This article compares OLS, the normal-half normal stochastic frontier approach (SFA) and the thick frontier approach (TFA) to an alternative thick frontier approach based on a mixture approach. Unlike the TFA approach, the new approach developed here uses all of the data, does not require...

Following Mann's (National Tax Journal, 33, 189-201, 1980) study, five different versions of Wagner's law are empirically examined using annual time-series data on ten countries over the period 1951 to 1996. Included are three of the emerging industrialized countries of Asia: South Korea,...

Deregulation during the 1980s allowed savings and loan associations to undertake many of the same activities as mutual savings banks, so that competition among thrifts increased, and they became more homogeneous in nature. At the same time, according to agency theory, mutual institutions should...