Ranking efficient DMUs using cooperative game theory

The problem of ranking Decision Making Units (DMUs) in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been widely studied in the literature. Some of the proposed approaches use cooperative game theory as a tool to perform the ranking. In this paper, we use the Shapley value of two different cooperative games in which the players are the efficient DMUs and the characteristic function represents the increase in the discriminant power of DEA contributed by each efficient DMU. The idea is that if the efficient DMUs are not included in the modified reference sample then the efficiency score of some inefficient DMUs would be higher. The characteristic function represents, therefore, the change in the efficiency scores of the inefficient DMUs that occurs when a given coalition of efficient units is dropped from the sample. Alternatively, the characteristic function of the cooperative game can be defined as the change in the efficiency scores of the inefficient DMUs that occurs when a given coalition of efficient DMUs are the only efficient DMUs that are included in the sample. Since the two cooperative games proposed are dual games, their corresponding Shapley value coincide and thus lead to the same ranking. The more an ef- ficient DMU impacts the shape of the efficient frontier, the higher the increase in the efficiency scores of the inefficient DMUs its removal brings about and, hence, the higher its contribution to the overall discriminant power of the method. The proposed approach is illustrated on a number of datasets from the literature and compared with existing methods

The Regulation of Financial Markets and the European Social Model

The regulation of financial markets generates very relevant consequences for inequality and produces important distributional effects. First, public funds used to restore financial stability and to rescue troubled financial institutions cannot be assigned to finance better infrastructures or health care. Second, financial crises destabilize productive industries, reduce investment and increaseunemployment, deterioratingmore sharplythe welfare of theweaker sections of the population.Third, depending on the regulatory framework, consumers and retail investors may see their position weakenedor suffer unexpected losses more easily. Thus it is obviousthat the regulation of financial markets significantly conditions the social model

A Statue Gets a Fresh Coat of Paint: A Glimpse at the Catholic Church and Chicano Activists in the Rio Grande Valley in 1970

In December, 1969, at the end of a weekend conference, a group of Mexican American activist students painted a statue of Mary brown, causing an uproar among some priests and faithful. This reaction did not, however, cause the Church to pull back on its commitment to social justice. Indeed, some bishops, priests, and laity took strong positions and acted on issues related to farmworkers and Chicano youth projects in the face of opposition within the Church and among the public. This paper utilizes oral history interviews, newspaper accounts, and documents in archives of the Oblate School of Theolog

The New Services Directive of the European Union – Hopes and Expectations from the Angle of a (further) Completion of the Internal Market: Spanish Report

This work deals with the legal problems and expectations of the transposition of the Directive 2006/123/EC (Services Directive) in Spain. This contribution reviews the national debates on the implementing rules, the constitutional repercussions arising from its transposition, and the scope and effects of the Services Directive in Spanish law, taking into account both its substantive and procedural provisions. The major legal consequence of the implementation of the Services Directive in Spain will be administrative simplification. The Spanish services market suffers from legal opacity and complexity due to the mixture of regulating competencies of different Administrations. From a general point of view, this is the most important entry barrier for foreign providers of services. The establishment of points of single contact, accessible by electronic means, if successfully achieved, will represent a revolutionary progress in a traditionally burdensome and bureaucratic set of Administrations. It will also reduce the economic inefficiencies derived from political decentralisation. From a material point of view, the evaluation process may help to detect regional and local norms which have to be reconciled with Community law, and that have passed unnoticed in the past, because of their limited territorial scope of application

Transparency in International Financial Institutions

This work provides a comparative analysis of international financial institutions’ transparency policies and denounces their shortcomings and excessive prudence, and in the case of less formal cooperation bodies (such as the G-20 or the Financial Stability Board), the lack of attention to basic transparency concerns. The study shows that a higher degree of institutionalization calls for a more coherent and open transparency policy, as more structured institutions have at their disposal the appropriate resources and are more easily subject to pressure by the civil society. The IMF and the World Bank are clearly more transparent than informal cooperation fora such as the G-20 or the Financial Stability Board. As a development institution, the World Bank gets more benefits from transparency and it has achieved a remarkable level of procedural guarantees that could be set as an example for other international financial institutions, including the IMF. However, in practice, even in the World Bank there is excessive latitude for opaqueness

A Critical Assessment of the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1373

This work studies the content of Security Council Res 1373, its organic and procedural structure, and later explores the path travelled during more than a decade of implementation with its main achievements and shortcomings. The singular organic structure established to supervise the implementation of the Resolution offers an interesting testing ground to analyse future trends of global governance to safeguard common universal interests. This contribution concludes with some reflections on the future of counter-terrorist cooperation in the United Nations (UN) and a proposal to create a UN Counter-Terrorist Agency