In management contexts, mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best. In this capacity, mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management. Data Envelopment Analysis reverses this...

This paper addresses estimation and decomposition of productivity change, which is mostly identified as technical change under constant (unitary) returns to scale (CRS). If the CRS assumption is not made, productivity change is decomposed into technical change and scale effects.Furthermore, if...

This paper is on its way to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) level and identify the sources of technical inefficiency (TIE) of the Vietnam Manufacture of Chemicals and Chemical Products (MCCP) or the chemical industry, using the stochastic frontier cost function and the sample data of 95...

The Stochastic frontier production function was used to assess the technical efficiency of cassava production in Epe Area of Lagos State, Nigeria. Results show that cassava farmers in the study area experienced increasing positive return-to-scale (2.2675. The study also reveals that a...

The major objective of this paper is to examine the association between agricultural subsidies and farm efficiency using data from the European Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) for operations specializing on dairy. The analysis covers the 18 year period going from 1990 to 2007 and includes...

Since Hong Kong’s reversion of political sovereignty to Mainland China in 1997, the pace of economic integration between the two economies has increased. This paper first examines the economic benefits and institutional differences between Mainland China and Hong Kong. The empirical section of...

The U.S. dairy industry is undergoing rapid structural change, evolving from a structure including many small farmers in the Upper Midwest and Northeast to one that includes very large farms in new production regions. Small farms are struggling to retain competitiveness via improved management...

This paper is a survey of recent contributions to, and developments of, the relationship between outsourcing, efficiency and productivity growth in manufacturing and services. The objective is to provide a thorough and up-to-date survey that provides a significant discussion on data, as well as...

Diewert and Fox (2013) proposed decompositions of a Malmquist-type productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting technical progress, technical efficiency change and returns to scale components. A major problem with their decompositions is that it may be difficult to...