We study, using the non-parametric data envelopment approach, we investigated the long-run profit efficiency dynamics and the short-run market reaction of nine pre-classified merger deals of merging and non-merging U.S. banks over the time period from 1992 to 2003. Our main results are as follows: First, merger deals that match least efficient acquirers with the least efficient targets could improve their profit efficiency four years following the merger event, unlike all other merger deals. Second, we find that mergers match least efficient acquirers with the least efficient targets could also achieve significant positive cumulative access returns (CARs) while all other deals were followed by significant negative CARs. Third, we find that, in general, that large-size acquirers have and maintain higher and efficiency scores than targets and non-merging banks. Fianally, the value-maximizing mergers are mostly large in size and match banks with clear chances to increase their future efficiency rankings.

Local land administration office is to execute registering of lands and buildings. Its objective is to implement local land policy. In the mean time, its functions are about citizen¡¦s property rights. Because the social, economy and political environment have been changed rapidly, demands for land administration and service quality have been growing as well. Therefore, the first priority work for government is to improve whole administrative efficiency and effectiveness, by using modern technology. It thus needed to electronic-wise land office, to set up a computerization system of land information management so as to provide complete land information, to execute modern administration, to promote competition, and to provide convenient and efficient services. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to research these first-line local offices so as (i) to promote its efficiency after being computerized (ii) to compare the implementing result before and after the computerization in Kaohsiung county and city, and (iii) to study the influences of the computerized process, finally (iv) to suggest local offices decision makers the future direction of improvement. This study uses DEA and SFA to compute their efficiency after computerization of the local land offices in Kaohsiung county and city. To do this, we collect annually statistics and use DEA-Solver software and Frontier 4.1 computer program to evaluate their productivities, and to make an efficiency analysis. The results revealed that the annual average technology efficiency descended before computerization and ascended after computerization for all land offices. CCR model revealed that annual averages of technology efficiency are stable before computerization and it ascended after computerization for all land offices. SFA analysis revealed that annual averageefficiency score slightly ascends before computerization and ascends after computerization except for year 2001. For technology changes, their productivities slightly descends for all land offices in Kaohsiung county but ascends for all land offices in Kaohsiung city. For efficiency slack analysis, all five land offices must reduce their inputs in Kaohsiung county. For output slack, only Chi-Shang land office must expand its output 13.01% so as to reach a relatively inefficient DMU. Between the Kaohsiung county and city, information difference between city and country has influences on efficiency. Land offices in Kaohsiung city have general higher average technology efficiency than those in Kaohsiung county. This study uses DEA and SFA to analyze land offices in Kaohsiung county and city, and it was found that whole efficiency scores increased after computerization. And it is suggested several important problems and the possible directions of productivity improvement in the future for all land offices.

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ABSTRACT After the national universities in Taiwan implementing the college affairs funds, the expenditure comes from not only the government supply but also universities themselves. It¡¦s for the purpose of their needs on teaching, researching, and serving. In order to enhance the elasticity that the funds use independently and the competitiveness of higher education, it is bound to put more focus on both the managing and cost efficiency. This research adopts the efficiency-measuring mode of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to weigh the conditions of managing results and efficiency fluctuations¡]the fluctuation of Malmquist productivity¡^of 51 national universities in Taiwan from year 2001 to 2004. The conclusion of obtaining is as follows: From the aspect of managing efficiency, National Chiao Tung University and National Dong Hwa University perform the best among the general universities; as for the technological universities and vocational colleges, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and National Chin-Yi Institute of Technology perform the best. The lacks of valid managements in resource usages causes the technical inefficiencies; the general universities performed like the technological and vocational colleges were rather similar and relatively inefficient from the year 2001 to 2004. The reasons of inefficiency came from the technological efficiency of bad management with reached the scale efficiency of the best scale at the same time. The Malmquist indices of National Tsing Hua University and National Taichung University were more than 1 from the year 2001 to 2004; as for the technological and vocational colleges, the Malmquist indices of National Tai-Chung Institute of Technology, National Taichung Nursing College, National Taiwan Junior College of Performing Arts, and National Tainan Institute of Nursing were more than 1 as well. There is a decline trend gradually of productivity in 2001-2004 in both the general universities and technological and vocational colleges, it was mainly that the production technology efficiency retrogresses. Finally, implementing college affair funds may be still affected by other external objective environments, the one of great impact among them: external parameters, such as size of the school, the history of the school, and the location of the school. Through the regression analysis, there are strong correlation between campus size and management efficiency for the general universities; however, not between history and location of the school. On the other hand, the technological and vocational colleges, do not have dominance to whole efficiency value. From the analysis, we can understand the over-all performing, efficiency of the universities in Taiwan. The fund governors should manage and advent different efficiencies with various methods in order to promote the managing efficiency of the whole. KEY WORDS¡GCollege affair funds Efficient evaluation Data envelopment analysis Malmquist index.

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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Allen M. Featherstone / This study focuses on the productivity and on-farm efficiency impacts of adopting biotechnology enhanced soybeans (BES). Previous research suggests the adoption of BES and subsequent time savings resulted in labor allocation to off-farm employment and reduced on-farm efficiency. Using continuous panel data for 129 farms enrolled in the Kansas Farm Management Association (KFMA) with production and financial crop records from 1993 through 2011 that also provided information on their BES adoption experience, this study provides estimates on the technical efficiency, cost efficiency, and Malmquist productivity indexes (MI) with decompositions into efficiency change (EC) and technical change (TC) to provide insights on the impacts of adopting BES for set of sample farms. Using data envelopment analysis to construct nonparametric efficiency frontiers and measurements assuming constant returns-to-scale (CRS) and variable returns-to-scale (VRS) technologies for the farms, this study provides insights on the impact of yield impacts of BES adoption. A biennial Malmquist productivity index (BMI) is developed to consider estimation of the productivity impacts between BES adopters and non-adopters assuming VRS. This analysis used five input categories: Labor, general, direct inputs, maintenance, and energy; and five outputs: corn, soybeans, sorghum, wheat, and other crops. Tobit regression analysis of the panel of Kansas farms provided evidence of a positive impact from adoption of biotechnology enhanced soybeans on on-farm technical efficiency. Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit distributional hypothesis tests showed significant differences between analyzing the farms under CRS and VRS assumptions. T-tests showed a bias existed when assuming CRS if the true underlying technology was VRS in productivity analysis. However, there was not a strong statistically significant difference between the distributions of productivity measures from the underlying populations of BES adopters and non-adopters in the sample of Kansas farms. A revenue-indirect cost efficiency analysis of the sample farms demonstrated that different conclusions were reached under CRS and VRS when considering the differences in the average of the means of estimated efficiency scores and Tobit regression results considering BES adoption. Assuming CRS resulted in positive marginal effects for adopting BES of 0.017 significant at the 5% level. The marginal effect of BES adoption was not statistically significant under VRS.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Allen M. Featherstone / This dissertation focuses on measuring the efficiency and productivity for agricultural cooperatives in the United States using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Economic measures such as cost efficiency, economies of scale, and economies of scope are measured by estimating a cost frontier in a multiproduct framework. Productivity growth is measured using the biennial Malmquist index approach. The cost frontier is the basis for calculating cost efficiency, economies of scale, and economies of scope as the cost frontier estimation in a multiproduct approach describes how cost changes as output changes. The estimates of economies of scale and scope have important implications for agricultural cooperatives because most of the cooperatives sell more than one product. Understanding the impact of changing output levels or mixes on the cost structure is helpful to improve the performance of cooperatives. Further, scope economies estimate the percentage of cost savings through product diversification in a multiproduct firm. The trade-off between cost efficiency and multiproduct scale economies allows the estimation of whether a higher percentage of cost can be eliminated by becoming cost efficient or changing the scale of operations. The economic measures are estimated using a single cost frontier (multi-year frontier) and annual cost frontiers. Multiproduct economies of scale and economies of scope exist indicating that increasing scale and product diversification can reduce cost for agricultural cooperatives. The mean values of product-specific economies of scale for all outputs are close to one indicating that cooperatives are operating close to constant returns to scale. The comparison between cost efficiency and scale economies suggests that smaller cooperatives can save a higher percentage of cost by increasing the scale of operations rather than just becoming cost efficient. Because larger incentives exist for small cooperatives to increase scale, mergers will likely continue until economies of scale are exhausted in the industry. Annual estimates show that agricultural cooperatives have become less cost efficient over time, but economies of scale and economies of scope remain consistent across years. Many agricultural cooperatives face economies of scale indicating that variable returns to scale as opposed to constant returns to scale is the appropriate technology for modeling agricultural farm marketing and supply cooperatives. Further, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test and two sample t-test are used to examine whether economic measures estimated from a single frontier and annual frontiers are statistically different. The KS test and t-test indicate that economic measures obtained from the single frontier are statistically different from those measures calculated from annual frontiers. This indicates that the cost frontier has shifted over time. Productivity growth of agricultural cooperatives is estimated using the biennial Malmquist productivity index (BMI) under variable returns to scale over the period 2005 to 2014. The BMI avoids numerical infeasibilities under variable returns to scale compared to traditional methods. The BMI is decomposed into efficiency change and technical change to evaluate the sources of productivity growth. Overall, agricultural cooperatives gained 34% cumulative productivity growth during the decade allocated by -2% and 37% cumulative technical efficiency change and technical change over the study period. Technical change was the major source of productivity growth rather than efficiency change. Cooperatives can achieve higher productivity by increasing managerial efficiency and by investing in technology.

Denna studie undersöker sambandet mellan svenska bankers förändring i effektivitet samt produktivitet och det ökande användandet av betaltjänsten Swish. Det undersökta urvalet är elva svenska banker under perioden 2006-2021. Ett centralt begrepp i studien är produktivitetsparadoxen som innebär att investeringar i IT är svåra att fånga upp i en produktivitetsmätning. För att testa sambanden används först en DEA-baserad Malmquist Index för att beräkna bankernas produktivitets- samt effektivitetsvärden, vilka sedan används som beroende variabler i en regression tillsammans med de oberoende Swish-variablerna. Trots det utbredda användandet av Swish i landet finner vi endast negativa samband som är statistiskt signifikanta mellan variablerna för årligt antal Swish-transaktioner samt Swish-användare, vilket kan ses som stöd för existensen av en produktivitetsparadox.

O setor sucroenergético é um importante setor dentro da economia brasileira, e também um dos mais significativos para o estado de São Paulo, que em 2015 respondeu por 57% do valor de toda a produção agrícola do estado, segundo dados do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE (2017), além de empregar mais de 220 mil pessoas e gerar cerca de R$ 560 milhões em renda, segundo o Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego - MTE (2017). A partir da década de 2000, houve um crescimento expressivo da área cultivada com cana-de-açúcar, tanto em São Paulo quanto no Brasil, se expandindo para regiões anteriormente ocupadas por outras culturas. Nesse período também ocorreu a substituição da colheita manual com uso de fogo pela colheita mecanizada sem uso de fogo. Tendo em vista tais transformações observadas pelo setor sucroenergético, este trabalho propõe o uso do método Análise Envoltória de Dados – DEA a fim de avaliar a eficiência econômica, social e ambiental das microrregiões canavieiras do estado de São Paulo, com o objetivo de identificar quais regiões foram eficientes em converter seus fatores de produção em fatores econômicos, sociais e ambientais durante o período de 2007 a 2014. Foram montados quatro modelos considerando os fatores de produção capital, terra e trabalho como inputs para todos eles; já como outputs, foram consideradas variáveis que representassem cada um dos modelos: econômico, social, ambiental e sustentável. Os resultados indicam que, de maneira geral, em determinadas regiões, sobretudo as áreas de expansão, o nível de eficiência é maior que naquelas tradicionais, demonstrando que o setor vem crescendo de maneira mais eficiente nas regiões de expansão, e que as políticas a fim de promover melhores indicadores de sustentabilidade estão apresentando resultados positivos. Contudo, o setor canavieiro ainda necessita de ações voltadas à melhoria de alguns de seus índices de sustentabilidade, sobretudo em relação aos pilares econômicos e sociais, a fim de direcioná-lo a um coerente desenvolvimento sustentável. / The sugarcane industry is an important sector for the Brazilian economy, and also one of the most significant to the state of São Paulo, which in 2015 accounted for 57% of the value of all agricultural production in the state, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics - IBGE (2017), besides employing more than 220 thousand people and generating around R$ 560 million in income, according to the Ministry of Labor and Employment - MTE (2017). Since the 2000s, there has been an expressive growth of the cultivated area with sugarcane, in São Paulo and Brazil, expanding to regions formerly occupied by other crops. During this period, the manual sugarcane harvest by the use of fire was replaced by the mechanized sugarcane harvest, without needing the use of fire. In order to evaluate the economic, social and environmental efficiency of sugarcane microregions in the state of São Paulo, this work proposes the use of the Data Envelopment Analysis - DEA method to identify which regions were efficient in converting their factors of production into economic, social and environmental factors during the period from 2007 to 2014. Four models were constructed considering factors of production - capital, land and labor - as inputs for all of them. In relation to the outputs, it was considered variables that represented each one of the models: economic, social, environmental and sustainable. Generally, the results indicated that in some regions, especially in the expansion areas, the level of efficiency was higher than in the traditional ones, showing that the sector has been growing more efficiently in the expansion regions, and that policies that aimed the promotion of better sustainability indicators are showing positive results. However, the sugarcane industry still needs actions aimed at improving some of its sustainability indices, especially in relation to the economic and social pillars, in order to direct it towards a coherent sustainable development.

O presente estudo buscou avaliar, a partir de informações da Pesquisa Anual Industrial do IBGE, a evolução da Produtividade Total dos Fatores (PTF) para a indústria farmacêutica nacional, objetivando contribuir com o debate acerca dos reajustes de preços do setor no âmbito da resolução Nº 1, de 27 de Fevereiro de 2004 da CMED. Para tanto, foram estimadas as fronteiras de produção estocásticas segundo o modelo implementado em Battese e Coelli (1995) com o emprego da Forma Flexível de Fourrier. A partir da metodologia citada acima, calculou-se os índices PTF de Malmquist para o período compreendido entre 1996 e 2003. Foram construídos seis índices distintos de produtividade para avaliar o setor. Tal construção se deveu à necessidade de se atribuir exogenamente as taxas de depreciação para o cálculo do estoque de capital. Desta forma, três hipóteses distintas (8%, 9% e 10%, seguindo valores dentro do intervalo utilizado pela literatura de ciclos reais no Brasil) foram atribuídas com o objetivo de checar a robustez dos índices. A partir deste conjunto de três séries, foram calculados índices de média geométrica (seguindo a metodologia mais popular entre os autores da literatura de índices de Malmquist) e de média ponderada (cujo peso atribuído foi a participação do Valor da Transformação Industrial de cada empresa em relação ao total do mercado). Dentre os resultados obtidos, vale destacar que, no período investigado, o setor não apresentou variações tecnológicas significativas. Os coeficientes são, numericamente próximos a zero e os índices de variação técnica variam positivamente até 1999 e, posteriormente, apresentam variações negativas que compensam o efeito positivo do período anterior. O mesmo não pode ser dito ineficiência técnica. De acordo com as equações estimadas, a ineficiência não apenas está presente, como predomina a variância do erro idiossincrático. Sua variação não apresenta um padrão decrescente nítido como a tecnologia. Entretanto, quando avaliada de maneira acumulada, os resultados mostram que, em todos os índices elaborados, houve uma perda de eficiência. Os resultados finais dos índices, obtidos a partir da variação da eficiência técnica e da variação técnica, apontam para uma perda de produtividade acumulada nos dois grupos de índices, isto é, tomando como base o ano de 1996. Desta forma, o ano de 2003 apresentou uma perda média de 8% para a média ponderada e de aproximadamente 7% na média geométrica. / The aim of this study is develop a contribution about the prices readjustments in Brazilian Pharmaceutical Industrial Sector, which is regulated by Resolution Nº 1 from 27 February of Brazilian?s Medicines Chamber (CMED). The present work uses information from IBGE?s Industrial Annual Research between 1996-2003. This contribution comes from measuring the Malmquist Total Factor Productivity Index of this sector. In order to do so, Battese and Coelli?s (1995) stochastic productions frontiers were estimated whit employment of Fourrier Flexible Form. Six different indexes were constructed by the necessity to attribute an exogenous depreciation factor to calculus of capital stock. Therefore, three distinct hypotheses (8%, 9% and 10%) were established to this factor, following the values used by Brazilian Real Business Cycles Literature. Apart from these values, two sets of indexes were constructed: a geometric mean index (following the most popular methodology in the Malmquist Index Literature) and a weighted mean index (the weight used is the relatively participation of each firm at the total Industrial Transformation Value). The results shows that the sector doesn?t have a significant technological variation in the investigated period. The technological coefficients are numerically near to zero and the derivative technological indexes present positive variation until 1999. After this period, the technological indexes present negative variation, so the final effect is quite null. Looking to the technical efficiency, we can?t assume the same result. According to the estimated equation, inefficiency is not only present but it?s effects seem dominate the idiosyncratic error. Moreover, the inefficiency doesn?t show a clear decreasing pattern like technological variation. However, when someone evaluate this variable accumulated, the results show an efficiency lost. The final results of these indexes were got by the technical indexes and technical efficiencies indexes and present an accumulated efficiency lost in two sets of indexes with 1996 as basis. Therefore, 2003 shows an average lost about 8% in weighted mean and about 7% in geometric mean.