The last few years have witnessed a rapid evolution in the literature evaluating mutual fund performance using frontier techniques. The instruments applied, mostly DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and, to a lesser extent, FDH (Free Disposal Hull), are able to encompass several dimensions of...

The aim of this study is to analyse the efficiency of companies forming collective brands in the experience goods sector. The central hypothesis is that collective brands have a positive impact on the efficiency of their member companies and that this is because collective reputation encourages...

In this work a non parametric approach is used in order to evaluate the relative efficiency of a sample of firms producers of wooden goods, in presence of non desirable outputs. As main results, we find that the consideration of several restrictions on the expansion of non desirable outputs...

Over the last few years, many studies have analyzed the productive efficiency of local governments in different countries. An accurate definition of their output bundles -i.e., the services and facilities they provide to their constituencies- is essential to this research. However, several...

Over the last few years, there has been a devolutionary tendency in many developed and developingcountries. In this article we propose a methodology to decompose whether the benefits in terms ofefficiency derived from transfers of powers from higher to municipal levels of government...

Over the last decade, the Spanish banking sector has undergone a radical structural change. The old bank statu quo has broken down due both to the impact of technical change and to a strong deregulation process, that has given way to a much freer and competitive economic environment. Similarly,...

This paper analyzes the relationship between market structure and performance within the Spanish banking industry. Three different stochastic measures of efficiency are used (based on three alternative distributional assumptions for inefficiency: half-normal, normal-truncated and exponential)....

In a previous work, Forner and Marhuenda (2001) find that the contrarian strategy, thatis, the forming of a zero-investment portfolio that buys the stocks that have performed poorly inthe past (losers) and sells those that have performed well (winners), does not yield abnormallypositive returns...

This paper tests the different hypotheses explaining profitability in the generic framework of hypotheses of collusion versus efficiency, presenting as its main contribution the use of a direct measurement of efficiency. This measurement is obtained by applying frontier techniques using the...

The objectives of this paper are, in first place, to analyze the equity of the Spanish scholarship system for all levels of education, assuming that in a fair system grants are given mainly to families with unfavourable economic conditions. A second element, also related to equity and which...