The statistical properties of the efficiency estimators based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) are largely unknown. Recent work by Simar et al. and Banker has shown the consistency of the DEA estimators under specific assumptions, and Banker proposes asymptotic tests of whether two subsamples have the same efficiency distribution. There are difficulties arising from bias in small samples and ...

This study explores the reduction potential of greenhouse gases for major pollution emitting countries of the world using nonparametric productivity measurement methods and directional distance functions. In contrast to the existing literature we apply optimization methods to endogenously determine optimal directions for the efficiency analysis. These directions represent the compromise of outp...

This empirical research note documents the relationship between composition of a firm's workforce (with a special focus on age and gender) and its performance with respect to innovative activities (outlays and employment in research and development (R&D)) for a large representative sample of enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany using unique newly available data. We find that fir...

BACKGROUND Previous researches reveal that depression is associated with increased inflammatory markers. As a simple and cheap inflammatory marker, we hypothesize that neutrophilic granulocyte percentage is associated with depression in hospitalized heart failure patients, whose prevalence of depression is at a very high level. METHODS Three hundred sixty-six cases of hospitalized heart failu...

A production technology specification in electricity distribution leads to many product aspects that together with detailed input data gives a high dimensionality. Non-parametric methods may give meaningful results when parametric methods lack degrees of freedom, but have problems with collinear or irrelevant variables. Aggregate efficiency estimates will be little affected, but rates of transf...

Wages and Productivity Growth in a Dynamic Monopoly* This Paper studies the intertemporal problem of a monopolistic firm that engages in productivity-enhancing innovations to reduce its labour costs. If the level of wages is sufficiently low, the firm’s rate of productivity growth approaches the rate of wage growth and eventually the firm reaches a steady state where its unit labour cost remain...

There is strong evidence that exporting firms are better. This correlation can potentially arise from many alternative casual models. In this paper, we utilise the natural experiments offered by transitioning into export in a dataset of Indian firms from 1990 to 2011, where each firm which made the transition is matched against one which did not. While exporting firms become bigger, there is no...

We measure the capacity output of a firm as the maximum amount producible by a firm given a specific quantity of the quasi-fixed input and an overall expenditure constraint for its choice of variable inputs. We compute this indirect capacity utilization measure for the total manufacturing sector in the US as well as for a number of disaggregated industries, for the period 1970-2001. We find con...

− A theoretical framework is developed for decomposing partial factor productivity and measuring technical inefficiency when the underlying technology is characterized by factor non-substitution. With Farrell’s (1957) radial index of technical inefficiency being inappropriate in this case, Russell’s (1985; 1987) non-radial indices are adapted to measure technical inefficiency in a Leontief mode...

In this paper the time series properties of the outcomes of two different specifications of a nonparametric productivity analysis are compared using data for threeand four-digit U.S. manufacturing industries over the period 1958-96. The first model is standard and does not account for variations of capacity utilization of the production factors whereas the second model does. Correcting for util...