Private health insurance premiums in Australia are regulated by the Commonwealth Government. Premium increases often well exceed the national consumer price index, which suggests that consumers are not receiving value for money for health insurance products. The current regulatory framework does...

Housing price indexes are generally computed using variants of hedonic housing price models. The commonly used methods are the time-dummy method, the hedonic imputation method and the rolling window hedonic models. In addition, hedonic models that explicitly account for spatial correlation in...

This paper presents a metafrontier production function model for firms in different groups having different technologies. The metafrontier model enables the calculation of comparable technical efficiencies for firms operating under different technologies. The model also enables the technology...

This article presents multi-output, multi-input total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates in agriculture for 88 countries over the 1970–2001 period, estimated with both stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and the more commonly employed data envelopment analysis (DEA). We find results with...

This book deals with the currently most relevant topics in price index numbers theory and practice. The problem of the harmonization of Consumer Price Indexes (CPIs) and the time-space integration of baskets is analyzed at the EU-zone level, with methodological and practical proposals on how to...

The importance of availability of comparable real income aggregates and their components to applied economic research is highlighted by the popularity of the Penn World Tables. Any methodology designed to achieve such a task requires the combination of data from several sources. The first is...

Objective We propose a new method to measure health inequalities caused by conditions amenable to policy intervention and use this to identify health differences between sexes and age groups.Methods The lowest observed mortality rates are used as a proxy of unavoidable mortality risks to develop...

There are two main types of data sources of income distributions in China: household survey data and grouped data. Household survey data are typically available for isolated years and individual provinces. In comparison, aggregate or grouped data are typically available more frequently and...

The estimated parameters of output distance functions frequently violate the monotonicity, quasi-convexity and convexity constraints implied by economic theory, leading to estimated elasticities and shadow prices that are incorrectly signed, and ultimately to perverse conclusions concerning the...

The second edition of An Introduction to Efficiency and Productivity Analysis is designed to be a general introduction for those who wish to study efficiency and productivity analysis. The book provides an accessible, well-written introduction to the four principal methods involved: econometric...