and democratic participation in order to address this issue we take advantage of a new global efficiency measure for norwegian local governments we find that high fiscal capacity and a high degree of party fragmentation contribute to low efficiency in addition there is some evidence that democratic participation increases efficiency while a centralized top down budgetary procedure is associated with low efficiency

a comparative application of data envelopment analysis and translog methods an illustrative study of hospital production this paper compares inferences about hospital cost and production correspondences from two different estimation models 1 the econometric modeling of the translog cost function and 2 the application of data envelopment analysis dea while there are numerous examples of the application of each approach to empirical data this paper provides insights into the relative strengths of the estimation methods by applying both models to the same data the translog results suggest that constant reruns are operant whereas the dea results suggest that both increasing and decreasing returns to scale may be observed in different segments of the production correspondence in turn suggesting that the translog model may be averaging diametrically opposite behavior on the other hand by examining the rate of output transformation both models agree that patient days devoted to care of children are more resource intensive than those devoted to adults or to the elderly in addition we compare estimates of technical efficiencies of individual hospitals obtained from the two methods the dea estimates are found to be highly related to the capacity utilization but no such relationship was found for the translog estimates this comparative application of different estimation models to the same data to obtain inferences about the nature of underlying cost and production correspondences sheds interesting light on the strengths of each approach and suggests the need for additional research comparing estimation models using real as well as simulated data

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

managerial efficiency in local government implications on jurisdictional consolidation using data from maine estimates of size economies in the production of public education services are provided under the alternative assumptions of managerial efficiency and inefficiency while size economies were identified under the traditional assumption of managerial efficiency limited or no size economies were identified under the more general assumption of managerial inefficiency these results question the validity of the traditional economies of size literature and the jurisdictional consolidation policy which follows from the traditional literature

explaining differences in productive efficiency an application to belgian municipalities the purpose of this paper is to measure and explain variations in productive efficiency of municipal governments in belgium technical efficiency is evaluated using a non parametric method based on the free disposal hull fdh reference technology we first calculate input output and graph farrell efficiency measures for a cross section of all 589 belgian municipalities in a second stage of the analysis we explain the calculated differences in efficiency in terms of variables related to the structural characteristics of municipalities and to the institutional environment

the role of knowledge in r d efficiency past research has recognized that both demand and capability influence the allocation of r d resources scholars have had an easier time getting a grip on demand than on capability while it has been recognized that knowledge is an important part of capability to date formalization of knowledge and its role in r d activity has been unsatisfactory this paper models the role of knowledge in r d various sources of such knowledge are considered the model throws a different light on analyses that employ a knowledge capital stock and also illuminates the dual private and public nature of technological knowledge

cost disease in defense and public administration baumol and politics william baumol s model predicts a steady increase in relative public sector prices or costs because of the combination of slow productivity growth and wage growth similar to sectors wherein productivity is growing more quickly in this paper we extend the baumol model with political variables and analyze price growth in defense and public administration using norwegian data we find strong support for the mechanism of the baumol model since manufacturing productivity is the most important determinant of relative public sector prices greater political fragmentation has also contributed to the price growth but its quantitative effect is smaller than that of manufacturing productivity an analysis of a labor intensive private service restaurants and cafes supports the broader relevance of the baumol mechanism and the validity of the estimated effect of political fragmentation on the two sectors considered herein

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