ESTIMATING THE EFFECT OF WATER CHARGE INTRODUCTION AT SMALL-SCALE IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN NORTH WEST PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA

In South Africa water law has recently changed, adopting the principle of water as an economic good, thus levying charges on its use. For small-scale irrigators this is an important change, because currently their water use is entirely subsidized. In the coming years, subsidies will gradually decrease and an essential expected benefit of this policy change is that water use efficiency will rise, leading to reduced consumption and possible reallocation of the water saved. The exact impact of the water pricing policy on the irrigation water use or on the farmers' production system is however unclear. This study introduces a new methodology, based on data envelopment analysis, that allows estimating the effects on the agricultural production process and water demand of introducing or raising a water price. It is revealed that a large majority of the farmers does not adjust water use. Production costs however were shown to increase significantly.Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Technical Efficiency of Nigerian Insurance Companies

This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the performance of Nigerian insurance companies, from 2001 to 2005, combining operational and financial variables. The paper also analyses the situations of these companies in relation to the frontier of best practices. In addition, it tests for the roles played by dimension, bank network and market share in the efficiency of the Nigerian insurance companies. The implications of this research for managerial purposes are then drawn.Nigerian insurance companies; Data Envelopment Analysis; Efficiency.

Market structure and hospital efficiency: Evaluating potential effects of deregulation in a national health service

In this article we examine the potential effect of market structure on hospital technical efficiency as a measure of performance controlled by ownership and regulation. This study is relevant to provide an evaluation of the potential effects of recommended and initiated deregulation policies in order to promote market reforms in the context of a European National Health Service. Our goal was reached through three main empirical stages. Firstly, using patient origin data from hospitals in the region of Catalonia in 1990, we estimated geographic hospital markets through the Elzinga--Hogarty approach, based on patient flows. Then we measured the market level of concentration using the Herfindahl--Hirschman index. Secondly, technical and scale efficiency scores for each hospital was obtained specifying a Data Envelopment Analysis. According to the data nearly two--thirds of the hospitals operate under the production frontier with an average efficiency score of 0.841. Finally, the determinants of the efficiency scores were investigated using a censored regression model. Special attention was paid to test the hypothesis that there is an efficiency improvement in more competitive markets. The results suggest that the number of competitors in the market contributes positively to technical efficiency and there is some evidence that the differences in efficiency scores are attributed to several environmental factors such as ownership, market structure and regulation effects.Geographic markets, market concentration, technical efficiency, data envelopment analysis, censored regression model

Valuing Environmental Factors in Cost-Benefit Analysis Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Environmental cost-benefit analysis (ECBA) refers to social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts. Valuation of the environmental impacts in monetary terms forms one of the critical steps in ECBA. We propose a new approach for environmental valuation within ECBA framework that is based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) and does not demand any price estimation for environmental impacts using traditional revealed or stated preference methods. We show that DEA can be modified to the context of CBA by using absolute shadow prices instead of traditionally used relative prices. We also discuss how the approach can be used for sensitive analysis which is an important part of ECBA. We illustrate the application of the DEA approach to ECBA by means of a hypothetical numerical example where a household considers investment to a new sport utility vehicle.Cost-Benefit Analysis, Data Envelopment Analysis, Eco-Efficiency, Environmental Valuation, Environmental Performance, Performance Measurement

Do Islamic and conventional banks have the same technology?

Is there a technology gap between Islamic and conventional banks? Do Islamic and conventional banks have different cost efficiency levels? We show that conventional and Islamic banks have similar mean (aggregate) cost efficiency levels in the MENA area and there is no technology gap between the two types of banks. At the country level, Islamic banks are more cost efficient than conventional banks in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and United Arab Emirates, and less efficient in Bangladesh, Kuwait, Malaysia and Tunisia. We analyse a very large sample of banks in twelve MENA and South East Asian countries between 2000 and 2006 and we use the meta-frontier approach to account for the sample heterogeneity

The Law of One Price in Data Envelopment Analysis: Restricting Weight Flexibility Across Firms

The Law of One Price (LoOP) states that all firms face the same prices for their inputs and outputs in the competitive market equilibrium. This law has powerful implications for productive efficiency analysis, which have remained unexploited thus far. This paper shows how LoOP-based weight restrictions can be incorporated in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Utilizing the relation between the industry level and the firm level cost efficiency measures, we propose to apply a set of input prices that is common for all firms and that maximizes cost efficiency of the industry. Our framework allows for firm-specific output weights and variable returns-to-scale, and preserves the linear programming structure of the standard DEA. We apply the proposed methodology for evaluating research efficiency of economics departments of Dutch Universities. This application shows that the methodology is computationally tractable for practical efficiency analysis, and that it helps in deepening the DEA analysis.Data Envelopment Analysis; Law of One Price; industry-level efficiency; weight restrictions; research efficiency

Assessing Hospital Efficiency: Non-parametric Evidence for Portugal

We compute DEA efficiency scores and Malmquist indexes for a panel data set comprising 68 Portuguese public hospitals belonging to the National Health System (NHS) in the period 2000-2005, when several units started being run in an entrepreneurial framework. With data on hospital services’ and resource quantities we construct an output distance function, we assess by how much can output quantities be proportionally expanded without changing input quantities Our results show that, on average, the NHS hospital sector revealed positive but small productivity growth between 2000 and 2004. The mean TFP indices vary between 0.917 and 1.109, implying some differences in the Malmquist indices across specifications. Furthermore, there are significant fluctuations among NHS hospitals in terms of individual efficiency scores from one year to the other.Public hospitals; Data Envelopment Analysis; Malmquist indices; Portugal.

Hospital Efficiency: An Empirical Analysis of District and Grant-in-Aid Hospitals in Gujarat

This study focuses on analysing the hospital efficiency of district level government hospitals and grant-in-aid hospitals in Gujarat. The study makes an attempt to provide an overview of the general status of the health care services provided by hospitals in the state of Gujarat in terms of their technical and allocative efficiency. One of the two thrusts behind addressing the issue of efficiency was to take stock of the state of healthcare services (in terms of efficiency) provided by grant-in-aid hospitals and district hospitals in Gujarat. The motivation behind addressing the efficiency issue is to provide empirical analysis of governments policy to provide grants to not-for-profit making institutions which in turn provide hospital care in the state. The study addresses the issue whether grant-in-aid hospitals are relatively more efficient than public hospitals. This comparison between grant-in-aid hospitals and district hospitals in terms of their efficiency has been of interest to many researchers in countries other than India, and no consensus has been reached so far as to which category is more efficient. The relative efficiency of government and not-for-profit sector has been reviewed in this paper. It is expected that the findings of the study would be useful to evaluate this policy and help policy makers to develop benchmarks in providing the grants to such institutions.

The Cost of Corporate Social Responsibility: The Case of the Community Reinvestment Act

A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) cost minimization model is employed to estimate the cost to thrift institutions of achieving a rating of 'Outstanding' under the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act, which is viewed as an act of voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). There is no difference in overall cost efficiency between 'Outstanding' and minimally compliant 'Satisfactory' thrifts. However, the sources of cost inefficiency do differ, and an 'Outstanding' rating involves annual extra cost of $7.4 million or, 1.3% of total costs. This added cost is the shadow price of CSR since it is not an explicit output or input in the DEA cost model. Before and After-tax rates of return are the same for the 'Outstanding' and 'Satisfactory' thrifts, which implies a recoupment of the extra cost. The findings are consistent with CSR as a management choice based on balancing marginal cost and marginal revenue. An incidental finding is that larger thrifts are less efficient