asphaltenes are the n-pentane or n-heptane insoluble fractions of crude oil that remain in solution under reservoir temperature and pressure conditions. they are destabilized and start to precipitate when the pressure, temperature and/or composition changes occur during primary production. the precipitated asphaltene particles will then grow in size and may start to deposit onto the production ...

According to a frequently cited finding by Berger et al (1993), X-inefficiency contributes 20% to cost-inefficiency in western banks. Empirical studies of Chinese banks tend to place cost-inefficiency in the region of 50%. Such estimates would suggest that Chinese banks suffer from gross cost inefficiency. Using a nonparametric bootstrapping method, this study decomposes cost-inefficiency in Ch...

In this article we perform production efficiency analysis for the 40 countries with largest value added by agricultural sector in 2005. Under the assumption of a nonparametric frontier and production observations satisfying a statistical model including both random and inefficiency errors, we estimate an agricultural production function using DEA measures of efficiency with output orientation a...

We examine the cost structure of public schools in this paper, using frontier cost models that enable us to estimate sources of inefficiency. A two equation stochastic frontier model is presented that can be used to explain both cost and the sources of inefficiency. Using that model and data for public schools in Nebraska over the period 1989-92, we estimate cost frontiers for the districts. Es...

We show new constructions of semi-honest and malicious two-round multiparty secure computation protocols using only (a fixed) poly(n, λ) invocations of a two-round oblivious transfer protocol (which use expensive public-key operations) and poly(λ, |C|) cheaper one-way function calls, where λ is the security parameter, n is the number of parties, and C is the circuit being computed. All previous...

Indonesia has become the country with largest palm oil production. However, level of productivity per land in tends to remain stagnant. The main objective this study is evaluate lands smallholders that experience inefficiency. In analyzing efficiency, used cross-section data obtained from Statistics (BPS). This uses an input distance function approach stochastic frontier analysis tools. Our est...

Computationally binding and perfectly hiding commitments can be constructed from GM-secure public-key encryptions. The main idea is to send an encryption of the message together with the public key. To decommit, we reveal the random bits used to encrypt the message. In fact, one-way functions suffice to construct computationally binding and perfectly hiding commitments. Perfectly binding and co...

In this paper we introduce a four-parameter generalized Weibull distribution. This new distribution has a more general form of failure rate function. It is more general for modeling than six ageing classes of life distributions with appropriate choices of parameter values, so it can display decreasing, increasing, bathtub shaped, unimodal, increasing-decreasing increasing and decreasing-increas...