Operational performance of low-cost carriers and international airlines: New evidence using a bootstrap truncated regression

Between 2001 and 2005, the US airline industry faced financial turmoil. At the same time, the European airline industry entered a period of substantive deregulation. This period witnessed opportunities for low-cost carriers to become more competitive in the market as a result of these combined events. To help assess airline performance in the aftermath of these events, this paper provides new evidence of technical efficiency for 42 national and international airlines in 2006 using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) bootstrap approach first proposed by Simar and Wilson (J Econ, 136:31-64, 2007). In the first stage, technical efficiency scores are estimated using a bootstrap DEA model. In the second stage, a truncated regression is employed to quantify the economic drivers underlying measured technical efficiency. The results highlight the key role played by non-discretionary inputs in measures of airline technical efficiency.Data envelopment analysis, efficiency, airlines, bootstrap truncated regression, non-discretionary inputs.

Efficiency, technology and productivity change in Australian universities, 1998-2003

In this study, productivity growth in thirty-five Australian universities is investigated using nonparametric frontier techniques over the period 1998 to 2003. The inputs included in the analysis are full-time equivalent academic and non-academic staff, non-labour expenditure and undergraduate and postgraduate student load and the outputs are undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD completions, national competitive and industry grants and publications. Using Malmquist indices, productivity growth is decomposed into technical efficiency and technological change. The results indicate that annual productivity growth averaged 3.3 percent across all universities, with a range between -1.8 percent and 13.0 percent, and was largely attributable to technological progress. However, separate analyses of research-only and teaching-only productivity indicate that most of this gain was attributable to improvements in research-only productivity associated with pure technical and some scale efficiency improvements. While teaching-only productivity also contributed, the largest source of gain in that instance was technological progress offset by a slight fall in technical efficiency.Productivity; technical and scale efficiency; technological progress; Malmquist indices; universities.

Facilitating reflective practice via Instant Messenger Cooperative Development

Reflective practice may be considered an important part of the teaching process. By reflecting on their action, teachers can continually examine their classroom teaching and embrace possibilities for professional growth and change. This article describes how teachers can utilize Instant Messenger Cooperative Development (IMCD) (Boon, 2005, 2007, 2011, 2015); an online framework for reflecting on pedagogical practice. To illustrate IMCD in action, it examines a session in which a teacher explores ways for her learners to recycle and review language learned in previous lessons. The article then discusses the benefits of IMCD as an aid for reflecting on and finding workable solutions to pedagogic puzzles with the hope that readers of the article may go on to utilize IMCD for their own reflective practice purposes

Desperately seeking reassurance: analysing requestive hint miscommunication in an email exchange

This article seeks to determine reasons for the miscommunication of a requestive hint within an authentic email exchange between two native speakers. It includes the analysis of the interaction from the perspectives of ⅰ) speech act theory, ⅱ) implicature, relevance, and prior email history between the two interlocutors, and ⅲ) politeness

Setting up an extensive reading course: the beginning, the middle, and the end

　This article provides an outline of an extensive reading elective reading course for second year students at Toyo Gakuen University. It describes the decisions that were made when designing the course, the in-class activities that helped foster learner confidence and motivation, and the evaluation of the course from the perspectives of both the students and the teacher

Learner support and discovery in a virtual non-judgmental environment

This thesis is a qualitative case study that draws upon a grounded genre analysis approach situated within the social constructivist paradigm. The study describes the various obligatory, desired, and optional moves used by post-graduate students as they interacted within an online, non-judgmental environment in order to seek solutions to issues they were experiencing with their research projects or teaching. The postgraduate students or case participants met individually online with me at pre-arranged times to take part in Instant Messenger Cooperative Development (IMCD) (Boon, 2005) 30-minute to one hour sessions via the text-chat function of Skype. Participants took on the role of ‘Explorer’ in order to articulate their thoughts and ideas about their research. I took on the role of ‘Understander’ to provide support to each Explorer by reflecting my understanding of the ongoing articulations as the Explorers investigated their specific issues, determined possible ways to overcome them, made new discoveries, and formulated plans of action regarding the best way for them to move forward. The description of generic moves covers 32 IMCD sessions collected over a threeyear period (2009-2012) from 10 different participants (A-J). Data collected is drawn from live IMCD sessions, field notes, and post-session email feedback from participants. In particular, the thesis focuses on describing the specific generic moves of Explorers within IMCD sessions as they seek satisfactory resolutions to particular research or pedagogic puzzles. It also provides a detailed description of a longitudinal case (Participant A – four sessions), a one-session case (Participant B – one session), and an outlier case in which the Explorer underwent a negative IMCD experience. The thesis concludes by arguing that IMCD is a highly effective tool that helps facilitate the research process for both distance-learning and on-campus students and has the potential to be utilized across all disciplines at the tertiary level

Malmquist Indices of Pre and Post-Deregulation Productivity, Efficiency and Technological Change in the Singaporean Banking Sector

By the end of the 1990s, the Singaporean government had recognised the need to open up its banking sector so as to remain competitive in the global economy. The Monetary Authority of Singapore thus began deregulation of the banking sector in 1999 to strengthening the competitiveness of local banks relative to their foreign competition through mergers. This paper employs a nonparametric Malmquist productivity index to provide measure of productivity, technological change and efficiency gains over the period 1995-2005. The findings reveal some total factor productivity growth associated with deregulation and scale efficiency improvement largely from mergers amongst the local banks.Efficiency, productivity; deregulation; Malmquist indices; banking

Identifying Moves in an IMCD Session

This article seeks to identify the various generic moves that may exist in a typical Instant Messenger Cooperative Development session in order to better understand how the IMCD framework may be used by an ‘Explorer’ to achieve a satisfactory resolution to a research obstacle