2 research outputs found
Technical and scale efficiency in public and private Irish nursing homes a bootstrap DEA approach
This article provides methodological and
empirical insights into the estimation of technical efficiency in the nursing
home sector. Focusing on long-stay care
and using primary data, we examine technical and scale efficiency in 39 public
and 73 private Irish nursing homes by applying an input-oriented data
envelopment analysis (DEA). We employ robust
bootstrap methods to validate our nonparametric DEA scores and to integrate the
effects of potential determinants in estimating the efficiencies. Both the homogenous and two-stage double bootstrap
procedures are used to obtain confidence intervals for the bias-corrected DEA
scores. Importantly, the application of
the double bootstrap approach affords true DEA technical efficiency scores
after adjusting for the effects of ownership, size, case-mix, and other
determinants such as location, and quality.Â
Based on our DEA results for variable returns to scale technology, the
average technical efficiency score is 62%, and the mean scale efficiency is
88%, with nearly all units operating on the increasing returns to scale part of
the production frontier. Moreover, based
on the double bootstrap results, Irish nursing homes are less technically
efficient, and more scale efficient than the conventional DEA estimates
suggest. Regarding the efficiency
determinants, in terms of ownership, we find that private facilities are less
efficient than the public units. Furthermore,
the size of the nursing home has a positive effect, and this reinforces our
finding that Irish homes produce at increasing returns to scale. Also, notably, we find that a tendency
towards quality improvements can lead to poorer technical efficiency
performance
Analysing the drivers of services firm performance: evidence for Ireland
We examine drivers of firm performance using a holistic multivariate model which relates
services firm growth to firm-characteristic, firm strategy and macroeconomic variables. Using data
for 905 services firms in Ireland over the period 2001-2007, we employ System Generalised Method
of Moments estimations and multiple firm performance measures to address the possible
endogeneity and multidimensionality of firm-level performance. This paper provides empirical
evidence on the factors determining services firm performance and the channels through which
this occurs. Results confirm the importance of macroeconomic conditions for firm performance. We
also find that small services firms in Ireland grew quicker during this period