This paper presents productivity measurement results for hospital services using panel data for Ontario hospitals between 2003 and 2006. The study uses the Malmquist Productivity index (MPI) obtained through the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which is decomposed into efficiency...

In this paper we address an issue of equivalence of primal and dual measures of scale efficiency in general production theory framework. We find that particular types of homotheticity, which we refer to as scale homotheticity, provide necessary and sufficient condition for such equivalence....

In this article we show equivalence between the input oriented and output oriented scale elasticity measures for multi-output, multi-input technologies. We show the necessary and sufficient condition for this equivalence. We also provide a Lagrange multiplier (or shadow price) interpretation of...

In this paper we introduce a scale elasticity measure based on directional distance function for multi-output-multi-input technologies and explore its fundamental properties. Specifically, we derive necessary and sufficient condition for equivalence of the scale elasticity measure based on the...

In a seminal paper, Racine and Li, (Journal of Econometrics, 2004) introduce a tool which admits discrete and categorical variables as regressors in nonparametric regres- sions. The method is similar to the smoothing techniques for continuous regressors but uses discrete kernels. In the...

In this paper we consider the question of measuring aggregate economic growth and its sources. We derive a theoretically justified solution for aggregating (across firms, industries, countries, etc.) growth rates and their sources within the framework of Solow?s (1957) growth accounting method....

In this paper we focus on scale elasticity measure based on directional distance function for multi-output-multi-input technologies, explore its fundamental properties and show its equivalence with the input oriented and output oriented scale elasticity measures. We also establish duality...

In this article we extend the aggregation theory in efficiency and productivity analysis by deriving solutions to the problem of aggregation of individual scale efficiency measures, primal and dual, into aggregate primal and dual scale efficiency measures of a group. The new aggregation result...

This paper develops a slack-based decomposition of profit efficiency based on a direc- tional distance function. It complements Cooper, Pastor, Aparicio and Borras (2011).

In the wake of the recent global financial crisis central banks and regulators are concerned about redirection of bailout funds into dividends. Yet, we do not know much about the extent banks follow dividend policies and funding decisions optimal to generating shareholders? wealth because banks...