Dynamic efficiency evaluation of Italian judicial system using DEA based Malmquist productivity indexes

The aim of this study is the empirical analysis of the Italian judicial system, measuring its efficiency and productivity. For this purpose, in details, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist indexes were used, since they are recognized by the current literature as successful techniques to evaluate the performance of decision making units, namely the courts of law in our field of application.The statistical data on the administration of justice in Italy, as reported in Dossier n. 11 May 2013, Senate Research Services, Research Office on Institutional Issues, Justice and Culture, XVII legislature, shows that the efficiency crisis of justice in Italy began in the 1970s of the last century, aggravating during the ‘80s, and reaching its most critical moment during the 1990s. Several studies emphasize the relevance of the effects of inefficiency upon the judicial system on the credit and financial markets.The present analysis, using data that covers a wide time span and is disaggregated at district level, has set the goal of measuring the efficiency of the individual Italian judicial offices while assessing the progress of productivity in its components, by the means of technological progress and scale efficiency. The efficiency analysis that was carried out transcends the aspect of judicial taxation, considering how the passage of time has impacted on judicial efficiency.Considering the judges and judicial administration employed, in the new, pending and finished cases during the years ranging from 2011 to 2016, the results highlighted a distinct heterogeneity among courts, depending on their geographical location. The five-year period that was considered, included the years in which the judicial geographical distribution reform entered into force, so to better comprehend how this complex reform influenced the recovery of efficiency of the judicial offices. Furthermore, by breaking down the index into change in efficiency and change in technology, this work offers a further glimpse into judiciary organization. The application of combined DEA method and Malmquist indexes for evaluating court efficiency in a large time frame showed very interesting and useful results, relevant for judicial administration.     

Governance of tax courts

This paper attempts to penetrate the “black box” of the judiciary through an empirical investigation of the Italian tax courts of first instance. Both judicial delay and two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis approach with bootstrap are used to measure the efficiency of the court system and to further identify the main determinants of efficiency which, in line with the previous literature, seem to be mostly related to the judges’ effort. The study also takes advantage of an idiosyncratic feature of this branch of the Italian judiciary—in which judges are temporarily appointed and can continue to practice an external (though not conflicting) profession—to assess the impact of opportunity costs on the behavior of judges. The overall outcome confirms that judges maximize utility “the same as everybody else does” (Posner, Supreme Court Econ Rev 3:1–41, 1993).     

The role of the separation of democratic powers on structural transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa

The objective of this paper is to assess the effects of the separation of democratic powers on structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Indeed, reducing the dependence of the judiciary and the legislature on the executive branch is likely to promote labor reallocation, innovation, and human capital and thus improve structural change and intra-industry productivity, which are the two components of structural transformation. Data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project (Ziblatt and al., 2021) and Mensah and Szirmai (2018) allow us to illustrate our points using a vector auto regression (VAR) model on a panel of 18 SSA countries. Our results show that both legislative dependence and judicial dependence on the executive branch have a negative effect on structural change and intra-industry productivity in the short and long run; but the effect of the judiciary is more decisive than that of the legislature in the short and long run. On the other hand, judicial dependence causes legislative dependence, while public sector corruption and educational inequalities cause judicial and legislative dependence on the executive. Our results argue for the independence of these two branches from the executive, especially the judiciary.     

Judicial regimes for employment rights disputes: comparing Germany,Great Britain and Japan

This article compares the judicial regimes for resolving individual employment rights disputes in Germany, Great Britain and Japan. First, we consider the form of institutional change; second, we examine the lay judge's role; and third, we assess the effectiveness of the three judicial regimes. We find that Japan made the least institutional change, layering a new procedure on top of an existing one. Paradoxically, however, its lay judges have a more extensive role than their counterparts in Germany and Britain, which established new institutions. As to effectiveness, there are several criteria. British labour courts are currently the least informal and speedy, but the cheapest. In both Britain and Germany, legal norms are publicised as adjudicatory hearings are open to the public and judgments are available for public scrutiny, unlike in Japan.     

Resolving the conflict between clients’ privacy rights and employees’ equal employment opportunity rights

It is unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for employers to discriminate against applicants or employees because of their sex unless sex is a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ). During the past two decades, a number of courts were asked to decide whether sex is a BFOQ for the purpose of protecting clients’ privacy rights (i.e., whether employers could insist that employees be of the same sex as their clients for those jobs which required employees to touch or view clients’ bodies in various stages of undress). This investigation examined relevant judicial opinions rendered throughout the United States to determine how the courts resolved this conflict between clients’ privacy rights and employees’ equal employment opportunity rights.     

Balancing Hate Speech, Professional Ethics, and First Amendment Rights: A Case of and from the Judiciary

As an increasing number of state and local governments pass laws that prohibit discrimination against gay and lesbian employees, individual citizens and groups opposed to such rights continue to fight against them. Although the First Amendment to the United State Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, a potential problem arises when the impartiality of a member of the judiciary is questioned based on free ‘‘hate speech’’ expressed as a private citizen. This paper explores the dilemma the courts face relative to the professional ethics of those who oversee the courts where gay and lesbian and other employees attempt to ensure their rights to fair treatment in the workplace.     

The effects of IT-enabled supply chain process change on job and process outcomes: A longitudinal investigation

Prior research on information technology (IT)-enabled supply chain management (SCM) has primarily focused on macro-level issues (e.g., IT capabilities related to SCM, and SCM design and optimization) and outcomes (e.g., firm performance). There has been limited research that focuses on micro-level outcomes related to employees who actually execute SCM processes in organizations. These employee-level outcomes are important because successful implementation of SCM systems and processes hinges on SCM employees’ support and commitment. I develop and test a model positing that SCM employees’ perceptions of changes in their work process characteristics, i.e., process complexity and process rigidity, following a new SCM system implementation will influence their job outcomes, i.e., job performance, job satisfaction, job anxiety, and job security, and their perceptions of process outcomes, i.e., process performance and relationship quality. The model incorporates a holistic appraisal of the extent of change—change radicalness—as a mechanism between work process characteristics and outcomes. The model is supported in three studies conducted in the context of three different SCM system implementations (N = 278, 282, and 304, respectively). In particular, I found that individuals perceived a significant change in their work process characteristics following an SCM system implementation, and changes in work process characteristics had a significant impact on job and process outcomes. These findings contribute to the information systems and operations management literatures and their intersections by offering insights on challenges related to IT-enabled SCM innovation implementation in organizations.     

Environmental policy and innovations

The paper defines and uses the concepts environmental policy cycle and innovation cycle and explores the links between the two in search for an environmental policy that creates incentives for innovation in environmental technology. We conclude that key factors are shortening the period the bureaucracy takes for preparing new environmental requirements, transparency and consistency of bureaucratic and political decision‐making and fast and strict implementation with environmental policy instruments that give pollution sources freedom in their choice of suitable technology. Economic instruments provide strong incentives for innovation because they speed up implementation. Large R&D subsidies may be needed to make technology development profitable under the conventional policy of direct regulation by emission standards and regulation by way of covenants. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The family resemblance of technologically mediated work practices

Practice-based perspectives in information systems have established how, in every instance of use (i.e., work practices), the user exercises considerable discretion in their appropriation of the technology with local workarounds and situated improvisations. We analyse the relationship between technologically mediated work practices separated in time and space. Specifically, we analyse how similarity in work practices is achieved. Achieving absolutely similar (or ‘best’) practices is unattainable. Drawing on a longitudinal (2007–2011) case of ambulatory maintenance work in the oil and gas sector, we identify and discuss three constituting strategies (differentiation, assembling and punctuation) through which a family resemblance of – similar but not the same – work practices is crafted. We discuss how, in the absence of an essentialist criterion, similarity is subject to pragmatic but also political negotiations.     

Hicks-Moorsteen versus Malmquist: a connection by means of a radial productivity index

A primal index of productivity change is introduced which decomposes exactly into three components: technical change, technical efficiency change and average scale economies (radial scale change). The productivity index is defined using variations of the distance function along pre-assigned input–output rays and, for this reason, it is deemed a radial productivity index (RPI). It is proven that: first, the RPI index collapses to the Malmquist productivity index when the technology is constant returns to scale (CRS); second the RPI index equals the Hicks-Moorsteen productivity index under homotheticity of technology (and non-CRS). The key to these results is a new definition and measure of the contribution of scale economies to productivity change.     

Frontier Technology and Absorptive Capacity: Evidence from OECD Manufacturing Industries*

In this paper, we examine the three facets of technology: its creation, dispersion and absorption. We investigate whether differences in absorptive capacity help to explain cross‐country differences in the level of productivity. We utilize stochastic frontier analysis to investigate two potential sources of this inefficiency – differences in human capital and R&D – for nine industries in 12 Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 1973–91. We find that inefficiency in production does indeed exist and it depends upon the level of human capital of the country's workforce. Evidence that the amount of R&D an industry undertakes is also important is less robust.     

Comparisons of agricultural productivity growth in China and India

We measure and compare agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components (efficiency and technical change) in China and India and test the TFP series for the existence of structural breaks relating the evolution of TFP to policy milestones. Our results show that agricultural TFP growth accelerates in China after 1979 and in India after 1974, although China’s agricultural sector clearly outperforms India’s. The main explanation of these differentials is that agricultural growth in China benefited from more fundamental institutional and policy reforms in agriculture than India. There is some evidence that the transformation of industry in China was also important for agricultural TFP growth. Manufacture growth absorbed labor and reduced employment in agriculture, creating incentives for capital investment and technical change that kept output per worker in agriculture growing at high rates. Fewer changes in agricultural policies and in the dynamics of manufacturing in India resulted in slower growth in agricultural productivity, despite policy changes that accelerated economic growth in recent years.     

Assessing the Italian tax courts system by weighted three-way log-ratio analysis

Deciding on what should be the most suitable reforms of a national judicial system, whether this means reorganising a courts' structure or offering incetives to judges, requires more empirical evidence. The efficiency of the public judicial system is important to any functioning democracy as it affects several aspects of citizens’ life. As a consequence, new statistical methodologies are required for further valuable insights into the issues that affect the effectiveness of a judicial system.The current study attempts to fill this gap by introducing a new statistical method to investigate the heterogeneity among Italian judicial courts. Here we propose a generalisation of log-ratio analysis for the analysis of the association between the variables of a three-way contingency table. Our focus of this investigation will be on the tax court system of the Italian judicial system.Log-ratio analysis presents many advantages, two of which are the computation and the visual representation of the odds ratios on which the analysis is based. For three-way tables, a conditional odds ratio reflects the likelihood that an event (say tax disputes) will take place in a particular geographical area (say North Italy) instead of an another (say South Italy) given a specific condition (type of justice court).Interestingly, the three-way log-ratio analysis presented in this paper allows one to visually describe these conditional odds-ratios in terms of point distances in a biplot between the types of justice court located in different geographical areas of Italy.     

Dynamics of productivity in higher education: cross-european evidence based on bootstrapped Malmquist indices

This study examines patterns of productivity change in a large set of 266 public higher education institutions (HEIs) in 7 European countries across the time period 2001–2005. We adopt consistent bootstrap estimation procedures to obtain confidence intervals for Malmquist indices of HEI productivity and their components. Consequently, we are able to assess the statistical significance of changes in HEI productivity, efficiency and technology. Our results suggest that, assessed vis-à-vis a common ‘European’ frontier, HEI productivity rose on average by 4 % annually. Statistically significant changes in productivity were registered in 90 % of observations on the institutions in our sample, but statistically significant annual improvements in overall productivity took place in only 56 % of cases. There are considerable national differences, with German, Italian and Swiss HEIs performing better in terms of productivity change than HEIs from the other countries examined.     

Technology transfer and the restructuring of science and technology in central and eastern Europe

Profound changes which have occurred in central and eastern Europe (CEE) have left science and technology systems in those countries in a dilapidated state. Reform efforts have focused on restructuring and privatising research institutes and promoting technology transfer between domestic institutions and between domestic and foreign institutions.¹ Both of these reform initiatives are aimed at increasing levels of innovation. Emphasis has been put on introducing the market mechanism. This paper looks at these reforms in CEE, particularly in Poland. The following broad points emerge: First, the track record of efforts to promote technology transfer need to be understood and interpreted in conjunction with a fuller understanding of institutional change, innovation and learning. Technology transfer is meant to encourage innovation, but a range of things need to happen if technology transfer initiatives are to work. Gibbons (Gibbons M. et al., 1994) observed, for example, that effective innovation requires new configurations of knowledge (and skills). The coordination activities required to effect these new configurations within and between organisations and institutions impose their own demands on actors engaged in technology transfer, which rapid privatisation or liberalisation policies in CEE do not begin to address. Reform policies which have focused on introducing new economic incentives need to address change at micro and meso levels. Creating new institutional practice depends not only on creating economic incentives but on wider reform processes, such as creating new organisational practices and encouraging the emergence of new sorts of institutions which can facilitate links. Second, the reform process is a social and political one. Changing the emphasis of policy towards technological development requires a change in power relations so that technological development and innovation, rather than success in science, are prioritised. These political battles greatly influence the pace and nature of change, and in CEE the promotion of technology and innovation is taking place in a context of social upheaval. Social consequences of reform in general and in science and technology in particular are difficult and uncomfortable, and change in this area is perhaps not yet a political priority in some CEE countries.     

Efficiency and productivity in the Thai non-life insurance industry

This paper estimates a stochastic cost frontier for a sample of the non-life insurance industry in Thailand from 2000 to 2007. Our model explicitly considers the heteroscedasticity in the variances of the noise and inefficiency components that could affect the position of the cost frontier as well as the measurement of efficiency. Tests for double heteroscedasticity and appropriate specification for the cost frontier are performed. The chosen model is used to examine whether economies of scale and a change in technology exist. In addition, this paper calculates total factor productivity (TFP) change and decomposes it into scale effect, cost efficiency effect, technology effect, output effect, price effect, and environmental effect. Our results reveal that, on average, Thai non-life insurance firms are between 74 and 79 % efficient, that economies of scale exist, and that regress in technology shifts the cost frontier upward by 2.2 %. The regress in technology is the dominant contributor to a negative TFP growth of 1.15 %. The restructuring of the industry following the 1997 Asian financial crisis finally paid off when the industry experienced technology progress in 2005 and beyond. Between 2005 and 2007, technology progress and productivity growth occurred at a little over 2 % a year. In-depth analysis of the most and the least efficient firms reveals that most efficient firms tend to strategically select types of insurance services and underwrite average and small size sum insured per policy to diversify their risks. In addition, they tend to be savvy investors. The opposite holds for the least efficient firms which concentrate in providing labor-intensive, small sum automobile insurance policies or underwrite large coverage policies for fewer policyholders. Balancing the mix of insurance types, spreading risk across insurance types or across number of policyholders, investing in high yield assets, or developing a market niche may prove beneficial for improving cost efficiency.     

Measuring productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency changes of CPA firms prior to, and following the Sarbanes–Oxley Act

This paper investigates productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency change for a group of the 56 largest CPA firms in the US from the period 1996–1999 through the period 2003–2006, where the former preceded, and the latter followed, enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX). Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to calculate Malmquist indices of three measures of interest: productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency change. Results indicate that CPA firms, on average, experienced a productivity growth of approx. 17% from the pre- to post-SOX period. Consistent with the finding of Banker et al. [Banker RD, Chang H, Natarajan R. Productivity change, technical progress and relative efficiency change in the public accounting industry. Management Science 2005;51:291–304], this productivity gain can be attributed primarily to technical progress rather than a change in relative efficiency. In addition, results indicate that the “Big 4” firms underperformed their non-Big 4 counterparts in both productivity growth and technical progress.     

司法大众化之目的探究

司法大众化,是相对司法专业化而言的司法民主化。虽然司法专业化是法治建设的必然要求,但是我国的司法亦不能脱离国情,仍需充分考虑司法的大众化需求。事实上,司法大众化是与司法专业化相辅相成的。在我国,司法大众化的目的尚不明确,以至于其目的之实现在较大程度上受到了制约。司法大众化的目的在于促进司法的社会认同和推进法治建设。当前我国应在马锡五审判方式的基础上,进一步拓展司法大众化新路径,完善相关制度,以最大程度实现司法大众化之目的。     

Managing Discretionary Accruals and Book‐Tax Differences in Anticipation of Tax Rate Increases: Evidence from China

This paper investigates how firms manage their earnings to trade off various incentives when tax rates increase. We hypothesize and find that firms generally choose to manage their taxable income upward in a book‐tax non‐conforming manner rather than in a book‐tax conforming manner before a tax rate increment, which in turn reduces the detection risk of aggressive financial reporting. These results suggest that firms give more weight to tax incentives and tax audit or regulatory inspection risks than to boosting financial reporting income in tax management. However, when firms have higher book management incentives or lower tunneling incentives (i.e., non‐state‐owned enterprises), we find that they manage their taxable income and book income upward together (i.e., in a book‐tax conforming manner), whereas their counterparts (i.e., state‐owned enterprises) do not. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the interplay of tax, tunneling and financial reporting incentives in influencing tax management strategies. The findings from our paper should also help government and regulators understand more about firms’ reactions to tax rate increases.