The formulas of cost and allocative efficiencies of decision making units (DMUs) with positive data cannot be used for DMUs with negative data. On the other hand, these formulas are needed to analyze the productivity and performance of DMUs with negative data. To this end, this study introduces...

Similar to many sub-Saharan African countries, Sudan has inherited a dual economy in the immediate post-independence era where a large agriculture-based rural traditional sector coexisted with a small non-agricultural modern sector. This functional dualism remained until the first oil shipment...

Within a production theoretic framework, this paper considers an axiomatic approach to benchmark selection. It is shown that two simple and weak axioms: efficiency and comprehensive monotonicity characterize a natural family of benchmarks which typically becomes unique. Further axioms are added...

Over the years, a large number of indexes of technological inefficiency have been specified, and a spate of papers has examined the properties satisfied by these indexes. This paper approaches the subject more synthetically, presenting generic results on classes of indexes and their properties....

The presence of an open source software community has provided firms with a non-monetary compensation dimension: the firm can substitute wages for the flexibility it gives its programmers to participate in open source projects. The problem for the software firm is to determine the optimal extent...

In the presence of (at least locally) increasing returns to scale tech- nologies, the paper asks the question: does there exist an economic system which implements Pareto efficient allocations and respects the voluntary participation principle? To answer this question, the paper formulates an...

Using a new administrative dataset, we provide fresh micro-level evidence on firms’ returns to scale (RTS). We employ a new administrative database, iBACH, which contains extensive high-quality annual balance sheet, financial, and demographic information on more than two million non-financial...