Towards minimum procedural guarantees for the defence in criminal proceedings in the EU

A critical observer would not deny that the practice of European Union (‘EU’) policy making in the field of criminal law in the past decade since the implementation of the Tampere Programme has been mainly repressive and prosecution-oriented.1 The idea of introducing a set of common (minimum) rules, guaranteeing the rights of defence at a EU-wide level, has not been accorded the same attention as the introduction of instruments aimed at improving the effectiveness of crime-fighting. What does this mean for the future of EU criminal policy? Will the EU succeed in the coming years in developing an area where freedom, security and justice are truly balanced? According to several authors, to date the EU has evolved in the opposite direction. As one observer put it:[I]f Procedural Criminal Law arises from the application of Constitutional Law, or indeed if it may be described as “a seismograph of the constitutional system of a State”, then as a consequence the Procedural Criminal Law of the European Union shows the extent of the Democratic Rule of Law, of the existence of a true “Rechtsstaat”, within an integrated Europe. This situation may be qualified as lamentable, as the main plank of the EU's criminal justice policy relates to the simplification and the speeding up of police and judicial cooperation—articles 30 and 31 of the Treaty of the EU—but without at the same time setting an acceptable standard for fundamental rights throughout a united Europe.2</jats:p

A Shadow Price Approach to Technical Efficiency Measurement.

The axiomatic literature on technical efficiency measurement has drawn attention to the indication problem of the Debreu-Farrell (DF) measure. We follow a shadow price approach to preserve the DF benchmark while reconciling it with the Koopmans efficiency characterization. First, we define a set of Koopmans efficient references that can be rationalized in a similar way as the DF projection. The indication problem is then captured using a measure of implicit allocative or mix efficiency, also interpretable as a dominance measure in price space. We consequently present a mix-adjusted DF framework for efficiency measurement in which e.g. the Zieschang (1984) procedure can be fitted.

Technical Efficiency Evaluation: Naturally Dual!

We provide a dual perspective on technical efficiency evaluation, in two respects. First, we build on the price assumptions implicitly associated with the notion of technical efficiency in a general equilibrium framework to characterize a set of appropriate references to be used in the technical efficiency evaluation of an input-output vector. Some existing evaluation methods always select an element of this set, but other methods fail to do so. Second, the above framework leads us to assert that a well-grounded measure of technical efficiency is naturally decomposable. One part refers to technical efficiency as captured by the classical Debreu-Farrell measure. The other part refers to technical efficiency resulting from the “implicit allocative efficiency” or “mix efficiency” of the evaluated vector. We present both a quantity-based distance measure and its price-based equivalent to evaluate this complementary dimension of technical efficiency. This generalized perspective encompasses the standard Debreu-Farrell framework for technical efficiency evaluation, and makes it fully consistent with the well-established Koopmans efficiency notion.

Profit efficiency analysis under limited information. With an application to German farm types.

Efficiency; Information;

Product Mixes as Objects of Choice in Nonparametric Efficiency Measurement

Non-radial measures of technical efficiency essentially differ from their radial counterparts in that the product mix of the efficient reference is allowed to be different from the product mix of the evaluated observation. Whereas existing non-radial measures are still based on the product mix of the evaluated, i.e. possibly inefficient observation, we change the perspective and propose a measure based on the mix properties of the efficient reference. The resulting `inverse' measure can be considered as complementary to the Färe-Lovell (or ``Russell'') efficiency measure.Data Envelopment Analysis, Non-radial efficiency measures, Product mix benchmarking

Learning from inout-output mixes in DEA: A proportional measure for slack-based efficient projections.

Learning;

A Shadow Price Approach to Technical Efficiency Measurement

The axiomatic literature on technical efficiency measurement has drawn attention to the indication problem of the Debreu-Farrell (DF) measure. We follow a shadow price approach to preserve the DF benchmark while reconciling it with the Koopmans efficiency characterization. First, we define a set of Koopmans efficient references that can be rationalized in a similar way as the DF projection. The indication problem is then captured using a measure of implicit allocative or mix efficiency, also interpretable as a dominance measure in price space. We consequently present a mix-adjusted DF framework for efficiency measurement in which e.g. the Zieschang (1984) procedure can be fitted.

Profit Efficiency Analysis Under Limited Information. With an Application to German Farm Types

Lack of information about technology and prices often hampers the empirical assessment of the validity of the profit maximization hypothesis. We show that the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology comprises natural tools for dealing with such incomplete information. In particular, we focus on the economic meaning of the DEA model that builds on assumptions of monotone and convex production possibility sets, and provide some extensions that further exploit this economic interpretation. This perspective on DEA is all the more attractive since its original use for technical efficiency analysis is sometimes questionable given its restrictive production assumptions. An application to German farm types complements our methodological discussion. By using nonparametric tools to test specific hypotheses about profit differences, we further demonstrate the potential of the non-parametric approach in deriving strong and robust statistical evidence while imposing minimal structure on the setting under study.profit maximization hypothesis; Data Envelopment Analysis; non-parametric techniques; agriculture