This paper assesses the relative efficiency of knowledge production in the OECD using a nonparametric DEA approach. Resources allocated to R&D are limited and should therefore be used efficiently given the institutional and legal constraints. This paper presents efficiency scores based on an...

This study explores the prevalence and nature of the regional divide for the Mexican manufacturing production across sub-national regions. We utilize a unique panel of municipality-level data from the manufacturing sector. An important contribution is the use of different panel methods to...

While the link between the ownership and productive efficiency of firms has been discussed extensively, no consensus exists regarding the superiority of one or the other in non-competitive, regulated environments. This paper applies a flexible production model to test for efficiency differences...

We analyze the technical efficiency of German and Swiss urban public transport companies by means of SFA. In transport networks we might face different network structures or complexities, not observed, but influencing the production process. The unobserved factors are typically modeled as...

This paper investigates the factors that explain the level and dynamics of manufacturing firm productive efficiency. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique sample of about 39,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2005. We estimate the...

Subsidies are considered important means to facilitate the provision of public transit, yet the empirical evidence implies that they can have harming effects on costs and possibly also on operators' performance. This paper examines the impacts of deficit-balancing subsidies on the cost...

In January 2009 Germany introduced incentive regulation for the electricity distribution sector based on results obtained from econometric and nonparametric benchmarking analysis. One main problem for the regulator in assigning the relative efficiency scores are unobserved firm-specific factors...

We analyze potential gains from hypothetical mergers in local public transport using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis with bias corrections by means of bootstrapping. Our sample consists of 41 public transport companies from Germany's most densely populated region, North...

Revenue cap regulation is often combined with systematic benchmarking to reveal the managerial inefficiencies when regulating natural monopolies. One example is the European energy sector, where benchmarking methods are based on actual cost data, which are influenced by managerial inefficiency...