primal and dual capacity utilization an application to productivity measurement in the u s automobile industry capacity utilization measures have traditionally been constructed as indexes of actual as compared to potential output this potential or capacity output y can be represented within an economic model of the firm as the tangency between the short and long run average cost curves economic theoretical measures of capacity utilization cu can then be characterized as y y where y is the realized level of output these quantity or primal cu measures allow for economic interpretation they provide explicit inference as to how changes in exogenous variables affect cu additional information for analyzing deviations from capacity production can be obtained by assessing the dual cost of the gap in this article the definitions and representations of primal output and dual cost cu measures are formalized within a dynamic model of a monopolistic firm as an illustration of this approach to characterizing cu measures a model is estimated for the u s automobile industry 1959 1980 and primal and dual cu

estimating output allocative efficiency and productivity change application to japanese banks abstract a new measure of output allocative efficiency is developed by comparing the input technical efficiency of a firm for the direct input requirement set and the indirect input requirement set proposed by shephard indirect production functions verlag anton hain meisenheim am glan the ratio of the direct and indirect input quasi distance functions serves as the measure of output allocative efficiency as such it measures the ratio of potential to actual inputs if the firm had chosen the revenue maximizing output mix using panel data on japanese banks operating during 1992 1996 productivity growth is measured and decomposed into changes in output allocative efficiency changes in input technical efficiency and technical change during the period japanese banks experienced productivity declines averaging 2 per year and could have used only 78 93 of actual inputs if they had chosen the revenue maximizing output mix

excess capacity and asymmetric information in developing country fisheries the malaysian purse seine fishery excess capacity poses a problem in many developing country fisheries these countries often pursue a development strategy aimed at expanding capacity under open access sustainable development however requires management principal agent issues from asymmetric information between the regulator and fishers which potentially form serious obstacles to fisheries management arise in the likely forms of management this article discusses principal agent issues and examines the principal agent moral hazard issue which is due to divorce of ownership and vessel operations the article also illustrates a method for estimating capacity when information is limited the peninsular malaysian purse seine fishery forms a case study

measuring economic efficiency with incomplete price information with an application to european commercial banks measuring economic efficiency requires complete price information while resorting to technical efficiency exclusively does not allow one to utilise any price information in most studies at least some information on the prices is available from theory or practical knowledge of the industry under evaluation in this paper we extend the theory of efficiency measurement to accommodate incomplete price information by deriving upper and lower bounds for farrell s overall economic efficiency the bounds typically give a better approximation for economic efficiency than technical efficiency measures that use no price data whatsoever from an operational point of view we derive new data envelopment analysis dea models for computing these bounds using standard linear programming the practical application of these estimators is illustrated with an empirical application to large european union commercial banks

the propensity to patent abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between 1974 rd among the exceptions the tendency was toward diminishing returns variables measuring overseas sales federal r d support diversification scope of invention use and invention type had only modest explanatory power there was no significant evidence of disproportionate patent accumulation in the more highly concentrated industries

sustainable fisheries development in the tropics trawlers and licence limitation in malaysia sustainable fisheries development requires sound fisheries management area licence limitation programmes may form the cornerstone for most tropical multispecies fisheries management programmes an empirical analysis of peninsular malaysian fishing trawlers is used to design an area licence limitation programme that conforms to the multiproduct production technology and cost and revenue structures to best accommodate condtions of asymmetric information between the regulator and fishing vessels

can economic causes of tropical deforestation be identified at a global level this paper contributes to the literature on the macro scale economic determinants of the increase in global forest depletion by performing a regression analysis based on a panel dataset for fifty tropical countries over an eighteen year period while the initial findings appear at first to confirm a common causality pattern of selected macroeconomic variables in influencing tropical deforestation subsequent statistical tests question the significance of the results more specifically testing for autocorrelation which has been downplayed in previous studies appears to represent a critical issue when the initial results are corrected for autocorrelation the significance of the parameters declines substantially below statistically acceptable levels the implications are twofold first regression analyses that seek to explain deforestation at the global level need to be carefully scrutinised and checked to ensure that they meet standard statistical tests second tropical deforestation might ultimately depend upon case specific factors and further research may render more effective policy suggestions if conducted at a more disaggregated local level

non joint technologies the hypothesis of non jointness in input quantities separate production functions is well known and it plays an important role in many areas of economics in this paper we define three additional forms of non jointness which have received little or no attention in the literature and which might be relevant for the firm as well as for the representation of the aggregate technology we characterize all forms of non jointness in terms of variable profit and joint cost functions this yields a number of restrictions which are all testable empirically the assumption that production is non joint in input quantities separate production functions inputs allocated between the different production processes plays a crucial role in many areas of economic theory we need only think of international trade theory public finance macroeconomics growth theory or traded non traded good models of international finance in fact it is safe to say that more often than not production is assumed non joint in input quantities in multiple output models little work has been done to test the empirical validity of the assumption of non jointness in input quantities samuelson 1966 studies the characterization of non joint technologies in terms of the transformation function as pointed out by hall 1973 however samuelson s results do not seem very useful for econometric work hall studies the characterization of non jointness in input quantities in terms of the joint cost function this leads to a number of restrictions which can easily be imposed or tested for and which were used in empirical work by burgess 1976 and by kohli 1981 lau 1972 1978 finally characterizes non jointness in input quantities in terms of the profit function besides non jointness in input quantities lau also examines the case of non jointness in output quantities when an input can be cracked into several outputs in this paper we define two additional cases of non jointness and we characterize them in terms of the joint cost function and the variable or normalized restricted profit function the new forms of non jointness that we define may be useful to describe technologies at the level of the firm and may be even more so at the aggregate level some may be useful concepts in other areas of economics as well such as consumer theory by distinguishing between the various forms of non jointness one obtains a number of testable restrictions on the corresponding joint cost or variable profit functions

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

production quota in multiproduct pacific fisheries abstract assessing the individual firm s technology and costs in a multispecies fishery allows design of a more effective output quota prior to regulation by anticipating and controlling for the firm s regulation induced responses an empirical study of a pacific coast trawl fishery indicates that the firm s flexibility of product decision is tightly constrained by its technology and cost structure hence as the resource stock for the regulated species sablefish deteriorates and the trip quota progressively tightens the firm cannot sufficiently reorganize its product bundle to preclude increasingly large sablefish disposal this defeats the purpose of the production quota

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

measuring and decomposing firm s revenue and cost efficiency the russell measures revisited abstract overall inefficiency measurement and decomposition are important for firms facing a world of changing prices since the resultant loss has implications on managers decision making in this paper we draw attention to some problems within existing approaches to decompose overall inefficiency into its sources and propose new revenue and cost inefficiency measures based on the well known russell measures specifically the technical inefficiency component is calculated by the russell output input measure which is able to incorporate all sources of inefficiency corresponding to the output input side specifically output input slacks whereas allocative inefficiency is retrieved residually all our results are derived from a new fenchel mahler inequality using the theory of convex conjugates this paper has several implications in theory and practice from a theoretical point of view we establish a natural dual relationship between the revenue cost function and the russell output input measure despite the previous unsuccessful attempts in the literature to provide such duality result from a practical point of view we provide a way of decomposing revenue cost inefficiency into allocative inefficiency and a component that measures technical inefficiency in the sense of pareto contrasting with the usual approaches for decomposing revenue cost inefficiency such as those based on shephard s output input distance function and the directional output input distance function

addressing global environmental externalities transaction costs considerations is there a way to understand why some global environmental externalities are addressed effectively whereas others are not the transaction costs of defining the property rights to mitigation benefits and costs is a useful framework for such analysis this approach views international cooperation as a contractual process among country leaders to assign those property rights leaders cooperate when it serves domestic interests to do so the demand for property rights comes from those who value and stand to gain from multilateral action property rights are supplied by international agreements that specify resource access and use assign costs and benefits including outlining the size and duration of compensating transfer payments and determining who will pay and who will receive them four factors raise the transaction costs of assigning property rights i scientific uncertainty regarding mitigation benefits and costs ii varying preferences and perceptions across heterogeneous populations iii asymmetric information and iv the extent of compliance and new entry these factors are used to examine the role of transaction costs in the establishment and allocation of property rights to provide globally valued national parks implement the convention on the international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora execute the montreal protocol to manage emissions that damage the stratospheric ozone layer set limits on harvest of highly migratory ocean fish stocks and control greenhouse gas emissions jel d23 p14 q22 q51 q54 q58

super efficiency dea in the presence of infeasibility it is well known that super efficiency data envelopment analysis dea approach can be infeasible under the condition of variable returns to scale vrs by extending of the work of chen 2005 the current study develops a two stage process for calculating super efficiency scores regardless whether the standard vrs super efficiency mode is feasible or not the proposed approach examines whether the standard vrs super efficiency dea model is infeasible when the model is feasible our approach yields super efficiency scores that are identical to those arising from the original model for efficient dmus that are infeasible under the super efficiency model our approach yields super efficiency scores that characterize input savings and or output surpluses the current study also shows that infeasibility may imply that an efficient dmu does not exhibit super efficiency in inputs or outputs when infeasibility occurs it can be necessary that i both inputs and outputs be decreased to reach the frontier formed by the remaining dmus under the input orientation and ii both inputs and outputs be increased to reach the frontier formed by the remaining dmus under the output orientation the newly developed approach is illustrated with numerical examples

reputation and efficiency a non parametric assessment of america s top rated mba programs abstract widely publicized reports of fresh mbas getting multiple job offers with six figure annual salaries leave a long lasting general impression about the high quality of selected business schools while such spectacular achievement in job placement rightly deserves recognition one should not lose sight of the resources expended in order to accomplish this result in this study we employ a measure of pareto koopmans global efficiency to evaluate the efficiency levels of the mba programs in business week s top rated list we compute input and output oriented radial and non radial efficiency measures for comparison among three tier groups the schools from a higher tier group on average are more efficient than those from lower tiers although variations in efficiency levels do occur within the same tier which exist over different measures of efficiency

one hundred major swedish technical innovations from 1945 to 1980 abstract an inventory of the most successful technical innovations in sweden during the period 1945 1980 has been made a hundred of them have been selected each of them has reached an economic turnover in excess of 20 million swedish crowns per year 3 5 million analyses of the innovations the innovators and the companies have been made the innovation frequency that is the number of innovations per year shows a continuous increase of about 5 percent per year during the period the gestation period that is the time between making the invention and introducing it on the market varies greatly but has an average value of about seven years no long term change in the gestation time could be determined the increase in economic turnover per year for the innovations can be described by a double logarithmic distribution for a fourth of the innovations the economic turnover per year is at least doubled each year also there is a clear correlation between the number of patents and the number of successful innovations in a company on the average there are 1 5 innovators per innovation the number increasing during the period 1945 1980 from 1 3 to 1 8 the proportion of foreigners among the innovators is about 6 percent somewhat less than the proportion of foreign workers in the manufacturing industry only one woman is found among the 137 innovators the ages of the innovators at the time of the invention is relatively high on the average 40 years but shows considerable variation the education of the innovators is relatively high with two third of them holding an academic degree and one third of them holding a higher academic degree only 5 percent have only elementary school or similar background the 100 innovations alone account for 5 percent of the economic value added in swedish industry eighty percent of the innovations have been conceived in and developed by existing large companies the distribution between various branches of industry correlates well with r d expenditures in the respective branches twenty percent of the innovations have been the basis for new company formation the role of universities in the innovations is a dominating one in medical innovations but less important in other branches of industry

compensated successful efforts for avoided deforestation vs compensated reductions abstract in recent years several proposals for the design of a mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd within the united nations convention on climate change have been advanced the essence of these proposals is to provide financial benefits to developing countries proportionally to the amount of avoided emissions they achieve i e output based a paper published in ecological economics combes motel p pirard r combes j l 2008 a methodology to estimate impacts of domestic policies on deforestation compensated successful efforts for avoided deforestation redd ecological economics doi 10 1016 j ecolecon 2008 06 001 aims to provide an alternative termed compensated successful efforts cse it suggests that financial benefits should be provided on the basis of developing countries successful efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation i e input based the cse approach also differs from previous ones in relation to the definition of what should be counted as avoided deforestation and how to estimate avoided deforestation the present paper discusses the cse approach and points out several shortcomings

measuring productivity growth under factor non substitution an application to us steam electric power generation utilities a theoretical framework is developed for decomposing partial factor productivity and measuring technical inefficiency when the underlying technology is characterized by factor non substitution with farrell s 1957 radial index of technical inefficiency being inappropriate in this case russell non radial indices are adapted to measure technical inefficiency in a leontief type model a system of factor demand equations with a regime specific technical inefficiency term is proposed and estimated allowing for dependence across inputs using a copula approach then the paper presents a complete decomposition of partial factor productivity changes using a dataset of us steam power electric generation utilities

estimating substitution and expansion effects using a profit function framework this study reports a first attempt to derive all the relevant information with respect to the structure of production of an industry using knowledge of only a profit function using estimates of a profit function for canadian agriculture a procedure to separate substitution and expansion effects for both inputs and outputs was implemented information concerning net input and output substitution and complementarity possibilities were obtained the most important empirical results suggest that the hypothesis of nonjoint production of crop and animal outputs in canadian agriculture cannot be rejected and that hired and operator labor are complements rather than substitutes

transferable quotas enforcement costs and typical firms an empirical application to the norwegian trawler fleet an alternative to traditional regulations of fisheries to avoid rent dissipation is the use of individual transferable quotas itqs where prices in the quota market provide the necessary information to owners of harvest rights to contract with each other however even under such a decentralized regime information on the underlying technology of the fishing vessels is also necessary first since most fisheries consist of many interrelated production processes in order to avoid rent dissipation by discarding wrong output mix etc the structure of production in the multispecies fishery must be known to design a proper quota system second an itq system may create incentives for misreporting by understating the actual catch this may especially be the case where the expected degree of self enforcement is low the paper proposes a way to reduce the information requirements under regulation with asymmetric information by constructing a typical firm and comparing performance for the other vessels to this firm based on the typical firm and if the industry is relatively homogenous the performance and hence catch of any other firm in the industry can be predicted within a certain range further the paper applies this idea to the norwegian trawler fleet to assess the production structure in terms of jointness input output separability and the supply and demand elasticities for the fishing firms this information characterizes the fishery and thus how the quota system may be designed and how to construct a yardstick in order to reduce the enforcement cost under a decentralized regulation of itqs

diversification consistent data envelopment analysis with general deviation measures abstract we propose new efficiency tests which are based on traditional dea models and take into account portfolio diversification the goal is to identify the investment opportunities that perform well without specifying our attitude to risk we use general deviation measures as the inputs and return measures as the outputs we discuss the choice of the set of investment opportunities including portfolios with limited number of assets we compare the optimal values efficiency scores of all proposed tests leading to the relations between the sets of efficient opportunities strength of the tests is then discussed we test the efficiency of 25 world financial indices using new dea models with cvar deviation measures

estimation of cost functions in a data poor environment the case of capacity estimation in fisheries fisheries economic analysis is often handicapped by the lack of adequate data to undertake robust econometric analyses in this study a translog cost function was required to estimate the potential direction of adjustment in a uk fleet segment if a new regulatory regime was introduced however the available data were not appropriate for such estimation data envelopment analysis dea was used to modify the data subsequently used in the estimation of the long run cost function the resulting model appears robust and is consistent with economic theory and the supporting evidence produced using dea

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

from efficiency measurement to efficiency improvement the choice of a relevant benchmark abstract this article deals with efficiency improvement and how to identify appropriate benchmarks for inefficient firms to imitate we argue that the most relevant benchmark is the most similar efficient firm having interpreted similarity in terms of input endowments the problem reduces to find the closest reference firm on the efficient subset of the isoquant to such an end we introduce the concept of input specific contractions this concept allows to find the shortest path to the efficient subset this information can be used to advise inefficient firms about which efficient firm to visit in order to detect its mistakes and to learn better managerial practices

a generalized distance function and the analysis of production efficiency a generalization of shephard s distance functions is proposed extending the usefulness of distance functions in economic analysis applications to efficiency measurements and productivity analysis are presented new indexes of productivity and technical allocative and scale efficiency are proposed and analyzed interpretation of these indexes in terms of ray average cost ray average revenue and cost to revenue ratio is discussed

semi radial technical efficiency measurement semi radial efficiency measurement combines technical efficiency as captured by the classical farrell measure with an economically meaningful mix efficiency component the semi radial evaluation we propose proceeds in two steps first we build on the price interpretation of the generally accepted koopmans efficiency notion to characterize appropriate benchmarks next we present both a quantity based distance measure and its dual price based equivalent to evaluate the mix efficiency factor the type of measures we propose may e g be used to provide a price rationale for the zieschang technical efficiency evaluation procedure

product mixes as objects of choice in non parametric efficiency measurement abstract non radial measures of technical efficiency essentially differ from their radial counterparts in that the product mix of the efficient reference is allowed to be different from the product mix of the evaluated observation whereas existing non radial measures are still based on the product mix of the evaluated i e possibly inefficient observation we change the perspective and propose a measure based on the mix properties of the efficient reference the resulting inverse measure can be considered as complementary to the fare lovell or russell efficiency measure

production technology costs and multiproduct industry structure an application of the long run profit function to the new england fishing industry the long run multiproduct profit function is developed to provide a more general procedure than the static minimum cost function to examine the technological and cost determinants of multiproduct industry structure and the likely form of any market equilibrium in this approach outputs are endogenous and the long run equilibrium levels of quasi fixed factors are endogenously determined the multiproduct structure of the multispecies new england fishing industry and the likely multi

the costs of error in setting reference rates for reduced deforestation setting reference rates for policy to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation is challenging this challenge is reflected in the number of proposals for reference rate design in this paper i show how these proposals have basic structural weaknesses that increase the likelihood of reference rates being set with error this leads to higher costs of reduced deforestation policy i propose that reference rates be designed to minimize the cost of forecast error these ideas are illustrated through forecasting agricultural land expansion in deforesting countries

the indian auto component industry estimation of operational efficiency and its determinants using dea in this paper the performance analysis of the indian auto component industry is carried out from the perspectives of an original equipment manufacturer and a component supplier various efficiency measures are estimated using data envelopment analysis with publicly available financial data on a representative sample of 50 firms the first stage analysis reveals various operational inefficiencies in the auto component industry which are subsequently decomposed into technical input mix and scale efficiencies the study finds evidence that a majority of the inefficient firms are operating in the diminishing returns to scale region and demonstrates potential savings through benchmark input targets a second stage analysis aimed at exploring root causes of inefficiencies finds that substitution of labour for capital could be causing a variety of inefficiencies including the input mix inefficiency in the indian component industry the empirical results also suggest that unlike the global auto supply chain higher average inventories are required for higher operational efficiencies in the indian context contrary to the popular expectations the technology licensing does not show significant influence on efficiency at least in the short term whereas efficient working capital management does result in higher operational efficiencies the study also unearths the need to reform labour laws which are significantly contributing to various inefficiencies in the indian component industry

public regulation and the structure of production in multiproduct industries an application to the new england otter trawl industry this article considers the problem of managing multispecies fishing industries as one of regulating the production of individual multiproduct firms the multispecies new england otter trawl industry is examined within this framework empirical results derived from estimating a multiproduct profitfunction indicate that management consistent with the structures ofmultiproduct production and costs would directly regulate inputs little support is provided for applying the traditional bioeconomic model to the fishery studied

distribution of growth rates in highly successful swedish technical innovations abstract this study concerns gestation times time between patent application and market introduction and post market introduction growth rates of 90 highly successful swedish technical innovations innovations in small firms 1 49 employees are characterized by short gestation times and high growth rates those in medium sized firms 50 499 employees show intermediate gestation times and relatively low growth rates innovations in large firms belonging to the wallenberg sphere of influence show long gestation times and high growth rates an unexpected result in contrast to those in other large swedish firms which are characterized by intermediate gestation times and relatively low growth rates the assumption that the distribution of innovation growth rates in all the firms can be interpreted as being log normal with a pareto inverse power tail for the very high growth rates is compatible with the data innovations in the small firms and in the wallenberg firms are overrepresented in the pareto inverse power tail portion of the distribution these results are both unexpected and significant

decomposing capacity utilization in data envelopment analysis an application to banks in india abstract this paper briefly reviews the existing methods of capacity utilization in nonparametric framework from economic perspectives and then suggests an alternative in the light of limitations therein in the spirit of work by coelli et al coelli t j grifell tatje e perelman s 2002 capacity utilisation and profitability a decomposition of short run profit efficiency international journal of production economics 79 261 278 we propose two methods radial and non radial to decompose the input based physical technological capacity utilization into various meaningful components viz technical inefficiency ray economic capacity utilization and optimal capacity idleness a case study of indian banking industry is taken as an example to illustrate the potential application of these two methods of decomposition our two broad empirical findings are that first competition created after financial sector reforms generates high efficiency growth and reduces excess capacity second the cost gap of the short run cost from the actual cost is higher for the nationalized banks over the private banks indicating that the former banks though old do not reflect their learning experience in their cost minimizing behavior

cost structure and capacity in the norwegian pelagic fisheries the parameters of the short run cost function are estimated for three vessel types taking part in the norwegian pelagic fisheries purse seine vessels trawlers and coastal vessels the generalized translog functional form is used estimates of returns to scale are calculated and the results indicate that there are substantial economies of scale in all vessel classes it is further investigated whether excess capacity varies with vessel size and age the analysis suggests increased quotas per vessel to avoid rent dissipation with the total allowable catch given the number of participating vessels must be reduced

measures of technical efficiency abstract fare and lovell j econom theory 19 1978 150 162 suggest four properties that a measure of technical efficiency should satisfy the commonly employed debreu farrell measure fails three of them necessary and sufficient conditions for a measure to satisfy the four conditions are provided and recently proposed measures are analyzed in the light of this result also it is argued that the debreu farrell measure has several desirable properties when one takes account of 1 perhaps unknown market prices and the relationship between technical and economic efficiency and 2 its characterization as a measure of economic efficiency using the shadow prices implicit in the production technology

technical efficiency effects of input controls evidence from australia s banana prawn fishery this paper provides the first ex post estimates of the effects of input controls on technical efficiency in a fishery using individual vessel data from the northern prawn fishery of australia for the years 1990 1996 and 1994 2000 stochastic production frontiers are estimated to analyse the efficiency impacts of input controls on engine and vessel size the results indicate that technical efficiency is increasing in a measure of vessel size and engine capacity that was controlled by the regulator from 1985 to 2001 and decreasing in an unregulated input gear headrope length the study shows that fishers have substituted from regulated to unregulated inputs over the period 1990 2000 and technical efficiency has declined coincident with increasing restrictions on vessel size and engine capacity the decline in technical efficiency indicates that the goal of the regulator to increase economic efficiency has not been realized

a methodology to estimate impacts of domestic policies on deforestation compensated successful efforts for avoided deforestation redd climate change mitigation would benefit from reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation redd in developing countries the redd mechanism is in charge of distilling the right incentives for fostering forest conservation with appropriate compensation of foregone revenues which in turn is related to avoided deforestation how many hectares of forests are saved although any prediction of deforestation rates i e business as usual scenarios is challenging and any negotiated target is subject to political influence these two ways have been prioritirized so far in other words proposals have focused on a baseline or cap and trade approach which relevance is questionable because resulting financial compensations are subject to unfairness if estimations of avoided deforestation are not reliable rather than considering overall deforestation predicted and observed we argue that a redd mechanism would gain from linking compensations to real efforts that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates this would provide more efficient incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures the methodology we present to measure these efforts labeled compensated successful efforts is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is due partly to structural factors and partly to domestic policies and measures this typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate underlying causes or economic institutional factors using an econometric model our approach estimates efforts that are i independent of structural factors economic development population initial forest area agricultural export prices ii estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period and iii relative to other countries in order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries asia latin america africa and four periods between 1970 and 2005 we conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the compensated successful efforts approach in addition to being conservative from an environmental perspective this approach guarantees fairness by accounting for dramatic changes during the commitment period

catch limits capacity utilization and cost reduction in japanese fishery management japan s fishery harvest peaked in the late 1980s to limit the race for fish each fisherman could be provided with specific catch limits in the form of individual transferable quotas itqs the market for itqs would also help remove the most inefficient fishers in this article we estimate the potential cost reduction associated with catch limits and find that about 300 billion yen or about 3 billion dollars could be saved through the allocation and trading of individual specific catch shares

an integrated performance evaluation of financial holding companies in taiwan abstract there has been a worldwide trend for financial institutions to become larger in scale and more diversified in scope with taiwan being no exception fourteen financial holding companies fhcs have each begun to function as a management umbrella in taiwan by investing in different types of financial services such as banking insurance and securities this paper focuses on this local financing issue from an integrated methodological perspective by model innovations proposed in several earlier studies for example the efficiency of profitability and marketability are combined to evaluate the fhcs performance to conduct a valid and reliable evaluation process while applying the fhc s case in taiwan we integrate the slacks based measure sbm and slacks based measure of super efficiency super sbm models in order to directly handle the slacks and identify the best performers a new scheme that deals with the negative output data in the sbm super sbm is also introduced inter temporal efficiency change which is decomposed into catch up and frontier shift effects is analyzed by means of the sbm based malmquist index a decision making matrix is also presented to help the fhcs managerial authorities position themselves in the industry the above techniques show with a high degree of consistency that large sized fhcs perform better than small sized ones