Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, government regulators have become more interested than ever in the significant increase of bank size in the U.S. financial sector. To shed light on the reasons of the bank size increase and its effects on banks, we study the dynamic interactions between size, cost efficiency and returns to scale. Using Fourier flexible form, we show that banks of all but the lar...

Gross-output vs value-added production function. With the Cobb-Douglas form used by Sicsic (1994), increasing returns to scale in the value-added production function are equivalent to increasing returns to scale in the gross-output production function. The choice between value-added and gross-output production function is nevertheless not innocuous because returns to scale estimated from the va...

The extent to which there are aggregate returns to scale at the level of aggregate production has important implications both for the types of shocks generating business cycles and for optimal policy. However, prior attempts to measure the extent of these returns using instrumental variable techniques have yielded quite imprecise estimates. In this article, we show that the production shocks im...

In most countries, basic research is supported through governmental research councils that select, after peer review, the individuals or teams what will receive funding. Unfortunately, the number of grants these research councils can allocate is not infinite, and many researchers (45% in Quebec) are not able to obtain any funding. A small minority of those who do get funded account for the majo...

Cross-efficiency evaluation in data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been developed under the assumption of constant returns to scale (CRS), and no valid attempts have been made to apply the cross-efficiency concept to the variable returns to scale (VRS) condition. This is due to the fact that negative VRS cross-efficiency arises for some decision-making units (DMUs). Since there exist many insta...

In this paper a dynamic model of monopolistic competition with entry and exit has been presented and examined. It is shown that the model displays indeterminacy at modest degrees of increasing returns in cases where the market power in the consumption goods market and in the investment goods market diiers. Furthermore, the model is quite successful in replicating major U.S. business cycle facts...

This paper considers a capital accumulation model that was previously analyzed by Barucci (1998). The specific feature of the model is that revenue is a convex function of the capital stock. We extend Barucci's work by giving a full analytical characterization of the case where a saddle point with a positive capital stock level exists. Furthermore we also analyze the other cases.

This study analyzes the real estate production function and economic depreciation of structures by using data from Japan and the U.S. Real estate exhibits decreasing returns in the U.S. but constant returns in Japan. Land and structures are substitutes in both countries. The property depreciation rate is larger for newer and denser properties located away from the Central Business District (CBD...

We build a quality ladders product cycle model with Northern innovation, Northern imitation, and Southern imitation. Our model generalizes Grossman and Helpman (1991a) to allow Northern imitation. Similar to Segerstrom (1991), successful Northern imitators collude with innovators. Changes in resources and R&D subsidies generate substitution in Northern R&D between innovation and imitation and s...