Extending Productivity Research Frontiers: DEA Resource of Datasets and Errata

Website databases provide the opportunity to fundamentally change the way research and knowledge are advanced and disseminated. This paper describes a website, http://www.etm.pdx.edu/dea/dataset/, focused on Data Envelopment Analysis and DEA researchers.     

Evaluating Productivity Growth Measures in the EU

In this paper we evaluate the productivity growth of the member countries in the European Union (EU) before and after the enforcement of the Maastricht convergence criteria in 1992. Total factor productivity was measured by employing the growth-accounting approach and Tornqvist indices. The evaluation of productivity growth was performed by employing the non-parametric method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in particular years and within three time periods. DEA was also used to evaluate the relative efficiency of EU members with respect to the convergence criteria with important implications for their economic integration. TFP growth was found to have contributed the most in the EU, while its share in the latest recessions was the smallest as compared to labor and capital share.     

Neoclassical Growth Accounting and Frontier Analysis: A Synthesis

The standard measure of productivity growth is the Solow residual. Its evaluation requires data on factor input shares or prices. Since these prices are presumed to match factor productivities, the standard procedure amounts to accepting at face value what is supposed to be measured. In this paper we estimate total factor productivity growth without recourse to data on factor input prices. Factor productivities are defined as Lagrange multipliers to the program that maximizes the level of domestic final demand. The consequent measure of total factor productivity is shown to encompass not only the Solow residual, but also the efficiency change of frontier analysis and the hitherto slippery terms-of-trade effect. Using input-output tables from 1962 to 1991 we show that the source of Canadian productivity growth has shifted from technical change to terms-of-trade effects.     

Benchmarking Warehousing and Distribution Operations: An Input-Output Approach

We developan input-output model of a warehouse system to assess operationalefficiency. Our model simultaneously accounts for all of thecritical resources (labor, space, storage and handling equipment)and the different workload requirements (broken case, full caseand pallet picking, storage and order accumulation) of a warehouse.We collected extensive data on 57 warehouse and distributionfacilities from a variety of industries, including auto parts,dental and office supplies, electronics, fine papers, hardware,health care, industrial packaging, mail order apparel, officemachines, photographic supplies, and wholesale drugs, and usedthe model to assess and compare their efficiencies. We offer3 conclusions based on a statistical analysis of the operatingefficiencies obtained from several models: Smaller warehouses tend to be more efficient than larger warehouses.Warehouses using lower levels of automation tend to be moreefficient. This association is more pronounced in small firms.Unionization is not negatively associated with efficiencyand in fact may actually contribute to higher efficiency.     

区域技术创新体系评价模型研究

本文首先探讨了区域创新体系的结构特征，在此基础上从区域技术创新体系的基点、构架、动力三个方面建立了区域技术创新体系的评价指标体系，按照投入产出的关系将这些指标分为输入指标和输出指标，从而运用DEA的方法对大连、沈阳和哈尔滨三个城市进行了评价，得出了制度和法律建设在区域技术创新体系的建设中有着举足轻重的作用。     

国际贸易、技术进步和中国工业行业的生产率增长

内生增长理论认为技术进步是经济增长最为重要的助推力,推动技术进步的力量是对研发的投资和国际贸易的发展。随着经济贸易与信息技术的飞速发展,社会对国际贸易、技术进步的关注程度日渐提升。通过深入分析国际贸易与工业行业生产率之间的关系,可以有针对性地应用有效手段对国际贸易进行调整,使其可以继续带动技术的进步并促进工业行业生产率的提升。基于此,论文探究了我国国际贸易、技术进步与工业行业生产率增长的关系,阐述了国际贸易、技术进步对于工业行业生产率的真实影响。     

Productivity,Technology and Economic Growth: What is the Relationship?

The relationship between productivity, technology and economic growth has been debated extensively in the endogenous growth, growth accounting, New Economy and policy literature. This paper briefly surveys the literature on total factor productivity (TFP) calculations – the various techniques and problems associated with it. We argue that TFP is not a measure of technological change and only under ideal conditions does it measure the supernormal profits associated with technological change. The critical driving force of economic growth is not the super normal profits that technological change generates but rather the continuous creation of opportunities for further technological development. Six illustrations of when TFP fails to correctly measure these super normal profits are provided. A version Carlaw and Lipsey's (2003b) model of endogenous general purpose technology‐ driven growth is then utilized to make some progress toward answering Prescott's (1998) call for a theory of TFP. The model is used to simulate artificial data and connect theoretical assumptions of returns to scale and resource costs to the conditions under which TFP miss‐measures the actual growth of technological knowledge.     

未来中国经济增长的关键——综合生产率的提高

中国经济增长依靠的是要素高投入所致,这种增长方式不会持久。因此,要从提高综合生产率这一角度来探寻经济增长的新途径,并且提出实现综合生产率得以提高的主要措施。     

Innovation and productivity: insights from Malaysia's logistics industry

Efficient logistics is critical to a country's trade competitiveness. This paper uses the Data Envelopment Analysis Malmquist Index that includes an innovation component comprising three dimensions (input, process, and output), to assess the impact of innovation by third-party logistics (3PL). We treat the panel data of asset-based 3PL in Malaysia from 2007 to 2012. Three findings hold. First, innovation is not always accompanied by productivity gains. Second, innovation is still lacking in the logistics industry in Malaysia. Third, 3PL need to invest more in technology and stay financially healthy to accelerate the diffusion of innovation under a more competitive cost structure. This paper has two contributions. First, we offer an enhanced methodology for total factor productivity by including an innovation component and apply it for the first time to the logistics industry. Second, we augment the performance measurement literature specific to the logistics industry and our research suggests that the antecedents of productivity in logistics companies are investment and financial strength. These productivity–innovation findings provide insights into Malaysia's logistics industry and may be helpful for economies similar to Malaysia.     

中国高技术产业的全要素生产率及产业比较

基于2001～2007年中国5个高技术产业的细分行业的面板数据,运用Malmquist指数构建一个三投入三产出的模型,分别测算了高技术产业及其细分行业的全要素生产率。结果显示,5个细分行业全要素生产率的增长率差异较大,而且整个高技术产业的全要素生产率的增长率不稳定,主要原因是技术进步因素发生波动。     

基于MEA和Luenberger生产率指数的中国商业银行效率及生产率模式评估

引入多方向效率分析模型(MEA)模型对我国16家上市商业银行2011—2018年各指标的效率进行了评估,结果显示国有银行效率低下的主要原因是净利息利润、存款和劳动力的效率较低。为进一步研究中国商业银行生产率的构成情况,引入基于方向性距离函数的Luenberger生产率指数及其分解结果,来评价中国商业银行各指标的生产率,得到中国商业银行生产率的变化主要归功于净利息利润和净非利息利润生产率的变化。     

Productivity Growth,Import Leakage and Employment Growth in Puerto Rico, 1967–87

Using Puerto Rican input–output data that cover the period 1967–87, we find that employment growth was led primarily by a rapid increase in final output—5.1% per year—although labor productivity growth was also substantial, at 3.7% per year. Import leakages also fell over this period, but had little impact on employment growth. Local absorption was more successful than exports in generating new jobs. Employment generated by local absorption grew by 35% and that from exports by 29%, even though exports increased almost four-fold, while local absorption only doubled. The difference reflects the greater labor intensity of industries that supply local absorption. There was also a notable shift in the occupational structure toward white-collar employment and away from blue-collar jobs. The primary reason for this was the shift in the composition of final demand toward industries that rely heavily on white-collar workers. A secondary reason was a bias in technological change, which favored white-collar over blue-collar workers.     

Efficiency and Technical Change in Intertemporal Intersectoral DEA

A new procedure for the measurement of efficiency and technical change is presented, using DEA with three-dimension data (box data), pooling over sectors, regions and time. Until now, when pooling the data in panel applications it has been assumed that technology remained unchanged, so productivity change was entirely attributed to technical efficiency change. However, patterns of technology change and the decomposition into efficiency and technical change elements can be accomplished by means of restrictions on the general structure of the technology indexes. Under the assumption of non-regressive technical change, upper and lower bounds for efficiency and technical change are obtained. The new methodology is illustrated in an analysis of productivity growth in 13 manufacturing sectors in the Spanish regions from 1980 to 1992.     

Productivity Growth in the Western Hemisphere (1978–94): The Caribbean in Perspective

Productivity growth, technical efficiency change, and technological change were measured for a sample of 30 countries in the Western Hemisphere for the 1978–1994 period using the Malmquist index. The Caribbean compared unfavorably with North America and the Latin American regions. Evidence indicated some support for the convergence hypothesis. Regression analysis indicated that productivity growth in the Caribbean was positively associated with civil, economic, and political liberty.     

Multiple Objective Approach as an Alternative to Radial Projection in DEA

Radial projection is a standard technique applied in data envelopment analysis (DEA) to calculate efficiency scores for input and/or output variables. In this paper, we have studied the appropriateness of radial projection for target setting. We have created a situation where the decision making units (DMUs) are free to choose their own target values on the efficient frontier and then compared the results to those of radial projection. In practice, target values are primarily used for future goal attainment; hence, not only preferences but also, and on the whole, change in time frame, affect the choice of target values. Based on that, we conducted an empirical experiment with an aim to study how the DMUs choose their most preferred target values on the efficient frontier. The subjects, who all were students of the Helsinki School of Economics, were given the freedom to explore their personalized efficient frontiers by using a multiple objective linear programming (MOLP) approach. To study various and relevant scenarios, the personalized efficient frontiers for all students were constructed in such a way that the current position of each student in relation to the frontier made him/her inefficient, efficient, or super-efficient. The results show that the use of radial projection for target setting is too restrictive.     

Using DEA and Worst Practice DEA in Credit Risk Evaluation

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of worst practice DEA, which aims at identifying worst performers by placing them on the frontier. This is particularly relevant for our application to credit risk evaluation, but this also has general relevance since the worst performers are where the largest improvement potential can be found. The paper also proposes to use a layering technique instead of the traditional cut-off point approach, since this enables incorporation of risk attitudes and risk-based pricing. Finally, it is shown how the use of a combination of normal and worst practice DEA models enable detection of self-identifiers. The results of the empirical application on credit risk evaluation validate the method. The best combination of layered normal and worst practice DEA models yields an impressive 100% bankruptcy and 78% non-bankruptcy prediction accuracy in the calibration data set, and equally convincing 100% and 67% out-of-sample classification accuracies.     

江苏经济发展阶段与科技进步贡献率探究

根据钱纳里等关于经济发展阶段的“标准结构”理论,运用增长速度方程,对江苏省及其13个地市的科技进步贡献率进行了实际测算。结果表明,改革开放以来江苏省及其各个地市的经济增长主要受资本投入和科技进步的驱动;相比较而言,科技进步对苏南地区经济的促进作用较为明显,而资本投入对苏北地区经济的拉动作用更为显著。     

Measuring efficiency in education: The influence of imprecision and variability in data on DEA estimates

Many studies devoted to efficiency performance evaluation in the education sector are based on measures of central tendency at school level as, for example, the average values of students belonging to the same school. Although this is a common and accepted way of summarizing data from the original observations (students), it is not less true that this approach neglects the existing dispersion of data, which may become a serious problem if variability across schools is high. Additionally, imprecision may arise when experts on each evaluated subject select the battery of questions, with different levels of difficulty, which will be the base for the final questionnaires completed by students. This paper uses data from US students and schools participating in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2015 to illustrate that schools' efficiency measures based on aggregate data and imprecision may reflect an inaccurate picture of their performance if they are compared to measures estimated accounting for broader information provided by all students of the same school. In order to operationalize our approach, we resort to Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis. This methodology allows us to deal with the notion of fuzziness in some variables such as the socio-economic status of students or test scores. Our results indicate that the estimated measures of performance obtained with the fuzzy DEA approach are highly correlated with those calculated with traditional DEA models. However, we find some relevant divergences in the identification of efficient units when we account for data dispersion and vagueness.     

DEA, DFA and SFA: A comparison

The nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) model has become increasingly popular in the analysis of productive efficiency, and the number of empirical applications is now very large. Recent theoretical and mathematical research has also contributed to a deeper understanding of the seemingly simple but inherently complex DEA model. Less effort has, however, been directed toward comparisons between DEA and other competing efficiency analysis models. This paper undertakes a comparison of the DEA, the deterministic parametric (DFA), and the stochastic frontier (SFA) models. Efficiency comparisons across models in the above categories are done based on 15 Colombian cement plants observed during 1968–1988.     

Productivity Measurement from a Reference Technology: A Distance Function Approach

An approach to productivity measurement based on distance function measurement is developed in this paper. A series of reference technologies are constructed by augmenting observed inputs and outputs such that the resulting effective netputs are consistent with the weak axiom of profit maximization. Geometric means of year-ahead and year-back distance function values serve as measures of multifactor productivity changes. Both primal measures from the inner bound and dual measures from the outer bound of the reference technologies are calculated. Resulting productivity measures are similar to those derived using index number approaches, but potentially provide greater information regarding the reference technologies.