The field of production frontier estimation is divided between the parametric Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and the deterministic, nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This paper explores an amalgam of DEA and SFA that melds a nonparametric frontier with a stochastic composite...

By integrating Battese and Coelli's (1995) model and the spatial autoregressive model (SAR), a spatial autoregressive stochastic frontier model for panel data is developed. The main feature of this frontier model is a spatial lag term of explained variables and the joint structure of a...

Estimation of the one sided error component in stochastic frontier models may erroneously attribute firm characteristics to inefficiency if heterogeneity is unaccounted for. However, it is not clear in general in which component of the error distribution the covariates should be included. In the...

By integrating Battese and Coelli’s (1995) model and the spatial autoregressive model (SAR), a spatial autoregressive stochastic frontier model for panel data is developed. The main feature of this frontier model is a spatial lag term of explained variables and the joint structure of a...

Estimating efficiencies of higher education institutions (HEIs) has become a central area of research in efficiency analysis literature, particularly during the last two decades. Although the number of efficiency analysis researches in higher education has risen, comparative research estimating...

When benchmarking production units by non-parametric methods like data envelopment analysis (DEA), an assumption has to be made about the returns to scale of the underlying technology. Moreover, it is often also relevant to compare the frontiers across samples of producers. Until now, no exact...

This paper presents and applies different approaches to estimate returns to scale in multiple-input multiple-output technologies. Scale efficiency gives quantitative information of scale characteristics. A primal based approach to estimate the scale elasticity is proposed as an alternative to...

This paper is concerned with significance testing of the effects of exogenous determinants upon the one-sided deviation term of a semiparametric stochastic frontier model. Two nonparametric significance tests for all or a subset of the determinants of inefficiency are proposed. The proposed...

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...

This paper analyzes the impact of load factor, facility and generator types on the productivity of Korean electric power plants. In order to capture important differences in the effect of load policy on power output, we use a semiparametric smooth coefficient (SPSC) model that allows us to model...