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.

Este trabalho aplica metodologia de Wang (2003a, 2003b) para definir uma nova medida do produto de bancos brasileiros. Acredita-se que tal medida seja superior às comumente utilizadas na literatura por se tratar de uma variável de fluxo, incorporar os depósitos bancários de maneira teoricamente embasada e levar em consideração a exposição ao risco. Esta nova variável de produção é utilizada na estimação de fronteiras estocásticas de produção e custo para o setor bancário brasileiro, visando a mensurar sua eficiência técnica e econômica, assim como a magnitude de suas economias de escala. As fronteiras estimadas apresentam especificação dada pela forma funcional flexível de Fourier e incorporam variáveis determinantes da eficiência. Os resultados apontam para uma acentuada ineficiência do setor bancário, assim como para a ocorrência de retornos crescentes de escala. / This work applies the Wang (2003a, 2003b) methodology to define Brazilian banks\' output. It is believed that this new output measure is superior to the ones commonly used by the literature, since it treats output as a flow variable, provides a theoretical basis for defining the role of deposits and takes account of risk exposure in defining output. This new measure is applied to the estimation of stochastic production and cost frontiers for the Brazilian banking sector, aiming at measuring its technical and economic efficiency, and also the size of its scale economies. The frontiers follow a Fourier flexible functional form especification and incorporate efficiency determinants. The results point to the existence of high inneficiency in the banking industry, and also to the ocurrence of increasing returns to scale.

Este trabalho aplica metodologia de Wang (2003a, 2003b) para definir uma nova medida do produto de bancos brasileiros. Acredita-se que tal medida seja superior às comumente utilizadas na literatura por se tratar de uma variável de fluxo, incorporar os depósitos bancários de maneira teoricamente embasada e levar em consideração a exposição ao risco. Esta nova variável de produção é utilizada na estimação de fronteiras estocásticas de produção e custo para o setor bancário brasileiro, visando a mensurar sua eficiência técnica e econômica, assim como a magnitude de suas economias de escala. As fronteiras estimadas apresentam especificação dada pela forma funcional flexível de Fourier e incorporam variáveis determinantes da eficiência. Os resultados apontam para uma acentuada ineficiência do setor bancário, assim como para a ocorrência de retornos crescentes de escala. / This work applies the Wang (2003a, 2003b) methodology to define Brazilian banks\' output. It is believed that this new output measure is superior to the ones commonly used by the literature, since it treats output as a flow variable, provides a theoretical basis for defining the role of deposits and takes account of risk exposure in defining output. This new measure is applied to the estimation of stochastic production and cost frontiers for the Brazilian banking sector, aiming at measuring its technical and economic efficiency, and also the size of its scale economies. The frontiers follow a Fourier flexible functional form especification and incorporate efficiency determinants. The results point to the existence of high inneficiency in the banking industry, and also to the ocurrence of increasing returns to scale.

The ginger industry is one of the key industries identified by the Fiji government in its diversification strategy to accommodate the remnants of the withdrawal of the European Union’s sugar preferences. There is considerable pressure on small industries such as ginger in search of ways in which they can be made to operate efficiently and sustain the economy. Expansion of commercial agriculture into marginal land which is unsustainable adds enormous pressure on land causing soil erosion. Coupled with this is the quality issue which is a serious problem of ginger production and has reduced its competitiveness over the years. This study focuses on two types of losses in ginger production to provide an integrated approach to policy making and computing production losses. One is the observable output loss at the farm site that is not sold due to sub-standard quality related to disease and the other is the unobserved output loss due to inefficient production. The research attempts to answer the question of whether the Fiji ginger farmers are producing efficiently, and at what levels. The relative importance of each input in ginger production is examined. The study undertakes to determine the effects of key variables on farm efficiency. Also examined is the overall farm profiles based on the efficiency rankings of the ginger producers. Furthermore, this research attempts to determine factors that influence soil erosion, and those that influence the observed ginger loss. Using cross-sectional data from a ginger farm survey conducted in June 2007, this research estimates a stochastic production frontier which incorporates soil erosion as an input in the framework. Very few studies have looked at the impact of soil erosion in this context; hence, this study fills the gap by incorporating land quality in the analysis. Farms were found to produce at 69% of their maximum potential output and soil erosion resulted in 6.8% loss in ginger output. This also implies that using the same resources, technology and farming techniques efficiently can lead to a 31% increase in output. While unobserved loss to farm income is a 27% (F$4.6m) increase over the observable loss at farm site, the revenue loss to the whole industry is at least 30% (F$5.07m). Profit was a key determinant of both losses, but staying on farm, slope of land, manure use and hot water treatment affected the observed but not unobserved loss. Although farmer education had no effect on both losses, it was important for undertaking soil conservation. Fiji is in a good position to increase production as education, age and experience of farmers were not significant determinants of efficiency. Thus, displaced farmers from sugar cane farming (given serious concerns of the viability of that industry) can be encouraged to move with ease into ginger as an alternative livelihood. Lastly, the study highlights some practical implication which calls for an integrated package of policies related to use of best farming techniques, land tenure and, agricultural extension and support services for sustainable agricultural growth.

abstract: This dissertation applies the Bayesian approach as a method to improve the estimation efficiency of existing econometric tools. The first chapter suggests the Continuous Choice Bayesian (CCB) estimator which combines the Bayesian approach with the Continuous Choice (CC) estimator suggested by Imai and Keane (2004). Using simulation study, I provide two important findings. First, the CC estimator clearly has better finite sample properties compared to a frequently used Discrete Choice (DC) estimator. Second, the CCB estimator has better estimation efficiency when data size is relatively small and it still retains the advantage of the CC estimator over the DC estimator. The second chapter estimates baseball's managerial efficiency using a stochastic frontier function with the Bayesian approach. When I apply a stochastic frontier model to baseball panel data, the difficult part is that dataset often has a small number of periods, which result in large estimation variance. To overcome this problem, I apply the Bayesian approach to a stochastic frontier analysis. I compare the confidence interval of efficiencies from the Bayesian estimator with the classical frequentist confidence interval. Simulation results show that when I use the Bayesian approach, I achieve smaller estimation variance while I do not lose any reliability in a point estimation. Then, I apply the Bayesian stochastic frontier analysis to answer some interesting questions in baseball. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2014

About 75% of human food in the 21st century consists of just 12 crops, though specific crops vary among nations. Modern technology has allowed development of innovative food and non-food uses for these commodities. For instance, corn (maize (Zea mays L.)) is produced for many purposes, including food, livestock feed, biofuels, fiber for clothing, etcetera. Scientists project the human population will reach 9.2 billion in next 20 years—an 18% increase from the 2020 population of 7.8 billion—resulting in increased demand for corn and other crops. Hence, farmers must increase total crop production to meet demand; however, local agricultural resource endowments such as climate, land and water availability, and soil attributes constrain production. Perhaps the quickest yield and efficiency improvements will result from farm management practices that tailor input applications to match accurate seasonal weather forecasts. Regional seasonal weather forecasts would enable farmers to optimize yields by reducing yield risk from extreme weather events, as well as from less extreme inter-annual weather variability. Improved productive efficiency is also critical to reducing environmental harms, e.g. contaminated runoff from excessive agricultural input use. The objective of this dissertation is to estimate the corn yield frontier and efficiency measures based on agricultural input management and weather. This research contributes to an enhanced understanding of how the corn yield frontier responds to inter-annual weather variations, and how it may shift with climate change. The first chapter summarizes three main topics—farm technology, climate change and weather variability, and methods for evaluating production efficiency. The second presents estimated corn yield frontiers and efficiency measures based on stochastic frontier and data envelopment analyses for nine North Dakota Agricultural Statistics Districts from 1994 to 2018. The third presents corn yield efficiency measures for five states: Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin from 1994 to 2018. The results reveal the major causes of inter-annual yield variation are variability of rainfall and temperature. Development of accurate growing-season weather forecasts is likely to result in high value-added for farmers and downstream agribusinesses. Federal, state, and private research funding in seasonal weather forecasting would probably be well invested.

New Zealand experienced dramatic restructuring programs after the Labor party won the national elections in 1984. Deregulation of price controls, removal of the log export ban, and privatization of public assets were the main shocks to the forest sector. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of these reforms on wood and paper industry cost, production, and cost efficiency. Unlike previous work, the effects of privatization and deregulation are compared to determine which shock had the most influence on the forest sector. Results show that production decreased, total cost increased, and cost efficiency decreased after deregulation for the sector, and that deregulation was more significant than privatization for the wood and paper sectors. In particular, removal of the log export ban had the greatest impact, while privatization had little effect on industry production and cost. This suggests that countries with comparative advantages in wood processing who implement deregulation or privatization may suffer through a short term period of lower cost efficiency as the economy adjusts to higher input costs in those sectors. In New Zealand's case, the adjustments most likely affecting efficiency have been investments in new technologies, which require time to attain maximum efficiency. The results are contrary to other studies that have predicted increased efficiency as a result of privatization. / Ph. D.

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the HE sectors of the member states, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each university is confronted with. Utilizing a recent advancement in the method to measure efficiency, we separate short-term (transient) and long-term (persistent) efficiency, while controlling for unobserved institution specific heterogeneity. While the first term reflects the efficiency of the individual universities working within the country, the second term echoes the influence of the country specific overall HE structure. The cross-country comparison displays if the overall efficiency difference between countries is related to individual performance of their universities or their HE structure. This allows more purposeful policy recommendation and expands the literature regarding the efficiency of universities in a fundamental way. Choosing Italy and Germany as two important illustrative examples we can take advantage of a novel dataset including characteristics of institutions in both countries for an exceptional long period of time from 2001 to 2011. We show that the Italian universities exhibit a higher overall efficiency value than their German counterparts. With the individual universities working at the upper bound of efficiency in both countries, the overall inefficiency as well as the gap between the countries is caused by persistent, structural inefficiency. To expedite a true European Area of Higher Education future measures should hence aim at the country specific structure, not solely at affecting the activities of single universities.

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The thesis examines technical efficiency using frontier efficiency estimation techniques from parametric and non-parametric approaches. Five different frontier efficiency estimation techniques are considered which are SFA, DFA, DEA-CCR, DEA-BCC and DEA-RAM. These techniques are then used on an artificially generated panel dataset using a two-input two-output production function framework based on characteristics of German life-insurers. The key contribution of the thesis is firstly, a study that uses simulated panel dataset to estimate frontier efficiency techniques and secondly, a research framework that compares multiple frontier efficiency techniques across parametric and non-parametric approaches in the context of simulated panel data. The findings suggest that, as opposed to previous studies, parametric and non-parametric approaches can both generate comparable technical efficiency scores with simulated data. Moreover, techniques from parametric approaches, i.e. SFA and DFA are consistent with each other whereas the same applies to non-parametric approaches, i.e. DEA models. The research study also discusses some important theoretical and methodological implication of the findings and suggests some ways whereby future research can enable to overcome some of the restrictions associated with current approaches.