We develop a theoretical model in which firms are either private or state-owned. When firms become insolvent, the government can intervene with general measures, like subsidies, or by nationalizing firms. The government only intervenes when the bankruptcy of a firm entails social costs. In a stylized model, we analyze how government interventions affect allocative and productive efficiency. Nat...

Copyright 2012 by Jarmila Curtiss and Ladislav Jelínek. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. Annotation: This paper examines allocative and cost efficiency implications of adopting variable-rate fertiliser application using survey data from Czech wheat farm...

This paper investigates cost, technical and allocative efficiencies for Brazilian banks in the recent period (2000-2007). We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compute efficiency scores. Brazilian banks were found to have low levels of economic (cost) efficiency compared to banks in Europe and in the US. For the period with high macroeconomic volatility (2000-2002) the economic inefficiency...

This paper empirically investigates the x-eciency (technical and allocative) in Australian banks. A non-parametric method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been used to arrive at the eciency scores. Banks in this sample were found to have low levels of overall eciency compared with the banks in the European countries and in the US. The results indicate that, as a source of overall inec...

This book chapter reviews some of the major principles associated with optimal strategy in basketball. In particular, we consider the principles of allocative efficiency (optimal allocation of shots between offensive options), dynamic efficiency (optimal shot selection in the face of pressure from the shot clock), and the risk/reward tradeoff (strategic manipulation of outcome variance). For ea...

We define and examine the performance of three minimal strategic market games (sell-all, buy-sell, and double auction) in laboratory relative to the predictions of theory. Unlike open or partial equilibrium settings of most other experiments, these closed exchange economies have limited amounts of cash to facilitate transactions, and include feedback. General equilibrium theory, since it abstra...

This paper examines the effect of collusion on allocative efficiency in a second-price sealed-bid auction, in which bidders’ valuations have private and common value components. We present a theoretical model which shows that explicit collusion improves average efficiency. Furthermore, a reduction in common value signal variance increases the efficiency of allocations when a cartel is present. ...

Private ownership creates monopoly power, harming the dynamic efficiency of asset allocation. Common ownership improves allocative efficiency, but eliminates incentives to invest in the common value of assets. We propose a simple partial private ownership system, Harberger licensing, for public assets. Lessors self-assess a price at which they commit to sell the asset to any interested buyer an...

We investigate the impact of transport infrastructure on the organisation and efficiency of manufacturing activity. The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) project upgraded a central highway network in India. Manufacturing activity grew disproportionately along the network. These findings hold in straight-line IV frameworks and are not present on a second highway that was planned to be upgraded at the sa...

A shortage function is defined that looks for possible increases in return and skewness and decreases in variance. Global optimality is guaranteed for the resulting optimal portfolios. We also establish a link to a proper indirect mean-variance-skewness utility function. For computational reasons, the optimal portfolios resulting from this dual approach are only locally optimal. This framework ...