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Many developed countries face a growing need for long-term care provision because of population ageing. Japan is one such example, given its population's longevity and low birth rate. In this study, we examine the efficiency of Japan's regional long-term care system in FY2010 by performing a data envelopment analysis, a non-parametric frontier approach, on prefectural data and separating cost e...

We analyze a dynamic market with a seller who can make a one-time investment that affects the returns of tradable assets. The potential buyers of the assets cannot observe the seller's investment prior to the trade or verify it in any way after the trade. The market faces two types of inefficiency: the ex-ante inefficiency, i.e., the seller's moral hazard problem, and the ex-post inefficiency, ...

Social networks on the Internet have seen an enormous growth recently and play a crucial role in different aspects of today’s life. They have facilitated information dissemination in ways that have been beneficial for their users but they are often used strategically in order to spread information that only serves the objectives of particular users. These properties have inspired a revision of ...

Previous articles have noted the possibility of socially ineficient levels of entry in markets in whichJirms must incurjixed set-up costs upon entry. This article identijies thefundamental and intuitive forces that lie behind these entry biases. Ifan entrant causes incumbentJirms to reduce output, entry is more desirable to the entrant than it is to society. There is therefore a tendency toward...

Estimation of technical efficiency is widely used in empirical research using both cross-sectional and panel data. Although several stochastic frontier models for panel data are available, only a few of them are normally applied in empirical research. In this article we chose a broad selection of such models based on different assumptions and specifications of heterogeneity, heteroskedasticity ...

We present the theoretical foundation for an adjustment cost technology that supports the intertemporal production decision making behavior using the directional distance function. Dynamic input efficiency measures are developed that can separate out the impact of variable and dynamic factors inefficiency levels. An approach to implement this theory in a nonparametric fashion is developed and a...