The neglected issue of using profit efficiency for the best-practice benchmarking of UK universities is explored to see whether this supports the policy stance of encouraging more specialized university production. The article also investigates whether nonparametric modelling with financial...

This article explores the relative efficiency of Northern Ireland hospitals, and in particular the efficiency of small hospitals relative to their large counterparts, employing a technique called data envelopment analysis. The empirical analysis revealed that larger hospitals displayed higher...

The study obtains measures of the productive efficiency of 'larger' and 'smaller' Northern Ireland hospitals during the 1986-92 pre-Trust period. The measures provide insights into how these hospitals were responding to the pressures for increased efficiency prior to Trust status. They also...

The study examines the technical, scale and size efficiency of acute hospitals in Northern Ireland over the six-year period, 1986-1992. The efficiency estimates are used to investigate whether the empirical evidence supports the subsequent current rationalisation policy for hospital provision in...