econometric developments in agricultural and resource economics the first 100 years this article reviews the major contributions of agricultural and resource economists in the area of econometrics over the past 100 years early on a number of agricultural economists were in on the ground floor in terms of developing new econometric methods over time as the economics profession became more empirically oriented agricultural and resource economists increasingly assumed the role of early adopters of new econometric methods even so agricultural and resource economists continue to make useful modifications to econometric techniques in order to adapt the methods to the unique nature of the problems and applications that we study

derivation of marginal effects of determinants of technical inefficiency in efficiency studies using the stochastic frontier approach the main focus is to explain inefficiency in terms of some exogenous variables and computation of marginal effects of each of these determinants although inefficiency is estimated by its mean conditional on the composed error term the jondrow et al 1982 estimator the marginal effects are computed from the unconditional mean of inefficiency wang 2002 in this paper we derive the marginal effects based on the jondrow et al estimator and use the bootstrap method to compute confidence intervals of the marginal effects

the structure of production technical change and productivity in a port the primary focus of this paper is the modelling and estimation of the structure of production technical change and total factor productivity tfp growth in a port special attention is given to the specification of technical change which is measured as the percent of containerization our findings indicate that technical change has been labour saving and capital using tfp has been growing from 1966 1983 at an annual average rate of 0 11 the main contribution to tfp growth has been containerization on the average 85 of the growth in tfp has been due to containerization and 15 of the growth has been due to economies of scale and output growth

using stochastic frontier analysis to measure the impact of weather on the efficiency of electricity distribution businesses in developing economies abstract this paper analyses the influence of weather variables on the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in argentina brazil chile and peru covering 82 firms which represent more than 90 percent of the distribution market of energy delivered for the period 1998 2008 stochastic frontier analysis sfa is applied using a translog input distance function two different approaches are evaluated weather in the production function and weather in the inefficiency term the efficacy of one over the other is determined using nested models weather data are collected from meteorological stations 429 and nasa 3423 coordinates a geographic information system gis is used for locating the firms service areas and their weather conditions a combination of cost only and cost quality models is proposed for cost only models the results suggest that on average there is a significant increase in measured efficiency when weather is incorporated in the production function under the cost quality models on average the effect of weather is much lower this suggests that firms have internalised the effects of weather and have adapted their networks to the environment in which they operate a company level analysis indicates that across models a significant number of companies are affected by weather regulators are advised to make proper adjustments of efficiency scores when specific firms face important efficiency changes due to weather

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

does wto accession matter for the chinese textile and clothing industry based on field surveys conducted in guangdong zhejiang and beijing in 2000 and 2001 this paper argues that accession to the world trade organisation wto by china will create a new competitive arena for different categories of textile and clothing firms located in that country partly dependent on the size and ownership of the firm from the perspectives of reducing import tariffs eliminating export quotas and the regulations on trade disputes wto accession does matter for the majority of chinese firms in this win lose game from the perspective of compliance with international standards this paper argues that accession to the wto does not really matter for some chinese firms as they may not survive the intense competition prior to 2005 when the effects of the agreement on textiles and clothing materialise

china s membership in the world trade organization wto and the exports of the developing economies of east asia a computable general equilibrium approach there is a general perception particularly among the developing countries of east asia that china s wto membership would spell bad news for their exports the asean countries in particular are quite concerned about its likely negative impact on their export and growth potentials in this light the main objective of this paper is to empirically assess the trade implications of china s wto membership for these countries only few studies using a computable general equilibrium cge approach have addressed the issue of china s wto membership trade implications further these studies have not adequately addressed the issue from the perspective of the developing countries of east asia particularly the asean countries using the latest version of the global trade analysis project gtap model and based on the latest tariff reduction commitments by china the results showed that contrary to the current perception and previous studies almost all of the developing countries of east asia are likely to benefi

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

estimation and decomposition of technical efficiency for sugarbeet farms this study computes technical efficiency for idaho sugarbeet farms and decomposes it into pure technical efficiency scale efficiency and congestion efficiency using nonparametric procedures the results indicate that the average efficiency is 0 88 with 45 of the farms in the sample exhibiting full efficiency improper scale operation and input overutilization are the major sources of inefficiency for remaining farms technical efficiency is independent of farm size a tobit model was used to examine the impacts of variables such as farm size specialization tenancy position hired labour location and managerial ability on efficiency inefficiency in sugarbeet production results in a shortfall of potential revenues not only for producers but also for landlords and processors

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

efficiency and environmental factors in the us electricity transmission industry the electricity industry in most developed countries has been restructured over recent decades with the aim of improving both service quality and firm performance regulated segments e g transmission still provide the infrastructure for the competitive segments and represent a significant share of the total price paid by final customers however there is a lack of empirical studies that analyse firms performance in the electricity transmission sector in this paper an empirical analysis of us electricity transmission companies is conducted for the period 2001 2009 we use alternative stochastic frontier models that allow us to identify the determinants of firms inefficiency these models also permit us to control for weather conditions potentially one of the most decisive uncontrollable factors in electricity transmission our results suggest that weather conditions clearly have an influence on transmission costs and that there is room for improvement in the management of us electricity transmission systems regulators should also be aware that more adverse conditions generate higher levels of inefficiency and that achieving long term efficiency improvements tends to worsen firms short term relative performance

the economic costs of environmental regulation in u s dairy farming a directional distance function approach analyses of the costs of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy production which could be used to assess the effectiveness of alternative policy measures is a missing link in the literature this article addresses this gap by establishing the economic impact associated with a hypothetical greenhouse gas environmental regulatory regime across major dairy producing counties in the united states in doing so the article makes three important contributions to the literature first it develops a comprehensive pollution index based on environmental protection agency methodologies which contrasts with previous studies that rely on partial measures based only on surplus nitrogen stemming from the over application of fertilizer second the article uses a directional output distance function an approach that has not been employed previously to evaluate polluting technologies in the u s dairy sector third the article incorporates a four way error approach that accounts for unobserved county heterogeneity time invariant persistent technical efficiency time varying transient technical efficiency and a random error the results indicate that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy farming would induce a 5 percentage point increase in average technical efficiency in addition the economic costs of implementing this hypothetical regulatory framework exhibit significant spatial variation across counties in the united states

competition privatisation and productive efficiency evidence from the airline industry we use data from the airline industry to examine the extent to which the costs of airline operations are affected by rents accruing to workers and the extent to which these rents depend inter alia upon the degree of competition in the industry our empirical results based on a panel of twelve european and seven major united states airlines confirm that state ownership substantially increases rents to labour while the effects of competition are more subtle and ambiguous airline profits tend to be associated with higher rents to employees the gains from further privatisation and liberalisation may be quite large does competition have significant effects on productive as well as allocative efficiency convincing empirical answers to this question have been hard to find for two reasons first data of the quality required for robust estimation of productive efficiency are only rarely available secondly there is frequently no convincing standard against which the efficiency of an industry or a firm may be compared since when the degree of competition varies many other things such as technology network structures and firm sizes typically vary as well these problems do not automatically make comparison impossible but they compound the need for high quality data one industry which is likely to be well suited to investigating questions of this kind is the international airline industry the industry contains a large number of firms thus ensuring at least enough potential competition to make questions about the effects of competition interesting but the scope for these firms to compete with one another has been influenced to varying degrees over the years by different national and international regulatory regimes in particular deregulation of the united states industry in 1978 provided a kind of natural experiment that has led not only to comparisons of the before and after variety but also to comparisons between the united states industry and that of other global regions notably europe such comparisons are far from straightforward but they are facilitated by the fact that the technology of civil aviation is more or less internationally standardised and by the relatively high quality of available data in the industry

modeling international trends in energy efficiency article i nfo article history i use a stochastic production frontier to model energy ef ciency trends in 85 countries over a 37 year period differences in energy ef ciency across countries are modeled as a stochastic function of explanatory variables and i estimate the model using the cross section of time averaged data so that no structure is imposed on technological change over time energy ef ciency is measured using a new energy distance function ap proach the country using the least energy per unit output given its mix of outputs and inputs de nes the global production frontier a country s relative energy ef ciency is given by its distance from the frontier the ratio of its actual energy use to the minimum required energy use ceteris paribus energy ef ciency is higher in countries with inter alia higher total factor productivity undervalued currencies and smaller fossil fuel reserves and it converges over time across countries globally technological change was the most impor tant factor counteracting the energy use and carbon emissions increasing effects of economic growth

how are investments allocated in a publicly owned port system political factors versus economic criteria castillo manzano j i and fageda x how are investments allocated in a publicly owned port system political factors versus economic criteria regional studies this paper estimates the determinants of investments in port infrastructure in the spanish regions made by the central administration it is found that the use of the infrastructure in relation to capacity has some influence on the amount of investment received by a region furthermore specialization in containers is also relevant for receiving more resources however it is found that when greater political decentralization does not go hand in hand with greater financial decentralization the importance of tactical political aspects increases overall efficiency plays a more relevant role in the regional allocation of investments in ports than in other transport infrastructures

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

developing country fisheries and technical efficiency the java sea purse seine fishery the analysis of technical efficiency in developing country agriculture is well established but has been overlooked for developing country commercial marine fisheries policies raising technical efficiency in agriculture are viewed as uniformly positive but are a mixed blessing in fisheries due to the open access property right and common pool resource this study explores this contradiction and policies aimed to promote sustainable development and management of renewable common pool resources through a case study of the java sea purse seine fishery season of the year rather than fisher or vessel characteristics primarily determines technical efficiency the results are contrasted with developing country agriculture and conclusions drawn for fisheries development strategies

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

market structure and the efficiency of european insurance companies a stochastic frontier analysis abstract this paper is motivated by the progressive liberalisation of the european insurance market in recent years it uses stochastic frontier analysis to estimate flexible fourier cost functions for european insurance companies separate frontiers are estimated for life non life and composite companies we adopt a maximum likelihood approach to estimation in which the variance of both one sided and two sided error terms is modelled jointly with the frontiers this approach allows us to simultaneously control for the impact of heteroskedasticity on the estimation of scale economies as well as estimating the effect of firm size and market structure on x inefficiency the study draws on standard poor s eurothesys data set of financial reports for the period 1995 to 2001 this provides technical and non technical accounts at year end for life non life and composite insurance businesses in 14 major european countries our estimates suggest that over this period most european insurers were operating under conditions of decreasing costs increasing returns to scale and that company size and domestic market share were significant factors determining x inefficiency larger firms and those with high market shares tend to have higher levels of cost inefficiency

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

how ambitious are china and india s emissions intensity targets abstract several developing economies have announced carbon emissions targets for 2020 as part of the negotiating process for a post kyoto climate policy regime china and india s commitments are framed as reductions in the emissions intensity of the economy by 40 45 and 20 25 respectively between 2005 and 2020 how feasible are the proposed reductions in emissions intensity for china and india and how do they compare with the targeted reductions in the us and the eu in this paper we use a stochastic frontier model of energy intensity to decompose energy intensity into the effects of input and output mix climate and a residual technology variable we use the model to produce emissions projections for china and india under a number of scenarios regarding the pace of technological change and changes in the share of non fossil energy we find that china is likely to need to adopt ambitious carbon mitigation policies in order to achieve its stated target and that its targeted reductions in emissions intensity are on par with those implicit in the us and eu targets india s target is less ambitious and might be met with only limited or even no dedicated mitigation policies

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

organic farming in scandinavia productivity and market exit abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively measure the change in the productivity of danish organic farming in recent years based on a translog production frontier framework the technical and scale efficiency at farm level is analysed by following a time trends as well as a general index model specification further this study tries to analyse the significance of subsidies for promoting long term growth in organic production by estimating a bootstrapped bivariate probit model with respect to factors influencing the probability of organic market exit the results revealed significant differences in the organic farms technical efficiencies no significant total factor productivity growth and even a slightly negative rate of technical change in the period investigated evidence has been found for a positive relationship between subsidy payments and an increase in farm efficiency technology improvements and a decreasing probability of organic market exit which was also confirmed for off farm income

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

evaluating the operational efficiency of major ports in the asia pacific region using data envelopment analysis in recent years as competition among international ports has intensified the impartial and objective evaluation of port operational efficiency has become increasingly important in enabling each individual port to understand its peculiar strengths and weaknesses as well as any immediate threats or opportunities that may affect its competitive environment this study applies ccr model bcc model and 3 stage dea model to evaluate the changes in efficiency that have taken place between 1998 and 2001 in 10 ports in the asia pacific region using cross period data the empirical results show that different model will lead to different result on average the efficiency estimated by 3 stage dea procedure is the highest while ccr efficiency is the lowest it should be noted that the efficiencies based on ccr and bcc model are somewhat lower than the 3 stage dea approaches because they do not take the environmental factors managerial inefficiency and statistical noises into account

mergers coordinated effects and efficiency in the portuguese non life insurance industry we evaluate the impact on market power and efficiency of a series of mergers on three portuguese non life insurance markets we specify and estimate with a panel of firm level data a structural model which includes preferences technology and a market equilibrium condition firms demand curves are not very elastic firms technologies exhibit scale and scope economies and high cost efficiency scores we find that for the period following the mergers there is no evidence of i an increase in market power through coordinated behavior or ii changes in cost efficiency levels in addition social welfare increased

productivity and efficiency dynamics in indian banking an input distance function approach incorporating quality of inputs and outputs summary banking technology is typically characterized by multiple inputs and multiple outputs that are associated with various attributes such as different types of deposits loans number of accounts classes of employees and location of branches these quality differentials in inputs and outputs are mostly ignored in empirical studies these omissions make the practical value of productivity studies in organizations like banks questionable because quality is a key component of performance this paper proposes using hedonic aggregator functions as a tool of aggregating inputs and outputs with quality attributes within an input distance function framework and analyzes the impact of banking deregulation on efficiency and total factor productivity tfp change in the indian banking industry using panel data for the period 1996 2005 empirical results indicate that banks have improved their efficiency from 61 in 1996 to 72 in 2005 during the post deregulation period and the gain in efficiency of state owned banks has surpassed that of private banks improvement in capital base as indicated by increased capital adequacy ratio played an important role in ushering efficiency gain the return to scale estimate suggests that state owned banks are operating far above their efficient scale and cost savings can be obtained by reducing their size of operations overall tfp growth was above 3 5 annually both technical progress and technical efficiency change consistently played an important role in shaping tfp growth copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

impact of quality on estimations of hotel efficiency abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of output quality on hotel efficiency it demonstrates how ignoring quality can lead to erroneous efficiency estimates the study uses stochastic frontier methodology and the model proposed by battese and coelli 1995 to estimate the efficiency of 838 hotels in spain in the period 2009 2013 the key advantage of this methodology is its ability to estimate efficiency and identify factors that explain differences in efficiency in a single stage sampling procedure estimates of cost efficiency which only include the costs of higher quality are compared to those of profit efficiency which not only consider costs but also the revenues generated by higher quality results show that quality has a negative impact on cost efficiency and a positive one on profit efficiency thus hotel management should implement strategies that increase the value of their services as a way to achieve sustainable competitive advantages

technological change and managerial ability evidence from a malaysian artisanal fishery technological progress can improve economic development but its role in the harvest of common resources has received little attention we study the relationship between skill and the use of electronic and mechanical innovations in the productivity of malaysian artisanal fishers surprisingly electronics users do not define the frontier and mechanical winch adopters produced well inside it we show that if technology is a skill substitute rather than a complement then it helps less efficient users catch up to the production frontier policy makers must balance the implications for participation rates and resource depletion against gains for the least skilled participants

the effect of regulatory governance on efficiency of thermal power generation in india a stochastic frontier analysis abstract this paper investigates the impact of institutional quality typified as regulatory governance on the performance of thermal power plants in india the indian power sector was reformed in the early 1990s however reforms are effective only as much as the regulators are committed in ensuring that they are implemented we hypothesize that higher the quality of regulation in a federal indian state higher is the efficiency of electric generation utilities a translog stochastic frontier model is estimated using index of state level independent regulation as one of the determinants of inefficiency the dataset comprises a panel of 77 coal based thermal power plants during the reform period covering over 70 of installed electricity generation capacity the mean technical efficiency of 76 7 indicates there is wide scope for efficiency improvement in the sector results are robust to various model specifications and show that state level regulators have positively impacted plant performance technical efficiency is sensitive to both unbundling of state utilities and regulatory experience the policy implication is that further reforms which empower independent regulators will have far reaching impacts on power sector performance

did credit rating agencies make unbiased assumptions on cdos article appears in papers and proceedings of the 123rd annual meeting of the amerian economic association denver co usa 6 9 january 2011

allocative and scale efficiency among maize farmers in zambia a zero efficiency stochastic frontier approach the commonly used stochastic frontier model assumes that all firms are inefficient in this specification inefficiency is non negative and the probability of inefficiency being exactly zero is al

heteroscedasticity or production risk a synthetic view two veins of literature namely production risk literature and stochastic frontier analysis are examined both fields are concerned of output variation the former due to exogenous shocks the latter due inefficiency by covering the literature from both the fields this review suggests that the concept of heteroscedasticity can be utilized to build a synthesis between these mainly separate branches of literature however the synthetic approach brings a challenge how to differentiate between different sources of output variation this challenge is identified as the main obstacle to meaningfully combine the two approaches

efficiency gains from port reform and the potential for yardstick competition lessons from mexico abstract this paper shows how measures of relative efficiency performance could promote yardstick competition between port infrastructure operators the illustration is based on a study of the efficiency effects of the mexican 1993 port reform it covers 1996 99 and relies on a stochastic production frontier to show that mexico s ports achieved 2 8 3 3 average annual efficiency gains since reform the port specific measures point to consistent leaders and laggards which would not all be identified by common partial productivity indicators this information could be built into an explicit incentive based regulatory regime aiming at promoting catch up by laggards

a women s boom in the boardroom effects on performance this article analyzes whether improving gender diversity in boardrooms improves firms economic performance in the context of french cac40 listed companies between 2008 and 2012 this research uses instrumental variable panel regressions including production frontier estimates to arrive at two key results first gender diversity in boards depends on firms attributes including their previous gender promotion strategies second promoting women in boardrooms has a significant and positive effect on economic performance after accounting for the endogeneity of diversity gender diversity even reduces corporate inefficiencies and enables firms to come closer to their optimal performance

examining the relationship between default risk and efficiency in islamic and conventional banks we examine the relationship between efficiency and default risk in islamic banks ibs and conventional banks cbs in gulf cooperation countries gcc and three non gcc countries over the period 2002 2010 to the best of our knowledge this is the first study to consider the efficiency default risk paradigm in a comparative setup which includes ibs efficiency and default risk are measured using the stochastic frontier approach and distance to default merton s model respectively the existence of causality reverse causality between the two is addressed via a panel vector auto regression var framework our analysis shows that the relationship between profit efficiency and default risk banks across the sample for cbs and for the gcc is such that a decrease in default risk is associated with lower efficiency levels with the single exception of ibs the causality from profit efficiency to default risk is inversely related for all categories for cbs the trade off between efficiency and risk is evident the absence of a trade off for ibs suggests that efficiency and default risk are plausible early warning indicators of ib instability these findings could be of relevance to regulators in countries where both banking system co exist

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

estimating the trans log cost function with insufficient observations abstract if the production technology is non homothetic efficient estimation of the trans log approximation requires joint estimation of the cost and share equations in this note we adopt the method of extraneous estimation to obtain a method of efficient joint estimation when there are insufficient observations on the cost equation

on the relationship among efficiency capitalization and risk does management matter in local banking market abstractby employing a granger causality methodology in a panel data framework this article explores the relationship among efficiency capitalization and credit risk within the local italian banking system focusing the attention on cooperative banks we specifically test whether managers take more risks in highly concentrated markets i e monopoly than in partially competitive markets i e duopoly the evidence shows that in more concentrated markets management efficiency generates a decrease in risk taking rejecting the bad management hypothesis with respect to the partially competitive markets results are consistent with the idea that banks with less local competition are able to increase their profits by indulging more freely in rent seeking behaviour minimizing their risk taking and consequently improving the quality of their assets through additional screening processes the financial crisis does not seem to affect the conduct of management in terms of bank investment decisions and risk

the impact of ownership on the cost of bus service provision an example from italy this article examines the potential impact of ownership on the cost of bus service provision for a sample of 65 private and 12 public companies providing local public transit lpt in piedmont italy from 1998 to 2002 a translog cost frontier is estimated using the model in battese and coelli 1995 where inefficiency scores are allowed to vary across firms and over time a public ownership dummy is included in the inefficiency model and it is always positive and significant density and scale economies and cost inefficiencies are then computed private companies seem to experience higher density and scale economies than public ones cost inefficiencies appear higher in the public sample

farmers health and agricultural productivity agriculture is one of the most hazardous productive sectors around the world most previous studies have focused on health issues of farmers in developing countries while little attention has been paid to farmers health problems in developed countries the present study assesses the effect of farmers health conditions on agricultural productivity in norway employing stochastic frontier regression techniques we conclude that differences in farmers health help to explain the variance in agricultural production efficiency

political violence and farm household efficiency in colombia abstract this article estimates farm household levels of technical efficiency and their determinants in colombia with particular reference to political violence i e guerrilla fronts homicides kidnappings and forced population displacements an input oriented stochastic frontier is estimated simultaneously with a technical inefficiency model that incorporates an index of political violence at the local level using survey data from 822 farm households the findings show that household productivity is lower in areas with high political violence due mainly to disruptions in rural labor markets and in the operation of large farms should political violence be eliminated the ensuing increases in the farrell s technical efficiency indexes of farm households in the sample would increase substantially pointing to significant peace dividends for rural households in colombia

evaluating efficient public good provision theory and evidence from a generalised conditional efficiency model for public libraries abstract provision of most public goods e g health care libraries education police fire protection utilities can be characterized by a two stage production process in the first stage basic inputs e g labor and capital are used to generate service potential e g opening hours materials which is then in the second stage transformed into observed outputs e g school outcomes library circulation crimes solved as final outputs are also affected by demand side factors conflating both production stages likely leads to biased inferences about public productive in efficiency and its determinants hence this paper uses a specially tailored fully non parametric efficiency model allowing for both outlying observations and heterogeneity to analyse efficient public good provision in stage one only we thereby employ a dataset comprising all 290 flemish public libraries our findings suggest that ideological stance of the local government wealth and density of the local population and source of library funding i e local funding versus intergovernmental transfers strongly affect library productive efficiency

do farmers choose to be inefficient evidence from bicol abstract farming households that differ in their ability or willingness to take on risks are likely to allocate resources and effort among income producing activities differently with consequences for productivity in this paper we measure voluntary and involuntary departures from efficiency for rice producing households in the bicol region of the philippines we take advantage of a panel of observations on households from 1978 1983 and 1994 available monthly weather data and survey information on planting times allows us to create household specific measures of weather shocks which we use in our analysis we find evidence that diversification and input choices do affect efficiency outcomes among farmers although these effects are not dominant accumulated wealth past decisions to invest favorable market conditions and propitious weather are also important determinants of efficiency outcomes among bicol rice farmers our findings suggest that the costs of incomplete formal and informal insurance markets are higher for poorer farmers

determinants of bank cost efficiency in transition economies evidence for latin america central and eastern europe and south east asia in this study we adopt wang s 2002 heteroscedastic stochastic frontier model which allows us to investigate bank cost efficiency and to measure the marginal effects of some variables on both the level and the variability of inefficiency in recent years the financial crisis has significantly affected the banking systems of the transition countries hence the efficiency is of major importance for the stability of the banks regarding the determinants of efficiency we find evidence that banks that follow a more cautious strategy characterized by lower risk appetite and average expectations on profitability have higher cost efficiency we also find that traditional deposit taking and loan making still remain the most efficient activity of the banks additionally the results showed that a higher gross domestic product growth rate implies an increase in the inefficiency level indicating an unsustainable bank management behaviour which in periods of economic growth adopts policies that can generate

on the proper modelling of multioutput port cargo handling costs cargo handling activities involve various heterogeneous outputs e g general cargo containers dry and liquid bulk and so on these activities in ports however have been usually analysed using aggregate descriptions of output such as total tons moved the main purpose of this article is to show that ignoring this heterogeneity may lead to two types of problems i the underestimation of the relevance of key dimensions i e marginal costs per product and economies of scope and ii a bias in the estimates of the relevance of other dimensions economies of scale to do so we rely on a unique new dataset on three cargo handling firms operating in a spanish port between 1991 and 1999 we use it to estimate both a multi output cost for these three operators as well as an aggregate cost function the policy conclusions are derived from an explicit and detailed comparison of these two sets of estimates

appraisal smoothing and price discovery in real estate markets this paper reviews the literature on price determination in the private and public real estate markets in particular it discusses the processes of appraisal smoothing in the private market and of price discovery between the public and the private markets in real estate markets the absence of good quality information on price whether because of lack of trades or confidentiality has led to the widespread use of appraisals for market tracking and as the basis for performance measurement appraisers have to make an optimum assessment of value based on fundamental variables and market information including transactions and a market wide appraisal index however transaction prices are a noisy signal and it is the appraiser s role to extract the signal from the noise in an efficient manner this involves a process of optimal combination of past and current information and leads to appraisal smoothing price discovery is the process by which the opinions of market participants about the value of an asset

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

a comprehensive analysis of the effects of risk measures on bank efficiency evidence from emerging asian countries this study investigates the role of risk in determining the cost efficiency of international banks in eight emerging asian countries researchers of this paper consider three distinct risk aspects under a total of eight risk measures credit risk operational risk and market risk we apply a heteroscedastic stochastic frontier model to estimate bank cost efficiency in our analysis additionally this study analyzes the marginal effects of all risk measures on the inefficiency effect in order to explore a more detailed relationship between risks and efficiency the empirical results indicate that the risk measures represent significant effects on both the level and variability of bank efficiency we also find that these effects vary across countries and over time

can institutional investors bias real estate portfolio appraisals evidence from the market downturn this paper investigates the extent to which institutional investors may have influenced independent real estate appraisals during the financial crisis a conceptual model of the determinants of client influence on real estate appraisals is proposed it is suggested that the extent of clients ability and willingness to bias appraisal outputs is contingent upon market and regulatory environments ethical norms and legal and institutional frameworks the salience of the appraisal s to the client financial incentives for the appraiser to respond to client pressure organisational culture the level of moral reasoning of both individual clients and appraisers client knowledge and the degree of appraisal uncertainty the potential of client influence to bias ostensibly independent real estate appraisals is examined using the opportunity afforded by the market downturn commencing in 2007 in the uk during the market turbulence at the end of 2007 the motivations of different types of owners to bias appraisals diverged clearly and temporarily provided a unique opportunity to assess potential appraisal bias we use appraisal based performance data for individual real estate assets to test whether there were significant ownership effects on performance during this period the results support the hypothesis that real estate appraisals in this period reflected the differing needs of clients

can the small dairy farm remain competitive in us agriculture smaller dairy farms in the us are observed to have higher costs than larger farms and whether those higher costs are due to technology or inefficiency has implications for policy to address the small farm if high cost of production on smaller farms is due to a higher cost frontier then to make small farms competitive would require research to devise and design technology that is suitable for small farms if instead high cost is due to inefficiency then educational approaches are needed to ensure small dairy farms use technology efficiently to determine the cause of higher costs on small farms the cost of milk production by farm size was decomposed into frontier and efficiency components with a stochastic cost curve using data on usa dairy farms although the frontier cost of production decreases with farm size that cost reduction is not as pronounced as a cost curve that includes inefficiency the higher cost of production on many smaller farms is caused by inefficiency rather than technology

smallholder technical efficiency controlling for environmental production conditions abstract smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined yet few data sets collect necessary detailed information on environmental production conditions this oversight raises the spectre of likely omitted variables bias because farmers input choices typically respond in part to environmental conditions moreover because environmental production conditions are rarely symmetrically distributed the omission also generally leads to upward bias in estimated technical inefficiency and to biased estimates of the correlates of estimated technical inefficiency as well using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in cote d ivoire we show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers estimated technical inefficiency

wto accession the changing competitiveness of foreign financed firms and regional development in guangdong of southern china this paper investigates the changing competitiveness of foreign financed manufacturing firms and its implications for regional development in guangdong province of southern china in the run up to world trade organization wto accession it is argued that transnational corporations tncs and some competitive large scale locally funded firms in guangdong will triumph after wto accession the crowding out process of small and medium sized enterprises smes in guangdong will be accelerated in the near future as they are competing directly with tncs and as their competitive advantages are diminishing due to bureaucratic red tape and the rigorous enforcement of new government policies due to close business linkages with local privately funded firms the competitiveness and vitality of foreign financed enterprises will have profound long term effects on the economic development of guangdong before and after wto accession cet article cherche a etudier l evolution de la competitivite des entreprises ind

on the estimation of technical and allocative inefficiency using stochastic frontier functions the case of u s class 1 railroads in this paper the author considers specification and estimation of technical and allocative inefficiency in a cost minimizing framework using panel data some distinguishing features of the model are 1 the functional form of the production technology is flexible enough to allow elasticity to vary across firms 2 allocative inefficiency coming from managerial errors ou t of inertia ignorance etc are separated from random errors in optimization 3 the panel nature of the data allows the estimation of input and firm specific allocative inefficiency together with technical inefficiency and 4 subdivision of the sample period allows one to make efficiency comparisons of each firm over the subperiods and to check the stability of the parameter estimates copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the influence of public subsidies on farm technical efficiency a robust conditional nonparametric approach the objective of this paper is to assess the influence of public subsidies on farm technical efficiency using recent advances in nonparametric efficiency analysis to this end we use robust conditional frontier techniques as well as insights from recent developments in nonparametric econometrics the paper contributes to the ongoing methodological discussion on how to model the effect of public subsidies on farmers production decisions the analysis is conducted using an unbalanced panel data of 1604 observations from 313 french farms located in the french region meuse over the period 2006 2011 the estimates indicate that public subsidies influence negatively the conditional technical efficiency of farms this suggests that public subsidies affect both the range of the attainable set for the inputs and outputs and the distribution of the efficiency scores inside the attainable set

firm and time varying technical and allocative efficiency an application to port cargo handling firms abstract in this paper we present an econometric model to calculate both the technical and the allocative efficiency in cargo handling firms in the port of las palmas spain to achieve these aims we estimate a system of equations consisting of a translog input distance function and cost shares equations using this procedure we can check the hypothesis in which given technology and prices terminal port inputs are not optimally allocated in the sense that costs are not minimized the main contribution of this paper is to apply an empirical model that allows the unbiased estimation of allocative inefficiency of input use in two ways an error components approach and a parametric approach we also avoid the greene problem and allow allocative inefficiency to be systematic both size and traffic mix are first shown to be sufficiently diverse as to allow for a reliable estimation of a representative flexible translog function

profit efficiency among bangladeshi rice farmers abstract production inefficiency is usually analyzed by its three components technical allocative and scale efficiency in this study we provide a direct measure of production efficiency of the bangladeshi rice farmers using a stochastic profit frontier and inefficiency effects model the data which are for 1996 include seven conventional inputs and several other background factors affecting production of modern or high yielding varieties hyvs of rice spread across 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the results show that there are high levels of inefficiency in modern rice cultivation the mean level of profit efficiency is 77 suggesting that an estimated 23 of the profit is lost due to a combination of technical allocative and scale inefficiency in modern rice production the efficiency differences are explained largely by infrastructure soil fertility experience extension services tenancy and share of non agricultural income

conflict of interest and the credibility of underwriter analyst recommendations brokerage analysts frequently comment on and sometimes recommend companies that their firms have recently taken public we show that stocks that underwriter analysts recommend perform more poorly than buy recommendations by unaffiliated brokers prior to at the time of and subsequent to the recommendation date we conclude that the recommendations by underwriter analysts show significant evidence of bias we show also that the market does not recognize the full extent of this bias the results suggest a potential conflict of interest inherent in the different functions that investment bankers perform

a stochastic frontier model of the productive efficiency of korean container terminals a central objective of port privatization and or deregulation policies is stimulating greater efficiency by engendering a more competitive market and commercial approach to management korea provides a prime example of a nation that is implementing such policies also its ports play a pivotal role in world shipping particularly in the ever burgeoning container market the success of these policies in increasing the productive efficiency of korean container terminals is assessed the uk container terminal sector provides a useful benchmark for comparison since privatization and deregulation have formed an integral part of uk port reforms for nearly 20 years and the effect on efficiency having had time to mature will be much easier to gauge the stochastic frontier model is justified as the chosen methodology for estimating productive efficiency levels and is applied to cross sectional data under a variety of distributional assumptions a panel data model is also estimated results are consistent and su

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

nonparametric estimation of the determinants of inefficiency in the presence of firm heterogeneity abstract we consider the application of the profile least squares method to estimate the impact of the determinants of inefficiency in the presence of panel data and unobserved individual specific heterogeneity for the stochastic frontier model this method has the advantage over previous approaches in that the effect of the determinants of inefficiency on output can be recovered nonparametrically in the presence of heterogeneity at the firm level we describe the estimator and offer a small set of monte carlo exercises that showcases the value of the method for the stochastic frontier model application of the method to assess insights generated compared to a pooled cross section approach using data from the taiwan banking system is also provided

investment climate and firm productivity an application to vietnamese manufacturing firms abstractthe fundamental aspect of a national competitive advantage is a good investment climate understanding the role of the investment climate in generating firm productivity has received extensive attention by policymakers and economists in many countries the article studies the effect of different dimensions of the investment climate on firm productivity using a large dataset of vietnamese manufacturing firms the article finds that deficiencies in the investment climate are prejudicial to firm productivity and competition furthermore in examining the effect of corruption in association with the quality of the business environment the study also investigates the possibility that corruption may compensate firms for a bad investment climate or at least may neutralize the negative impact of inefficient government regulations in other words corruption acts as speed money to improve the efficacy of the provision of public services or provides leeway for entrepreneurs to bypass the inefficient reg

the determinants of the cost efficiency of electric generating plants a stochastic frontier approach this article provides a detailed analysis of generation plant operating cost efficiency over the period 1988 1997 i estimate a stochastic frontier cost function together with a model of plant inefficiencies to measure the operating efficiencies of individual plants and identify factors that are associated with variations in plant efficiencies i find evidence that plant efficiencies are associated with capacity utilization of the plant the number of plants under utility management and ownership form i also find that regulatory restructuring activity in certain states is associated with improvements in plant operating performance the purpose of this article is to provide a detailed analysis of the operating cost efficiencies of electricity generating plants over the period 1988 1997 i estimate the operating efficiencies of fossil fueled steam generating plants and examine factors that influence plant operating performance i use the estimation procedure of battese and coelli 1995 to simultaneously estimate a stochastic frontier cost function and a function relating plant efficiency levels to plant specific factors and other explanatory variables a comprehensive data set allows me to investigate the influence of capacity utilization ownership form and utility experience on plant efficiency levels since significant regulatory change in the electricity industry had begun during this time period i also investigate the impact of state level regulatory change on plant operating efficiency a number of authors have analyzed the efficiencies of electricity generating plants relative to a best practice frontier including kopp and smith 1980 schmidt and lovell 1979 stevenson 1980 cote 1989 reifschneider and stevenson 1991 hammond 1992 pollitt 1995 and fire grosskopf and logan 1983 1985 these studies find considerable evidence of inefficiency in electricity generation during the 1960s and 1970s the present study provides more recent information regarding generating plant efficiencies during a period of significant regulatory and structural change studies investigating the determinants of power plant departures from the frontier have focused primarily on the effects of ownership mode pollitt 1995 provides a comprehensive review of these studies reifschneider and stevenson 1991 examine the impact on cost efficiency of a number of variables including the capacity utilization of the firm s generating facilities more recently knittel 2001 examines the impact of incentive regulation on plant efficiency levels steiner

productive efficiency of specialty and conventional coffee farmers in costa rica accounting for technological heterogeneity and self selection a steep decline in coffee prices at the producer level led to considerable pressure for farmers in costa rica and producer countries all over the world one possible reaction was moving to specialty markets where price pressure was perceived to be lower we use original survey data from 2002 2003 and 2003 2004 to analyze the factors influencing participation in specialty markets and to estimate separate production functions for specialty and conventional coffee farmers allowing for farm specific inefficiencies applying a sample selection framework we find significant selection bias in the sub sample of specialty farmers and evidence for the overestimation of efficiency if this bias is not adequately controlled for among the most important factors that influence farm specific efficiency levels in the two sub samples are the availability of additional income activities experience in coffee cultivation and membership in cooperatives based on the results we derive policy recommendations to improve farmers production performance and ability to cope with the effects of the coffee crisis these policy measures include the provision of extension services with respect to farm management skills the creation of income opportunities in rural areas and the support of farmer owned cooperatives

the impact of ownership unbundling on cost efficiency empirical evidence from the new zealand electricity distribution sector abstract several countries around the world have introduced reforms to the electric power sector one important element of these reforms is the introduction of an unbundling process i e the separation of the competitive activities of supply and production from the monopole activity of transmission and distribution of electricity there are several forms of unbundling functional legal and ownership new zealand for instance adopted an ownership unbundling in 1998 as discussed in the literature ownership unbundling produces benefits and costs one of the benefits may be an improvement in the level of the productive efficiency of the companies due to the use of the inputs in just one activity and a greater level of transparency for the regulator this paper analyzes the cost efficiency of 28 electricity distribution companies in new zealand for the period between 1996 and 2011 using a stochastic frontier panel data model a total cost function and a variable cost function are estimated in order to evaluate the impact of ownership unbundling on the level of cost efficiency the results indicate that ownership separation of electricity generation and retail operations from the distribution network has a positive effect on the cost efficiency of distribution companies in new zealand the estimated effect of ownership separation suggests a positive average one off shift in the level of cost efficiency by 0 242 in the short run and 0 144 in the long run

cost function estimates scale economies and technological progress in the turkish electricity generation sector abstract turkish electricity sector has undergone significant institutional changes since 1984 the recent developments since 2001 including the setting up of a regulatory agency to undertake the regulation of the sector and increasing participation of private investors in the field of electricity generation are of special interest this paper estimates cost functions and investigates the degree of scale economies overinvestment and technological progress in the turkish electricity generation sector for the period 1984 2006 using long run and short run translog cost functions estimations were done for six groups of firms public and private the results indicate existence of scale economies throughout the period of analysis hence declining long run average costs the paper finds empirical support for the averch johnson effect until 2001 i e firms overinvested in an environment where there are excess returns to capital but this effect was reduced largely after 2002 technological progress deteriorated slightly from 1984 1993 to 1994 2001 but improved after 2002 overall the paper found that regulation of the market under the newly established regulating agency after 2002 was effective and there are potential gains from such regulation

a firm specific analysis of economies of density in the u s railroad industry an understanding of the nature of costs of production is important in every regulated industry both for policy makers and firms policy makers may be interested in whether there are economies of scale in production and in whether there are technological aspects of an industry that will pose difficult problems if an industry is regulated regulators and firms may be interested in costs for ratemaking purposes and in decisions about the effects of introducing new services or discontinuing existing services historically most cost studies in regulated industries have used data drawn from a cross section of firms or from a combination of cross section and time

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

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

estimating the potential for electricity savings in households abstract improving efficiency in the use of energy is an important goal for many nations since end use energy efficiency can help to reduce co 2 emissions furthermore since the residential sector in industrialised countries requires around one third of the end use electricity it is important for policy makers to estimate the scope for electricity saving in households to reduce electricity consumption by using appropriate steering mechanisms we estimate the level of technical efficiency in the use of electricity using data from a swiss household survey we find an average inefficiency in electricity use by swiss households of around 20 to 25 bottom up economic engineering models estimate the potential in switzerland to be around 15 in this paper we use a sub vector input distance frontier function based on economic foundations our estimates lie at the upper end of the electricity saving potential estimated by the afore mentioned economic engineering approach

semiparametric smooth coefficient stochastic frontier model this paper proposes a semiparametric smooth coefficient spsc stochastic production frontier model where regression coefficients are unknown smooth functions of environmental factors z technical inefficiency is specified in the form of a parametric scaling function which also depends on the z variables thus in our spsc model the z variables affect productivity directly via the technology parameters as well as through inefficiency a residual based bootstrap test of the relevance of the environmental factors in the spsc model is suggested an empirical application is also used to illustrate the technique

on measuring natural resource scarcity conclusions concerning trends in natural resource scarcity may depend critically on the choice of scarcity index unfortunately the prevalence of vertical integration in natural resource industries has hindered the use of some otherwise desirable scarcity measures in this paper duality theory is used to derive an econometric procedure for estimating one such measure the shadow price of the resource in situ empirical results for the canadian metal mining industry indicate that resource scarcity as measured by this shadow price has decreased substantially over time

regulation capital vintage and technical change in the electric utility industry this paper presents estimates of the rate of technical change in the electric power industry over the period 1951 78 the estimated model directly incorporates the effects of rate of return regulation and uses both a time trend and a vintage index to represent disembodied and embodied technical change respectively the results indicate that disembodied technical change was the primary source of cost reduction during 1951 70 and that tighter regulation as represented by a one point reduction in the rate of return would have reduced the rate of technical change by an average of 1 2 during 1951 78 34 references 18 footnotes 3 tables