Ao longo dos últimos anos tem se observado no mundo uma expansão do setor leiteiro. Parte dessa expansão se deve a novas tecnologias que foram adotadas nas últimas décadas, mas também ocorreu por causa da queda, ou da anulação de barreiras comerciais. Contudo, notou-se também uma queda no número de fazendas leiteiras. Sendo o leite uma commodity os preços seguem as oscilações de mercado - oferta e demanda - e nenhum dos agentes possui poder para influenciar nos preços de compra e venda dessa mercadoria. Como os boletins do CEPEA mostram, os preços no ano passado têm-se mantido abaixo da média histórica, referente à última década, mas os termos de troca com relação a quantidade de litros de leite para se comprar insumos e defensivos se mantêm em patamares estáveis com tendência de alta. Tendo em vista esse problema, surge a necessidade de buscar compreender melhor como funciona o sistema de produção do setor leiteiro. Este trabalho satisfatoriamente conseguiu detectar através das fronteiras estocásticas de produção simples - leite como único produto de saída - e multi-output - leite e outros produtos animais existentes nas fazendas - além da regressão quantílica para análise de quantis variados da produção de leite, quais os insumos utilizados pelos produtores que oferecem melhores retornos para sua produção bem como analisar fatores de eficiência (BATTESE, COELLI; 1995; CHIDMI; SOLÍS; CABRERA, 2011). Os resultados apresentados apontam para a necessidade de se levar em consideração a inter-relação entre os insumos considerados - função de produção translog - e identificaram os insumos referentes ao capital - quantidade de vacas ordenhadas e gastos com máquinas e equipamentos - e ao trabalho - gastos com salários - como principais insumos da atividade pecuária. Os gastos com medicamentos animais, com energia elétrica e a área disponível para a atividade pecuária se mostraram contraproducentes indicando mau uso ou uso excessivo desses fatores, além de ressaltar a importância do capital na pecuária. Em geral, para quase todos os modelos testados, a produção leiteira apresentou retornos constantes à escala e nível de eficiência em torno de 88% em média para as fronteiras estocásticas e 90% para as estimativas feitas com regressão quantílica. Entre os fatores de eficiência identificados estão a capacidade de armazenamento de silos e tanques de refrigeração para o leite e a margem bruta líquida obtida com a atividade. Os fatores de ineficiência identificados são a prática de queimadas e o percentual de mulheres na administração das unidades produtivas. Com relação aos variados modelos estimados percebeu-se, em suma, a necessidade de se intensificar a produção pecuária e de melhorar a infraestrutura das fazendas. / Over the past few years it has been observed in the world an expansion of the dairy industry. Part of this expansion is due to new technologies that have been adopted in recent decades, but also because of the fall, or the annulment of trade barriers. However, it has also been noted a drop in the number of dairy farms. Being a commodity, milk prices follow the market oscillations - supply and demand - and none of the agents has enough power to influence buying and selling prices of this commodity. As the CEPEA bulletins show, prices last year have remained below the historical average for the last decade, but the terms of trade regarding the amount of liters of milk to buy inputs and pesticides at levels remain stable with uptrend. In view of this problem, there is the need to get a better understanding of how the dairy sector production system works. This work satisfactorily managed to detect, through the single-output stochastic production frontier method - value of milk production as output - and multi-output - value of milk and other existing animal products at the farms - besides quantile regression analysis for multiple production quantiles, which inputs used by farmers offer the best outcome for their production as well as analyzing efficiency factors (BATTESE; COELLI, 1995; CHIDMI; SOLÍS; CABRERA, 2011). The estimated results pointed to the need of considering the interrelation of considered inputs - translog production function - and identified the capital related inputs - quantity of milked cows and expenditure on machinery and equipment - and work related inputs - expenditure on wages - as main production inputs. Expenditure on animal drugs and on electricity and the area available for livestock activity proved counterproductive indicating misuse or overuse of these factors, in addition to emphasizing the importance of capital in livestock. In general, for most of the tested models, dairy production showed constant returns to scale and an average efficiency level of 88% for stochastic frontier models and 90% for estimates done using quantile regression. Among the identified efficiency factors are the storage capacity of silos and cooling tanks for milk and the net gross margin with activity. The identified inefficiency factors are the practice of burning and the percentage of women in the management of production units. With regard to various models estimated it was realized, in short, the need to intensify livestock production and to improve the infrastructure of the farms.

Recent developments in microsimulation modeling of activity and travel demand have called for the explicit recognition of time-space constraints under which individuals perform their activity and travel patterns. The estimation of time-space prism vertex locations, i.e., the perceived time constraints, is an important development in this context. Stochastic frontier modeling methodology offers a suitable framework for modeling and identifying the expected vertex locations of time space prisms within which people execute activity-travel patterns. In this work, stochastic frontier models of time space prism vertex locations are estimated for samples drawn from a household travel survey conducted in 2001 in the city of Thane on the west coast of India and National Household Travel Survey 2001, United States. This offers an opportunity to study time constraints governing activity travel patterns of individuals in a developing as well as developed country context. The work also includes comparisons between males and females, workers and non-workers, and developed and developing country contexts to better understand how socio-economic and socio-cultural norms and characteristics affect time space prism constraints. It is found that time space prism constraints in developing country data set can be modeled using the stochastic frontier modeling methodology. It is also found that significant differences exist between workers and non-workers and between males and females,possibly due to the more traditional gender and working status roles in the Indian context. Finally, both differences and similarities were noticed when comparisons were made between results obtained from the data set of India and United States. Many of these differences can be explained by the presence of other constraints including institutional, household, income, and transportation accessibility constraints that are generally significantly greater in the developing country context.

This study veers from the traditional perspective of examining school efficiency or productivity as a cost minimizing process, in which educational inputs are minimized to achieve maximum outputs (student performance). Instead, it provides a critical examination of the dominant, cost minimizing assumption associated with efficiency models and suggest schools instead behave similarly to budget maximizers as presented in Niskanen’s (1971) seminal budget maximizing framework. The study examines the relationship between total student expenditures and subsequent student outcomes, establishing the relative efficiency of Texas school districts using stochastic frontier analysis within a budget-maximizing framework. Additionally, the study investigates how special education populations are structured within those districts deemed efficient or inefficient. The results of the study concluded that district efficient type did not result in different educational outcomes for students with disabilities. While analysis revealed that inefficient districts spend almost twice as much as efficient districts, no other significant differences were identified among districts type based on the percentage of students receiving special education or student performance. This study contributes to the growing need to identify more appropriate estimation techniques for measuring school productivity and how students with special needs should be included in the education productivity conversation.

Michael Porter於1991年首先對於以往環保政策會傷害廠商營運的論點提出反對的觀點，Porter認為環保政策可以刺激廠商進行創新及研發，最終將使廠商的營運情況提升，變得更有競爭力。Porter hypothesis(PH)提出之後，許多學者便針對PH的主張進行實證研究，然而至今學者間對於PH的存在與否仍無明確的共識。然而PH的主張對於像是中國大陸等發展中的國家尤為重要，而中國近期的十二五計畫亦將經濟發展及環境保護放在同等重要的位置，因此驗證PH是否成立以了解環保政策對於廠商及至國家經濟發展的影響則有助於政策的制定。本研究以實證分析的方式研究PH的主張是否存在於廠商的生產效率之中，並試圖找出造成過去實證研究矛盾的可能因素。本研究使用中國大陸的面板資料，分析模型對環保政策及廠商生產效率進行分析。

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan

Flourishing economy, rapid industrialization and increasing trend of motorization have been shaping societies in the developing countries like India in an unprecedented manner.Infrastructure backlog amid such rapid growth in all imaginable directions has heavily exacerbated the urban transport crisis in these countries by alarming increase in vehicular travel demand, road fatalities, and environmental pollution. To address urban transport challenges, the necessary development and implementation of effective transport planning and policies have generally lagged in the developing countries compared to that seen in the developed countries due to several constraints including resource constraints, knowledge constraints, institutional constraints and so on. However, in the recent past, with the rapid development seen by several emerging economies and the explosive growth in transportation infrastructure investment, there is a growing interest in the development and implementati on of advanced travel demand modeling systems in developing countries. But lack of necessary research and exploration of travel behavior in a developing country context has left very limited knowledge for us to understand the extent of applicability of these advanced theories and methodologies in a different socio-cultural perspective. Assessing the practical relevance of the subject, this research adopts a comprehensive approach to explore the activity engagement pattern and time use behavior from a developing country standpoint. To accomplish this goal, a series of empirical and analytical studies are performed on a household travel survey data set available from Thane Metropolitan Area in India. The study also introduces new concepts and facilitates enhancements of existing modeling methodologies in the field of travel behavior and time use research. The study results provide very insightful findings and plausible interpretations consistent with a developing country perspective reco gnizing a wide spectrum of differences and similarities in activity patterns and time use behavior between a developed and a developing country. Specified model structures are meaningfully able to incorporate various socio-cultural and institutional constraints and reflected sensitivity to the behavioral variability between the contexts suggesting that advanced analytical techniques may be satisfactorily applied on the data set from developing countries which may contribute important ingredients in the development of advanced activity-based model system in the countries like India.

This thesis adopts a new operational method to measure and investigate the relationship among cost efficiency, market competition and profitability in major Asian economies by using an unbalanced panel data sample of 278 commercial banks during the financial upheaval period of 2005-2012 before and after the global financial crisis. Firstly, we estimate the cost efficiency by employing different stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) models, which include the equity capital to indicate loss-absorbing capacity and risk preference and cross-country differences to be additional environmental variables. It is generally agreed that cross-country differences influence the frontier technology in the international comparison of banks performance. In this case, we implement the international comparison under SFA models with and without incorporating these cross-country heterogeneities. And the empirical results suggest that cross-country differences are significant sources to measure banks cost efficiency and evaluate banks performance. Secondly, we measure the market competition by investigating a range of approaches: the traditional Structure-Conduct-Performance approach, Lerner index, and new empirical industrial organization Panzar-Rosse approach. And we find that the SCP-Lerner approach may fail to identify the strength of competition and may not always unambiguously distinguish between the market power and the efficiency explanations of market concentration. Finally, following the approach of Boone, we measure the intensity of competition in two ways: the profit elasticity and the relative profit difference (calculated by cost efficiency score and shadow return on equity capital). Then we implement a quadratic quantile regression to compute the integral areas and standard errors for the Boone visual test and Wald test to reflect the relative intensity of competition for different competitive regimes over time. Our findings show that competition of banking industries become more intense in 9 Asian economies in the wake of the financial crisis and that two advanced economies (Singapore and Taiwan Province of China) and two remarkable emerging economies (China and India) play the significantly leading role in this intensifying competition process.

Ao longo dos últimos anos tem se observado no mundo uma expansão do setor leiteiro. Parte dessa expansão se deve a novas tecnologias que foram adotadas nas últimas décadas, mas também ocorreu por causa da queda, ou da anulação de barreiras comerciais. Contudo, notou-se também uma queda no número de fazendas leiteiras. Sendo o leite uma commodity os preços seguem as oscilações de mercado - oferta e demanda - e nenhum dos agentes possui poder para influenciar nos preços de compra e venda dessa mercadoria. Como os boletins do CEPEA mostram, os preços no ano passado têm-se mantido abaixo da média histórica, referente à última década, mas os termos de troca com relação a quantidade de litros de leite para se comprar insumos e defensivos se mantêm em patamares estáveis com tendência de alta. Tendo em vista esse problema, surge a necessidade de buscar compreender melhor como funciona o sistema de produção do setor leiteiro. Este trabalho satisfatoriamente conseguiu detectar através das fronteiras estocásticas de produção simples - leite como único produto de saída - e multi-output - leite e outros produtos animais existentes nas fazendas - além da regressão quantílica para análise de quantis variados da produção de leite, quais os insumos utilizados pelos produtores que oferecem melhores retornos para sua produção bem como analisar fatores de eficiência (BATTESE, COELLI; 1995; CHIDMI; SOLÍS; CABRERA, 2011). Os resultados apresentados apontam para a necessidade de se levar em consideração a inter-relação entre os insumos considerados - função de produção translog - e identificaram os insumos referentes ao capital - quantidade de vacas ordenhadas e gastos com máquinas e equipamentos - e ao trabalho - gastos com salários - como principais insumos da atividade pecuária. Os gastos com medicamentos animais, com energia elétrica e a área disponível para a atividade pecuária se mostraram contraproducentes indicando mau uso ou uso excessivo desses fatores, além de ressaltar a importância do capital na pecuária. Em geral, para quase todos os modelos testados, a produção leiteira apresentou retornos constantes à escala e nível de eficiência em torno de 88% em média para as fronteiras estocásticas e 90% para as estimativas feitas com regressão quantílica. Entre os fatores de eficiência identificados estão a capacidade de armazenamento de silos e tanques de refrigeração para o leite e a margem bruta líquida obtida com a atividade. Os fatores de ineficiência identificados são a prática de queimadas e o percentual de mulheres na administração das unidades produtivas. Com relação aos variados modelos estimados percebeu-se, em suma, a necessidade de se intensificar a produção pecuária e de melhorar a infraestrutura das fazendas. / Over the past few years it has been observed in the world an expansion of the dairy industry. Part of this expansion is due to new technologies that have been adopted in recent decades, but also because of the fall, or the annulment of trade barriers. However, it has also been noted a drop in the number of dairy farms. Being a commodity, milk prices follow the market oscillations - supply and demand - and none of the agents has enough power to influence buying and selling prices of this commodity. As the CEPEA bulletins show, prices last year have remained below the historical average for the last decade, but the terms of trade regarding the amount of liters of milk to buy inputs and pesticides at levels remain stable with uptrend. In view of this problem, there is the need to get a better understanding of how the dairy sector production system works. This work satisfactorily managed to detect, through the single-output stochastic production frontier method - value of milk production as output - and multi-output - value of milk and other existing animal products at the farms - besides quantile regression analysis for multiple production quantiles, which inputs used by farmers offer the best outcome for their production as well as analyzing efficiency factors (BATTESE; COELLI, 1995; CHIDMI; SOLÍS; CABRERA, 2011). The estimated results pointed to the need of considering the interrelation of considered inputs - translog production function - and identified the capital related inputs - quantity of milked cows and expenditure on machinery and equipment - and work related inputs - expenditure on wages - as main production inputs. Expenditure on animal drugs and on electricity and the area available for livestock activity proved counterproductive indicating misuse or overuse of these factors, in addition to emphasizing the importance of capital in livestock. In general, for most of the tested models, dairy production showed constant returns to scale and an average efficiency level of 88% for stochastic frontier models and 90% for estimates done using quantile regression. Among the identified efficiency factors are the storage capacity of silos and cooling tanks for milk and the net gross margin with activity. The identified inefficiency factors are the practice of burning and the percentage of women in the management of production units. With regard to various models estimated it was realized, in short, the need to intensify livestock production and to improve the infrastructure of the farms.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgico / Analyzes the technical efficiency and economic profitability of commercial dairy farmers from Ceara State. The stochastic frontier production methodology was used to estimate milk producersâ technical efficiency. As primary conclusion, the study observed a high rate of mean technical efficiency in the set of companies, about 80%, which points, however, to a relevant space to the unitiesâ efficiency growth, especially considering the efficiency rates dispersion. As it regards to the variables used to define the production frontier, all of them were statistically significant, and the expense with labor was the variable that presented the main contribution to the production growth. Among variables used to explain technical inefficiency, all resulted significant, and the genetic group of the herd was the one that presented the main participation at decreasing inefficiency. After the estimative of each companyâs efficiency, the present research analyzed the behavior of some technical indicators of productivity and economic profitability. It found that as the technical efficiency of the unities increased the indexes of productivity also improved, as well as a reduction of operational expenses and an elevation of profit margins. Finally, the research focused the important correlation between the efficiency level and the volume produced, suggesting a scale effect on milk production. / Analisa a eficiÃncia tÃcnica e a rentabilidade econÃmica dos produtores comerciais de leite do Estado do CearÃ. A metodologia de fronteiras estocÃsticas de produÃÃo foi utilizada para estimar a eficiÃncia tÃcnica dos produtores. Como principais conclusÃes, observou-se elevada taxa de eficiÃncia tÃcnica mÃdia para o conjunto das firmas, em torno de 80%, indicando, contudo, um espaÃo relevante para o crescimento da eficiÃncia das unidades, principalmente se for considerada a dispersÃo das taxas de eficiÃncia. Em relaÃÃo Ãs variÃveis utilizadas para definir a fronteira de produÃÃo, todas foram estatisticamente significativas, sendo a despesa com mÃo-de-obra aquela que apresentou maior contribuiÃÃo para o crescimento da produÃÃo, enquanto, das variÃveis utilizadas para explicar a ineficiÃncia tÃcnica, todas se mostraram significativas, sendo a composiÃÃo racial do rebanho aquela que apresentou maior participaÃÃo para a reduÃÃo da ineficiÃncia. ApÃs a estimativa da eficiÃncia de cada firma, estudou-se o comportamento de alguns indicadores tÃcnicos de produtividade e de rentabilidade econÃmica, percebeu-se que, Ã medida que crescia a eficiÃncia tÃcnica das unidades, observava-se tambÃm melhora nos Ãndices de produtividade, uma reduÃÃo dos custos operacionais e elevaÃÃo das margens de rentabilidade. Por fim, foi observada importante correlaÃÃo entre o nÃvel de eficiÃncia e o volume produzido, indicando um efeito-escala na produÃÃo de leite.

Bibliographic note Papoušek Radan. Gravity model and efficiency of trade between China and EU countries: Visegrad group, Germany, Austria. Praha 2017. 87 p. Master's thesis (Mgr.) Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Eco- nomic Studies. Supervisor: doc. Ing. Vladimír Benáček CSc. Character count: 115 210 Abstract The thesis analyzes bilateral trade between China and Visegrad group (V4), Austria, and Germany. I use panel data of 23 countries across 1995-2015 to esti- mate gravity model. I compare the countries among themselves (time-series view) and analyze the development of the crucial variables employed in the model (cross- sectional view). Further, I estimate efficiency scores based on stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Connecting the findings from all three perspectives provides com- prehensive picture of the trade relations of the given countries with China. The thesis reveals that accession to EU was beneficial for trade between V4 and China. Global value chains (GVCs) also help to intensify the trade exchange between the European countries and China. I find that Austria and Germany exhibit higher effi- ciency scores for their exports mainly due to better positions in global value chains. V4's trade balance with China is very sensitive to the decisions of the international...