This paper studies technical efficiency for Swedish employment offices between 2004 and 2010. Efficiency is computed using a semi-dynamic DEA-framework. On the input side we include a measure of input quality and we also control for services that are carried out by private contractors. On the output side we are using both intermediate and final outputs. The motivation for using an intermediate ...

I construct a putty-clay model of directed technical change and use it to analyze the effect of environmental policy on energy use in the United States. The model matches key data patterns that cannot be explained by the standard Cobb-Douglas approach used in climate change economics. In particular, the model captures both the shortand long-run elasticity of substitution between energy and non-...

BACKGROUND Nowadays, restriction on access and optimum use of resources is the main challenge of development in all organizations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the technical efficiency and its factors, influencing hospitals of Tehran. METHODS This research was a descriptive-analytical and retrospective study conducted in 2014-2015. Fifty two hospitals with public, private...

By lowering the transaction costs associated with barter, a payments system greatly facilitates the exchange of goods and services. Although vastly improved over the years, the process of transferring funds remains costly, and the evolution of the payments system has been at least partially determined by efforts to trim these costs further. Increasing the productivity of the payments system imp...

This paper specifies an empirical framework for estimating both technical and allocative efficiency, which is applied to a large panel of European banks over the years 1996 to 2003. Our methodology allows for self-consistent measurement of technical and allocative inefficiency, in an effort to address the issue known in the literature as the Greene problem. The results suggest that, on average,...

Based on a sample of about 600 state enterprises from 1980 to 1994, this paper investigates the productivity performance of SOEs using Data Envelopment Analysis and a Malmquist index. Our empirical results show that the average technical efficiency was low for these firms. Considerable productivity growth was found, but it was accomplished mainly through technical progress rather than through e...

Bootstrap confidence intervals on fixed-effects efficiency estimates in micro panels exhibit low coverage probabilities. We propose an alternative efficiency measure involving the mean of the firm effects. With the same estimated efficiency ranks as the traditional measure, its corresponding bootstrap confidence intervals have better coverage probabilities. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reser...

In this paper an attempt is made to explain the basic concept of efficiency, frontier production function, technical efficiency, deterministic frontier, and stochastic frontier. Efficiency of a firm/industry refers to its performance in the utilization of resources at its disposal and is a relative concept. Technical efficiency of a production function is defined as the maximum quantity of outp...

There has been an ever growing concern to measure efficiency of decision making units (DMUs). Parametric approaches have been the popular methods for measuring the same. Data Envelope Analysis (DEA) is an addition in this domain. This paper is an attempt to understand the concept of DEA approach. DEA is a Linear Programming Problem that provides a means of calculating apparent efficiency levels...

This article investigated how process-based animal welfare indicators (PAI) affected the technical efficiency of German dairy farms. A sample of 115 North-Rhine Westphalian dairy farms was used to estimate their technical efficiency with data envelopment analysis. A censored regression model was then applied to quantify the effects of PAI on technical efficiency. The results indicated that in p...