Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is an axiomatic, mathematical programming approach to productive efficiency analysis and performance measurement. This paper shows that DEA can be interpreted as a nonparametric least squares regression subject to shape constraints on production frontier and sign constraints on residuals. Thus, DEA can be seen as a nonparametric counter-part of the corrected ordi...

This paper studies an infinite-horizon adverse selection model with an underlying Markov information process and a risk-neutral agent. It introduces a graphic representation of continuation contracts and continuation-payoff frontiers, namely finite policy graphs, and provides an algorithm that generates a sequence of such graphs to approximate the optimal policy graph. The algorithm performs an...

This paper extends the existing research on real estate investment trust (REIT) operating efficiencies. We estimate stochastic-frontier, panel-data models specifying a translog cost function. The specified model updates the cost frontier with new information as it becomes available over time. The model can identify frontier cost improvements, returns to scale, and cost inefficiencies over time....

This paper introduces a new way to measure divergence of output across countries. It measures how productivity, technology or output per worker in each country follow the global frontier. We find that during the years 1970-2008 most countries followed the global frontier only partially, so they diverged from it. We use the tools of ‘development accounting’ to measure by how much countries follo...

When analyzing the productivity of rms, one may want to compare how the rms transform a set of inputs x (typically labor, energy or capital) into an output y (typically a quantity of goods produced). The economic eeciency of a rm is then deened in terms of its ability of operating close to or on the production frontier which is the boundary of the production set. The frontier function gives the...

The Brazilian Amazon is one of the most rapidly developing agricultural frontiers in the world. The authors assess changes in cropland area and the intensification of cropping in the Brazilian agricultural frontier state of Mato Grosso using remote sensing and develop a greenhouse gas emissions budget. The most common type of intensification in this region is a shift from singleto doublecroppin...

We consider the Potts model and the related bond, site, and mixed site-bond percolation problems on triangular-type and kagome-type lattices, and derive closed-form expressions for the critical frontier. For triangular-type lattices the critical frontier is known, usually derived from a duality consideration in conjunction with the assumption of a unique transition. Our analysis, however, is ri...

The literature suggests that investors prefer portfolios based on mean, variance and skewness rather than portfolios based on mean-variance (MV) criteria solely. Furthermore, a small variety of methods have been proposed to determine meanvariance-skewness (MVS) optimal portfolios. Recently, the shortage function has been introduced as a measure of efficiency, allowing to characterize MVS optima...

Because of non-convexities in the model, computing much of anything along the nondominated frontier of a large-scale (1000 to 3000 securities) portfolio selection problem with semi-continuous variables is a task that has not previously been achieved. But (a) given the speed at which the nondominated frontier of a classical portfolio problem can now be computed and (b) the possibility that there...

In a recent paper, Yang et al developed an algorithm based on the extended minimal adjustment strategy and the equilibrium competition strategy to achieve a common equilibrium efficient frontier. However, the computational burden of their algorithm is challenging when a sample contains many inefficient decision-making units (DMUs). In this paper, we propose a linear programming model that can a...