The purpose of this chapter is to review dental economics in three major areas: (i) demand for and utilisation of dental care, (ii) productivity, technical efficiency and economies of scale in dental care production, and finally (iii) economic evaluation of dental care procedures and programmes....

Caves, Christensen, Diewert introduced Malmquist output, input and productivity indexes into production theory in a systematic way. This paper revisits the debate on how to decompose Bjurek’s concept of a Malmquist productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting...

Based on the 2016-2017 farm survey data, this study examines technical efficiency in the production of wheat, rice, and maize in Punjab province in Pakistan. Technical efficiency, under varying returns to scale, in wheat farming averaged 0.65; in rice, it averaged 0.74, and in the case of maize,...

PurposeIn an audit report provided to the Ugandan Parliament by the Office of the Audit General, Uganda, technical efficiency in Ugandan referral hospitals was measured and analysed. The audit report pointed out that there was a relatively low level of technical inefficiency, at least in...

As one of Thailand’s economic crops, rice plays an important role in generating national income and creating domestic employment for the country. Its production has been increasing because of the expansion of areas planted to rice and not due to increases in productivity. The national...

This paper examines the impact of information and communications technologies (ICTs) on technical production efficiency in a wide range of Italian industries. Technical efficiency, defined as the firm’s distance from the production efficiency frontier, is one important component of...

This paper explores the role of unobserved managerial ability in production and its relationship with technical efficiency. Previous analyses of managerial ability have been based on strong assumptions about its role in production or on the use of proxies. We avoid these limitations by...

This study presents new perspectives on performance evaluation of Islamic banking operations in Malaysia, by investigating for the first time, both cost and profit efficiency of full-fledged Islamic banks and Islamic window operations of domestic and foreign banks. The application of Data...