Energy consumption, economic growth and prices: A reassessment using panel VECM for developed and developing countries

This paper reinvestigates the energy consumption-GDP growth nexus in a panel error correction model using data on 20 net energy importers and exporters from 1971 to 2002. Among the energy exporters, there was bidirectional causality between economic growth and energy consumption in the developed countries in both the short and long run, while in the developing countries energy consumption stimulates growth only in the short run. The former result is also found for energy importers and the latter result exists only for the developed countries within this category. In addition, compared to the developing countries, the developed countries' elasticity response in terms of economic growth from an increase in energy consumption is larger although its income elasticity is lower and less than unitary. Lastly. the implications for energy policy calling for a more holistic approach are discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Constructing internationally comparable real income aggregates by combining sparse benchmark data with annual national accounts data: A state-space approach

The importance of availability of comparable real income aggregates and their components to applied economic research is highlighted by the popularity of the Penn World Tables. Any methodology designed to achieve such a task requires the combination of data from several sources. The first is purchasing power parities (PPP) data available from the International Comparisons Project roughly every five years since the 1970s. The second is national level data on a range of variables that explain the behaviour of the ratio of PPP to market exchange rates. The final source of data is the national accounts publications of different countries which include estimates of gross domestic product and various price deflators. In this paper we present a method to construct a consistent panel of comparable real incomes by specifying the problem in state-space form. We present our completed work as well as briefly indicate our work in progress.

How cost efficient are Australia's mining industries?

This paper uses a stochastic translog cost frontier model and a panel data of five key mining industries in Australia over 1968-1969 to 1994-1995 to investigate the sources of output growth and the effects of cost inefficiency on total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The results indicate that mining output growth was largely input-driven rather than productivity-driven. Although there were some gains from technological progress and economics of scale in production, cost inefficiency which barely exceeded 1.1% since the mid-1970s in the mining industries was the main factor causing low TFP growth. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Trade liberalisation and technical efficiency: Evidence from Bangladesh manufacturing industries

The paper investigates the effects of trade liberalisation on the technical efficiency of the Bangladesh manufacturing sector by estimating a combined stochastic frontier-inefficiency model using panel data for the period 197894 for 25 three-digit level industries. The results show that the overall technical efficiency of the manufacturing sector as well as the technical efficiencies of the majority of the individual industries has increased over time. The findings also clearly suggest that trade liberalisation, proxied by export orientation and capital deepening, has had significant impact on the reduction of the overall technical inefficiency. Similarly, the scale of operation and the proportion of non-production labour in total employment appear as important determinants of technical inefficiency. The evidence also indicates that both export-promoting and import-substituting industries have experienced rises in technical efficiencies over time. Besides, the results are suggestive of neutral technical change, although (at the 5 per cent level of significance) the empirical results indicate that there was no technical change in the manufacturing industries. Finally, the joint test based on the likelihood ratio (LR) test rejects the Cobb-Douglas production technology as description of the database given the specification of the translog production technology.

The productivity-inflation nexus: The case of the Australian mining sector

This paper examines the causal links between productivity growth and two price series given by domestic inflation and the price of mineral products in Australia's mining sector for the period 1968/1969 to 1997/1998. The study also uses a stochastic translog cost frontier to generate improved estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The results indicate negative unidirectional causality running from both price series to mining productivity growth. Regression analysis further shows that domestic inflation has a small but adverse effect on mining productivity growth, thus providing some empirical support for Australia's 'inflation first' monetary policy, at least with respect to the mining sector. Inflation in mineral price, on the other hand, has a greater negative effect on mining productivity growth via mineral export growth.

A metafrontier production function for estimation of technical efficiencies and technology gaps for firms operating under different technologies

This paper presents a metafrontier production function model for firms in different groups having different technologies. The metafrontier model enables the calculation of comparable technical efficiencies for firms operating under different technologies. The model also enables the technology gaps to be estimated for firms under different technologies relative to the potential technology available to the industry as a whole. The metafrontier model is applied in the analysis of panel data on garment firms in five different regions of Indonesia, assuming that the regional stochastic frontier production function models have technical inefficiency effects with the time-varying structure proposed by Battese and Coelli ( 1992).

Industry-specific human capital, knowledge labour, and industry wage structure in Taiwan

This paper investigates the role of industry-specific human capital (ISHC) in determining industry wage structure. The model presented in this paper distinguishes between knowledge labour and physical labour. Knowledge labour is physical labour embodied with ISHC. It is postulated that more ISHC-intensive industries, such as high-tech industries, pay higher wages and the wage premiums increase with workers' experience. The hypothesis is tested using a merged sample of 1997 - 1999 manpower utilization survey data from a newly industrialized economy - Taiwan. The findings show support for the effect of ISHC.

Lameness, metabolic and digestive disorders, and technical efficiency in Danish dairy herds: a stochastic frontier production function approach

The relationship between reported treatments of lameness, metabolic disorders (milk fever, ketosis), digestive disorders, and technical efficiency (TE) was investigated using neutral and non-neutral stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). TE is estimated relative to the stochastic frontier production function for a sample of 574 Danish dairy herds collected in 1997. Contrary to most published results, but in line with the expected negative impact of disorders on the average cow milk production, herds reporting higher frequencies of milk fever are less technically efficient. Unexpectedly, however, the opposite results were observed for lameness, ketosis, and digestive disorders. The non-neutral stochastic frontier indicated that the opposite results are due to the relative. high productivities of inputs. The productivity of the cows is also reflected by the direction of impact of herd management variables. Whereas efficient farms replace cows more frequently, enroll heifers in production at an earlier age, and have shorter calving intervals, they also report higher frequency of disorder treatments. The average estimated energy corrected milk loss per cow is 1036, 451 and 242 kg for low, medium and high efficient farms. The study demonstrates the benefit of the stochastic frontier production function involving the estimation of individual technical efficiencies to evaluate farm performance and investigate the source of inefficiency. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Relationships of Efficiency to Reproductive Disorders in Danish Milk Production: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Relationships of various reproductive disorders and milk production performance of Danish dairy farms were investigated. A stochastic frontier production function was estimated using data collected in 1998 from 514 Danish dairy farms. Measures of farm-level milk production efficiency relative to this production frontier were obtained, and relationships between milk production efficiency and the incidence risk of reproductive disorders were examined. There were moderate positive relationships between milk production efficiency and retained placenta, induction of estrus, uterine infections, ovarian cysts, and induction of birth. Inclusion of reproductive management variables showed that these moderate relationships disappeared, but directions of coefficients for almost all those variables remained the same. Dystocia showed a weak negative correlation with milk production efficiency. Farms that were mainly managed by young farmers had the highest average efficiency scores. The estimated milk losses due to inefficiency averaged 1142, 488, and 256 kg of energy-corrected milk per cow, respectively, for low-, medium-, and high-efficiency herds. It is concluded that the availability of younger cows, which enabled farmers to replace cows with reproductive disorders, contributed to high cow productivity in efficient farms. Thus, a high replacement rate more than compensates for the possible negative effect of reproductive disorders. The use of frontier production and efficiency/ inefficiency functions to analyze herd data may enable dairy advisors to identify inefficient herds and to simulate the effect of alternative management procedures on the individual herd's efficiency.

A Bayesian approach to imposing curvature on distance functions

The estimated parameters of output distance functions frequently violate the monotonicity, quasi-convexity and convexity constraints implied by economic theory, leading to estimated elasticities and shadow prices that are incorrectly signed, and ultimately to perverse conclusions concerning the effects of input and output changes on productivity growth and relative efficiency levels. We show how a Bayesian approach can be used to impose these constraints on the parameters of a translog output distance function. Implementing the approach involves the use of a Gibbs sampler with data augmentation. A Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is also used within the Gibbs to simulate observations from truncated pdfs. Our methods are developed for the case where panel data is available and technical inefficiency effects are assumed to be time-invariant. Two models-a fixed effects model and a random effects model-are developed and applied to panel data on 17 European railways. We observe significant changes in estimated elasticities and shadow price ratios when regularity restrictions are imposed. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Empirical investigation of investment behaviour in Australia's pastoral region

Optimal intertemporal investment behaviour of Australian pastoralists is modelled using panel data for the period 1979-1993. Results indicate that quasi-fixity of inputs of labour, capital, sheep numbers and cattle numbers is characteristic of production in the pastoral region. It takes about two years for labour, four years for capital and a little over two years for both sheep numbers and cattle numbers to adjust towards long-run optimal levels. Results also indicate that, after accounting for adjustment costs, own-price product supply and input demand responses are inelastic in both the short and long run.

Estimating state-contingent production frontiers

Chambers and Quiggin (2000) use state-contingent representations of risky production technologies to establish important theoretical results concerning producer behavior under uncertainty. Unfortunately, perceived problems in the estimation of state-contingent models have limited the usefulness of the approach in policy formulation. We show that fixed and random effects state-contingent production frontiers can be conveniently estimated in a finite mixtures framework. An empirical example is provided. Compared to conventional estimation approaches, we find that estimating production frontiers in a state-contingent framework produces significantly different estimates of elasticities, firm technical efficiencies, and other quantities of economic interest.