This paper measures energy efficiency improvements of US single-family homes between 1997 and 2001 using a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, an indicator of energy efficiency is derived by means of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), and the analogy between the DEA estimator and traditional...

This work follows the series of studies conducted in Ipea, in order to compare the efficiency of the Brazilian health system to health systems of other countries. We evaluate the efficiency of expenditure in health care provision by comparing various output measures (life expectancy; infant...

The aim of the paper is to use the data envelopment analysis (DEA) for mining in Zacatecas and provide efficiency indicators in the years 1998, 2003, and 2008. We compare the performance of the state of Zacatecas with other mining states in Mexico. Then the empirical analysis extends to specific...

Research on productive efficiency at the firm level has developed as an important and active strand of research the last decades, both within operations research, management science and economics. However, the interests pursued within the fields have had some differences regarding sound...

Performance measurement is an area of crucial interest in asset valuation and investment management. High volatility as well as time aggregation of returns, amongst other characteristics, may distort the results of conventional measures of performance. In this work, we study the performance of...

Recent discussions on the definition of growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP suggest that it is of urgent need to develop new approaches for measuring the economic performance of the firms and national economies. The new concepts should take into account simultaneously economic as well as...

There has been a lively discussion about measures of social welfare beyond GDP induced by Stiglitz Report (Stiglitz et al, 2009) which can be viewed as a summation of the earlier efforts to deal with those challenges. Environmental indicators constitute one important dimension to be taken into...

In pursuit of welfare, environmental issues constitute one important dimension to be taken into account in assessing the welfare along with the economic and social indicators. There has been a lively discussion about measures of social welfare beyond GDP articulated by Stiglitz Report (Stiglitz...

Growing interest in the analysis of interrelationships between income distribution and economic growth has recently stimulated new theoretical as well as empirical research. Since existing theoretical models propose inequality is detrimental to growth, while others point at income inequality as...

We consider efficiency measurement methods in the presence of uncertain input and output data, and without the (empirically problematic) assumption of convexity of the production technology. In particular, we perform a simulation study in order to contrast two well-established methods, IDEA and...