This study sheds light on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing and its performance in Thailand. It elaborates on the key sources of finance existing for Thai manufacturing SMEs and their importance for SME performance as measured by technical efficiency, export performance, and...

This paper implements both stochastic production and cost frontier analyses to estimate the efficiency of toll motorway companies in Spain, the country with the largest number of private concessionaires in this economic sector. Our dataset includes 32 concessionaires with different features for...

A feature of the recent global slowdown in productivity growth is that progress at the technological frontier has remained strong, while the gap between firms at the global frontier and other 'laggards' within an industry has grown. This growing gap reflects the fact that laggard firms now seem...

In a stochastic frontier setting, we examine technical efficiency in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Evidence suggests that in addition to economic indicators, political and social ones play a key role in development and frontier technical efficiency profiles. The MENA have been...

This paper evaluates the efficiency of the twenty-one largest Syndicates of Lloyd's of London. Members of Lloyd's of London are grouped into Syndicates in order to undertake insurance liabilities. In this study, the Syndicate is regarded as the counterpart of an insurance company in a regular...

In this study, we address a major problem in the measurement of firm performance and the regulation of natural monopolies, namely the intertemporal character of long-term investment decisions. In specific, we focus on the impact of adjustment costs of investments on estimates of firms’...

The Bohai Economic Rim plays an important role in supporting China’s economic growth. For this research, we selected nine main ports in the region to study whether intra-port competition or corporatization would improve efficiency. Using a panel fixed effect model and stochastic frontier...

Increasing energy efficiency is one of the main goals in current German energy and climate policies. We study the determinants of energy efficiency in the German manufacturing sector based on official firm-level production census data. By means of a stochastic frontier analysis, we estimate the...

This paper assesses energy efficiency in Swedish industry. Using unique firm-level panel data covering the years 2001-2008, the efficiency estimates are obtained for firms in 14 industrial sectors by using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The analysis accounts for multi-output technologies where...

This paper estimates firm level energy efficiency and its determinants in 14 sectors of Swedish manufacturing by using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). We derive energy demand frontiers both from cost minimizing and profit maximizing perspectives. To account for firms' heterogeneity, Greene's...