This study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) and a distance function approach to derive Malmquist productivity indexes for 113 English higher education institutions (HEIs) over the period 1996/97 to 2002/03. The analysis finds that over the period of the study HEIs have experienced an annual...

This study used a parametric frontier approach to analyze technical, allocative and economic efficiency of smallholder rice farmers. It further explored the factors that influence the efficiency levels of the rice farmers. The study used a trans-log stochastic production function to analyze the...

This study applies parametric distance functions to estimate the efficiency of foreign banks in Australia, and subsequently employs extreme bounds analysis to establish the determinants of foreign bank efficiency that are robust to model specification. The limited global advantage hypothesis of...

The study contributes to the development of 'standards' for the application of matching algorithms in empirical evaluation studies. The focus is on the first step of the matching procedure, the choice of an appropriate distance function. Supplementary to most former studies, the simulation is...

This article presents multi-output, multi-input total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates in agriculture for 88 countries over the 1970–2001 period, estimated with both stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and the more commonly employed data envelopment analysis (DEA). We find results with...

This study compares the empirical performances of the parametric distance functions(PDF) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) with applications to adopters of improved cereal production technology in eastern Ethiopia. The results from both approaches revealed substantial technical inefficiencies...

Dixit’s 1975 paper "Welfare Effects of Tax and Price Changes" constitutes a seminal contribution to the theory of tax reform analysis within a second-best general equilibrium framework. The present paper clarifies ambiguities with respect to normalisation which have led to misinterpretation of...

In two widely cited but unpublished working papers, Simar and Wilson (1998) and Zofío and Lovell (1998) proposed an alternative decomposition of the Malmquist Productivity Index, which retained what seemed to be the strongholds of previous proposals with regard to the contribution of...

HEIs are likely to face tight fiscal constraints in the future. This paper uses random effects and stochastic frontier techniques to estimate an output distance function over the period 1997/97 to 2007/08 in order to investigate the efficiency of higher education institutions (HEIs) and to...