Can economic theory help explain the persistence of a cultural enclave among the Cherokee Indians living in North Carolina during the nineteenth century? To date, Fogelson and Kutsche (1961) and Finger (1984) have identified the continuation of a communal, labor-sharing, agricultural institution...

This paper aims to test the effect of smallholder farmers' participatory social learning on their gain of performance in a village of southwest China. By exploring a panel structure survey data collected in the village, we identify the social learning effect using a Spatial Autoregressive (SAR)...

In this paper assess the relative performance of US mutual funds using a non-parametric method such as data envelopment analysis (DEA). In particular, we assess the changes of mutual funds’ total productivity using the DEA-based Tornqvist productivity Index. The findings show significant...

This paper investigates efficiency performance of thirty six banks operating in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries during the period 2006-2008 . Our results indicate in general GCC banks showed considerable pure technical efficiency in the past three years with the year 2007 exhibit the...

Some productivity measures area analyzed. The emphasis is on concepts, limitations and on some empirical results. Software is not discussed. The productivity measures are classified in optimized, whenever obtained by an optimization procedure, and not optimized, as yield, labor productivity and...

Replaced with revised version of paper 02/10/10

This study addresses the impact of trade openness on technical efficiency in the U.S. agricultural sector. The results indicate that trade protectionism illustrated with a decrease in the share of agricultural imports in agricultural GDP led to an increase in technical efficiency. A change in...

In recent years, significant structural and production system changes have been noted in the U.S. and European Union, as well as increased interest in pasture-based dairy systems. Technical efficiency, returns to scale, and farm characteristics are compared by size and production system in...

The aim of the paper is to explain the role that technical efficiency and foreign spillover effects have on firm survival. Panel data from Greek manufacturing industry (3142 firms) in 1997-2003 are used. Technical efficiency is estimated through a CES translog production function. A hazard...