This paper uses panel data to estimate a two-tiered instead of a one-tiered frontier model. The innovation is to develop a two-step maximum likelihood procedure yielding consistent estimates of inefficiency, while at the same time accounting for heterogeneity. The model is applied by estimating...

Reform of Chinese economy, especially the Urban Reform announced in 1984, has decentralized government control over the economy and encouraged freer trade, domestic as well as international. Consequently, strengths and weaknesses of geographic regions emerge and each region may specialize...

This paper proposes wage premiums for jobs in high black proportion cities as a source of the continuing economic disadvantages for poor blacks. The estimated hedonic model of individual wages confirms the presence of such wage premiums which result in high labor costs and economic stagnation in...

Poverty has been ubiquitous throughout history and across nations. It exists even in the richest nations amidst the unprecedented prosperity of the 21st century. The promises of the global era do not lessen the urgency of coping with the poverty problem of the society. This paper introduces the...

This paper uses a large individual data set from the Euro Barometer Survey (ICPSR 1993) to estimate the influence of religious phenomena on self-perceived satisfaction of an individual, controlling for macroeconomic conditions, effects of his political stance, and other socio-economic variables....

This pap er develops a "two-tiered frontier" estimation procedure to decompose the residual of an earnings function into three components. The first component can be interpreted as being purely random. Search theory is used to show that the other two components represent employee and employer...