Thepurpose of this short article is to simplify goodness-of-fitmethods to obtain qualitative information about returns to scalefor individual observations. Traditional and new goodness-of-fitmethods developed for estimating returns to scale on nonparametricdeterministic reference technologies...

This paper aims at assessing the extent to which M&As in European banking sector over the period 1996–2003 result in two simultaneous catching up and convergence processes of consolidating groups. First, do the M&As significantly contribute to the consolidating banks to catch-up with the...

Hospital productivity has been a research topic for over two decades. Whereas much has been learned regarding cost, technical, scale, and allocative efficiency as well as the impact that weakly disposable inputs/outputs have on hospital behavior, we expand on this research by examining size and...

Since Akerlof’s theory of lemons, economists have viewed quality uncertainty as an informational advantage for sellers. Drawing on frontier techniques, we propose in this paper a simple method for measuring inefficiency of both sellers and buyers in markets for goods with different levels of...

Livestock supply must challenge the growth of final demand in the developing countries. This challenge has to take into account its ecological effects since the dairy and livestock sectors are clearly pointed out as human activities which contribute significantly to environmental deterioration....