Conventional Cobb-Douglas and Transcendental Logarithmic production functions widely used in Stochastic Production Frontier Estimation and Inefficiency Analysis have merits and deficiencies. The Cobb-Douglas function imposes monotonicity and concavity constraints required by microeconomic theory. However it is inflexible and implies undesired assumptions as well. The Trans-log function is very flexible and does not imply undesired assumptions, yet it is very hard to impose both monotonicity and concavity constraints. The first essay introduced a class of stochastic production frontier estimation models that impose monotonicity and concavity constraints and suggested models that are very flexible. Researchers can use arbitrary order of polynomial functions or any function of independent variables within the suggested frameworks. Also shown was that adopting suggested models could greatly increase predictive accuracy through simulations. In the second essay we generalized the suggested models with the Inefficiency Analysis technique. In the last essay we extended the models developed in the previous two essays with regression spline and let the data decide how flexible or complicated the model should be. We showed the improvement of deterministic frontier estimation this extension could bring through simulations, as well. Works in this dissertation reduced the gap between conventional structural models and nonparametric models in stochastic frontier estimation field. This dissertation offered applied researchers Stochastic Production Frontier models that are more accurate and flexible than previous ones. It also preserves constraints of economic theory.

Zugl.: Bonn, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2005

Inaug.--diss.--Leipzig. / Cover title. "Sonderdruck aus dem Jahrbuch der Deutsch-Amerikanischen historischen gesellschaft von Illinois." Lebenslauf. "Bibliographie": p. 242-251.

Abstract of Thesis (Ph. D.)--Pennsylvania state college, 1933. / "Reprinted from the Missouri historical review for April, July, and October, 1934, and January, April, and July, 1935 (volumes 28-29)." Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-70).

Thesis (B.A.(Hons.))--University of Adelaide, Dept. of History, 1973.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1961. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-88).

Inaug.--diss.--Leipzig. / Cover title. "Sonderdruck aus dem Jahrbuch der Deutsch-Amerikanischen historischen gesellschaft von Illinois." Lebenslauf. "Bibliographie": p. 242-251.

No abstract provided. / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Based on the survey of Taiwan’s international tourist hotels during 1997 to 2001, this study applies stochastic frontier approach incorporating inefficiency effects to estimate cost inefficiency of international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Two hypotheses of no inefficiency and no inefficiency effects are rejected by using likelihood-ratio test. These outcomes indicate that the model and assumptions set up in this study are statistically more appropriate. The empirical evidence shows that the average cost inefficiency score during 1997 to 2001 is 1.1468 which suggests that actual cost expenditure is approximately 1.1468 times of minimum cost with fixed outputs. In empirical findings between inefficiency effects and cost inefficiencies, the factors such as diversification of services, competitive circumstances, various types of travelers, belonging to a international hotel chain, and located in the scenic area would improve cost efficiencies of international tourist hotels. However, it would worsen cost efficiencies for international tourist hotels to setting up a branch or branches.

The north eastern region in India represents a legacy of uneven imperial state formation inherited by the Indian nation state. My doctoral dissertation examines British imperialism in the nineteenth century, as it operated in “non-British” spaces of the north east frontier of colonial India. I focus on the historical production and cooption of the Khasi and Jaintiah hills, into a frontier space of the British Empire. I analyse the interconnections between physical transformations, colonial structures of law, and colonial knowledge that produced inhabitants of the autonomous polities, north east of Bengal into “hill tribals”. Law provided a foundational framework through which colonial commercial and military advancement into non-British territories such as the Khasi hills was achieved. The most profound implication of colonial processes was on ruler-subject relations, which accompanied the reconstitution of space and inhabitants’ conceptions of self. The dissertation traces both spatial and imaginative transformations that stripped the groups occupying the Khasi and Jaintiah hills of a political identity. The Khasi tribal subject’s relationship to the governing structures was navigated, and negotiated using a reconstituted notion of custom. This project is more than a history of tribal minorities in India. It addresses the crisis of colonial sovereignty in colonial frontiers, and the nature of imperialism in non-British territories. The dissertation also addresses how the hills and its peoples have long resisted incorporation and integration into totalizing histories of colonial modernity, capitalism and nationalism. Social identities of the diverse communities in the north east of India are articulated through, what I have called narratives of continuity that are both constitutive of and framed against colonial knowledge systems. Critical of the “naturalisation of the association between history and western modernity” and the consequent binaries of past and present, this dissertation analyses indigenous narratives, and the articulation of distinct pasts often inhered in the present. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2013-10-02 21:24:20.595