The Changing Pattern of Productive Efficiency in the Chinese Iron and Steel Industry

This study aims to explain the changing pattern of productive efficiency of the Chinese iron and steel industry during the 1980s. By decomposing productive inefficiency into technical, allocative and scale inefficiencies, the effect of market-oriented reform measures on inefficient resource utilization is empirically tested. A consistent improvement is found in technical efficiency from different sized firms. An improvement in allocative efficiency of investment in upgrading and innovation from different sized firms is also found. Allocative efficiency of working capital was found to have hardly improved which could be largely due to distorted factor markets. Different sized firms exhibited scale inefficiency which could be due to segmented local production and the impact of a two-tier price system on the distribution of production share among firms.     

Gender Inequalities and Economic Efficiency: New Evidence from Cassava‐based Farm Holdings in Rural South‐western Nigeria

Abstract: It is a widely accepted fact that persistent inequality between men and women constrains a society's productivity and ultimately slows its rate of economic growth. The economy pays for this inequality in reduced labour productivity today and diminished national output tomorrow. Motivated by this, the study aim is to assess the possibilities of enhancing productivity gains by improving the efficiency of small‐scale agriculture through gender‐responsive intra‐household allocation of resources in south‐western Nigeria. The study adopts a stochastic parametric decomposition method which yields efficiency measures that are not distorted by statistical noise to estimate the efficiency level of resource allocation by small‐scale cassava producers. The results indicate that average overall productive efficiency in the sample was 75.78 per cent, implying that small‐scale cassava farmers in the sample could reduce total variable cost by 24.22 per cent if they reduce labour, fertilizer, land and capital applications to levels observed in the changing input mix (technical efficiency) and then obtain optimal input mix for the given input prices and technology (allocative efficiency). The average technical efficiency and allocative efficiency indexes for the sample were 82.2 per cent and 92.2 per cent respectively. Also, evidence from empirical analysis of data from the male respondents showed that the average economic, technical and allocative efficiency indexes were 88.06 per cent, 89.34 per cent and 78.67 per cent respectively while the same computed for the female sample were 94.9 per cent, 74.85 per cent and 71.03 per cent respectively. Labour was the most limiting factor in cassava production suggesting that the technologies that enhance the productivity of labour are likely to achieve significant positive effects on cassava production. The paper shares the notion that producers' control over the means of production and impact of development are related and has influence on the economic efficiency and growth of society. Again, technical inefficiency constituted a more serious problem than allocative inefficiency, thus most cost savings will accrue to improvement in technical efficiency.     

Inefficiencies in the Japanese National Health Insurance system: A stochastic frontier approach

In this study, I examine the cost inefficiency and production inefficiency of municipal insurers operating under the Japanese National Health Insurance system. I employ insurer-level panel data for 2005 and 2010 and adopt stochastic frontier cost and production models to overcome analytical problems encountered in previous studies. The cost frontier estimates indicate that adverse effects on efficiency are associated with aging of the insured population, soft budget constraints due to government subsidies, insurer contributions to the elder care systems, and an increase in care provider densities. A positive effect on efficiency is associated with an expansion in insurer scale. The production frontier estimates suggest that cost inefficiencies decreased by roughly 15 percent between 2005 and 2010. The correlation between cost inefficiency and technical inefficiency is not particularly strong, whereas the correlation between cost inefficiency and allocative inefficiency is strong and positive.     

The Focus Efficiency of U.S. Hospitals

Hospital productivity has been a research topic for over two decades. Whereas much has been learned regarding cost, technical, scale, and allocative efficiency as well as the impact that weakly disposable inputs/outputs have on hospital behavior, we expand on this research by examining size and service offering, or focus, efficiency at the metropolitan area level for US hospitals. By using an extension of the Free Coordination Hull (FCH), we are able to determine whether hospitals in our sample could become more efficient if they provided more services (reduce inefficiency due to too narrow a focus) or fewer services (reduce inefficiency due to too broad a focus). Our results suggest that findings vary among the hospital markets. This approach could be used by policy makers and managers in order to reduce costs by sharing services, reducing services in hospitals, or expanding services in hospitals. Findings from a study such as this should aid reform programs by providing more information on the sources of hospital inefficiency.     

Expense Preference Behavior and Contract-Management: Evidence from U.S. Hospitals

This paper reports on a study of expense preference behavior in a conditional sample of hospitals (before and after adoption of contract-management arrangements) using an extension of Mester's (1989) test. To identify expense preference parameters, input demand equations are considered in addition to the cost function and are estimated jointly with the cost function as a system of nonlinear equations. Based on this test, contract managers do not appear to be cost minimizers, although they tend to exhibit lower expense preference behavior than salaried managers. The importance of our results, however, goes beyond a single industry because we have shown that estimates of expense preference depend critically upon the particular input demand being studied. Studies that hitherto have relied on single input demand equations or on the cost function alone may have to be reinterpreted in this light.     

Technical Efficiency Measures and Its Determinants for Olive Producing Farms in Tunisia: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Abstract: This paper investigates farm level technical efficiency of production and its determinants in a sample of 178 olive producing farms in Tunisia using a stochastic frontier production function approach applied to cross‐section data. Results indicate that technical efficiency of production in the sample of olive producing farms investigated ranges from a minimum of 58.5 per cent to a maximum of 95.5 per cent with an average technical efficiency estimate of 82 per cent. This suggests that olive producers may increase their production by as much as 18 per cent through more efficient use of production inputs. Further, the estimated coefficients in the technical inefficiency model indicate the positive effect on technical efficiency of the share of productive trees, the share of skilled labour and agricultural training. However, a negative relationship between technical efficiency and fruit trees is found.     

Profit versus Cost Frontier Estimation of Price and Technical Inefficiency: A Parametric Approach with Panel Data

We develop two panel data models, based on the assumption of shadow-profit maximization, to obtain firm-specific parametric estimates of allocative, scale, and technical inefficiency. One is a restricted shadow-profit system with additional equations for quasi-fixed inputs that allow testing for the efficiency of their utilization. The other is a shadow-cost system augmented with an equation to capture deviations from marginal-cost pricing. We show that with the translog functional form, the shadow-profit system may encounter computational difficulties that the shadow-cost system avoids. An application of the shadow-cost system to the U.S. airline industry is provided.     

Determinants of Factor Misallocation in Agricultural Production and Implications for Agricultural Supply‐side Reform in China

Allocative inefficiency in agriculture is an issue puzzling researchers and policy‐makers in China. Based on household data from the China Family Panel Studies of 2012, the present paper quantifies the potential distortions in China's agricultural production and examines their underlying determinants across regions. The results reveal that there are different levels of distortions across regions. The Middle region is facing the greatest distortion. Increases in machinery input, the proportion of non‐farm income and effective labor input will reduce distortions. Household saving, farmland rent and farmland size are significantly positively related to distortions. There is a complementary effect between labor and farmland in alleviating production inefficiency, but substitution effects exist between capital and farmland and also capital and labor. The increase in farmland size will aggravate the impact of capital on distortions. Given the constraint of super small‐scale farmland, facilitating land transfer is a necessary precondition for improving allocative efficiency.     

Assessing aggregate reallocation effects with heterogeneous inputs,and evidence across countries

Theoretically, reallocating an input from a firm where the input has low marginal product to a firm where the input has high marginal product would increase aggregate productivity without any underlying change in technology. This paper argues that measuring these reallocation effects requires accounting for detailed input types because, for example, differences in wages across producers often reflect the skill mix of workers, not allocative inefficiency. The paper develops an approach to measuring reallocation that accounts for worker skill and the composition of capital assets, thus focuses on the set of countries for which this information is available. The results show once input heterogeneity is accounted for, the effects of reallocation on aggregate productivity were small on average, but sizable in a subset of countries. Panel regressions indicate that reallocation effects are related to population distribution and government effectiveness.     

中国银行业X效率实证研究

本文考察了1997-2002年间中国14家商业银行技术效率、配置效率和X效率的变化情况。其中DEA用以计算各银行的效率得分情况，Bootstrap回归分析用以确定银行效率的影响因素。研究表明，中国银行业近年来效率显著改善，国有商业银行的效率低于股份制银行。低效率的原因主要归咎于配置低效率和规模低效率，这意味着金融管制的进一步放松和国有银行继续精简机构是必要的。回归分析显示单一国有产权对三种类型的效率都有显著的负向影响，因此可以期待正在进行的国有银行股份制改造取得良好的效果。     

Allocative Efficiency of Agrifood Traders: Shrimp Traders in Indonesia

Shrimp is one of Indonesia's most important agricultural export commodities, with an annual export value exceeding $1 billion. If this high-value sector is to remain competitive and continue to grow, rural traders must be able to efficiently allocate scarce labour and factor inputs to trade shrimp. This study tests for factors leading to allocative inefficiency in the shrimp trade, by estimating a stochastic cost frontier on the basis of data from a survey of 200 shrimp traders in Central Java and South Sulawesi. Our results show that larger firms have a distinct cost advantage in trade and, owing in part to greater access to factor markets, are more efficient in allocating factors. Small firms can improve their allocative efficiency and become more competitive by specialising in trading one shrimp variety and by using output contracts to mitigate risk in the output market.     

Allocative inefficiency and measures of market power

Conclusion This paper has shown that under conditions of both linear and constant price elasticity demand functions, market power as measured by the Lerner index and profit rates may easily move in the opposite direction of the welfare losses from monopoly. This means that changes in monopoly power, as measured by either Lerner indexes or profit rates, are not adequate to predict qualitative changes in allocative inefficiency.More (less) market power does not necessarily imply more (less) allocative inefficiency whether one is comparing different industries at a point in time or a given industry at different points in time. For these reasons, interpretation of the relation between market power as measured by the Lerner index or profit rates and market performance must proceed with caution.     

A Generalized Distance Function and the Analysis of Production Efficiency

A generalization of Shephard's distance functions is proposed, extending the usefulness of distance functions in economic analysis. Applications to efficiency measurements and productivity analysis are presented. New indexes of productivity and technical, allocative, and scale efficiency are proposed and analyzed. Interpretation of these indexes in terms of ray-average cost, ray-average revenue, and cost-to-revenue ratio is discussed.     

Some aspects of employment in Indian agriculture

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of structural differences (due to size of holding) on employment in Indian agriculture. Translog cost function is applied, and restrictions are tested using a likelihood ratio test. For small- and medium-size farms, joint estimation of a non-homothetic cost function with cost share equations is conducted, and Allen elasticities of substitution and price elasticities of demand for eight different inputs are derived. Inputs are classified as substitutes and complements using Slutsky-Hicks-Allen-Schultz definition. Each source of labor against hired labor is a substitute for small farms (0–5 hectares). Some policy analysis of rural employment and a fertilizer subsidy scheme is presented using price elasticities of demand for small and medium farms.     

Flexibility in input substitution: A case study of South African agriculture

Differences in elasticities of substitution between agricultural inputs over time in South African agricultural production were measured. The translog functional specification was used for empirical estimation of factor share equations derived from cost data. This was done by using duality that exists between the production function and the cost function along the expansion path. South African agriculture exhibits less flexibility in dealing with input price variation, especially machinery, than US agriculture. The relative rigidity of the South African agricultural production process may at least partially be attributed to present competitive structures, and has important implications for development policy, especially with regard to the success obtained with policy measures favouring relative input subsidisation over the short term.     

Proxy variable estimation of productivity and efficiency

We model productivity and inefficiency jointly, instead of modeling and estimating either only productivity or only inefficiency with many variable and quasi-fixed inputs. In the first model, we use a multi-step procedure. We use the proxy variable method based on the first-order condition (FOC) of expected profit maximization with respect to the single variable input to take care of the endogeneity problem arising from both productivity and inefficiency. To separate mean inefficiency from mean productivity we assume them nonparametric functions of different sets of exogenous variables. In the second model, we consider a novel system consisting of the production function and the FOCs of expected profit maximization for the multiple variable inputs. Distributional assumptions are made on all the random errors associated with the production function, the FOCs, productivity, and inefficiency functions in the second model. We use the Colombian food manufacturing data as an application of our model.     

Technical Inefficiency and Production Risk in Rice Farming: Evidence from Central Luzon Philippines*

There have been many previous studies of technical inefficiency in rice production in the Philippines, but none has focused simultaneously on production risk and technical inefficiency at the farm level. Rice production is inherently risky because of the heterogeneous production environment. In this study, we analyze technical inefficiency in a rainfed lowland rice environment in Central Luzon using a stochastic frontier production function with a heteroskedastic error structure. An 8‐year panel dataset collected from 46 rainfed rice farmers was used to estimate flexible functional specifications. Over the whole period, the average technical efficiency was found to be 79 percent. Results indicate that there is a high degree of variability in technical efficiency estimates, which can be attributed to the instability of farming conditions in the rainfed lowland environment. Mean output was signifificantly influenced by area planted to rice, labor and the amount of fertilizer used. Consequently, these inputs were found to be risk‐increasing, whereas herbicide was found to be a risk‐reducing input.     

Water Externalities: Tragedy of the Common Canal

Laboratory experiments are used to investigate alternative solutions to the allocation problem of a common‐pool resource with unidirectional flow. Focus is on the comparative economic efficiency of nonbinding communications, bilateral “Coasian” bargaining, allocation by auction, and allocation by exogenous usage fee. All solutions improve allocative efficiency, but communication and bilateral bargaining are not generally as effective as market allocations. An exogenously imposed optimal fee results in the greatest allocative efficiency, closely followed by an auction allocation that determines the usage fee endogenously.     

Nonparametric Evaluation of Economies of Scope in the Context of Technical Efficiency: The Case of Rice and Vegetable Farms in Korea

This paper provides a nonparametric evaluation of economies of scope in the context of technical efficiency allowing for non‐convexity, with an application to Korean rice and vegetable farms. Relying on non‐parametric‐free disposal hull and data envelopment analysis approaches and input–output data for rice and vegetable farms from the Korea Farm Household Economy Survey data collected in 2007, this article examines technical inefficiency and its decomposition under non‐convexity and convexity. Empirical measures of technical inefficiency and its decomposition results are provided, with a focus on a component of technical inefficiency associated with economies of scope (i.e. diversification benefits) under non‐convexity in production technology. The decomposition measures of technical inefficiency include pure technical inefficiency, size inefficiency and diversification inefficiency. The results provide empirical evidence supporting size‐dependent diversification strategies, where benefits of diversification are larger for small farms on average compared to those of large farms.     

Environmental growth convergence among Chinese regions

Since the end of the 20th century, numerous studies have analyzed Chinese economic development to gauge whether China's rapid growth is sustainable. Most of these studies focused on assessing total factor productivity (TFP) in Chinese mainland provinces but suffered from methodological weaknesses by assuming constant returns to scale (CRS) for the production frontier and/or incorrectly modeling variables returns to scale (VRS) technology taking into account bad output such as carbon dioxide emissions. Our paper offers a right non-parametric programming framework based on weak disposability and VRS assumptions to estimate environmental growth convergence among Chinese regions characterized by size heterogeneity. We explicitly separate regional efficiency gaps into two components: The first studies the technical catching-up process on each one (technical effect), and the second reveals convergence or divergence in the combinations of input and output among regions (structural effect). Moreover, carbon shadow price levels for provinces can be derived through the dual version of our activity analysis framework. Our empirical work focuses on 30 Chinese regions from 1997 to 2010. The results emphasize that environmental growth convergence among regions has mainly relied on the structural effect. We find that the structural effect largely depends on the pollution cost convergence and not on the evolution of the relative prices of capital or labor. The carbon shadow price is increasing at an annual rate of 2.5% and was evaluated around 864 yuan per ton in 2010 in China while regional estimates show significant disparities at the beginning of the period.