university of tehran administers a test known as the university of tehran english proficiency test (the utept) to phd candidates on a yearly basis. by definition, the test can be considered a high-stakes one. the validity of high stakes tests needs to be known (roever, 2001). as mesick (1988) maintains, if the validity of high stakes tests are not known, it might have some undesirable consequen...

In measuring productivity in the presence of undesirable outputs, traditional growth accounting and index number approaches face the problem that prices of the undesirable outputs typically do not exist since such outputs are generally not marketed. In this paper we employ an alternative measure of total factor productivity based on a generalization of the Shephard distance functions, namely wh...

Based on Super-SBM DEA model, this paper investigates the efficiency of 12 Chinese commercial banks from 2005 to 2013 under the consideration of undesirable output, and verifies the truth that considering undesirable outputs (non-performing loans) can make research result more authentic by comparing with the consequence obtained without considering undesirable output. On this basis, this paper ...

introduction:myocardial 18f-fdg uptake is highly variable in oncologic whole body 18f-fdg pet/ct studies, ranging from quite intense to minimal distribution. intense or heterogeneous myocardial 18f-fdg uptake is undesirable as it may interfere with the visual or quantitative evaluation of tumoral invasion and metastases in pericardium, myocardium or adjacent mediastinal structures. the diet, as...