Toda organización necesita, medir su desempeño como requisito previo para mejorar. Este trabajo propone un modelo para evaluar el sector asegurador argentino, analizando la eficiencia y productividad relativa de las compañías de seguros durante el periodo 2002 - 2011, utilizando la técnica de frontera eficiente conocida como Análisis Envolvente de Datos y el Índice de Malmquist. Los resultados indican que en los últimos diez años el mercado no ha mejorado su productividad. Una de las causas se atribuye al deterioro tecnológico sufrido en el periodo. Las empresas necesitaron más recursos para seguir produciendo lo mismo, no han invertido en pos de mejorar sus prácticas administrativas y tecnológicas, o bien sus inversiones no se han traducido en un aumento en el nivel de primas negociadas. Palabras clave: Mercado asegurador, Eficiencia, Productividad, Data Envelopment Analysis, Índice de Malmquist. / All organizations need to measure their performance as a prerequisite for improvement. This thesis proposes a model to evaluate the Argentine insurance sector, analyzing efficiency and relative productivity during the period 2002-2011, using a technique of efficient frontier known as Data Envelopment Analysis and Malmquist Index. The results indicate that in the last ten years the market has not improved its productivity. One of the causes is attributed to the technological decline suffered in the period. Companies needed more resources to continue producing at the same level, they have not invested in pursuit of improving its administrative and technological practices, or investments have not translated into an increase in the level of negotiated premiums. Key words: Insurance market, Efficiency, Productivity, Data Envelopment Analysis, Malmquist Index.

The concept of efficiency measurement is based on the definition of a frontier that envelopes observed production plans. The effect of pollution on productive efficiency is typically studied by considering pollution as not freely disposable (i.e., there is a cost incurred to dispose of pollution) or by assigning shadow prices to pollution outputs. However, the frontier along with the required technological assumptions (such as convexity) needed for a definition of a frontier may be replaced with the concept of pair-wise dominance. With data from a manufacturing facility, the use of pair-wise dominance allows one to consider a wide spectrum of inputs and outputs. Pair-wise dominance can also be applied to segregate production plans into sets according to their relative environmental performance and productive efficiency. These sets are used to identify reference production plans upon which distance-based measures of performance are defined. This research applies pair-wise dominance to time series data from a printed circuit board manufacturing facility to illustrate the approach. The proposed approach is compared to the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. It was observed that for detailed production data the proposed approach was more informative concerning the measurement of productive efficiency than the standard methods. / Ph. D.

This dissertation explores the use of the efficiency performance measurement paradigm (EM), in terms of its concepts and applications, as an ex-ante mechanism to evaluate enterprise performance and inform enterprise design. The design of an enterprise is driven by decisions that include, but not limit to, which strategies to implement, how to allocate resources, how to shift operating patterns, and how to boost coordination among enterprises, among others. Up to date, EM has been mainly used as a descriptive mechanism, but the fundamental reason for measuring performance in an ex-post fashion, i.e., how well an enterprise does, is also valid in the context of design decisions, i.e., ex-ante evaluation. The contrast between the ex-post and ex-ante use of EM relates to the measurement purpose, i.e., why to measure. Ex-post measurement focuses on evaluating 'what happened' (non-disruptive) while ex-ante measurement emphasizes in informing design decisions exploring changes in current settings (more disruptive). Within this context and to achieve the purpose above, this dissertation is supported by theoretical insights and complemented with three empirical studies. The theoretical insights relate to facts that support, connect to, and challenge (i.e., facilitate or impede) the ex-ante use of EM for enterprise evaluation and informing enterprise design. Those insights are based on the efficiency performance measurement, organizational design and enterprise systems engineering literature. Meanwhile, the three empirical studies situate the application of EM as an ex-ante mechanism to inform evacuation management, bank branch management, and power plants. The theoretical and empirical results indicate that EM is well suited for both evaluating enterprise performance and informing design decisions. The main contribution of this dissertation to enterprise stakeholders is that EM can be not only used to answer how well the enterprise did, but also how well it could do if certain design decisions are taken. / Ph. D.

Le tourisme a été généralement défini comme le voyage d'une personne à une destination pour y faire une escale avant de revenir à son milieu d'origine. La perception d'une destination est donc au centre de l’étude lors de l'examen de laproposition du tourisme expliqué dans le cadre de cette thèse. Mais la perception de la destination a aussi des caractéristiques très difficiles. Afin de vérifier cela, nous devons considérer ce que le marketing des professionnels et des chercheurs ont apporté. Metelka (1990, p.46) et Vukonic (1997) ont défini une destination comme “un lieu géographique où les gens peuvent séjourner », tandis que Gunn (1994) explique une destination comme une zone géographique "suffisamment développé pour répondre aux objectifs de voyageurs" (Gunn, 1994, p.27). De ce point de vue, les destinations touristiques peuvent être associées soit à un pays ou soit à un (ou plusieurs) région, une ville ou des sites touristiques ; la destination est une notion géographique ou spatiale qui est d'abord définie par ses propres visiteurs. Dans la condition où le lieu n’est pas familier au touriste, l'endroit ne peut pas être considéré comme destination. Cependant, de nombreuses questions sont abordées dans la présente thèse pour comprendre comment une place peut devenir ensuite une destination, ainsi que les implications de cette transformation. / Firstly, tourism has been defined as a journey of an individual to a destination for a stopover, then return to his/her origin environment. The perception of a destination is therefore at a centre, considering the tourism proposition explained here. Above and beyond this, the perception of a destination also has significantly difficult characteristics. To verify this, we have to consider what marketing professionals and researchers bring to it. Metelka (1990, p.46) describes a destination as "the geographic location to which someone travels." Vukonic (1997) also relates the term to that factor whereas Gunn (1994) explains a destination is recognised by the travel market as a geographical area "sufficiently developed to meet the objectives of travellers" (Gunn, 1994, p.27). From this standpoint, tourist destinations may have the scope of being a country or (one or more) region, city or an exact site. The destination is a geographical or spatial notion that is first definedby its visitors. In the condition that no stranger visits a place, that place cannot be deliberated as a destination. This image gives the impression of asserting the obvious. However, many issues are discussed in this paper for a place tosubsequently become a destination, as well as the implications of this transformation.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-15T00:31:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Necesio Jose Faria Tavares1.pdf: 2033252 bytes, checksum: 8b63c2b863899e404c67387e2131f57d (MD5) Necesio Jose Faria Tavares2.pdf: 2811029 bytes, checksum: d3712cd52d1b9c01aec2a33386aaf793 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-10-20 / DEA, Data Envelopment Analysis, is a non parametric modeling technique which came about in 1976 when three prominent researchers, Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes were in search of a procedure to evaluate productivity/efficiency without recourse to price information. Soon after, new and more complex models were developed with wide acceptance among researchers mainly in the Management Sciences field. Nowadays, DEA finds its use in areas like hospitals, banks, industries, universities and capital markets. This research aims at using DEA as a tool to evaluate the top Brazilian companies listed in the local stock exchange based in a model which simultaneously combine several inputs to generate income and net profits. A second step evaluates how shareholders value the income and profit generated by the firms. A third step evaluates how efficiently each firm succeeds in directly transforming its endowments in shareholder´s value. The proposed model goes further in that it uses outputs produced by a first stage evaluation, like income and net profit, as inputs to the second phase evaluation. Furthermore, this research combines DEA with the Malmquist Productivity Index providing information on how the largest companies went along in between 2001-2006, as far as productivity and efficiency is concerned. / DEA, Data Envelopment Analysis, é uma técnica não paramétrica que surgiu em 1976 quando os pesquisadores Charnes, Cooper e Rhodes procuravam uma metodologia para calcular eficiência e produtividade em situações onde as informações sobre preços de insumos e de produtos não eram disponíveis. Ao longo dos anos seus métodos se sofisticaram, passando de um simples modelo que exigia a restrição de que todas as empresas operavam em uma situação de retornos constantes de escala a modelos mais complexos que levantaram tal restrição. Atualmente, DEA é utilizada em áreas tão diversas como finanças empresariais, mercado de capitais, avaliação de universidades, bases aéreas, bibliotecas, etc. O modelo utilizado nesta tese para avaliação de desempenho empresarial se baseia na modelagem matemática de DEA que permite a utilização de vários inputs e outputs simultaneamente para a determinação da eficiência/produtividade de cada firma. A avaliação de desempenho das empresas é realizada sob 3 óticas distintas: (i) avalia a eficiência da empresa em gerar receita e lucro, (ii) avalia como o mercado valoriza a receita e o lucro produzidos pela empresa, e (iii) analisa também como a empresa consegue transformar seus fatores de produção diretamente em valor ao acionista. DEA permite distinguir os conceitos de eficiência e produtividade, fornecendo relevantes informações para tomada de decisões estratégicas. Como parte do processo de análise, obtém-se uma fronteira das melhores práticas entre as empresas analisadas permitindo a identificação da situação de retornos de escala de cada uma das empresas estudadas. Ademais, torna possível a associação com os conceitos do Índice de Malmquist, possibilitando uma avaliação da trajetória de cada empresa ao longo de um período estudado e identificando como ela evoluiu em termos de eficiência e/ou produtividade e se ela conseguiu acompanhar as inovações tecnológicas de seu grupo.

La question centrale que cherche à aborder cette thèse tourne autour d’une proposition de délimitation du concept de la gouvernance dans les organisations non gouvernementales. La question de la gouvernance a été largement étudiée par les économistes du « public choice » sans pour autant proposer une application aux ONG, chose qui devient nécessaire vu le développement sociétal quantitatif et qualitatif de ces organisations et leurs impacts croissants sur la société. Face aux défaillances des Etats, et aux besoins d’interventions spécifiques dans quelques domaines, des actions collectives organisées ont émergé et se sont développées. L’approche adoptée cherche à présenter en premier lieu l’émergence des normes de coopération et d’entraide pour ensuite définir les structures de propriétés et de prise de décisions au sein des ONG. Cette étude présente ensuite les caractéristiques des différentes composantes du cadre opérationnel des interventions des ONG : relations avec les donateurs, transparence de l’information, structures de coûts… Le choix du Liban émane du caractère unique d’un petit pays qui a connu une prolifération large d’ONG depuis plus qu’une cinquantaine d’années. Après avoir présenté les résultats de l’enquête menée auprès d’un échantillon représentatif des organisations au Liban, on propose un modèle d’évaluation de l’efficacité de l’action de ces organisations basé sur les travaux de Cooper, Charnes et Rhodes sur le modèle de Data Envelopment Analysis DEA. / The central question that this thesis seeks to address revolves around a proposal for delimitation of the concept of governance in non-governmental organizations. The issue of governance has been widely studied by economists of the public choice without nonetheless proposing an application to NGOs, something that has become necessary due to the quantitative and qualitative development of these organizations and their growing impact on society. Given the shortcomings of States, and specific needs that have begun to arise requiring interventions in some areas in societies, organized collective action emerged and developed. The approach used in this proposal seeks to present first the emergence of norms of cooperation and mutual assistance, and then define the properties and structures of decision-making processes within NGOs. This study then presents the characteristics of the different components of the operational framework of NGO interventions: donor relations, information and transparency, cost structures ... The choice of Lebanon comes from the uniqueness of a small country that has seen a large proliferation of NGOs from more than fifty years. presented the results of the survey of 90 organizations in Lebanon, an evaluation of the effectiveness of the action of the organization is presented based on the work of Cooper, Charnes and Rhodes on the model of Data envelopment analysis DEA.

A set of technical issues are addressed related to benchmarking best practice behavior in warehouses. In order to identify best practice, first performance needs to be measured. There are a variety of tools available to measure productivity and efficiency. One of the most common tools is data envelopment analysis (DEA). Given a system that consumes inputs to generate outputs, previous work has shown production theory can be used to develop basic postulates about the production possibility space and to construct an efficient frontier which is used to quantify efficiency. Beyond inputs and outputs warehouses typically have practices (techniques used in the warehouse) or attributes (characteristics of the environment of the warehouse including demand characteristics) which also influence efficiency. Previously in the literature, a two-stage method has been developed to investigate the impact of practices and attributes on efficiency. When applying this method, two issues arose: how to measure efficiency in small samples and how to identify outliers. The small sample efficiency measurement method developed in this thesis is called multi-input / multi-output quantile based approach (MQBA) and uses deleted residuals to estimate efficiency. The outlier detection method introduces the inefficient frontier. Both overly efficient and overly inefficient outliers can be identified by constructing an efficient and an inefficient frontier. The outlier detection method incorporates an iterative procedure previously described, but has not been implemented in the literature. Further, this thesis also discusses issues related to selecting an orientation in super efficiency models. Super efficiency models are used in outlier detection, but are also commonly used in measuring technical progress via the Malmquist index. These issues are addressed using two data sets recently collected in the warehousing industry. The first data set consists of 390 observations of various types of warehouses. The other data set has 25 observations from a specific industry. For both data sets, it is shown that significantly different results are realized if the methods suggested in this document are adopted.

Prediction of corporate bankruptcy (or distress) is one of the major activities in auditing firms’ risks and uncertainties. The design of reliable models to predict distress is crucial for many decision-making processes. Although a variety of models have been designed to predict distress, the relative performance evaluation of competing prediction models remains an exercise that is unidimensional in nature. To be more specific, although some studies use several performance criteria and their measures to assess the relative performance of distress prediction models, the assessment exercise of competing prediction models is restricted to their ranking by a single measure of a single criterion at a time, which leads to reporting conflicting results. The first essay of this research overcomes this methodological issue by proposing an orientation-free super-efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model as a multi-criteria assessment framework. Furthermore, the study performs an exhaustive comparative analysis of the most popular bankruptcy modelling frameworks for UK data. Also, it addresses two important research questions; namely, do some modelling frameworks perform better than others by design? and to what extent the choice and/or the design of explanatory variables and their nature affect the performance of modelling frameworks? Further, using different static and dynamic statistical frameworks, this chapter proposes new Failure Prediction Models (FPMs). However, within a super-efficiency DEA framework, the reference benchmark changes from one prediction model evaluation to another one, which in some contexts might be viewed as “unfair” benchmarking. The second essay overcomes this issue by proposing a Slacks-Based Measure Context-Dependent DEA (SBM-CDEA) framework to evaluate the competing Distress Prediction Models (DPMs). Moreover, it performs an exhaustive comparative analysis of the most popular corporate distress prediction frameworks under both a single criterion and multiple criteria using data of UK firms listed on London Stock Exchange (LSE). Further, this chapter proposes new DPMs using different static and dynamic statistical frameworks. Another shortcoming of the existing studies on performance evaluation lies in the use of static frameworks to compare the performance of DPMs. The third essay overcomes this methodological issue by suggesting a dynamic multi-criteria performance assessment framework, namely, Malmquist SBM-DEA, which by design, can monitor the performance of competing prediction models over time. Further, this study proposes new static and dynamic distress prediction models. Also, the study addresses several research questions as follows; what is the effect of information on the performance of DPMs? How the out-of-sample performance of dynamic DPMs compares to the out-of-sample performance of static ones? What is the effect of the length of training sample on the performance of static and dynamic models? Which models perform better in forecasting distress during the years with Higher Distress Rate (HDR)? On feature selection, studies have used different types of information including accounting, market, macroeconomic variables and the management efficiency scores as predictors. The recently applied techniques to take into account the management efficiency of firms are two-stage models. The two-stage DPMs incorporate multiple inputs and outputs to estimate the efficiency measure of a corporation relative to the most efficient ones, in the first stage, and use the efficiency score as a predictor in the second stage. The survey of the literature reveals that most of the existing studies failed to have a comprehensive comparison between two-stage DPMs. Moreover, the choice of inputs and outputs for DEA models that estimate the efficiency measures of a company has been restricted to accounting variables and features of the company. The fourth essay adds to the current literature of two-stage DPMs in several respects. First, the study proposes to consider the decomposition of Slack-Based Measure (SBM) of efficiency into Pure Technical Efficiency (PTE), Scale Efficiency (SE), and Mix Efficiency (ME), to analyse how each of these measures individually contributes to developing distress prediction models. Second, in addition to the conventional approach of using accounting variables as inputs and outputs of DEA models to estimate the measure of management efficiency, this study uses market information variables to calculate the measure of the market efficiency of companies. Third, this research provides a comprehensive analysis of two-stage DPMs through applying different DEA models at the first stage – e.g., input-oriented vs. output oriented, radial vs. non-radial, static vs. dynamic, to compute the measures of management efficiency and market efficiency of companies; and also using dynamic and static classifier frameworks at the second stage to design new distress prediction models.

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.

Since the open door policy was embarked upon in 1979, China s banking sector has undergone gradual but notable reforms. A key objective of the reforms implemented by the Chinese government is to build an effective, competitive and stable banking system in order to improve its efficiency and reliability. This study employs both parametric stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods to assess and evaluate the cost efficiency of Chinese banks over the period from 1994 until 2007, a period characterised by far-reaching changes brought about by the banking reforms. To this end, we first compare a number of specifications of stochastic cost frontier models to determine the preferred frontier model which are adopted in our efficiency analysis. The preferred model specification for our sample is the one stage SFA model that includes the traditional input prices, the outputs and the control variables (that is, equity, non-performing loans and the time trend) in the cost frontier and the environmental variables (that is, ownership structure, size, deregulation, market structure and market discipline) in the inefficiency term. Moreover, we also employ two cost DEA models (traditional DEA and New DEA) as a complement to the preferred SFA model for methodological cross-checking purposes. Similar to the previous empirical literature, we find that in most cases only moderate consistency across the different techniques. The cost efficiency of Chinese banks is found to be 91% on average, based on our SFA model, over the period from 1994 until 2007. Based on the results of the DEA and New DEA models, the average cost efficiency for Chinese banks over the sample period is about 89% and 87%, respectively. We find that Chinese banking efficiency has deteriorated after China s admission to the WTO, suggesting that the significant external environmental changes which arose from China s WTO entry may have had a negative impact on its banking efficiency. In addition, we find that the majority of Chinese banks reveal scale inefficiencies and as asset size increases, banks tend to pass from increasing, to constant, and then to decreasing returns to scale. Our findings also show that both state-owned banks and foreign banks are more efficient than domestic private banks and larger banks tend to be relatively more efficient than smaller banks. These and other results suggest that in order to enhance Chinese banking efficiency, the government needs to continue with the banking reform process and in particular, to open up banking markets, to improve risk management and corporate governance in Chinese banks and to encourage the expansion of banks.