The paper investigates the organization of the Italian water sector in the light of the reforms of public utilities. The aim is to examine the degree of implementation of the water sector reform (the so-called Galli Law of 1994) and assess the performance of operators through a study of their...

This paper investigates the relative efficiency of 21 Swedish county councils through two efficiency models; one focusing on a traditional productivity measure (activity model) in terms of the production of intermediate outputs, and the other on quality outputs in the form of health-related...

Improving productive efficiency is an increasingly important determinant of the future of the swine industry in Hawaii. This paper examines the productive efficiency of a sample of swine producers in Hawaii by estimating a stochastic frontier production function and the constant returns to scale...

Bootstrap methods for inference in nonparametric models of productive efficiency can be simplified, reducing computational burden, when the independence condition implicitly assumed in Simar and Wilson (1998) holds. This paper surveys nonparametric tests of independence that might be useful in...

This paper investigates the relative efficiency of 21 Swedish county councils through two efficiency models; one focusing on a traditional productivity measure (activity model) in terms of the production of intermediate outputs, and the other on quality outputs in the form of health-related...

The goal of the present research is to evaluate productive efficiency in an input-output framework by means of data envelopment analysis (DEA). This mathematical programming technique allows researchers to assess potential efficiency improvements in the form of input requirements reduction. By...

Using a balanced panel data set covering the period of 1992–2004 and employing a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-based Malmquist Total Factor Productivity (TFP) index, this paper aims to examine the impact of regulatory reform on the performance of Indian commercial banks. We also explore...

The present study analyses the location of new economic activities in the 51 Greek prefectures (NUTS III level) as the outcome of agglomeration economies and other factors that are acknowledged as determinants of new firm location. Cross-section data referring to the location choices of firms in...

Nonparametric efficiency analysis has become a widely applied technique to support industrial benchmarking as well as a variety of incentive-based regulation policies. In practice such exercises are often plagued by incomplete knowledge about the correct specifications of inputs and outputs....