Analysing The Efficiency Of Portuguese Pension Funds:A Stochastic Frontier Model

This paper examines technical efficiency of Portuguese pension funds management companies, using a stochastic frontier model in order to obtain estimates of economies of scale and scope. The empirical findings reveal a significant effect of efficiency measures on pension funds efficiency. Their implications for managers and policy makers are discussed

A technique for estimating a cost system that allows for inefficiency

The presentation of a new econometric technique for estimating a system of cost and input share equations that allow for inefficiency.Econometrics ; Production (Economic theory)

Technical Efficiency and Heterogeneity of Argentina Pension Funds

This paper examines the technical efficiency of Argentinean pension funds management companies using a random stochastic frontier model to rank the pension funds management companies, taking into account heterogeneity in the data. The empirical findings reveal that efficiency measures have a significant effect on pension funds efficiency. The implications for managers and policy makers are discussed.Argentina; pension funds; efficiency; stochastic frontier models.

Determining the Rationality of Marketing Strategy on Farms

The focus of farm management, as a discipline, has reflected historically the assumption that farms are embedded in near-perfectly competitive market structures. The common validity of this assumption is plain. As open systems, farms have asymmetric relationships with their environment: they are significantly more influenced by it than influencing it. However, farmers seem often not to appreciate the implications of this for their management options. Nor, arguably, is the farm management discipline yet well equipped to analyse initiatives that farmers might contemplate to enhance their control over market outcomes, specifically, as a means of exerting greater control over business performance. In this paper a framework for the analysis of the prospects for product differentiation of farm output is presented in an attempt to fill this lacuna. Introduction As an academic discipline, historically farm management (FM) has been focused on management decision making (Charry and Parton 2002). The domain of physical agricultural production activities may have been taught within farm management qualifications, but the discipline has persistently involved analysis for decisions. Within it farms are characterised as purposeful, open, complex systems having to cope with substantial stochasticity (Dillon 1992). Economics has been the discipline used to most effect to analyse farm management decisions (Malcolm 2004).Farm Management,

Effects of ownership, subsidization and teaching activities on hospital costs in Switzerland

This paper explores the cost structure of Swiss hospitals, focusing on differences due to teaching activities and those across different ownership and subsidization types. A stochastic total cost frontier with a Cobb-Douglas functional form has been estimated for a panel of 150 general hospitals over the six-year period from 1998 and 2003. Inpatient cases adjusted by DRG cost weights and ambulatory revenues are considered as two separate outputs. The adopted econometric specification allows for unobserved heterogeneity across hospitals. The results indicate that the time-invariant unobserved factors could account for considerable cost differences that could be only partly due to inefficiency. The results suggest that teaching activities are an important cost driving factor and hospitals that have a broader range of specialization are relatively more costly. The excess costs of university hospitals can be explained by more extensive teaching activities as well as the relatively high quality of medical units. However, even after controlling for such differences university hospitals have shown a relatively low cost-efficiency especially in the first two or three years of the sample period. The analysis does not provide any evidence of significant efficiency differences across ownership and subsidization categories.general hospitals, teaching hospitals, stochastic frontier, cost efficiency

Transit Costs and Cost Efficiency: Bootstrapping Nonparametric Frontiers.

This paper explores a selection of recently proposed bootstrapping techniques to estimate non-parametric convex (DEA) cost frontiers and efficiency scores for transit firms. Using a sample of Norwegian bus operators, the key results can be summarised as follows: (i) the bias implied by uncorrected cost efficiency measures is numerically important (close to 25%), (ii) the bootstrapped-based test rejects the constant returns to scale hypothesis (iii) explaining patterns of efficiency scores using a two-stage bootstrapping approach detects only one significant covariate, in contrast to earlier results highlighting, e.g., the positive impact of high-powered contract types. Finally, comparing the average inefficiency obtained for the Norwegian data set with an analogous estimate for a smaller French sample illustrates how the estimated differences in average efficiency almost disappear once sample size differences are accounted for.

PLANNING FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: AN AGENDA GUIDED BY THE SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEM'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Co-operation among members of the world community is highly desirable, since it would be a step in the right direction to alleviate some of the world's problems. However, the current discussions on the harmonization of socio-economic systems and the globalization of trade goes beyond mere suggestions to the position that such a development is imminent and highly beneficial to the world community. For many countries being able to trade voluntarily with any country is highly desirable, but having to transform one's way of life to one single mode of operation poses far greater problems than those that currently are being experienced. This paper maintains that institutionalized macroeconomic planning, which can produce positive benefits to any and all societies, is the path that should be followed.globalization of trade, confron tational competition, managed trade, institutionalized macroeconomic planning, national economic policy de cisions.

Explaining bank failures: deposit insurance, regulation, and efficiency

This paper uses micro-level historical data to examine the causes of bank failure. For state charactered Kansas banks during 19 10-28, time-to-failure is explicitly modeled using a proportional hazards framework. In addition to standard financial ratios, this study includes membership in the voluntary state deposit insurance system and measures of technical efficiency to explain bank failure. The results indicate that deposit insurance system membership increased theprobability of failure and banks which were technically inefficient were more likely to fail than technically efficient banks.Bank failures