A mechanism for electronic rectification under low bias potentials is elucidated for the prototype molecule HS-phenyl-amide-phenyl-SH. We apply density functional theory (DFT) combined with the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism (NEGF), as implemented in the TranSIESTA computational code to calculate transport properties. We find that a single frontier orbital, the closest to the Fermi l...

This paper simultaneously explores the determinants of the developing countries’ production frontier and their ‘efficiency’ in using the available resources and technology. In doing so it allows for the transfer of (industrial country) technology in determining the frontier and for international trade to influence absorptive capacity and national efficiency levels. Stochastic frontier analysis ...

The outcome of a production process might not only deviate from a theoretical maximum due to inefficiency, but also because of non-controllable influences. This raises the issue of reliability of Data Envelopment Analysis in noisy environments. I propose to assume an i.i.d. data generating process with bounded noise component, so that the following approach is feasible: Use DEA to estimate a ps...

This paper tests Caldwell’s mass schooling hypothesis in the context of rural Pakistan. His hypothesis was that the onset of the fertility transition is closely linked to the achievement of “mass formal schooling” of boys and girls. Punjab and Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) were selected for this study because they appear to be on the leading edge of the demographic transition—a transition ...

A key result of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is that the market portfolio— the portfolio of all assets in which each asset’s weight is proportional to its total market capitalization—lies on the mean-variance-efficient frontier, the set of portfolios having mean-variance characteristics that cannot be improved upon. Therefore, the CAPM cannot be consistent with efficient frontiers for...

Although a rich literature has emerged analyzing the impact of localization, urbanization, and Jacobs externalities on regional innovativeness, the findings are still contradictory. Traditional studies differ mainly in the employed data but rely on similar empirical approaches. This paper argues in favor of using in this context production frontier approaches instead of the commonly employed pr...

This study uses a generalized stochastic frontier framework to model a multiple-output rice production system and analyses farm-level technical inefficiency of rice farming in Assam, India. Primary data for this study was collected in 2009-2010 from 310 farm-households in four non-contiguous districts of Dhubri, Morigaon, Dibrugarh, and Cachar that are located in different agro-climatic regions...

This paper presents a multiple reference point approach for multi-objective optimization problems of discrete and combinatorial nature. When approximating the Pareto Frontier, multiple reference points can be used instead of traditional techniques. These multiple reference points can easily be implemented in a parallel algorithmic framework. The reference points can be uniformly distributed wit...

The need to adapt Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and other frontier models in the context of negative data has been a rather neglected issue in the literature. A recent article in this journal proposed a variation on the directional distance function, a very general distance function that is dual to the profit function, to accommodate the occurrence of negative data. In this contribution, we d...