Measuring Cost Efficiency in European Banking: A Comparison of Frontier Techniques

This paper investigates the consistency of efficiency frontier methods on European banking samples. We measure the cost efficiency of banks from five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland) with three approaches: stochastic frontier approach, distribution-free approach, and data envelopment analysis. We compare means, correlation coefficients, two public policy issues, and the correlation with standard measures of performance. In general, we conclude in favor of the lack of robustness between approaches, even if there are some similarities in particular between parametric approaches. We do, however, observe some correlation between all frontier approaches and standard measures of performance.     

伦理型领导研究中的前沿问题:现状与趋势

伦理型领导是近年来国内外学者普遍关注的热点问题之一.虽然以往研究对伦理型领导的影响机制、影响结果等方面展开大量探讨,但依然存在诸多不足之处.本文探讨了伦理型领导的前因变量、潜在风险,多层次伦理型领导的关系以及伦理型领导影响效能的边界条件四大问题,并对其中可以深入研究的关键点进行了剖析,力求丰富和发展伦理型领导的理论体系.     

交通运输对旅游流的作用机制研究

对旅游流的概念进行界定,对交通运输对旅游流的作用机制进行详细分析,并提出促进交通运输对旅游流有效发挥作用的策略。     

交通运输对旅游流的作用机制研究

对旅游流的概念进行界定,对交通运输对旅游流的作用机制进行详细分析,并提出促进交通运输对旅游流有效发挥作用的策略.     

The Organization of European Space: Regions,Networks, and Places

Reviewed in this essay: Ash Amin, Angus Cameron and Ray Hudson Placing the Social Economy London: Routledge Pontus Braunerhjelm, Ricardo Faini, Victor Norman, Frances Ruanences and Paul Seabright Integration and the Regions of Europe: How the Right Policies Can Prevent Polarization Christer Jonsson, Sven Tagil and Gunnar Tornqvist Organizing European Space     

欧盟绿色双指令最新进展及影响

文章简要介绍了2009年版欧盟绿色双指令（RoHS和WEEE）的最新进展,探析了欧盟绿色双指令对我国电子信息产品对欧出口贸易的严重影响;文章建议进一步完善我国的技术标准体系,尽快与国际接轨,同时树立绿色理念,提高产品的环保和技术水平,为中国电子信息产业寻找新的发展契机。     

制度变迁对我国高校会计的影响

任何一种制度的变迁总是在否定、扬弃或改变旧制度的基础上向着更有效率的制度演化的过程。我国高校会计在形成与发展过程中无不受制度变迁的影响,并引发了一系列的会计变革,其变革具体内容体现在因为会计环境变化而引发的会计目标、会计核算科目以及资金运作的内容与方式的变化。本文就制度变迁过程中高校会计在理论与实务所受的影响作一分析与探讨。     

新预算法对事业单位财会工作的影响及对策探讨

随着我国市场经济体制的日益完善,事业单位对内部财务工作提出了新的要求.近几年,新预算法与现代财务体系的融合备受关注,在事业单位财会人员的创新驱动下,各项工作趋向透明化、优质化发展,因此建立预算平衡机制显得十分重要.基于此,文章立足于事业单位发展的视角,在介绍新预算法基本特点的基础上,重点阐述了其对事业单位财会工作的影响...     

Marketing and the church: Should god be sold or found?

Recent years have seen an expansion of marketing in social causes and not-for-profit activities; there continues to he considerable debate about the extent to which this simply reflects a pragmatic application of established marketing techniques or whether it truly reflects efforts to be genuinely market orientated. Indeed some may argue that the nature of social cause marketing is such that it is difficult, if not impossible, to be customer-driven. The marketing of the Church is one manifestation of social cause marketing where marketing programmes are calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas. The paper seeks to examine whether the marketing techniques and approaches used in relation to the Church are really marketing or just a form of selling. It is argued that the core product of the Church, salvation, is not really subject to modification in response to customer needs and thus that questions may arise about the possibility of genuinely marketing the Church. However, where there is a willingness to develop and modify the expected and augmented products in response to the changing needs and expectations of a ‘marketplace’, arguably there is evidence of marketing, not just selling.     

The Self-concept of Black and White Women: The Influences Upon Its Formation of Welfare Dependency, Work Effort, Family Networks, and Illnesses

Abstract . The concept of “self-efficacy” is used to test the hypothesis that the negative self-concept of welfare recipients coniributes to long term psychological and material dependency on such assistance. Self-efficacy focuses on the extent to which people are able to produce and regulate events in their lives and is associated with self-imposed performance expectations. The extent to which the minority status which Blacks occupy in this society decreases self efficacy relative to Whites is examined, using information generated from structured interviews with 290 low income Black and White women. Operationalizing the concept of self-efficacy with appropriate controls for socioeconomic status, family composition and other factors results in finding no racial differences in sense of self-efficacy between Black and White women. Observed differences in patterns of receipt of public assistance are found to be more directly related to the persistence of structural barriers to upward mobility that have differential impacts on Blacks and Whites. Long term receipt of public assistance is found to adversely affect both self-worth and work orientation/perceived efficacy for all women.     

Statistical Inference in Nonparametric Frontier Models: The State of the Art

Efficiency scores of firms are measured by their distance to an estimated production frontier. The economic literature proposes several nonparametric frontier estimators based on the idea of enveloping the data (FDH and DEA-type estimators). Many have claimed that FDH and DEA techniques are non-statistical, as opposed to econometric approaches where particular parametric expressions are posited to model the frontier. We can now define a statistical model allowing determination of the statistical properties of the nonparametric estimators in the multi-output and multi-input case. New results provide the asymptotic sampling distribution of the FDH estimator in a multivariate setting and of the DEA estimator in the bivariate case. Sampling distributions may also be approximated by bootstrap distributions in very general situations. Consequently, statistical inference based on DEA/FDH-type estimators is now possible. These techniques allow correction for the bias of the efficiency estimators and estimation of confidence intervals for the efficiency measures. This paper summarizes the results which are now available, and provides a brief guide to the existing literature. Emphasizing the role of hypotheses and inference, we show how the results can be used or adapted for practical purposes.     

The Influence of Geography on the Spatial Agglomeration of Production in the European Union

Abstract

Small regions and towns often experience problems such as high out-migration and unemployment. In these situations there is an urgent need to do something positive. Infrastructure development projects, partially financed by the national government, are a popular suggestion. We ponder the relevance of these actions in this paper in a context of project evaluation. We introduce computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling as a complement of the other quantitative evaluation techniques. We will use the town of Lapua in South Ostrobothnia, Finland, which is planning to implement two large-scale infrastructure projects, as an example. Our simulation tool is the Finnish multi-sector and interregional CGE RegFin model. We consider the regional short-run effects of the construction phase, the long-run effects of new business activity and the so-called secondary effects based on the commuting and trade patterns of the households.     

The Components of Output Growth: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

This paper uses Bayesian stochastic frontier methods to decompose output change into technical, efficiency and input changes. In the context of macroeconomic growth exercises, which typically involve small and noisy data sets, we argue that stochastic frontier methods are useful since they incorporate measurement error and assume a (flexible) parametric form for the production relationship. These properties enable us to calculate measures of uncertainty associated with the decomposition and minimize the risk of overfitting the noise in the data. Tools for Bayesian inference in such models are developed. An empirical investigation using data from 17 OECD countries for 10 years illustrates the practicality and usefulness of our approach.     

The Forever Frontier of Urbanism: Historicizing Persian Gulf Cities

In recent years, Persian Gulf cities have become symbols of the most spectacular forms of the ‘globalization of urbanization’. Current scholarship has sought to situate these cities in transnational processes and linkages with conceptualizations of ‘the global city’ and the mechanisms of ‘worlding’. This article builds on but moves beyond this line of analysis by turning to the histories of this region and its built environment to explore the longue‐durée influence of capital and empire operating across multiple scales. From this perspective, the glittering high‐rises and manmade islands are contemporary manifestations of a century of urban forms and logics of social control emanating from company towns, the struggles of state building, and the circulation and fixing of capital. To grasp how the Persian Gulf region has been remade as a frontier for accumulation, the analysis in this article blurs the boundaries between metropole and periphery, reconceptualizing the region not as an eclectic sideshow, but as a central site for global shifts in urbanism, capitalism and architecture in the twentieth century.