Search results for " frontier"
showing 10 items of 92 documents
Measuring water-use in response to climate change: an analysis of the efficiency of Italian crop production system
2017
Official meteo-climatic statistics show the variability of weather conditions. Their effects on socioeconomic and natural environments should be analyzed in multi-dimensional studies. Among sectors, agriculture is expected to be the most sensitive as well as water resources availability. The aim of our analysis is to measure the performance of Italian regions in crop production by estimating both production technology - including a measure of irrigation water used as input - output elasticities and returns to scale and productive efficiency or technical efficiency where rainfalls and temperatures are proxies of CC conditions in the period 2000-2010 at Italian regional level, using the stoch…
Technical efficiency and the vertical boundaries of the firm: theory and evidence
2013
This article provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between firms’ technical efficiency and the vertical organization of production. Technical inefficiency is explicitly introduced as the source of firms’ heterogeneity in a Bertrand–Nash model of industry competition: the main prediction of the model is that the most efficient firms choose vertical integrated structures and the less-efficient ones choose disintegrated structures. The empirical part of the article rests on a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) in a sample of about 400 Italian machine tool (MT) builders, and the result supports the prediction of the theoretical model.
Evolución de la eficiencia técnica de la industria textil española en el periodo 1995-2005. Análisis mediante un modelo frontera estocástica*
2021
La industria textil española, con un peso relativo importante en la manufactura, se encuentra sumida en una profunda crisis como consecuencia de la cada vez más agresiva e intensa competencia ejercida por los países productores de bajo coste. Si bien la eficiencia no agota el conjunto de estrategias para ser competitivo, la presencia de competidores induce a su búsqueda (Porter, 1990). En este trabajo se examina la evolución de la eficiencia técnica del textil español. Con tal finalidad, para el periodo 1995-2005 y cada uno de los siete grupos de actividad en que puede subdividirse la industria textil, se estima una frontera de producción estocástica de tipo translog. Los resultados empíric…
Una geografia dei confini tra passato e modernità
2016
Le dinamiche di distribuzione dei gruppi umani nell’ecumene e l’uso della stessa per la sopravvivenza e per lo sviluppo delle comunità, hanno originato una organizzazione di spazi terrestri caratterizzata da molteplici confini, perfettamente leggibili su più livelli, non solo territoriali.
Flexible Estimation of Heteroskedastic Stochastic Frontier Models via Two-step Iterative Nonlinear Least Squares
2019
Despite its importance, the monotonicity condition is typically overlooked in stochastic frontier analysis. This article illustrates a straightforward and useful method for the estimation of semiparametric stochastic frontier models imposing such constraint and incorporating exogenous inefficiency effects exploiting the scaling property. An iterative estimation algorithm based on nonlinear least squares is developed and the behavior of the proposed procedure is investigated through a set of Monte Carlo experiments comparing its finite sample properties with those of available alternatives. The simulation results highlight very good performance of the new algorithm which outperforms the comp…
SSPMO: A Scatter Tabu Search Procedure for Non-Linear Multiobjective Optimization
2007
We describe the development and testing of a metaheuristic procedure, based on the scatter-search methodology, for the problem of approximating the efficient frontier of nonlinear multiobjective optimization problems with continuous variables. Recent applications of scatter search have shown its merit as a global optimization technique for single-objective problems. However, the application of scatter search to multiobjective optimization problems has not been fully explored in the literature. We test the proposed procedure on a suite of problems that have been used extensively in multiobjective optimization. Additional tests are performed on instances that are an extension of those consid…
Education, Growth and Development
2016
The link between higher-education investment and growth is more relevant when a country’s economy is no longer based on imitation, and begins to rely instead, on innovation as the main engine for growth. The knowledge triangle – research, education and innovation – was a core factor in European efforts to meet the Lisbon strategy and its stated objective that knowledge should help the European economy become the most dynamic knowledge-based one in the world. The failure of the Lisbon strategy was later conducive to a new ambitious scheme, namely Horizon 2020. Human capital, when transposed to educational matters, helps put forward an assessment of the relevance of the neo-Schumpeterian view…
Climate variability and agricultural production efficiency: evidence from Ethiopian farmers
2020
It is known that climate and weather variability have negative impacts on agricultural production efficiency. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact of climatic variables on farms’ efficiency in Ethiopia making use of nationally representative datasets from Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) 2011/2012. By using the Stochastic Frontier Approach, we estimate simultaneously the farmers’ optimal production function and technical inefficiency equations, taking into account unobserved heterogeneity of farmers. Our main findings show that climate change variables have a positive effect on households’ efficiency but the impact depends on the diff…
Assessment of Tourist Competitiveness by Analysing Destination Efficiency
2006
Recently the notion and the measurement of destination competitiveness have received increasing attention in the economics literature on tourism. The reason for this interest emerges from both the increasing economic importance of the tourist sector and the increasing competition on the tourist market as a consequence of the transition from mass tourism to a new age of tourism that calls for a tailor-made approach to the specific attitudes and needs of tourists. The central subject of this paper - inspired by the conceptual competitiveness model developed earlier by Crouch and Ritchie - concerns the efficiency of tourist site destinations. Using a dataset of 103 Italian regions for the year…
ASSESSMENT OF TOURISM COMPETITIVENESS BY ANALYSING DESTINATION EFFICIENCY
2008
The notion and measurement of destination competitiveness have received increasing attention in the economics literature on tourism. The reason for this emerges from both the growing economic importance of the tourist sector and the increasing competition in the tourist market resulting from the transition from mass tourism to a new age of tourism that calls for a tailor-made approach to the specific attitudes and needs of tourists. The central subject of this paper – inspired by the conceptual competitiveness model developed by Crouch and Ritchie – concerns the efficiency of tourist site destinations. Using a data set of 103 Italian regions for 2001, an economic efficiency analysis is car…