Does market structure trigger efficiency? Evidence for the USA before and after the financial crisis

This paper investigates the relationship between efficiency and market structure for a sample of industrial facilities dispersed among the USA states. In order to measure the relevant efficiency scores, we use a Data Development Analysis (DEA) allowing for the inclusion of desirable and undesirable (toxic chemical releases) outputs in the production function. In the next stage, we utilise the bootstrapped quantile regression methodology to uncover possible non-linear relationships between efficiency and competition at the mean and at various quantiles before and after the global financial crisis (2002 and 2012). In this way, we impose no functional form constraints on parameter values over the conditional distribution of the dependent variable (efficiency). At the same time, we estimate at which part of its conditional distribution function, the efficiency is located and draw substantial conclusions about the range of policy measures obtained. The empirical findings, indicate that the relationship between efficiency and market concentration did not remain unchanged in the aftermath of the economic crisis. The empirical results survived robustness checks under the inclusion of an alternative market concentration indicator (CR8).