This paper examines for the first time the impact of problem loans on Japanese productivity growth. We exploit a new data set of Japanese problem loans classified into two categories: bankrupt and restructured loans. We opt for a novel and flexible productivity growth decomposition that allows...

The paper examines the performance of US no-load equity mutual funds. Fund performance is derived using stochastic frontier analysis for a flexible functional form. This analysis allows us to derive parametric estimates of efficiency scores for each fund in our sample for the first time in the...