Public Sector Capital and the Production Efficiency of U.S. Regional Manufacturing Industries

This paper applies a stochastic frontier production model with time-varying technical efficiency to investigate the relationship between public capital and technical efficiency. It is based on the proposition that public capital has an effect on actual output by enhancing technical efficiency, thereby reducing the gap between maximum potential output and actual output. Empirical results using panel data from U.S. state manufacturing industries during 1969–86 show that technical efficiencies varied substantially, both between states and between years; variations in technical efficiency are significantly explained by variations in public-sector capital.
JEL Classification Numbers: O20, H54, C23.     

Intelligent Order Matching Systems for Commodity Markets

Automatic order matching systems have emerged as an electronic alternative to traditional markets. In current automatic order matching systems, price and quantity are the only product dimensions used for the order matching. However, a single-commodity market is made up of many heterogeneous goods which are close to each other but different in qualities and delivery conditions. Price and quantity are important but represent only parts of product attributes that commodity traders want to take into account. This study aims to extend current automatic order matching systems by diversifying product dimensions. An intelligent order matching system not only maximizes the total transaction volume based on the price and quantity but also satisfies traders' qualitative preferences over attributes other than price and quantity. The intelligent order matching mechanism combines an economic model with a preference model to incorporate both quantitative and qualitative utility of market participants. Constraint logic programming is investigated as a new information technology to structure and implement the intelligent order matching system.     

An appreciation of our referees

Editorial

An appreciation of our referees     

Performance Measurement in Government Service Provision: The Case of Police Services in New South Wales

The NSW Government is implementing a financial framework which is designed to encourage government service providers to become more efficient and effective. NSW Treasury is using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure the efficiency of major government service providers, such as police, courts and hospitals. This paper outlines the progress in implementing the new financial framework and illustrates the way NSW Treasury will use DEA to help improve the efficiency of government service providers by describing an analysis of the NSW Police Service. The results suggest that NSW police patrols (local police districts) could, on average, reduce input usage by 13.5 percent through better management, and by 6 percent if the patrols could be restructured to achieve the optimal scale. Results also indicate that differences in operating environments, such as location and socioeconomic factors, do not have a significant influence upon the efficiency of police patrols.     

Unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies

This research examines whether investments in advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) such as flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), robotics, etc., are more likely to lead to improved performance if they are supported by improvements in the manufacturing infrastructure of the company. This question is evaluated using data gathered from 202 manufacturing plants chosen from industries generally considered to have relatively high investments in technology.Multiple item scales are developed and adapted from sources in the literature to measure investments in technology, infrastructure, and the performance of the plant. Evidence supporting the reliability and validity of these scales is provided. Hierarchical regression is used to analyze the relationship between technology, infrastructure, and performance. The results suggest that there is an important interaction between the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and investments in infrastructure. Firms that invest in both AMTs and infrastructure perform better than firms which only invest in one or the other. Separate analyses on sub-samples of firms with the highest and lowest investments in AMTs show that infrastructural investments have a stronger relationship with performance in the high investment group. Thus, the data indicate that infrastructural investments provide a key to unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies.     

Identification and estimation of econometric models with group interactions,contextual factors and fixed effects

This paper considers identification and estimation of structural interaction effects in a social interaction model. The model allows unobservables in the group structure, which may be correlated with included regressors. We show that both the endogenous and exogenous interaction effects can be identified if there are sufficient variations in group sizes. We consider the estimation of the model by the conditional maximum likelihood and instrumental variables methods. For the case with large group sizes, the possible identification can be weak in the sense that the estimates converge in distribution at low rates.     

Perspectives on demarketing during the energy crisis

This article has attempted to outline the antecedent conditions which produced a gasoline shortage in the United States and describe the demarketing strategies employed by Shell and Exxon. The effectiveness of their respective strategies and the oil industry, in general, in stimulating de-consumption was also examined.