Productivity of nations: a stochastic frontier approach to TFP decomposition

This Paper Tackles the Problem of Aggregate Tfp Measurement Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (Sfa). Data From Penn World Table 6.1 are Used to Estimate a World Production Frontier For a Sample of 75 Countries Over a Long Period (1950-2000) Taking Advantage of the Model Offered By Battese and Coelli (1992). We Also Apply the Decomposition of Tfp Suggested By Bauer (1990) and Kumbhakar (2000) to a Smaller Sample of 36 Countries Over the Period 1970-2000 in Order to Evaluate the Effects of Changes in Efficiency (Technical and Allocative), Scale Effects and Technical Change. This Allows Us to Analyze the Role of Productivity and Its Components in Economic Growth of Developed and Developing Nations in Addition to the Importance of Factor Accumulation. Although not Much Explored in the Study of Economic Growth, Frontier Techniques Seem to Be of Particular Interest For That Purpose Since the Separation of Efficiency Effects and Technical Change Has a Direct Interpretation in Terms of the Catch-Up Debate. The Estimated Technical Efficiency Scores Reveal the Efficiency of Nations in the Production of Non Tradable Goods Since the Gdp Series Used is Ppp-Adjusted. We Also Provide a Second Set of Efficiency Scores Corrected in Order to Reveal Efficiency in the Production of Tradable Goods and Rank Them. When Compared to the Rankings of Productivity Indexes Offered By Non-Frontier Studies of Hall and Jones (1996) and Islam (1995) Our Ranking Shows a Somewhat More Intuitive Order of Countries. Rankings of the Technical Change and Scale Effects Components of Tfp Change are Also Very Intuitive. We Also Show That Productivity is Responsible For Virtually All the Differences of Performance Between Developed and Developing Countries in Terms of Rates of Growth of Income Per Worker. More Important, We Find That Changes in Allocative Efficiency Play a Crucial Role in Explaining Differences in the Productivity of Developed and Developing Nations, Even Larger Than the One Played By the Technology Gap

Do PGI integrated farms perform better? The case of the beef farms in Spain

European rural development policy is gaining in importance through one of its key instruments, the Protected Geographical Indications (PGI) system, which is designed to improve quality standards. Previous research has shown that PGI-certified beef farms tend to be more extensively managed operations that are better adapted to mountainous areas. This paper describes a comparative study of two production systems, one with PGI certification and one without, focusing on a number of economic variables. The results show a positive association between PGI production and profitability. In efficiency terms, non-certified farms show better pure technical efficiency scores, while PGI-certified holdings score higher on scale efficiency.

Eficiencia en la distribución: una aplicación en el sector de agencias de viajes

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en estimar la eficiencia productiva y de escala con la que operan los intermediarios del sector minorista español de distribución turístico. Adicionalmente, se pretende examinar los determinantes de la eficiencia en términos de la integración vertical, concentración horizontal, tamaño y resultados de las entidades. La metodología aplicada se apoya en diversas técnicas de medición de eficiencia (paramétrica de naturaleza estocástica y no paramétrica del Análisis Envolvente de Datos, DEA), así como en modelos tobit para conocer el impacto de los factores del mercado y de la empresa sobre los niveles de eficiencia. La aplicación empírica realizada en una muestra de 50 agencias de viaje de nuestro país evidencia, por un lado, unos elevados índices de ineficiencia técnica y de escala, destacando en el último caso los rendimientos decrecientes; y por otro, que el tamaño y el ROA son los factores determinante de la eficiencia de escala, mientras que la concentración del mercado explica la eficiencia técnica.

Does land fragmentation affect farm performance? A case study from Brittany. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 40, April 2013

Agricultural land fragmentation is widespread and may affect farmers’ decisions and impact farm performance, either negatively or positively. The authors investigated this impact for the western region of Brittany, France, in 2007, regressing a set of performance indicators on a set of fragmentation descriptors. The performance indicators (production costs, yields, revenue, profitability, technical and scale efficiency) were calculated at the farm level using Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data, while the fragmentation descriptors were calculated at the municipality level using data from the cartographic field pattern registry (RPG). The various fragmentation descriptors enabled the authors to account for not only the traditional number and average size of plots, but also their geographical scattering. They found that farms experienced higher costs of production, lower crop yields and lower profitability where land fragmentation (LF) was more pronounced. Total technical efficiency was not found to be significantly related to any of the municipality LF descriptors used, while scale efficiency was lower where the average distance to the nearest neighbouring plot was greater. Pure technical efficiency was found to be negatively related to the average number of plots in the municipality, with the unexpected result that it was also positively related to the average distance to the nearest neighbouring plot. By simulating the impact of hypothetical consolidation programmes on average pre-tax profits and wheat yield, the study also showed that the marginal benefits of reducing fragmentation may differ with respect to the improved LF dimension and the performance indicator considered. The analysis therefore shows that the measures of land fragmentation usually used in the literature do not reveal the full set of significant relationships with farm performance and that, in particular, measures accounting for distance should be considered more systematically.

A comparative assessment of performance and productivity of health centres in Seychelles

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to measure the technical and scale efficiency of health centres; to evaluate changes in productivity; and to highlight possible policy implications of the results for policy makers. Design/methodology/approach - Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is employed to assess the technical and scale efficiency, and productivity change over a four-year period among 17 public health centres. Findings - During the period of study, the results suggest that the public health centres in Seychelles have exhibited mean overall or technical efficiency of above 93 per cent. It was also found that the overall productivity increased by 2.4 per cent over 2001-2004. Research limitations/implications - Further research can be undertaken to gather data on the prices of the various inputs to facilitate an estimation of the allocative efficiency of clinics. If such an exercise were to be undertaken, researchers may also consider collecting data on quantities and prices of paramedical, administrative and support staff to ensure that the analysis is more comprehensive than the study reported in this paper. Institutionalization of efficiency monitoring would help to enhance further the already good health sector stewardship and governance. Originality/value - This paper provides new empirical evidence on a four-year trend in the efficiency and productivity of health centres in Seychelles. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

A performance assessment method for hospitals:the case of municipal hospitals in Angola

Over 60% of the recurrent budget of the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Angola is spent on the operations of the fixed health care facilities (health centres plus hospitals). However, to date, no study has been attempted to investigate how efficiently those resources are used to produce health services. Therefore the objectives of this study were to assess the technical efficiency of public municipal hospitals in Angola; assess changes in productivity over time with a view to analyzing changes in efficiency and technology; and demonstrate how the results can be used in the pursuit of the public health objective of promoting efficiency in the use of health resources. The analysis was based on a 3-year panel data from all the 28 public municipal hospitals in Angola. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-parametric linear programming approach, was employed to assess the technical and scale efficiency and productivity change over time using Malmquist index.The results show that on average, productivity of municipal hospitals in Angola increased by 4.5% over the period 2000-2002; that growth was due to improvements in efficiency rather than innovation. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Measurement of hospital performance

The rationale for carrying out this research was to address the clear lack of knowledge surrounding the measurement of public hospital performance in Ireland. The objectives of this research were to develop a comprehensive model for measuring hospital performance and using this model to measure the performance of public acute hospitals in Ireland in 2007. Having assessed the advantages and disadvantages of various measurement models the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model was chosen for this research. DEA was initiated by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes in 1978 and further developed by Fare et al. (1983) and Banker et al. (1984). The method used to choose relevant inputs and outputs to be included in the model followed that adopted by Casu et al. (2005) which included the use of focus groups. The main conclusions of the research are threefold. Firstly, it is clear that each stakeholder group has differing opinions on what constitutes good performance. It is therefore imperative that any performance measurement model would be designed within parameters that are clearly understood by any intended audience. Secondly, there is a lack of publicly available qualitative information in Ireland that inhibits detailed analysis of hospital performance. Thirdly, based on available qualitative and quantitative data the results indicated a high level of efficiency among the public acute hospitals in Ireland in their staffing and non pay costs, averaging 98.5%. As DEA scores are sensitive to the number of input and output variables as well as the size of the sample it should be borne in mind that a high level of efficiency could be as a result of using DEA with too many variables compared to the number of hospitals. No hospital was deemed to be scale efficient in any of the models even though the average scale efficiency for all of the hospitals was relatively high at 90.3%. Arising from this research the main recommendations would be that information on medical outcomes, survival rates and patient satisfaction should be made publicly available in Ireland; that despite a high average efficiency level that many individual hospitals need to focus on improving their technical and scale efficiencies, and that performance measurement models should be developed that would include more qualitative data.

Assessment of national health systems performance in the WHO African region

There is growing peer and donor pressure on African countries to utilize available resources more efficiently in a bid to support the ongoing efforts to expand coverage of health interventions with a view to achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals. The purpose of this study was to estimate the technical and scale efficiency of national health systems in African continent. Methods The study applied the Data Envelopment Analysis approach to estimate the technical efficiency and scale efficiency among the 53 countries of the African Continent. Results Out of the 38 low-income African countries, 12 countries national health systems manifested a constant returns to scale technical efficiency (CRSTE) score of 100%; 15 countries had a VRSTE score of 100%; and 12 countries had a SE score of one. The average variable returns to scale technical efficiency (VRSTE) score was 95% and the mean scale efficiency (SE) score was 59%; meaning that while on average the degree of inefficiency was only 5%, the magnitude of scale inefficiency was 41%. Of the 15 middle-income countries, 5 countries, 9 countries and 5 countries had CRSTE, VRSTE and SE scores of 100%. Ten countries, six countries and 10 countries had CRSTE, VRSTE and SE scores of less than 100%; and thus, they were deemed inefficient. The average VRSTE (i.e. pure efficiency) score was 97.6%. The average SE score was 49.9%. Conclusion There are large unmet need for health and health-related services among countries of the African Continent. Thus, it would not be advisable for health policy-makers address NHS inefficiencies through reduction in excess human resources for health. Instead, it would be more prudent for them to leverage health promotion approaches and universal access prepaid (tax-based, insurance-based or mixtures) health financing systems to create demand for under utilised health services/interventions with a view to increasing ultimate health outputs to efficient target levels.

Avaliação do desempenho das entidades gestoras dos serviços de resíduos urbanos em Portugal

Dissertação de Mestrado, Gestão Empresarial, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

Operating efficiency and return to scale of Malaysian REITS: The preliminary findings

This paper aims to present preliminary findings on measuring the technical efficiencies using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in Malaysian Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) to determine the best practice for operations which include the asset allocation and scale size to improve the performance of Malaysian REITs. Variables identified as input and output will be assessed in this cross section analysis using the operational approach and Variable Return to Scale DEA (VRS-DEA) by focusing on Malaysian REITs for the year 2013. Islamic REITs have higher efficiency score as compared to the conventional REITs for both models. Diversified REITs are more efficient as compared to the specialised REIT using both models. For Model 1, the negative inefficient value is identified in the managerial inefficiency as compared to the scale inefficiency. This shows that inputs are not fully minimised to produce more outputs. However, when other expenses are considered as different input variables, the efficiency score becomes higher from 60.3% to 81.2%. In model 2, scale inefficiency produce greater inefficiency as compared to the managerial efficiency. The result suggests that Malaysian REITs have been operating at the wrong scale of operations as majority of the Malaysian REITs are operating at decreasing return to scale.

EFFICIENCY DYNAMICS ON SCALE-FREE NETWORKS WITH COMMUNITIES

The simple efficiency model is developed on scale-free networks with communities to study the effect of the communities in complex networks on efficiency dynamics. For some parameters, we found that the state of system will transit from a stagnant phase to a growing phase as the strength of community decreases.

The early-stage risk capital market in Scotland since 2000: issues of scale, characteristics and market efficiency

In this paper we provide a detailed profile and analysis of the regional risk capital market in Scotland, using an innovative methodology and specially developed databases which cover risk capital investment in young companies in the periods 2000–04 and 2005–07. This identifies the investment activity of all actors in the market and provides estimates of the total flow of risk capital investment into early-stage Scottish companies over the period. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications for policy makers (providing a more robust evidence base for the development, implementation and monitoring of policy) and for academic researchers (on the methodologies for estimating market scale and efficiency).

Optimizing the efficiency of the sub-map technique for large-scale simultaneous localization and mapping

A technique for optimizing the efficiency of the sub-map method for large-scale simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is proposed. It optimizes the benefits of the sub-map technique to improve the accuracy and consistency of an extended Kalman filter (EKF)-based SLAM. Error models were developed and engaged to investigate some of the outstanding issues in employing the sub-map technique in SLAM. Such issues include the size (distance) of an optimal sub-map, the acceptable error effect caused by the process noise covariance on the predictions and estimations made within a sub-map, when to terminate an existing sub-map and start a new one and the magnitude of the process noise covariance that could produce such an effect. Numerical results obtained from the study and an error-correcting process were engaged to optimize the accuracy and convergence of the Invariant Information Local Sub-map Filter previously proposed. Applying this technique to the EKF-based SLAM algorithm (a) reduces the computational burden of maintaining the global map estimates and (b) simplifies transformation complexities and data association ambiguities usually experienced in fusing sub-maps together. A Monte Carlo analysis of the system is presented as a means of demonstrating the consistency and efficacy of the proposed technique.

Comparing Input- and Output-Oriented Measures of Technical Efficiency to Determine Local Returns to Scale in DEA Models

This paper shows how one can infer the nature of local returns to scale at the input- or output-oriented efficient projection of a technically inefficient input-output bundle, when the input- and output-oriented measures of efficiency differ.