This paper investigates the size of local authority fixed and variable costs and the extent of economies of scale and scope in the provision of local services. A flexible modelling framework is used which combines elements of both short and long run cost behaviour and allows returns to scale to...

ILO pub. Working paper on specific industry restructuring and plant shutdown in the motor vehicle industry in Western Europe - discusses industrial policy issues, enterprise level decision making, production, management, marketing, and the need for rationalization and economies of scale; includes...

ILO pub-WEP pub. Working paper on choice of technology in copper mining and processing in Zambia - discusses production capacity and the need for specific industry restructuring to achieve full development potential; examines feasibility of developing small scale industry using intermediate...

This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation into the role of project scale, as reflected in consortium size, on the impacts obtained by partners participating in publicly-funded collaborative R&D projects. I argue in this study that scale may affect performance indirectly rather...

This paper analyses the importance of scale economies by means of unbalanced plant-level panel data from three Norwegian manufacturing industries. Focus is on heterogeneous technologies, and unlike most previous work on micro data, the model description includes heterogeneity in both the scale...

Using the stochastic metafrontier framework of Battese et al. (J Prod Anal 21:91–103, <CitationRef CitationID="CR5">2004</CitationRef>), this study proposes to compare and measure the cost efficiency and cost frontier gap between the banking industry in Taiwan and China. It further identifies environmental variables that determine...</citationref>

The fairly recent discovery and growing use of costly, revolutionary biotechnology drugs (e.g., GM-CSFs) in hospitals represent a major technical innovation in clinical pharmacy intervention. This paper models the translog production cost impacts of ten distinct clinical pharmacy tasks including...

The adoption of agriculture was one of the most momentous transformations in human history. It set into motion forces that changed our species from living in small numbers within the confines of local ecosystems into one that is now changing the biophysical characteristics of the entire planet....