Decomposing hospital productivity changes, 1985–1988: A nonparametric Malmquist approach

Annual data on U.S. hospitals from 1985–1988 are evaluated by ownership type—profit, nonprofit, state and local government, and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—for changes in hospital productivity over time. Distance functions are used to measure Malmquist indices of productivity change, which are then decomposed into indices of efficiency change and technology change. In contrast to previous studies using this approach, we allow for variable returns to scale and use both input and output orientations. We find that changes in technology dominate changes in inefficiency in determining changes in productivity.     

基于DEA的北京市高技术产业R＆D效率比较分析

本文运用DEA模型全面测算了北京市高技术产业1996—2010年间R＆D的生产前沿面效率、综合技术效率、纯技术效率以及规模效率,对规模收益变化和投入产出的冗余与不足进行了具体分析,并针对北京市政府如何提高高技术产业的R＆D效率提出了建议。     

(Non-)Existence of Equilibria in Multicommunity Models

This paper reconsiders equilibrium existence in models with migration and voting over local public goods. We show that under some straightforward assumptions on preferences and income distributions, the basic structure of multicommunity models (i.e., perfect mobility, majority rule, single crossing property) implies that no equilibrium with jurisdictions conducting different policies can exist. Stratification equilibria—with sorting of the population according to income classes—are therefore not as natural as is sometimes suggested. Mechanisms that can serve to support stratification (i.e., tight housing markets, returns to scale in the provision of publicly consumed goods) are discussed.     

Investor sentiment and country exchange traded funds: Does economic freedom matter?

Using unbalanced panel data of 27 iShares MSCI country-specific exchange traded funds (ETFs) over the period 1996–2014, this paper applies quantile regression to examine the impacts of global, foreign, and U.S. investor sentiments on the returns of the ETFs traded in the U.S. markets. We further investigate whether a country’s economic freedom affects the relationship between investor sentiments and ETF returns. We find that ETF returns are strongly determined by investor sentiments and the ETF expense ratio. The quantile regression approach reveals that high-return ETFs are positively sensitive to changes in global sentiment (measured by market turnover, VIX, U.S. federal funds rate), foreign sentiment (measured by current account balance, inflation, market turnover, public debt), U.S. sentiment, currency exchange ratio, and expense ratio, while negatively influenced by economic freedom and Asian proxy. The effects of VIX and foreign inflation are a reversal; that is, returns from lower (higher) quantiles have a negative (positive) relation with VIX and foreign inflation. Not all components of economic freedom affect returns equally.     

基于绿色增长的我国各地区工业企业技术创新效率研究

本文基于绿色增长对技术创新的方向进行约束,将资源生产率和环境负荷视作产出,运用四阶段DEA模型对我国2009年各省份工业企业技术创新效率进行实证研究。结果表明:环境因素有利于各省份工业企业技术创新效率的提高;剔除环境因素影响后全国平均技术创新效率有所提高,纯技术创新效率上升,而规模效率下降;东部地区的平均纯技术创新效率最高,而中西部地区平均纯技术创新效率偏低,并且低于平均规模效率;经济越发达的省份越容易出现规模报酬递减现象,而经济欠发达的省份则呈现规模报酬递增现象。     

Infrastructure and productivity: An extension to private infrastructure and it productivity

This paper incorporates both public and private infrastructure within the framework of a nonlinear production function. The theoretical model specifies a technological growth rate as a nonlinear function of government infrastructure and private infrastructure generated by the information sector of the economy—cable, wireless stations, satellites, internet facilities, broadcasting, etc. The time trend is included to capture the effect of all other variables. The empirical estimates generated by the model imply increasing returns to scale for the US economy in the last few years. The evaluation of the growth accounting equation implies that information technology was the largest contributing component to growth during the expansion of the 1990s.     

Rate of return analysis and economies of scale in higher education

This paper presents the results of a study of the rate of return on undergraduate education at the University of Bradford, United Kingdom, and compares them with returns calculated independently for the U.K. university system as a whole. Rates of return are measured for separate undergraduate courses and considerable variation is shown, courses in science and technology generally having lower return because of their higher costs. Private returns to the individual graduate are shown to be substantially greater than those to society as a whole. The government's return, in the form of increased tax receipts is shown to be positive. Further results demonstrate increasing marginal rates of return to society as a result of the economies of scale associated with the expansion of enrolment planned for the decade 1971–1981. The problems involved in projecting rates of return into the future are considered.The paper is directed to teachers and students of the economics of education.     

A multiproduct Symmetric Generalized McFadden cost function

This paper introduces a flexible multiproduct cost function that permits zero values of one or more of the outputs and can impose restrictions quite easily, if not automatically satisfied, to ensure global concavity property. It satisfies linear homogeneity (in prices) property and is flexible in the output space. Thus the function is ideal for estimating, for example, economies of scope, cost complementarity, product-specific returns to scale, etc., without worrying about zero values of output(s) and extrapolations to points far from the point of approximation. As an empirical application, we use panel data (1978–1985) on 12 Finnish foundry plants to estimate technical progress, overall returns to scale, product-specific returns to scale and economies of scope.     

Calculation of scale elasticities in DEA models: direct and indirect approaches

The qualitative characterisation of returns to scale in DEA has been a research issue the last decade. However, quantitative information provides the ultimate information. This paper presents two ways of obtaining numerical values of scale elasticity by an indirect approach using efficiency scores and dual variables for radial projections of inefficient points to the frontier, and a direct approach that is more general and powerful and directly evaluates numerically scale elasticity at any point on the DEA surface along intersections with planes. The direct and indirect approaches are compared using real data and a very high correspondence is found.     

Scale Economies and Efficiency in U.S. Agriculture: Are Traditional Farms History?

The structural transformation of agriculture in recent decades has raised serious concerns about the future of the family farm. This study examines the economic performance of U.S. farms, to explore the potential of smaller farms to compete with larger entities, and ultimately to survive in this rapidly changing environment. We use deterministic and stochastic frontier methods and survey data to measure and evaluate factors underlying scale economies (SEC) and efficiency (SEF) of corn-belt farms for 1996–2001. Our results suggest that family farms are both scale and technically inefficient. Potential for the exploitation of significant scale and scope economies, and some greater technical efficiency, seem to be driving trends toward increased farm size and dwindling competitiveness of the small family farm.     

Productive Efficiency of the Swine Industry in Hawaii: Stochastic Frontier vs. Data Envelopment Analysis

Improving productive efficiency is an increasingly important determinant of the future of the swine industry in Hawaii. This paper examines the productive efficiency of a sample of swine producers in Hawaii by estimating a stochastic frontier production function and the constant returns to scale (CRS) and variable returns to scale (VRS) output-oriented DEA models. The technical efficiency estimates obtained from the two frontier techniques are compared. The scale properties are also examined under the two approaches. The industry's potential for increasing production through improved efficiency is also discussed.     

Short-term institutions’ information advantage and overvaluation

Prior literature has documented that institutions which trade more frequently are better able to forecast future returns and have an informational advantage. This study examines a proximate explanation for the differences in performance based on institutions’ investment horizon – short-term institutions are better informed because they are better able to identify overvalued stocks that are short-sale constrained and overvalued in the context of Miller’s (1977) overvaluation hypothesis. Analysis is conducted on 6330 unique firms from 1996 to 2014 using the calendar-time portfolio approach where abnormal returns are estimated from the Fama-French-Carhart four-factor regression model. The results provide evidence that stocks which are extremely overvalued due to short-sale constraints have the greatest decline in short-term institutional ownership, consistent with the notion that short-term institutions are able to correctly assess the components for stock overvaluation.     

Efficiency in Islamic and conventional banking: an international comparison

The paper investigates the efficiency of a sample of Islamic and conventional banks in 10 countries that operate Islamic banking for the period 1996–2002, using an output distance function approach. We obtain measures of efficiency after allowing for environmental influences such as country macroeconomic conditions, accessibility of banking services and bank type. While these factors are assumed to directly influence the shape of the technology, we assume that country dummies and bank size directly influence technical inefficiency. The parameter estimates highlight that during the sample period, Islamic banking appears to be associated with higher input usage. Furthermore, by allowing for bank size and international differences in the underlying inefficiency distributions, we are also able to demonstrate statistically significant differences in inefficiency related to these factors even after controlling for specific environmental characteristics and Islamic banking. Thus, for example, our results suggest that Sudan and Yemen have relatively higher inefficiency while Bahrain and Bangladesh have lower estimated inefficiency. Except for Sudan, where banks exhibits relatively strong returns to scale, most sample banks exhibit very slight returns to scale, although Islamic banks are found to have moderately higher returns to scale than conventional banks. While this suggests that Islamic banks may benefit from increased scale, we would emphasize that our results suggest that identifying and overcoming the factors that cause Islamic banks to have relatively low potential outputs for given input usage levels will be the key challenge for Islamic banking in the coming decades.     

Economic efficiency of multi-product structure: the evidence from Korean housebuilding firms

The Korean housebuilding industry has been subject to structural changes since the 1980s. One of the key features is that housebuilding firms have become diversified into a range of businesses and as a result display multi-product structure. This paper examines the efficiency of the multi-product structure of Korean housebuilding firms. For the analysis, translog cost functions were estimated using data for 201 building firms for the 3 years 1993–1995. The empirical results indicate that medium-size building firms enjoy increasing returns to scale, whereas large firms experience constant returns to scale. Korean building firms exhibit significant economies of scope in their diversification activities. Large firms have the greatest economies of scope. These results are consistent with cost efficiency for the multi-product structure of Korean housebuilding firms. The estimated optimum scale suggests that many large firms should expand only through diversification.     

IR journal and conference literature from the 1960s to the 1990s: What can HR learn from it? Where is it headed?

The industrial relations (IR) literature has changed notably from the early 1960s until the late 1990s. Yet it has retained an externalist flavor — a sense that the key variables determining outcomes are often outside the control of firm-level actors. However, the kind of externalism found in the modern IR literature differs notably from that of the past. Externalism today is seen as labor market and personal variables — often in an econometric formulation — rather than grand social forces. Generally, the IR literature has moved toward sophisticated empiricism and toward a labor economics paradigm. To the extent that the older grand themes remain, they are more likely to be found in IR books rather than in academic journals. Human resource (HR) academics and practitioners can nonetheless benefit from the IR approach, even though the tyranny of tenure review has made journal articles in IR less readable. The IR literature emphasizes that labor–market forces, sometimes stemming from product and financial markets, matter to HR outcomes. And it regards conflict more as a source of information rather than just a cause of lost productivity.     

Technological progress in the Brazilian agriculture

We analyze technical progress in the Brazilian agriculture in the period 1976–2016. Output is production value and inputs are expenses on land, labor, and other inputs. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) measures are used to capture technological progress via efficiency analysis. Filtering the data with a moving average and fractional regression we identify four periods with distinct behavior of technical efficiency under constant or decreasing returns to scale. From 1976 to 1988 and from 1996 to 2007 technical efficiency decreases at statistically significant rates of −1.74% and −0.26% respectively. From 1989 to 1995 and from 2008 to 2016 efficiency increases at statistically significant rates of 1.53% and 1.75% respectively. Efficiency of input use varies in these periods and is computed as a byproduct of the DEA analysis. We observe a more efficient usage of land and other inputs. A parametric fit using adjusted efficient inputs indicate the relative elasticities of 40.5%, 38.5% and 21.0% for other inputs, land and labor, respectively. Technological progress increases 3.73% in the period 1976–1988, decreases 1,58% between 1989 and 1995, increases 0.17% in the period 1996–2007 and increases 1.01% between 2008 and 2016. Technological inputs are statistically significantly influential on total factor productivity as indicated by an infinite distributed lag model. The long run elasticity effect is 39.5%. The effect of investments (public) in agricultural research has a significant elasticity of 0.835.     

Co-determination of capital structure and stock returns—A LISREL approach: An empirical test of Taiwan stock markets

Titman and Wessels (1988) utilize a structural-equations model (LISREL) to find out the latent determinants of capital structure. Maddala and Nimalendran (1996) indicate that the problematic model specification causes the poor results in Titman and Wessels’ research. Chang, Lee, & Lee (2009) apply a Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model to re-examine the same issue as Titman and Wessels did but found more convincing results. We extend Titman and Wessels’ research from using a single-equation approach to a multi-equations approach. In addition to the determinants of firms’ capital structure, those of stock returns are determined simultaneously. Literature indicates that a firm's capital structure may affect its stock returns (Bhandari, 1988), and the reverse is true too (Baker and Wurgler, 2002, Lucas and McDonald, 1990, Welch, 2004). Hence, a firm's determinants of its capital structure and those of its stock returns should be decided simultaneously, rather than independently. By solving the simultaneous equations, we examine the empirical relationship between the two endogenous variables: capital structure and stock returns and find out their common determinants as well. Our results show that stock returns, expected growth, uniqueness, asset structure, profitability, and industry classification are the main factors of capital structure, while the primary determinants of stock returns are leverage, expected growth, profitability, value and liquidity. The level of debt ratios and stock returns are mutually determined by the aforementioned factors and themselves.     

Measuring Hospital Performance in the Presence of Quasi-Fixed Inputs: An Analysis of Québec Hospitals

This research proposes an approach to measure hospital performance based on a generalization of Banker and Morey (1986) and Førsund (1996). This approach considers quasi-fixed inputs explicitly, calculates their implicit cost, and quantifies returns to scale. The performance measure is decomposed into allocative and technical inefficiencies. Based on a very complete data set of Québec hospitals, we find that significant inefficiencies of up to 17% ($700 CAN million) could have been saved through improved performance. Postestimation analyses that include qualitative measures of care suggest that differences in performance are attributable to differences in management or unobservable quality of care rather than patient case mix.     

Managerial economics and operating beta

We model a firm's unlevered beta in terms of elementary microeconomic variables. The source of uncertainty is a shock to demand. A firm decides on capital before the shock, and on labor, output, and price after the shock. Some insights are: (1) with decreasing returns to scale of production, beta has an inverse relation with price elasticity of demand, given the income elasticity of demand; (2) beta has a direct relation with the firm's returns to scale of production; (3) due to the impact of operating leverage, beta has an inverse relation with industry concentration; and (4) for a given returns to scale, beta has a direct relation with the capital–labor ratio that strengthens as industry concentration decreases. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Channels of R&D spillovers: An empirical investigation of Swiss firms

Research and development (R&D) spillovers are, potentially, a major source of endogenous growth in various recent ‘new growth theory’ models. According to these models, firms engage in R&D in order to seek rents. Public aspects of this R&D then spill over to other firms, thereby creating increasing returns relating to scale and long-term growth. The actual mechanisms by which spillovers occur has, however, not been systematically studied. In order to provide empirical facts on this issue the paper investigates the effectiveness of various channels of R&D spillovers. The analysis is based on a survey conducted among 358 Swiss R&D executives representing 127 different lines of business, mainly in the manufacturing sector. The results can be summarized as follows. First, undertaking independent R&D was perceived by the R&D executives questioned as the most effective channel of R&D spillovers at the intra-industry level. This was followed by reverse engineering for product innovations and the utilization of publications and information from technical meetings for process innovations. Second, learning methods that rely on interpersonal communication were judged as moderately effective in the following order of importance: (i) publications and technical meetings; (ii) conversations with employees from innovating firms; and (iii) hiring away employees from innovating firms. The last method, especially, is not valued as effective in the Swiss context. Third, learning methods related to the patent system—licensing technology and patent disclosures in the patent office—were seen as moderately effective or not effective at all. Fourth, the effectiveness of the various channels of R&D spillovers varies from one industry to another. Fifth, the various channels of R&D spillovers can be reduced to subgroups, so that patterns of learning of competitive technology can be established.