Policy recommendations concerning optimal scale of production units often have serious implications for the restructuring of a sector, while tests of natural monopoly have important implications for regulatory structure. The piecewise linear frontier production function framework is becoming the...

In economics scale properties of a production function is charcterised by the value of the scale elasticity. In the field of efficiency studies this is also a valid approach for the frontier production function. It has no good meaning to talk about scale properties of inefficient observations....

The problem of optimal management of a water reservoir by a hydropower producer is necessarily a dynamic one since water can be transferred between periods. A hydropower producer being a monopolist cannot reduce output in the classical way without spilling water. He will follow a strategy of...

Benchmarking by means of applying the DEA model is appearing as an interesting alternative for regulators under the new regimes for electricity distributors. A sample of large electricity distribution utilities from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands for the year 1997 is...

Previous works applying hedonic price technique to determine the formation of auction prices of objects of art have found no conclusive result about the impact of auction houses on final prices. In these studies the object of art has been the unit, and influence of auction houses is analysed by...

The RAINS model is used to calculate cost minimising abatement policies subject to European-wide spatial restrictions on pollution. The principle for choosing environmental targets for the 1994 Oslo Protocol was closing a gap between benchmark- and critical loads for each grid with a uniform...

If a DEA model has a mix of categorical and continuous variables a standard LP formulation can still be used by entering all combinations of categorical and continuous variables as different types of inputs and/or outputs. Most units will then not have positive levels of all variables. The...

It has been observed that similar prints can obtain quite different prices at different auctions within the same auction period. Previous works applying hedonic price technique to determine the formation of auction prices of objects of art have found no conclusive result about the impact of...

Circularity is a desirable property of a productivity index seldom satisfied in available bilateral indices, such as the Malmquist index. Within a setting of micro units belonging to groups with group-specific frontier technology, the bilateral Malmquist productivity index is investigated. Our...