Efficiency,heterogeneity and cost function analysis: empirical evidence from pathology services in the National Health Service in England

Pathology services are increasingly recognized as key to effective healthcare delivery – underpinning diagnosis, long-term disease management and research. To the extent that pathology services affect a patient’s treatment pathway, significant healthcare costs are influenced directly by the performance of these services. Given pressures on the UK Department of Health to make efficiency savings and that little is known about the efficiency of pathology laboratories, this area offers unlocked potential for efficiency gains. We adopt a time varying inefficiency model, with laboratory-specific time paths for inefficiency, to identify potential savings in pathology services based on a panel of 57 English laboratories over a 5 year period. We apply a range of approaches to account for observable and unobservable heterogeneity between laboratories. We find potential efficiency savings of 13% in pathology services in this sample, which implies the potential for an annual saving of £390m in pathology across the NHS. Our study also provides valuable insights into the impact of a range of factors influencing laboratory costs.     

The transient and persistent efficiency of Italian and German universities: a stochastic frontier analysis

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the higher education sectors, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences, we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each university is confronted with. We separate short-term and long-term efficiency while controlling for unobserved institution-specific heterogeneity. We argue that the first term reflects the efficiency of the individual universities working within the country, while the second term echoes the influence of the overall country-specific higher education structure. The cross-country comparison displays whether efficiency differences between countries are related to the individual performance of their universities or their higher education structure. This allows more purposeful policy recommendations and expands the literature regarding the efficiency of universities in a fundamental way. Choosing Italy and Germany as two important illustrative examples, we show that the Italian higher education sector exhibits a higher overall efficiency value. With the individual universities working at the upper bound of efficiency in both countries, the remaining inefficiency and the gap between the countries are caused by persistent, structural inefficiency. Future measures should hence aim at the country-specific structure and not solely at the activities of single universities.     

On certain inequalities by Steffensen

Abstract

Extract

In this note we are concerned with the inequalities published by Steffensen in this Journal under the title: ?On a generalization of certain inequalities by Tchebycheff and Jensen?. I will show how these inequalities are represented in one form by the integrals of Stieltjes. These integrals have the advantage of containing both sums and the integrals of Riemann. The proof of this generalized theorem is also more simple, which shows that this theorem appears only in this generalization in its most natural form.     

基于随机前沿分析的贷款定价效率研究

在同等条件下,高效率的贷款定价能够给银行带来更多的收益。本文将影响贷款定价的因素分成两部分：将成本因素设定为随机前沿生产函数的投入指标,将风险和其他因素设定为影响商业银行贷款定价效率的指标。通过建立商业银行贷款定价的随机前沿生产函数,研究商业银行的贷款定价效率。对中国33家商业银行2003--2012年的面板数据进行实证研究发现：大型商业银行因规模优势表现出了较高的效率;股份制银行和城市商业银行的贷款定价效率差异最大;在利率管制下,外资银行的技术优势没有体现出来。     

我国金融市场中基准利率的选择北大核心

本文从资产定价角度给出了基准利率选择的理论框架,并对我国市场中的利率体系进行研究。我们发现,在均值一方差标准下,银行间隔夜同业拆借利率和银行间隔夜国债回购利率并不是最有效的;银行间同业拆借市场与银行间国债回购市场内部各利率与期限之间的关系不是单调的;银行间同业拆借市场利率与银行间国债回购利率之间并不存在绝对的占优关系;相比之下,存款利率尤其是活期存款利率最有效从而更适合作为其他资产定价的依据,应该成为我国目前金融市场的基准利率。最后,本文给出了相应的建议。     

Time-varying beta risk of Pan-European industry portfolios: A comparison of alternative modeling techniques

This paper investigates the time-varying behavior of systematic risk for 18 pan-European sectors. Using weekly data over the period 1987–2005, six different modeling techniques in addition to the standard constant coefficient model are employed: a bivariate t-GARCH(1,1) model, two Kalman filter (KF)-based approaches, a bivariate stochastic volatility model estimated via the efficient Monte Carlo likelihood technique as well as two Markov switching models. A comparison of ex-ante forecast performances of the different models indicate that the random walk process in connection with the KF is the preferred model to describe and forecast the time-varying behavior of sector betas in a European context.     

Risk-sensitive benchmarked asset management

This paper extends the risk-sensitive asset management theory developed by Bielecki and Pliska and by Kuroda and Nagai to the case where the investor's objective is to outperform an investment benchmark. The main result is a mutual fund theorem. Every investor following the same benchmark will take positions, in proportions dependent on his/her risk sensitivity coefficient, in two funds: the log-optimal portfolio and a second fund which adjusts for the correlation between the traded assets, the benchmark and the underlying valuation factors.     

Risky asset pricing based on safety first fund management

We study a portfolio selection model based on Kataoka's safety-first criterion (KSF model in short). We assume that the market is complete but without risk-free asset, and that the returns are jointly elliptically distributed. With these assumptions, we provide an explicit analytical optimal solution for the KSF model and obtain some geometrical properties of the efficient frontier in the plane of probability risk degree z _α and target return r _α. We further prove a two-fund separation and tangency portfolio theorem in the spirit of the traditional mean-variance analysis. We also establish a risky asset pricing model based on risky funds that is similar to Black's zero-beta capital asset pricing model (CAPM, for short). Moreover, we simplify our risky asset pricing model using a derivative risky fund as a reference for market evaluation.     

The Impact of the Volatility of Monetary Policy Shocks

This paper studies the impact of the volatility of monetary policy using a structural vector auroregression (SVAR) model enriched along two dimensions. First, it allows for time‐varying variance of monetary policy shocks via a stochastic volatility specification. Second, it allows a dynamic interaction between the level of the endogenous variables in the VAR and the time‐varying volatility. The analysis establishes that the nominal interest rate, output growth, and inflation fall in reaction to an increase in the volatility of monetary policy. The analysis also develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model enriched with stochastic volatility to monetary policy that generates similar responses and provides a theoretical underpinning of these findings.     

Marshallian Externalities And The Emergence And Spatial Stability Of Technological Enclaves *

Technological dualism often is found to be associated with the geographical clustering of firms that use the same techniques. To shed further light on these localization phenomena, we analyze the long-run dynamic behavior of a system in which firms' choices among alternative production methods (each of which requires a technique-specific input) are influenced by both firm-specific random shocks and Marshallian ‘industrial neighborhood’ effects. The latter are local factor market externalities that tend to lower the relative marginal costs d those inputs that are used most extensively in the immediate locale. The model developed here focuses on labor market externalities affecting the supply conditions for workers with technology-specific skills, and their effect on the choices made by producers at various sites whose choice of technique is subject to periodic revisions. A special structure familiar in the applied theory of Markov random fields, the stochastic Ising model. provides a reduced-form representation of this dynamic spatial system. The general properties of models of this type and their application in economics are considered. Discrete time numerical simulations of the behavior of an ensemble of firms (located at the nodes of a finite lattice formed on a two-dimensional (orus) shows that positive neighborhood externalities effects do not necessarily result in the uniquitous diffusion of one of the two available technologies. Instead. this system exhibits a spatially localized form of ‘technological dualism," in which at least two technological enclaves emerge and undergo path-dependent evolution. The temporal durations of these spatial patterns in technology adoption are affected by parameters of the Ising model that can be given a straightforward economic interpretation