We present evidence on components of productivity change in the public accounting industry toward the end of the 20th century. Using revenue and human resource data from 64 of the 100 largest public accounting firms in the United States for the 1995--1999 period, we analyze productivity change,...

Linear programming formulations for piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces are derived from a set of basic properties postulated for the underlying production possibility sets. Unlike the piecewise linear model of Banker, Charnes, and Cooper (Banker R. D., A. Charnes, W....

An innovative business practice attributed to the information technology (IT) industry is the aggressive use of employee stock options to compensate executives and other employees. In this study, we investigate whether the greater use of stock options in the IT industry can be explained on the...

The year 2000 (Y2K) countdown provided a uniquely visible instance of spending on information technology (IT) by U.S. companies. With public attention riveted on potential Y2K malfunctions, managers were forced to evaluate their IT and make decisions about whether to modify or replace existing...

In recent years, the practitioner literature in operations management has seen a dramatic surge in articles on quality management. It reflects the increased emphasis on quality by U.S. firms, which has been attributed largely to increased competition faced by them. The question of how quality is...

Erratum to: "Piecewise Loglinear Estimation of Efficient Production Surfaces", Management Sci. 32 (1, January) (1986) 126--135.

Data Envelopment Analysis has now been extensively applied in a range of empirical settings to identify relative inefficiencies, and provide targets for improvements. It accomplishes this by developing peer groups for each unit being operated. The use of categorical variables is an important...

This paper compares inferences about hospital cost and production correspondences from two different estimation models: (1) the econometric modeling of the translog cost function, and (2) the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). While there are numerous examples of the application of...

This paper provides a formal statistical basis for the efficiency evaluation techniques of data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA estimators of the best practice monotone increasing and concave production function are shown to be also maximum likelihood estimators if the deviation of actual output...

The cost of maintaining application software has been rapidly escalating, and is currently estimated to comprise from 50--80% of corporate information systems department budgets. In this research we develop an estimable production frontier model of software maintenance, using a new methodology...