Welfare economics typically holds that market outcomes are Pareto efficient only if markets are competitive and average costs are constant or increasing. Otherwise, to attain market efficiency requires some regulatory implementation of a rule to equate price to marginal cost, though the ability of such a pricing rule to accomplish this is tempered by second-best considerations. In contrast to t...

In the context of climate change and energy crisis around the world, an increasing amount of attention has been paid to developing clean energy and improving energy efficiency. The penetration of distributed generation (DG) is increasing rapidly on the user’s side of an increasingly intelligent power system. This paper proposes an optimization method for industrial task-continuous load manageme...

We study the tradeoff between efficiency and service quality in tandem systems. We reward efficiency by assuming that a revenue is earned each time a job is completed, and we penalize poor service quality by incorporating positive holding costs. We study the dynamic assignment of servers to tasks with the objective of maximizing the long-run average profit. For systems of arbitrary size, genera...

The aim of this work is to investigate the efficiency level of healthcare system in Apulia. This is a study design; in fact, peculiar and objective efficiency index is built with ISTAT data from most of territorial healthcare structures (public, non-profit and private). This coefficient is calculated to compare with more generic and traditional indexes. Moreover, a forward analysis is conducted...

We consider a Cournot oligopoly model where multiple suppliers (oligopolists) compete by choosing quantities. We compare the social welfare achieved at a Cournot equilibrium to the maximum possible, for the case where the inverse market demand function is convex. We establish a lower bound on the efficiency of Cournot equilibria in terms of a scalar parameter derived from the inverse demand fun...

  The present study is an attempt towards remodeling cost, revenue and profit relationship within the network process. The previous models of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) have been too general in their scope and focused on the input and the output within a black box system, therefore they have not been able to measure various phases simultaneously within a network system. By using these mod...

This paper uses stochastic frontier analysis and Tobit regressions to provide international evidence on the impact of regulatory, supervision and environmental factors on bank efficiency. Our contribution is twofold. First, we use a newly constructed database of 3,086 observations from 677 publicly quoted commercial banks operating in 88 countries to provide cross-country evidence on the determ...

In this paper, we investigate competition in banking systems in the EU27 as a whole for the period 2004– 2010, but also for old members’ banking systems compared with new members’ banking systems and for banking systems from countries member of euro zone compares with banking systems from countries non-member of euro zone. In order to investigate this issue, we estimate a non-structural indicat...

Emergence of green supply chain management could be attributed to the rising public awareness of environmental problems. Consumers say they increasingly prefer to purchase products that are produced with a minimum of pollution and with minimal environmental impact. Therefore, companies that successfully adopt a green policy can generate profits, reduce environmental impact, and provide positive...

While neoclassical models of profit-maximization assume static cost-minimizing behavior, agency models of managerial behavior, particularly under regulation, suggest that managers may not minimize costs in less-competitive environments. We test whether the transition from cost-of-service regulation to more marketoriented environments affected input demand at U.S. electric generating plants. We ...