The neglected issue of using profit efficiency for the best-practice benchmarking of UK universities is explored to see whether this supports the policy stance of encouraging more specialized university production. The article also investigates whether nonparametric modelling with financial...

This study examines the relative performance of Japanese cooperative banks between 1998 and 2009, explicitly modelling non-performing loans as an undesirable output. Three key findings emerge. First, the sector is characterized by increasing returns to scale which supports the ongoing...

This article explores the relative efficiency of Northern Ireland hospitals, and in particular the efficiency of small hospitals relative to their large counterparts, employing a technique called data envelopment analysis. The empirical analysis revealed that larger hospitals displayed higher...

This study uses a stochastic frontier analysis to evaluate the relative performance of UK credit unions over the period 1991 to 2001. The analysis found that UK credit unions are subject to high levels of (gross) in efficiency. The analysis also revealed that the environment within which...

Today US credit unions operate within a highly competitive financial market place. Set against this competitive operating environment, the present study employs stochastic frontier analysis to evaluate the performance of large credit unions (assets greater than $50 million) over the period 1993...

Current education policy in the UK requires secondary schools to strive for 'effectiveness' or 'best-practice' performance in producing educational outcomes, while securing cost efficiency in input use when doing so. Given this double policy objective, the present study uses data envelopment...

The study obtains measures of the productive efficiency of 'larger' and 'smaller' Northern Ireland hospitals during the 1986-92 pre-Trust period. The measures provide insights into how these hospitals were responding to the pressures for increased efficiency prior to Trust status. They also...