To address the need for a better understanding of cooperation, coordination and competition among transportation modes identified by various research studies, this paper sets out to analyze port-railroad relations of cooperation and coordination in the Brazilian case and the possible existence...

This study explores the reduction potential of greenhouse gases for major pollution emitting countries of the world using nonparametric productivity measurement methods and directional distance functions. In contrast to the existing literature we apply optimization methods to endogenously...

Electricity distribution network is a prime example of a natural local monopoly. In many countries, electricity distribution is regulated by the government. In Finland, the regulator estimates the efficient cost frontier using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis...

We compute DEA efficiency scores and Malmquist indexes for a panel data set comprising 68 Portuguese public hospitals belonging to the National Health System (NHS) in the period 2000-2005, when several units started being run in an entrepreneurial framework. With data on hospital services' and...

Environmental factors add complexity to the comparison between specific activities or entire entities. Decision making units with an inferior performance are tempted to invoke that their organization is different from the others in the data set. By reinterpreting and extending the metafrontier...

The purpose of this paper is to use the bootstrap resampling technique to calculate confidence intervals for efficiency measures and Malmquist productivity indices. The efficiency and productivity measures are obtained from non-parametric linear programming models using primal production data....

Advocates for education reforms frequently call for policies to increase school efficiency performance. The Greek educational system has undergone several reforms while the recent financial crisis alters significantly. Using a unique dataset this study attempts to shed light on 643 Greek...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based cost norms have attractive properties in the regulation of natural monopolies. However, they are also sensitive to the choice of cost drivers. When some of the cost drivers are discretionary, this may lead to suboptimal incentives. When a regulated firm...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is often used by regulators to create a pseudo-competitive environment for sectors with natural monopolies. In addition to develop a theoretically well-behaved model, regulators need to take into account several other factors, such as the political agenda and the...

The inefficiency term in stochastic frontier models is usually assumed to have positive skewness; but when this assumption is not met, efficiency scores are overestimated. Potential endogeneity of model regressors poses an additional empirical challenge and greatly hinders identification of...