Privatisation is often explained by a desire to achieve efficiency. This paper presents conditions under which political interference yields higher welfare than under commercial objectives, and vice versa. If effort affects utility, interference may be beneficial in a seemingly perfect market.

The advent of a growing share of small firms in modern economies raises some intriguing questions. The most intriguing question undoubtedly is why so many smaller firms, which have traditionally been classified as sub-optimal scale firms, can exist. The authors suggest that, through pursuing a...

This paper is concerned with the estimation of stochastic frontier production functions with unbalanced panel data when unobservable firm efficiency levels are related to explanatory variables. We perform the "weighted-means" instrumental variables panel data model proposed by R. Gardner (1998)...

In this paper we analyse the efficiency of the Spanish Police Service using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The analysis concentrates on the police activities related to the solving of crimes. The theoretical and empirical study of the policy production function under this dimension leads us to...

This paper apportions responsability for inefficency in a market for state contingent claims between market makers and traders. We specifically examine the origins of a frequently observed distortion in the market for bets in horseraces- the favorite- longshot bias. Previous studies rationalise...

This paper defines a decomposition of technical efficiency for a series of nonparametric deterministic reference technologies related to the Free Disposal Hull. More specificaally, introducing several returns to scale assumptions into this non-convex production model allows one to distinguish...