Investigating the cost Performance of UK Credit Unions using Radial and Non-Radial Efficiency Measures

This paper examines the relative efficiency of UK credit unions. Radial and non-radial measures of input cost efficiency plus associated scale efficiency measures are computed for a selection of input output specifications. Both measures highlighted that UK credit unions have considerable scope for efficiency gains. It was mooted that the documented high levels of inefficiency may be indicative of the fact that credit unions, based on clearly defined and non-overlapping common bonds, are not in competition with each other for market share. Credit unions were also highlighted as suffering from a considerable degree of scale inefficiency with the majority of scale inefficient credit unions subject to decreasing returns to scale. The latter aspect highlights that the UK Government's goal of larger credit unions must be accompanied by greater regulatory freedom if inefficiency is to be avoided. One of the advantages of computing non-radial measures is that an insight into potential over- or under-expenditure on specific inputs can be obtained through a comparison of the non-radial measure of efficiency with the associated radial measure. Two interesting findings emerged, the first that UK credit unions over-spend on dividend payments and the second that they under-spend on labour costs.

Philosophers and practical men: Charles Babbage, Irish merchants and the economics of information

Before the emergence of coordination of production by firms, manufacturers and merchants traded in markets with asymmetric information. Evidence suggests that the practical knowledge thus gained by these agents was well in advance of contemporary political economists and anticipates twentieth-century developments in the economics of information. Charles Babbage, who regarded merchants and manufacturers as the chief sources of reliable economic data, drew on this knowledge as revealed in the evidence of manufacturers and merchants presented to House of Commons select committees to make an important pioneering contribution to the theory of production and exchange with information asymmetries.

Structure and Change: Douglass North's Economics

Douglass North is a pivotal figure in the development of the 'new' economic history as well as the 'new' institutional economics. However, the relationship between these two aspects of his thinking remains undeveloped in previous critical assessments of North's work. The relationship is clarified here. The evidence presented indicates that three distinct phases can be distinguished in his writings between the 1950s and the 2000s. The paper relates these changing views to the shifting mainstream within economics and the effects that this shift has in turn had on economic history research. Economic history has adapted to economic research by abandoning some practices associated with the earlier cliometric literature. Furthermore, North is unique to the extent that his recent writings represent something of a convergence with 'old' institutionalism. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.