the financing of social housing in integrating financial markets a view from developing countries the housing sector is the last major sector of the national economy for which analytical foundations for economic and financial policy evaluation have developed however the application of this analytical framework to international comparisons of housing policies or the evaluation of housing finance systems still lags considerably behind the strong foundations laid over the years for trade finance or industry policy analyses none the less the era when improvisation and fragmented policy making in housing and housing finance could be excused is well past today there is a deep and expanding body of basic research and policy analysis that can be shared for the design of housing policies and housing finance institutions whether it is in the european union or developing countries obviously social and economic contexts as well as wealth levels differ greatly common analytical foundations can lead to very different prescriptions in countries where macroeconomic and financial policies financial infrastr

the three is of public schools irrelevant inputs insufficient resources and inefficiency abstractwe examine the educational production function and efficiency of public school districts in illinois using non parametric kernel methods we find that most traditional schooling inputs are irrelevant in determining test scores even in a very general setting property tax caps are the only relevant factor that is related to districts financial constraints and have predominantly negative associations with test scores therefore insufficient resources may be partially responsible for the lack of growth in test scores for most other relevant inputs we find substantial heterogeneity in the returns which helps reconcile some of the puzzling results in the literature we further find that there exist inefficiencies in school districts moreover the level of test scores commonly used as a measure of school effectiveness while related differs substantially from our efficiency scores and standard parametric approaches drastically underestimate school efficiency we discuss the policy implicati

socialist cities without land markets abstract how does the spatial dynamics of the socialist city compare with that of the market city what happens when all investment decisions are made administratively in the absence of land markets russian development is the longest socialist experiment on record its outcome is of paramount interest to urban economists this paper reports the first analysis of the structure of russian cities after 70 years of soviet development the main finding is a perversely positive population density gradient the soviet city also has a disproportionate share of industrial land often in prime locations free property trading started in russia in 1992 the emerging negative price gradient contrasts totally with the positive population gradient that is the legacy of administrative land allocation these two conflicting gradients highlight the land misallocation and inefficiency of the socialist city

dea and its use in the regulation of water companies abstract this paper begins with an introduction to the basic principles of data envelopment analysis dea dea is a linear programming based method for assessing the productive efficiencies of operating units such as bank branches sales outlets schools or individuals this paper then goes on to describe the use of dea in the regulatory framework regulation employed to safeguard the public interest is increasingly playing an major role in great britain and other countries in the aftermath of the privatisation of publicly owned companies including utilities which still enjoy a good degree of monopoly power this paper gives an account of the use of dea to estimate potential cost savings at water companies in the context of the price review conducted by the regulator of water companies in england and wales in 1994 it also highlights certain generic issues arising in the use of dea in the regulatory context this paper should prove of interest both to those who want to know about dea as a tool in general and to those interested in efficiency measurement under regulation

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

optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective abstract the game theoretic perspective in auction bidding has provided a powerful normative framework for the analysis of auctions and it has generated an impressive volume of research contributions tracing this research we review key recent advances which have greatly expanded our understanding of the operation of auctions and produced a more accurate analysis of mechanism design and optimal bidding we follow various experimental studies which have shown that the predictive power of auction theory remains in many cases limited for this reason we concentrate on research themes which enhance the applicability of auction theory leading to more realistic descriptions of bidding behaviors we identify important innovations which expand the environment of auction bidding and carry us beyond rational decision making we conclude providing directions of future research and discussing their implications

incentive plans for productive efficiency innovation and learning in many industries where production or sales is delegated to a number of subunits the central management faces the classical problem how to induce continuous efficiency improvements organizational learning and transfer of knowledge with a minimum of control exercised this paper draws on recent results regarding regulatory frameworks to construct simple yet powerful incentive schemes for decentralized production under asymmetric information the theoretical foundation is based on principal agent theory cf laffont and tirole econometrica 56 1986 614 641 and extensions to production theory by bogetoft management science 40 1994 959 968 the proposed incentive system is operational and makes use of available information to provide positive incentives for participation in the dynamic development of the entire organization

design competition through multidimensional auctions this article studies design competition in government procurement by developing a model of two dimensional auctions wherefirms bid on both price and quality and bids are evaluated by a scoring rule designed by a buyer three auction schemes first score second score and second preferred offer are introduced and related to actual practices if the buyer can commit to a scoring rule in his best interest the resulting optimal scoring rule underrewards quality relative to the buyer s utility function and implements the optimal outcome for the buyer underfirst and second score auctions absent the commitment power the onlyfeasible scoring rule is the buyer s utility function under which 1 all three schemes yield the same expected utility to the buyer and 2 first and second score auctions induce the first best level of quality which turns out to be excessive from the buyer s point of view

the use of data envelopment analysis in the regulation of uk water utilities water distribution abstract regulation is increasingly playing a major role in defence of the public interest in the uk and other economies in the aftermath of the privatisation of utilities operating in near monopoly environments this paper gives an account of the use of data envelopment analysis dea by the regulator of water companies in england and wales in 1994 in the context of setting price limits dea is a general purpose linear programming based method for assessing the productive efficiencies of operating units such as bank branches or schools the paper details the use of dea to estimate potential savings in the specific context of water distribution and discusses the use of the results obtained it also highlights certain generic issues arising in the use of dea and more generally performance measurement methods in the regulatory context

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

data envelopment analysis on a relaxed set of assumptions data envelopment analysis is a procedure for evaluation of the relative efficiency of units in a production system dea involves construction of composite units as convex combinations of other units inputs and outputs under various conditions related to returns to scale the assumption of convexity is inconsistent with increasing returns to scale and not implied by constant or non increasing returns to scale an alternative dea approach which does not invoke the assumption of a convex production possibility set is developed in this paper it is implemented in two stages stage one is concerned with the spanning of isoquants and stage two with an evaluation of the position of an observed input output combination compared to the isoquants both stages involve linear programming techniques solely

the evolution of market structure when there is a sequence of innovations the paper explores the question of how market structure evolves when there is a sequence of opportunities to innovate does one firm extend its technological superiority to become increasingly dominant or does technological leadership constantly change hands in a process of actionreaction a simple duopoly model is proposed in which the answer to this question depends upon the nature of product market behaviour in that model highly competitive product market behaviour leads to increasing dominance whereas cournot behaviour may lead to action reaction

short communication dea based auctions simulations abstract in this paper we use simulations to numerically evaluate the hybrid dea second score auction in a procurement setting the winner of the hybrid auction by design receives payment at the most equal to the second score auction it is therefore superior to the traditional second score scheme from the point of view of a principal interested in acquiring an item at the minimum price without losing in quality for a set of parameters we quantify the size of the improvements and show that the improvement depends intimately on the regularity imposed on the underlying cost function in the least structured case of a variable returns to scale technology the hybrid auction only improved the outcome for a small percentage of cases for other technologies with constant returns to scale the gains are considerably higher and payments are lowered in a large percentage of cases we also show that the number of the participating agents the concavity of the principal value functions and the number of quality dimensions impact the expected payment

multi dimensional procurement auction under uncertain and asymmetric information abstract this paper addresses two important issues in public procurement ex ante uncertainty about the participating agents qualities and costs and their strategic behaviour we present a novel multi dimensional auction that incentivises agents to make a partial inquiry into the procured task and to honestly report quality cost probabilistic estimates based on which the principal can choose the agent that offers the best value for money the mechanism extends second score auction design to settings where the quality is uncertain and it provides incentives to both collect information and deliver desired qualities

market vs rationing the case of soviet housing economists devote considerable effort to the analysis of various forms of nonprice rationing these analyses generally disregard forces that act to foil rationing schemes even with a commodity that seems to be easy to control however in a system with extensive rationing experience nonprice rationing schemes can be circumvented this thesis is examined for the case of housing distribution in the u s s r utilizing the data from a survey of recent soviet emigres it is shown that administrative rationing of soviet urban housing is partially replaced by market forces acting usually through the second economy copyright 1988 by mit press

dea based auctions we discuss the design of a multi dimensional procurement mechanism that combines data envelopment analysis dea and auction theory the mechanism selects an agent to provide a project characterized by multiple attributes the optimal configuration of the multiple attributes is settled endogenously by trading off the costs to the provider with the benefits to the acquirer this is done within a context of asymmetric information and strategic behavior as well as possibly correlated costs the mechanism makes it individually rational and incentive compatible to participate and reveal costs and the outcome is socially optimal allocatively efficient

the role of environmental factors in water utilities technical efficiency empirical evidence from spanish companies this article computes input specific scores of technical efficiency for a sample of water utilities located in the southern spanish region of andalusia in addition differences in efficiency between different operating environments are investigated concerning the debate about ownership and efficiency we find that privately owned companies outperform public utilities in their management of labour furthermore technical efficiency is found to be greater among firms located in highly populated areas and for utilities providing water services to tourist municipalities finally no empirical evidence supporting the greater technical efficiency of consortia of water utilities a managerial strategy strongly encouraged by regional politicians is found

benchmarking and incentive regulation of quality of service an application to the uk electricity distribution networks abstract quality of service has emerged as an important issue in post reform regulation of electricity distribution networks regulators have employed partial incentive schemes to promote cost saving investment efficiency and service quality this paper presents a quality incorporated benchmarking study of the electricity distribution utilities in the uk between 1991 92 and 1998 99 we calculate technical efficiency of the utilities using data envelopment analysis technique and productivity change over time using quality incorporated malmquist indices we find that cost efficient firms do not necessarily exhibit high service quality and that efficiency scores of cost only models do not show high correlation with those of quality based models the results also show that improvements in service quality have made a significant contribution to the sector s total productivity change in addition we show that integrating quality of service in regulatory benchmarking is preferable to cost only approaches

housing tenure choice in transitional urban china a multilevel analysis summary using a 1996 national survey of housing in china and a multilevel modelling technique we examine housing tenure choice in transitional urban china where households have been granted limited freedom of choice in the housing market since the housing reforms of 1988 we e nd that both market mechanisms and institutional forces affect households tenure choice in urban china while some socioeconomic factors such as age household size household income and housing price have similar effects on tenure choice as in the west others such as the number of workers and marital status have rather different effects in addition factors characterising institutional relationships among the state work units and households such as hukou job rank and work unit rank still play important roles in tenure choice

the performance of german water utilities a semi parametric analysis germany s water supply industry is characterized by a multitude of utilities and widely diverging prices possibly resulting from structural differences beyond the control of firms management but also from inefficiencies in this article we use data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis to determine the utilities technical efficiency te scores based on cross sectional data from 373 public and private water utilities in 2006 we find large differences in te scores even after accounting for significant structural variables like network density share of groundwater usage and water losses

the design of auctions and tenders with quality thresholds the symmetric case three designs of auctions with quality thresholds are considered the quality threshold is not known with certainty by the bidders in one scheme quality plans submitted by potential bidders are evaluated first and price bids for only those plans which have been approved are invited the second scheme has price bids first to yield a priority for scrutinising quality a third has simultaneous decisions on price and quality the model yields an equivalence result the use of reserve prices to produce social optimality is then investigated the theory is used to discuss the recent auction for uk television franchises

licensing a sequence of innovations it is common for a firm which receives a license for a technology also to obtain as part of the contract a license for future improvements on that technology we derive market structure reasons why such a provision might be used in a two period setting

efficiency in the public and private french water utilities prospects for benchmarking this article uses a data envelopment analysis dea and a stochastic frontier analysis sfa to assess the relative technical efficiency of 177 decision making units in the french water supply sector in 2009 water utilities can be directly managed by the local authorities or contracted out and then managed by a private operator the use of a three stage model mixing dea and sfa enables us to dissociate managerial inefficiencies from the structural inefficiencies and statistical noise after having taken the environmental variables into account we find that private management are on average slightly less efficient than public management an explanation to this performance gap can be different resource management

incentive efficient production frontiers an agency perspective on dea in this paper we examine how empirical production frontiers may contribute to the incentives of production units we consider a series of data envelopment analysis dea frontiers and we show when these may be incentive efficient in the sense that they contain all the information that are relevant for optimal incentive provision the frontiers considered include the so called constant decreasing and varying return to scale models the free disposability and the free replicability models as well as the increasing and decreasing return to scale models based on a relaxed set of assumptions also we illustrate how to design optimal incentive schemes based on such frontiers contents 1 introduction 2 the incentive problem 3 production frontiers and productivity measures 4 incentive efficient production frontiers 5 extensions 6 an example 7 final remarks mathematical appendix references

estimating cost functions in regulated industries characterized by asymmetric information abstract in this paper a structural model is developed to estimate a cost function that includes both an adverse selection and a moral hazard variable it is shown how traditional cost function estimates may produced biased results if moral hazard is present this gives an alternative reason to feinstein and wolak the econometric implications of incentive compatible regulation in g f rhodes ed advances in econometrics vol 9 159 204 jai press greenwich ct 1991 of why scale economics may be overestimated in regulated industries parameter estimates from our model can be used to design an optimal contract or any other regulatory mechanism we illustrate our approach using data from the norwegian bus transport industry

the real estate economy and the design of russian housing reforms part i the transition from plan to market in socialist economies dominates the economic agenda of this decade this two part paper on the russian housing reforms addresses four questions first what is the legacy of the administrative command system and why were demands for major reforms so widespread in the housing sector secondly in what manner does the severe contraction of the russian economy complicate the reformers task thirdly how has the russian government responded so far to the reform challenge fourthly why are the privatisation of housing and rent reforms at the core of the transition to market the first part of the paper deals with the first two questions the second part addresses the last two questions priority goes to an integrated perspective on the early stages of russian reforms over an in depth analysis of individual issues the modern analysis of the real estate economy distinguishes two markets the property market for the allocation of space and the asset market where investm

is dea useful in the regulation of water utilities a dynamic efficiency evaluation the discussion about public utilities efficiency and its management has become increasingly important in the last decades we focus on the distribution of water which is one of the most important natural resources marshall 1879 this research shows the relationship between efficiency and institutional factors such as management system for this purpose we have data about some spanish water utilities under different provision systems during the period 1985 to 2000 using data envelopment analysis dea we estimate potential cost savings in this context we will extend the results obtained by thanassoulis 2000a b in attempt to guide the regulation of this sector

relative efficiency measurement and prospects for yardstick competition in brazilian electricity distribution abstract the paper considers the non parametric methodology of data envelopment analysis dea in the context of efficiency measurement for brazilian electricity distribution in 1997 98 indicating the existence of firms operating substantially below the efficiency frontier the potential and difficulties associated with the implementation of yardstick competition schemes are then discussed stressing in particular the role of relative efficiency scores obtained from the dea approach

on the duration of technology licensing abstract we model an innovator s choice of payment scheme and duration as a joint decision in a multi period licensing game with potential future innovations and some irreversibility of technology transfer we find that it may be optimal to license the innovation for less than the full length of the patent and that royalty contracts can be more profitable than fixed fee licensing even in the absence of information asymmetry and risk aversion moreover licensing contracts based on royalty have a longer duration than fixed fee licenses and are more likely to be used in industries where innovations are frequent and intellectual property protection is weak our paper also highlights an important link between the study of technology licensing and the theory of durable goods

models for iterative multiattribute procurement auctions multiattribute auctions extend traditional auction settings to allow negotiation over nonprice attributes such as weight color and terms of delivery in addition to price and promise to improve market efficiency in markets with configurable goods this paper provides an iterative auction design for an important special case of the multiattribute allocation problem with special preferential independent additive structure on the buyer value and seller costs auction additive discrete provides a refined design for a price based auction in which the price feedback decomposes to an additive part with a price for each attribute and an aggregate part that appears as a price discount for each supplier in addition this design also has excellent information revelation properties that are validated through computational experiments the auction terminates with an outcome of a modified vickrey clarke groves mechanism this paper also develops auction nonlinear discrete for the more general nonlinear case a particularly simple design that solves the general multiattribute allocation problem but requires that the auctioneer maintains prices on bundles of attribute levels