Purpose – The aim of this paper is to call the attention of public entities for the econometric frontier models which allows benchmarking the tax offices accurately. In the context of the European Maastricht, the European countries face public receipts shortage and to focus in the management...

Purpose – This paper aims to reflect on the sources of the technical inefficiency of health care foodservice operations, using a sample of Australian and American hospitals. Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies the stochastic frontier model to reflect on the technical inefficiency...

Purpose – To study stochastic volatility in the pricing of options. Design/methodology/approach – Random-coefficient autoregressive and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models are studied. The option-pricing formula is viewed as a moment of a truncated normal...

Under the Mac Sharry and Agenda 2000 reforms, direct payments comprised a significant portion of farmers' income in the EU. Farmers had to engage in production to receive these payments but the payments were relatively risk-free and therefore risk may not have played an important role in the...

A new alternative in the analysis of manufacturing systems with finite buffers is presented. We propose and study a new approach in order to build tractable phase-type distributions, which are required by state-of-the-art analytical models. Called "probability masses fitting" (PMF), the approach...

In construction projects, contingency is the budget which is made available to cope with uncertainties that would incur schedule and cost overruns. Contingency estimation requires considering project cost, schedule and technology variability. The effect of dynamic project management of the...

Frequency-domain analysis is applied to a wave energy device composed of two coaxial axisymmetric bodies. For each frequency optimal damping coefficient values which maximize absorbed power are obtained. Several displacement amplitude restriction scenarios are considered. A stochastic model to...

Despite the low-carbon environmental policies, coal is expected to remain a main source of energy in the coming decades. Therefore, efficient and environmentally friendly power systems are required. A design process based on the deterministic models and application of the safety factors leads to...