In economics scale properties of a production function is charcterised by the value of the scale elasticity. In the field of efficiency studies this is also a valid approach for the frontier production function. It has no good meaning to talk about scale properties of inefficient observations....

The performance of local tax offices of Norway is studied over a three-year period using Data Envelopment Efficiency analysis and calculating Malmquist productivity indices. One input, labour, is used, and six output categories of the main service activities carried out by tax offices are...

Attempts can be found in the DEA literature to identify returns to scale at efficient interior points of the production possibility set on the basis of returns to scale at points of the corresponding reference sets. However, an opposite approach is put forward in this paper, advocating that...

The performance of local tax offices of Norway is studied over a three year period applying Data Envelopment Efficiency analysis and a Malmquist productivity index. The estimates are biascorrected using a bootstrap approach recently developed for DEA models. The results show that bias correction...

The contributions of the paper are threefold: i) compare with mathematical rigour the Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes DEA model and the Farrell model exhibiting constant returns to scale, ii) reinterpret the contribution of Farrell and Fieldhouse that extended the analysis to variables returns to...

The materials balance principle points to the crucial role of material inputs in generating residuals in production processes. Pollution modelling must be of a multi-output nature. The most flexible transformation function in outputs and inputs used in textbooks is too general to make sense in...

The field of theoretical and applied efficiency analysis is pursued both by economists and people from operational research and management science. Each group tends to cite a different paper as the seminal one. Recent availability of electronically accessible databases of journal articles makes...

The modelling of the interaction between production activities and the natural environment requires formulating a multioutput production function for intended and unintended outputs. The key feature when modelling joint production of intended outputs and unintended residuals is that the latter...