The Emerging Role of the State In Latin America

The article is designed to (a) provide a theoretical framework for analyzing reforms in the role of the state; (b) assess the Latin America experience in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of core government functions at all levels of government (e.g. human resource management, financial management, tax and customs administration and cross-sectoral service delivery though excluding a detailed treatment of sector-specific areas such as education and health); and (c) examine the experience to date in Latin America of successfully implementing institutional reforms with respect to (i) private sector development (legal reforms to facilitate private transactions as well as provide a regulatory role for government in the face of market failures and their enforcement) and (ii) poverty alleviation particularly with respect to reforms in the social security system as well as the introduction of social investment funds.     

试论国库集中收付制度下政府采购资金支付的会计核算

自2001年"国务院办公厅关于财政国库管理制度改革方案有关问题的通知"下发以来,全面推行国库集中收付制度得到了顺利的开展。在这种全新的财政国库管理制度体系下,如何准确、高效地做好会计核算工作非常重要。本文就行政事业单位政府采购资金实行财政集中支付的会计核算谈一些工作经验。     

政策支持、企业投资与旅游业效率

本文对30家旅游上市公司2009—2018年的数据包络分析效率值进行纠偏修正,并构建政策支持与企业投资对于旅游企业运营效率的影响因素模型,运用Bootstrap截断回归法进行实证分析。研究结果表明,旅游上市公司整体上处于非有效状态;政府补贴与金融支持会对企业运营效率产生抑制作用;企业投资对效率的提升作用是决定性的,远远大于政府补贴和金融支持的负面作用。     

Assessing academic department efficiency at a public university

The assessment of public universities has gained importance because of the demands from such state government bodies as the executive and the legislature. Public universities are increasingly being asked to account for how efficiently they have used diminishing state financial resources. Administrators thus have the responsibility of ensuring that the university's financial, human, and physical resources are allocated to academic departments in a manner that enhances the institution's efficiency. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed for evaluating the efficiency of academic departments at a public university. DEA provides a single measure of efficiency for each academic unit. It also identifies the causes behind the inefficiencies exhibited by poor performing units, as well as the changes that these units need to make in order to improve their efficiencies. Its usefulness as a planning tool is also discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Financial Liberalization on the Efficiency of Financial Institutions: The Case of Jordanian Commercial Banks

SUMMARY

Jordan undertook major financial sector liberalization starting in the early of 1990s. The effect of this reform on the efficiency of the banking sector is evaluated. A non-parametric method of Data Development Analysis (DEA) has been used to arrive at the efficiency scores for a panel data sample covering eight Jordanian commercial banks over the period 1984 to 2001. The findings suggest that liberalization program was followed by an observable increase in efficiency. Another finding of the study is that large banks demonstrated the faster productivity growth during the liberalization. The study has important implications such as guiding the government policy regarding deregulation and liberalization.     

Strategic partnerships and relationship marketing in healthcare

Despite repeated government policies to introduce market-orientation and customer-focus into the UK National Health Service, there is still much anecdotal evidence of unsuccessful policy implementation. In this article we investigate the attitudes of healthcare managers to one recent policy initiative based on partnership working that is intended to provide integrated and customer-focused service to patients. While acknowledging the tensions and dilemmas inherent in private sector marketing concepts, we argue that relationship marketing has considerable potential in public healthcare contexts, based on its advocacy of building relationships between providers and customers and between providers and their suppliers. Using the framework of relationship marketing we identify healthcare managers' concerns about the motives, effects and benefits of implementing partnership arrangements in two regions of the NHS. Through a longitudinal research design our findings suggest that while respondents' attitudes to partnership working and customer focus had become more positive after two years of policy implementation, they remain centred on the service process rather than the customers it serves. We discuss what still needs to be done to transform public healthcare from what is still a predominantly supplier and product-driven service to one that is truly relationship orientated.     

Burglar and Fire Alarms

A bstract . The alarm industry has been estimated at 8-11 billion dollars in 1993. There are approximately 17 million alarms installed nationwide. The annual growth of installations has been 8 percent over the last five years. At the same time, the number of false activations per system is 1.1 to 1.4 per year, with 20 to 30 percent of police manpower devoted to false activations. 94-98 percent of all activations are false. Indeed, false activations pose a severe problem for local police departments which respond with stiff fines for false activations and reduced response to alarm activations in general which are not high risk such as jewelry stores, banks or government facilities. This paper identifies the social benefits and costs which result from burglar and fire alarms in a given community. Included benefits are reduced burglary, assault , and rape incidents as well as fewer incidents of fire which are detected early and controlled. Costs include police response to alarms, costs of installation and monthly monitoring fees. The-results demonstrate that, indeed, burglar and fire alarms provide a net social benefit to the locality. The paper suggests that charges for false alarms should be allocated directly to the police which service them. Such users' fee method will improve resource allocation, and prevent a situation where alarms become useless.     

Minority owned banks and efficiency revisited

U.S. Government support for minority owned banks (MOBs) dates to the late 1960s. Evidence through the early 1990s suggested these banks are relatively inefficient. This study updates that research, using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and panel data from 2003 to 2014 on minority owned banks and other banks. It is, as far as we know, the first such study to exclude outliers in SFA estimation, while recovering the outliers for efficiency estimation. Initial results identify a disruption in cost efficiency during 2008, with statistically distinct regimes for 2003–2007 and 2009–2014. Including recovered observations alters the patterns of MOB efficiency in significant ways, and leads us to conclude that current MOB inefficiency is mainly limited to Asian American owned and Multi-racial and minority serving banks. Tests for the effects of government deposits under a U.S. Treasury program suggest these did not adversely effect efficiency among covered MOBs, but may have improved survival rates for those MOBs subsequent to the financial collapse.     

Horizontal collaboration in logistics: decision framework and typology

Logistics service providers become increasingly aware of the need to collaborate to face challenges such as globalization and the heightened expectations of customers. This paper focuses on horizontal cooperation between logistics service providers in road transportation and introduces two novel conceptual models. Firstly, a decision framework for the development and management of horizontal logistics alliances is presented. This framework provides support to logistics service providers considering horizontal collaboration and allows for the analysis of the decision process underlying horizontal logistics alliances. The cyclical framework consists of five stages and attributes a central position to continuous evaluation. Secondly, an easy-to-use typology is proposed which defines six horizontal collaboration types based on their activity scope and degree of structural intertwinement. The typology provides logistics service providers with insights in the various horizontal collaboration types, including some key management questions. Both models are validated by knowledgeable practitioners and are applied to two real-life case studies.     

Social and financial efficiency of Islamic microfinance institutions: A Data Envelopment Analysis application

Microfinance has been developed as alternative solution for global poverty alleviation effort in the last 30 years. Microfinance institution (MFI) has unique characteristic wherein they face double bottom line objectives of outreach to the poor and financial sustainability. This study proposes a two-stage analysis to measure Islamic Microfinance institutions (IMFIs) performance by comparing them to conventional MFIs. First, we develop a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) framework to measure MFIs' efficiency in its double bottom line objectives, i.e. in terms of social and financial efficiency. In the second stage non-parametric tests are used to compare the performance and identify factors that contribute to the efficiency of IMFIs and MFIs.     

Assessing the technical efficiency of public procurements in the bus transportation sector in the Czech Republic

This article examines public procurements in the regional bus transportation sector. The data were collected exclusively for this research from regional offices in the Czech Republic. This study does not propose to estimate the cost function for bus operators, as do most efficiency studies. Rather, it’ focuses on identifying the factors that influence the final price offered by participants in the tender. Knowing these factors will help to properly set the tender conditions, which can further help to improve how well the bus operator functions, and to reduce public subsidies. The study also aims to estimate the technical efficiency rate by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and find the implications of efficiency scoring for tender conditions. This statistic also enables contract owners to compare the cost differences between individual bus service providers and examine companies that operate at the efficiency frontier.     

中国地方政府消费支出效率及其区域差距演化

本文利用两阶段研究框架分析分税制改革以来(1994～2006年)中国各省级政府消费支出的效率、区域差距演化及其影响因素.第一阶段,运用DEA非参数方法,以地区生产总值为产出,核算31个省(市、区)政府消费支出的效率得分,并描述支出效率的区域差距演化;第二阶段,利用面板数据受限Tobit模型,以各省(市、区)效率得分为因变量,分析政府消费支出效率区域差距演化的影响因素.结果表明,东部地区的政府消费支出效率显著强于中部和西部地区;区域间差距自分税制改革以来逐年缩小,尤其是东部和中部地区的效率差异在2006年前后已基本消失.区域间政府消费支出效率之所以出现了明显的趋同,既得益于中西部地方政府行政效率的提高,也得益于人力资本在区域间分布日趋平衡.     

江苏省科技金融信息服务平台运行模式的思考

科技金融信息服务平台是解决中小企业与金融机构之问信息不对称,提高融资效率的有效途径,良好的运行架构可以更好地为企业和金融机构服务。文章比较分析了3种具有典型代表意义的综合性融资服务平台理论模式及其运行实践,介绍了江苏省科技金融信息服务平台的基本架构,在此基础上提出江苏省科技金融信息服务平台的运行模式。     

Efficiency and ownership in Swedish electricity retail distribution

This article examines the efficiency of electricity retail distributors in Sweden in a multiple output multiple input framework. Productive efficiency measures are calculated by use of different versions of the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. Comparisons are made between different types of ownership and between different types of service areas.The study indicates a rather low level of technical efficiency, a high level of scale efficiency in urban service areas, but a fairly low level of scale efficiency in rural areas. The results show no significant differences in efficiency between different types of ownership or economic organization.Paper presented at ORSA/TIMS joint national meeting, Productivity and Global Competition, Philadelphia, October 29–31, 1990.     

Risk allocation in service triads – The case of Dutch and Finnish home care procurement

We compare how Finland and the Netherlands organize home care services, both in legislation and in procurement practices, from a service triad risk perspective. We find Finnish public bodies rely to a great extent on inhouse provision and hybrid outsourcing. Dutch public bodies rely completely on outsourcing, using framework agreements with many care providers in parallel. Incentives used in contracts affect financial and service quality risks assumed by buyers, suppliers, and end-customers in the triad. This research improves our understanding of risk allocation among the actors in the service triad based on buyer decisions on outsourcing and supply market conditions. The risk profiles for all three actors in the home care service triad are affected by the manner in which public bodies outsource home care services: the purchasing practices. The delivery method (whether public and private or all private) and the number of providers impact the information position of the municipality versus the care provider in the triad.     

Performance of microfinance institutions in Europe—Does social capital matter?

This paper investigates performance drivers of microfinance suppliers in Europe. As such suppliers, in contrast to advanced microfinance suppliers in developing economies, typically focus on uncollateralized microcredit services to individuals at the margins of society and of labor markets, we draw on the theory of social capital and empirically investigate the role that social capital may play in the overall performance of European microfinance suppliers. We build a unique, unbalanced panel data set of 302 microfinance service providers in Europe covering the years 2008–2015, and measure their performance in terms of credit risk, financial and social performance, and efficiency. Pursuing an econometric approach, we test a series of hypotheses using various measures of conditions conducive to building social capital on both the institutional and the country level, such as the client base of a microfinance supplier and the level of cultural fractionalization in a society. Our findings confirm that a higher intensity of social capital is positively associated with all areas of the performance of microfinance suppliers in Europe. Our conclusions could help in the design and launch of microfinance institutions in those European countries in which microfinance markets are developed not at all or only to a very limited extent. Our paper thus contributes to the nascent literature on microfinance in developed economies by applying and extending the theoretical framework and empirical models on social capital and microfinance that were originally elaborated for developing economies.     

Research efficiency analysis of China's university faculty members: A modified meta-frontier DEA approach

Traditionally, data envelopment analysis (DEA) requires all decision-making units (DMUs) to have similar characteristics and experiences within the same external conditions. In many cases, this assumption fails to hold, and thus, difficulties will be encountered to some extent when measuring efficiency with a standard DEA model. Ideally, the performance of DMUs with different characteristics could be examined using the DEA meta-frontier framework. However, some of these DMUs are mixed-type DMUs that may affiliate with more than one group. Furthermore, the total number of observations of these mixed-type DMUs is limited. This is one of the common problems when studies focus on faculty research performance in higher education institutions. In general, a faculty member is affiliated with a certain department, and if the departmental assessment policy is not suitable for faculty members who are involved in interdisciplinary research, their performance could be underestimated. Therefore, the proposed model is an extension of the DEA meta-frontier framework that can assess the performance of mixed-type DMUs by constructing the reference set without the same type of DMUs. In this paper, the scientific research efficiency of faculty members at the Inner Mongolia University is used as an example to provide a better understanding of the proposed model. The proposed model is intended to provide a fair and balanced performance assessment method that reflects actual performance, especially for mixed-type DMUs.     

Government secondary school finances in New South Wales: accounting for students’ prior achievements in a two-stage DEA at the school level

This study measures the efficiency of government secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia, using a two-stage semi-parametric production frontier approach to schooling. In contrast to previous research comparing school performance with two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA), we control for prior academic achievement of students by using a rich data set from 2008 to 2010. We employ detailed financial data for deriving the envelope for the efficient production frontier of the schools. Using Simar and Wilson’s (J Econ 136:31-64, 2007, J Prod Anal 36:205-218, 2011a) double bootstrap procedure for two-stage DEA, the study finds that schools with lower total student numbers, a higher average of years of service of teachers, a higher ratio of special education students that attracts extra government funding, and girls only do better than other schools. On the other hand, a negative influence comes from a school’s location in provincial and outer metropolitan areas. An important result is that the socio-economic background of students attending a school has no significant effect on their academic performance, whereas higher prior academic achievements have a positive and statistically significant impact on student achievement. These results are relevant to decision makers for the school sector, in particular for funding criteria contained in the Gonski (Review of funding for schooling - Final report (December). Canberra: Commonwealth Government of Australia, 2011) review report.     

The operating efficiency of financial holding and nonfinancial holding banks—Epsilou‐based measure metafrontier data envelopment analysis model

Previous bank efficiency studies assumed that the same efficient frontier system exists in different types of banks, but the conventional radial data envelopment analysis (DEA) model slacks are not counted in efficiency scores, and nonradial DEA models do not consider radial features. This paper develops an Epsilou‐based measure meta‐DEA approach for measuring the efficiencies and technology gaps of different bank types. The results are as the follows: The average efficiency and technology gaps of nonfinancial holding banks are better than those of financial holding banks. The nonfinancial holding banks are more efficient than financial holding banks in investment and other income.