It has become increasingly common to produce goods in a number of geographically dispersed stages linked by international trade. This tendency, known by names such as "production fragmentation", "processing trade", and "vertical specialization", has important implications for the analysis of...

The application of the human capital theory, the production theory, and the comparison of costs between teaching and non-teaching hospitals all point to the difficulties in identifying whether medical residents should be considered as inputs or outputs. We add to the debate by using a...

This paper examines the properties of the X-inefficiencies in U.S. bank holding companies derived from both stochastic and linear programming frontiers. This examination allows the robustness of results across methods to be compared. While we find that calculated programming inefficiency scores...

We propose a set of consistency conditions that frontier efficiency measures should meet to be most useful for regulatory analysis or other purposes. The efficiency estimates should be consistent in their efficiency levels, rankings, and identification of best and worst firms, consistent over...

This paper uses a stochastic cost frontier to examine the scale economies, cost efficiencies, and technological change of three payments instruments--check, automated clearinghouse (ACH) transfers, and Fedwire processing--provided by the Federal Reserve over the period 1990-94. We find evidence...

We propose a set of consistency conditions that frontier efficiency measures should meet to be most useful for regulatory analysis or other purposes. The efficiency estimates should be consistent in their efficiency levels, rankings, and identification of best and worst firms; consistent over...

This paper examines the properties of the X-inefficiencies in U.S. bank holding companies derived from both stochastic and linear programming frontiers. This examination allows the robustness of results across methods to be compared. While we find that calculated programming inefficiency scores...

Newhouse (1994) questioned the usefulness of frontier efficiency estimation for health care applications.  In the intervening years, numerous modeling advances have improved the econometric approach to efficiency measurement known as stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and myriad academic...