Efficiency measurement naturally requires the definition of a frontier as a benchmark indicating efficiency. Usually a measure reflecting the distance of a data point to the frontier indicates the level of efficiency. One of the crucial characteristics to distinguish efficiency measurement tools is the way in which they construct the frontier. The class of deterministic and non parametric tools...

License agreements constitute between 20-33% of all strategic alliances in sectors commonly identified as likely candidates for an endogenous fixed cost (EFC) model; namely biotechnology and chemicals among others. We develop a model of endogenous market structure and fixed (sunk) cost R&D investment based on Sutton (1998; 2007) and include the ability of firms to license their technology to (p...

For a strongly connected Extended-Free-Choice Net (EFC-net) N the algorithm given in this paper either nds a cover of S-components or recognizes that N is not well-formed. Well-formedness denotes the existence of a live and bounded marking for N. The algorithm is also adaptable to compute a cover of T-components. The time complexity is O(jPjjTj). According to the Rank Theorem, nding a cover of ...

The Expansionary Fiscal Contraction (EFC) hypothesis predicts that a major fiscal consolidation leads to an economic expansion under certain circumstances. We test this hypothesis, and the implied non–linear responses of the economy to large and small changes in fiscal policy, using data from the 1983 Danish fiscal reform. We use a structural VAR/event study methodology following Blanchard and ...

Background Despite increasing reports of successful pregnancies whilst using Efavirenz (EFZ), the drug remains Category C during pregnancy due to concerns around teratogenicity [1]. Additionally, EFZ can render many hormonal methods of contraception less effective. For these reasons, UK guidance suggests that HIV positive women should be informed of these effects before commencing treatment [2]...

bootstrapping the dea is one of the current methods of measuring robust efficiency by constructing a confidence interval and measuring the noise (bias) in production. in this study, two estimators: the conventional data envelopment analysis (dea) and bootstrap simulation with 2,000 bootstrap iterations were applied on a cross sectional data of 296 broiler farms in peninsular malaysia. the objec...

Among today’s rich economies, per capita output levels diverged before converging to the levels of the frontier economy. Since frontier economies grew at stable rates, non-frontier economies display an S-shaped transition path. Along this transition, there are "catapult effects": longer episodes of stagnation are associated with faster subsequent rates of convergence to the frontier. Many of to...

The conventional Cobb-Douglas production function model require strong assumptions such as the constant elasticity and the entire frontier efficiency. The varying elasticity production function is an useful extension but it does not take frontier efficiency into account, and the data envelope analysis model involves the use of linear programming methods to estimate the frontier efficiency where...

We study some structural and topological properties of the frontiers of objects in a certain class of discrete spaces, in the framework of simplicial complexes and partial orders. In a previous work, we introduced the notion of frontier order, which allows to define the frontier of any object in an n-dimensional space. The main goal of this paper is to exhibit the links which exist between fron...