We examine the association between market structure and cost structure using a national sample of U.S. hospitals. Cost structure determines operating risk; therefore, it is important to understand factors that influence managerial choices on cost structure. Market structure is a potentially...

Theoretical models predict asymmetric information in health insurance markets may generate inefficient outcomes due to adverse selection and moral hazard. However, previous empirical research has found it difficult to disentangle adverse selection from moral hazard in health care. We empirically...

In sub-Saharan Africa, hospitals absorb the greatest proportion of total health resources according to the World health Organization. Senegal is no exception to this, out of the total government expenditure in the health sector, a third is absorbed by public hospitals and specialized health...

A major feature of healthcare systems is substantial variation in hospital productivity. Productivity widely varies across NHS hospitals. This research investigates factors that may explain variations in hospital productivity. We employ a non-parametric panel regression technique to explore the...

Electricity distribution network is a prime example of a natural local monopoly. In many countries, electricity distribution is regulated by the government. In Finland, the regulator estimates the efficient cost frontier using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis...

The purpose of this paper is to use the bootstrap resampling technique to calculate confidence intervals for efficiency measures and Malmquist productivity indices. The efficiency and productivity measures are obtained from non-parametric linear programming models using primal production data....

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 proposes a new strategy for the identification of all the marginal effects of an endogenous multi-valued variable (which can be continuous, or a vector) in a regression model with one binary instrumental variable. The unobservables must be separable from the endogenous variable of...

The recent debate on Italy's unsatisfactory economic performance has been focused on the increasing competitive pressures exerted by foreign firms localized in low-wage developing countries and specialized in products where Italy used to hold a comparative advantage. This paper aims at...

We highlight differences in the way multiplicative DEA is being applied and draw attention to the fact that a units-invariant (i.e. scale-invariant) form is available. Moreover, this model avoids the ‘zero weight problem' in DEA (where criteria are effectively ignored)