Simar and Wilson (J. Econometrics, 2007) provided a statistical model that can rationalize two-stage estimation of technical efficiency in nonparametric settings. Two-stage estimation has been widely used, but requires a strong assumption: the second-stage environmental variables cannot affect...

Directional distances provide useful, flexible measures of technical efficiency of production units relative to the efficient frontier of the attainable set in input-output space. In addition, the additive nature of directional distances permits negative input or outputs quantities. The choice...

The issue of quality and its relationship with efficiency and performance is a crucial operational issue in many fields of study including production economics, operations research, engineering and business management. In this paper we provide a methodology for identifying latent quality...

Non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) estimators based on linear programming methods have been widely applied in analyses of productive efficiency. The distributions of these estimators remain unknown except in the simple case of one input and one output, and previous bootstrap methods...

This paper examines the origins and early performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort. The Fed was established to overcome the problems of the National Banking era, in particular an "inelastic" currency and the absence of an effective lender of last resort. As conceived by Paul...