INTRODUCTION Hospitals are the most expensive health services provider in the world. Therefore, the evaluation of their performance can be used to reduce costs. The aim of this study was to determine the efficiency of the hospitals at the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). METHODS This was a cross-sectional and retrospective study that assessed ...

A number of studies have explored the semiand nonparametric estimation of stochastic frontier models by using kernel regression or other nonparametric smoothing techniques. In contrast to popular deterministic nonparametric estimators, these approaches do not allow one to impose any shape constraints (or regularity conditions) on the frontier function. On the other hand, as many of the previous...

document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. * I would like to thank Peter Schmidt and Bob Myers for their suggestions and guidance. Thanks also go to Thomas Jayne for generously providing me the data, Zhiying Xu, and especially Margaret Beaver for helping me understand the data. All remaining errors and omissions are my own.

This paper provides a concise review of a broad set of concepts, models and estimation issues in the field of stochastic frontier analysis. The goal is to provide practitioners with a quick guide to some key ideas. The review is restricted to single-output models estimated by econometric methods. Among the conceptual issues are the interpretation and the paths to reduce inefficiency. The modell...

Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) is often used to estimate technical efficiency of entities such as firms, countries or municipalities. A potential dependence between the two components of the error term can be taken into account by a copula function. While estimation of the model is straightforward using the Corrected Ordinary Least Squares (COLS) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) methods, an open...

The stochastic frontier model with heterogeneous technical efficiency explained by exogenous variables is augmented with a sparse spatial autoregressive component for a crosssection data, and a spatial-temporal component for a panel data. An estimation procedure that takes advantage of the additivity of the model is proposed, computational advantages over simultaneous maximum likelihood estimat...

The scores in the national examinations taken by students at the end of their secondary courses have received much public attention in recent years, partly justified by the importance they have among the criteria for admission to higher education. These scores also have been used to evaluate the performance of Portuguese schools offering secondary courses. The aim of this paper is to analyse su...

Despite plausible theoretical grounds for presuming a positive relationship between foreign direct investment inflows (FDI) and economic growth, existing empirical evidence on this nexus is inconclusive. In an effort to add to the empirical literature, this paper estimates the relationship between FDI and the rate of growth of GDP using a stochastic frontier model and employing panel data cover...