The aim of this research is to introduce a simple and easily computable metric to assess the performance of basketball players through non-scoring box-score statistics. This metric is called Factors Determining Production (FDP), which is created through separating points made from the remaining...

The aim of this research was to empirically prove if different types of names and surnames influence people’s perception about the performance of professionals such as psychologists, architects, writers or lawyers. However, across a series of studies using both convenience and random...

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...

In a recent volume of this journal, Holden [Testing the normality assumption in the Tobit Model, J. Appl. Stat. 31 (2004) pp. 521-532] presents Monte Carlo evidence comparing several tests for departures from normality in the Tobit Model. This study adds to the work of Holden by considering...

This article uses the method of pairwise comparisons to rank college football teams. This issue is of some importance due to debate over, which team actually won the national championship in 2003-2004. Some polls ranked LSU number 1 while others ranked USC number 1. Our method, based on pairwise...

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,...

This article applies composed error frontier regression techniques to estimate the minimal moments of inertia and radii of gyration for a unique and varied sample of shotguns. We find that minimum inertia depends on weight, center of gravity, length of pull, and barrel length, but not on gauge,...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the answers to several questions raised by the fact that econometrics in theory is not the same as econometrics in practice. An obvious question is why econometrics in theory differs from econometrics in practice. The simple answer is that the benefits...

This paper examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in Taiwan from 1962 to 1998. Using a four-variable VAR model, the competing hypotheses of demand-following versus supply-leading are empirically tested. The results from Granger causality tests based on vector...

This article proposes the use of finite mixtures of probability distributions to estimate cost functions. The mixture technique allows for the simultaneous existence and unobservability of multiple technologies of production. Technology switching by firms and conventional technical change can be...