Some Determinants of Intermediate Local Governments' Spending Efficiency: The Case of French Départements

Efforts undertaken by France to restructure the allocation of governmental competencies increased the importance of subnational governments by transferring additional tasks. This paper analyzes the efficiency of public spending on an intermediate government level for a sample of 96 départements in metropolitan France in 2008. Spending efficiency is measured using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Results indicate significant room for improvements and detect spending inefficiencies averaging between 10 and 22 percent, depending on model specification. To explain efficiency, a bootstrapped truncated regression, following Simar and Wilson (2007), is applied. The second-stage regression shows that efficiency is also determined by exogenous factors and identifies the distance to the national capital, inhabitants' income and the share of inhabitants of an age over 65 as significant determinants of efficiency.Intermediate government spending efficiency, nonparametric efficiency analysis, bootstrapped truncated regression

Semi-parametric measures of scale characteristics of German natural gas-fired electricity generation

Scale characteristics are key properties of production functions that determine optimal firm sizes, and have considerable policy implications for sectors undergoing restructuring. However, estimates of scale characteristics typically vary with the assumptions of the underlying empirical model. This paper derives estimators of scale efficiency and scale elasticity for semi-parametric stochastic non-smooth envelopment of data (StoNED) that are based on few assumptions and rely neither on a functional form nor on distributional assumptions, but satisfy basic microeconomic properties. The estimators are applied to a unique sample covering 124 natural gas-fired power plants operating in Germany in 2011. Results indicate that on average plants operate under constant to slightly decreasing returns-to-scale, and scale inefficiency is found to be overall rather low. However, considerable improvement potential exists due to technical inefficiency. The results allow the strong fragmentation of gas-fired electricity generation in Germany, but emphasize the importance of using best practices on plant level

Productivity Growth and its Sources - A StoNED Metafrontier Analyis of the German Electricity Generating Sector

Energy supply in Germany has undergone considerable changes during the last decade, of which especially the nuclear phase-out and enormous installations of renewable energy sources pose new challenges for conventional combustion technologies. To analyze potential adaption processes due to this changing market conditions, this paper analyzes productivity change and its components in the German electricity and heat generation sector. A unique panel data set of 1555 power plants in Germany between 2003 and 2010 allows to estimate production frontiers for coal, lignite, gas and biomass fired power plants. Production functions are estimated using stochastic non-smooth envelopment of data (StoNED) in a meta-frontier framework. Productivity developments and its components are assessed at quantiles of the input value distributions of the different technologies using a metafrontier Malmquist decomposition. Results indicate (1) a dominant position of gas-fired plants in the metafrontier, (2) productivity changes for all technologies and reductions in production potentials (3) a catch-up for biomass plants to the other technologies

Effizienzanalysemethoden in der Regulierung deutscher Elektrizitäts- und Gasversorgungsunternehmen

Mehr als 1600 Verteilnetzbetreiber versorgen deutsche Haushalte mit Strom und Gas. Dabei handelt es sich um »natürliche Monopole«, d.h. es gibt keinen direkten Wettbewerb zwischen den Unternehmen, sondern werden sie durch die Bundesnetzagentur im Anreizregulierungsverfahren reguliert. Herzstück dieses Regulierungsverfahren ist ein Benchmarking beruhend auf der Data Envelopment (DEA) Analysis und der Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). In der wissenschaftlichen Literatur werden Stärken und Schwächen dieser Schätzverfahren diskutiert. Insbesondere jüngere methodische Fortschritte könnten das Benchmarking im Anreizregulierungsverfahren in Zukunft beeinflussen

on the efficiency of team-based meritocracies

According to theory a pure meritocracy is efficient because individual members are competitively rewarded according to their individual contributions to society. However, purely individually based meritocracies seldom occur. We introduce a new model of social production called “team-based meritocracy” (TBM) in which individual members are rewarded based on their team membership. We demonstrate that as long as such team membership is both mobile and competitively based on contributions, individuals are able to tacitly coordinate a complex and counterintuitive asymmetric equilibrium that is close to Pareto-optimal, possibly indicating that such a group-based meritocracy could be a social structure to which humans respond with particular ease. Our findings are relevant to many contemporary societies in which rewards are at least in part determined via membership in organizations such as for example firms, and organizational membership is increasingly determined by contribution rather than privilege.social stratification, meritocracies, mechanism design, non-cooperative games, experiment, team production

Auctioning Greenhouse Gas Emissions Permits in Australia

The allocation of permits is an important design aspect of an emissions trading scheme. Traditionally, governments have favoured the free allocation of greenhouse gas permits based on individual historical emissions (‘grandfathering’) or industry benchmark data. Particularly in the EU, the free allocation of permits has proven complex and inefficient and the distributional implications are politically difficult to justify; auctioning emissions permits has therefore become more popular. The EU is now moving to auction more than 50 per cent of all permits in 2013, and in the US the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has begun auctioning more than 90 per cent of total allowances. Another case in point is the Australian proposal for a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), which provides for auctioning a significant share of total permits. This paper discusses the proposed Australian CPRS’s auction design. A major difference to other emissions trading schemes is that the CPRS plans to auction multiple vintages of emissions permits simultaneously.Auctions, carbon auctions, greenhouse gas auctions

Communications Regulation in the Age of Digital Convergence : Legal and Economic Perspectives

This book brings together contributions of a distinguished panel of regulators as well as lawyers and economists from both academia and industry to present their insights on the digital convergence phenomenon in the telecommunications industry. The contributions cover a great deal of the relevant topics in communications regulation, such as technological and network neutrality, distribution of the digital dividend, and incentives for investment and innovation

Lokale Arbeitsmärkte für ausländische Arbeitskräfte in Deutschland : berufliche Veränderungsprozesse am Beispiel dreier idealtypischer Arbeitsmarktregionen (Local labour markets for foreign workers in Germany : occupational processes of change, taking as an example three ideal-typical labour market regions)

"This article examines the extent to which the structure of foreign workers in three different types of local labour market adapted to the respective structure of indigenous workers between 1980 and 1990. The Ruhr district is examined as an example of a traditional industrial region, Frankfurt as an example of a service region and Stuttgart as an example of 'high-tech production' and quality production in engineering. The report takes as a starting point the thesis that the patterns of employment of the foreign workers is gradually adapting to the demand pattern of the labour markets. Corresponding alignment processes are expected to take place more quickly in regions with a low rate of unemployment. Accordingly foreigners should be employed as skilled workers more often in Stuttgart than in the Ruhr district and more foreigners should be found in the services sector in Frankfurt. The analyses of the IAB employment sample, however, do not confirm these assumptions overall. Although a higher proportion of foreign workers can be found in services in the Frankfurt region, in Stuttgart foreign workers are employed disproportionately often as unskilled or semi-skilled workers, and in the Ruhr district on the other hand foreign workers can be found increasingly in skilled worker positions. In the Ruhr district less favourable working conditions, lower wages and less secure employment prospects even in qualified employment fields have led to them being unattractive for indigenous workers. The gaps arising in these employment fields have been filled by foreign workers." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))ausländische Arbeitnehmer - Struktur, Beschäftigtenstatistik, Beschäftigtenstruktur, Stellung im Beruf, regionale Mobilität, regionaler Arbeitsmarkt, sektorale Verteilung, berufliche Mobilität, Ruhrgebiet, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Frankfurt/Main, Hessen, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Competition effects in an afrotemperate forest

Background Information about competition responses is mainly available for monospecific stands or mixed stands with a small number of species. Studies on complex multi-species and highly structured forest ecosystems are scarce. Accordingly, the objective of this study was to quantify competition effects and analyse competition responses in a species-diverse afrotemperate forest in South Africa, based on an observational study with mapped tree positions and long-term diameter increment records. Methods The sensitivity to competition was analysed for individual species and involved the calculation of the slope of the linear relation between the value of a competition index (CI) and diameter growth as a measure of sensitivity. In a next step different competition indices were combined and tree diameters were grouped in three classes as surrogates for canopy status and ontogenetic stage. Results Five competition indices were found to be effective in showing sensitivity to competition for a number of canopy and sub-canopy species. Significant linear regressions were fitted for 18 of a total of 25 species. Species reactions varied significantly in their sensitivity to the different CIs. The indices were classified as belonging to two groups, those that responded more to local crowding and those that are more sensitive to overtopping, which revealed species-specific sensitivities to both factors. The analysis based on diameter classes revealed that species clearly changed their sensitivity to crowding or overtopping depending on diameter. Canopy and sub-canopy species showed distinct differences in their reactions. Conclusions The application of multiple CIs brought novel insights relating to the dynamics of afrotemperate forests. The response patterns to different competition indices that focus on crowding and overtopping are varied and tree diameter dependent, indicating that oversimplified assumptions are not warranted in the interpretation of CI- growth relations