Using the planning and regulatory function of 173 NSW local governments, several approaches for incorporating contextual or non-discretionary inputs in data envelopment analysis (DEA) are compared. Non-discretionary inputs (or factors beyond managerial control) in this context include the...

Between 2001 and 2005, the US airline industry faced financial turmoil. At the same time, the European airline industry entered a period of substantive deregulation. This period witnessed opportunities for low-cost carriers to become more competitive in the market as a result of these combined...

This paper uses suburb-level quarterly data to model residential water demand in Brisbane, Australia, from 1998 to 2003. In this system, residential consumption is charged using a fixed annual service fee with no water entitlement followed by a fixed volumetric charge per kilolitre. Water demand...

This note examines the productive efficiency of 62 starting guards during the 2011/12 National Basketball Association (NBA) season. This period coincides with the phenomenal and largely unanticipated performance of New York Knicks’ starting point guard Jeremy Lin and the attendant public and...

This note examines demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as predictors of emergency finance in Australian households. The data is from the Household Expenditure Survey Confidentialised Unit Record Files and relates to 6,892 households. Emergency finance is defined as the ability to raise...

This paper employed panel data from the 2001–2010 waves of the Household, Income, and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to investigate the financial risk attitudes of 10,000 individuals across 6,839 households. Ordered logit models including individual and household random effects...

A two-stage estimation procedure is employed to evaluate non-bank financial institution efficiency. In the first stage, maximum-likelihood estimates of an econometric cost function are obtained for a cross-section of 150 Australian credit unions. The results indicate that a typical credit...

Maximum-likelihood estimates of a stochastic cost frontier function incorporating efficiency effects are obtained for 22 Australian building societies in the period 1992-1995. Cost inefficiency scores indicate that building societies' costs were 20% above what could be considered necessary. The...