Given n independent and identically distributed observations in a set G with an unknown function g, called a boundary or frontier, it is desired to estimate g from the observations. The problem has several important applications including classification and cluster analysis, and is closely...

Bt cotton has been cultivated in China for the past 10 years. Limitations of previous studies analyzing the impact of this technology are the short time period considered and lack of panel data. In this paper, we present findings from monitoring 150 Bt cotton farmers in 2002 and 2005....

All business transactions as well as achieving innovations take up resources, subsumed under the concept of transaction costs. One of the major factors in transaction costs theory is information. Firm networks can catalyse the interpersonal information exchange and hence, increase the access to...

The Danish "Klima 2020" plan sets an ambitious target for the complete phasing-out of fossil fuels by 2050. The Danish energy sector currently accounts for 40% of national CO2 emissions. Based on an extended Farrell input distance function that accounts for CO2 as an undesirable output, we...

A detailed analysis of the German productivity development is indispensable for understanding, why Europe is lagging behind the US growth since the mid 1990s. In this paper a new and unique database is used to analyze the sources of German productivity growth since 1970. It is shown that...

A new legislation in the German electricity market requires the implementation of an incentive-based regulation within the next years. In such a regime either prices or revenuesare capped and grow with the inflation rate minus a factor, which accounts for productivitydifferences between the...

Small and medium enterprises are an important factor in the East African economies especially with respect to employment. The increasing competition through globalisation puts them under considerable pressure. Through the rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) and ever...

Bee venom is a sub-product of the beekeeping activity, and has a wide field of applications in several pivotal markets. Nevertheless, its collection is not an activity disseminated among Portuguese beekeepers, as its production is marginal. There are limited empirical studies on the production...