Search results for "Cost efficiency"
showing 10 items of 25 documents
Conceptual and operational perspectives on ecosystem restoration options in the European Union and elsewhere
2015
Summary Egoh et al. (2014) prioritized areas for ecological restoration in the European Union (EU) so that Europe could cost-efficiently meet the globally agreed 15% restoration target. We identify three major deficiencies in their analysis, one conceptual and two operational, which compromise the conclusions of the prioritization. The conceptual flaw is neglect of both the magnitude of degradation and the magnitude of improvement of the ecosystem condition expected due to restoration. The first operational flaw is inclusion of inappropriately measured restoration costs into the analyses. The second is use of spatial units that are so large (10 × 10 km) that only a fraction of each unit cou…
Cost-efficiency assessments of marine monitoring methods lack rigor—a systematic mapping of literature and an end-user view on optimal cost-efficienc…
2021
Global deterioration of marine ecosystems, together with increasing pressure to use them, has created a demand for new, more efficient and cost-efficient monitoring tools that enable assessing changes in the status of marine ecosystems. However, demonstrating the cost-efficiency of a monitoring method is not straightforward as there are no generally applicable guidelines. Our study provides a systematic literature mapping of methods and criteria that have been proposed or used since the year 2000 to evaluate the cost-efficiency of marine monitoring methods. We aimed to investigate these methods but discovered that examples of actual cost-efficiency assessments in literature were rare, contr…
The cost-effectiveness of using raptor nest sites to identify areas with high species richness of other taxa
2016
Abstract Given the limited resources available for conservation, it is important that the areas to preserve are selected in a cost effective manner. However, the cost effectiveness of the surrogate species strategy (the use of information on one or more species to identify areas of value for other species for which there is no, or more limited, available information) has seldom been evaluated. In this study, we investigate the opportunity cost of setting aside breeding sites of two forest raptor species (the surrogate species) by evaluating their individual and combined contribution to preserve diversity of polypores (wood-decaying fungi) and birds against the contributions of previously es…
Development of novel functional ingredients: Need for testing systems and solutions with Caenorhabditis elegans
2016
Abstract Background Nutrition is increasingly understood as a means of maintaining health and well-being and the market for functional foods keeps growing in double-digits. Functional nutrition is seen by many as the interphase between food and pharmaceuticals. In fact, players from both sides are increasingly making moves in the form of strategic alliances, M&A operations and co-investments which are bringing the two realms closer together. Food regulations to prove safety of novel ingredients or to support health claims are every day more stringent and the general public is also increasingly informed about the science, risks and benefits of what they eat. All this presents a magnificent o…
VoiP performance analysis in IEEE802.16 networks
2012
WiMAX, as known as IEEE standard 802.16, is a wide range broadband wireless access network which has a significant good support for the quality of service. According to IEEE standard 802.16e WiMAX has support also for mobility. One of the key advantages of the WiMAX network is the possibility to assign QoS parameters as connection based. A good example of traffic type having strict QoS demands is VoIP. VoIP will probably be a killer application in the future's broadband wireless networks because of its cost efficiency compared to circuit switched networks. In this paper, we analyze by extensive simulations how QoS is applied per connection, especially for the VoIP connection.
An integrated methodological approach for optimising complex systems subjected to predictive maintenance
2021
Abstract The present paper addresses the relevant topic of maintenance management, widely recognised as a fundamental issue involving complex engineering systems and leading companies towards the optimisation of their assets while pursuing cost efficiency. With this regard, our research aims to provide companies with a hybrid methodological approach based on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) capable to deal with the main failures potentially involving complex systems subjected to predictive maintenance. Such an approach is going to be integrated within the framework of traditional Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), whose strengths and weaknesses are considered. In pa…
The cost of market power in banking: Social welfare loss vs. cost inefficiency
2007
Abstract This paper analyses the relationship between market power in the loan and deposit markets and efficiency in the EU-15 countries over 1993–2002. Results show the existence of a positive relationship between market power and cost X-efficiency, allowing rejection of the so-called quiet life hypothesis [Berger, A.N., Hannan, T.H., 1998. The efficiency cost of market power in the banking industry: A test of the ‘quiet life’ and related hypotheses. Review of Economics and Statistics 8 (3), 454–465]. The social welfare loss attributable to market power in 2002 represented 0.54% of the GDP of the EU-15. Results show that the welfare gains associated with a reduction of market power are gre…
Tariffs and efficient performance by water suppliers: an empirical approach
2012
Water leaks are an environmental and sustainable issue as well as an economic issue. The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of a sample of Spanish urban water systems by considering water leaks in a network as undesirable outputs. Data envelopment analysis (DEA), an analytical benchmarking methodology, is used to calculate technical and economic efficiency. We also discuss the possible relationship between efficiency and tariffs charged to users. Results show that the possibilities for reducing water leaks in networks are high, thus demonstrating that there is room for savings from an economic and environmental point of view. The assessment of efficiency performance could …
The Effect of Specialisation on Banks' Efficiency: An International Comparison
2006
Abstract This study analyses the effects of specialisation on the cost efficiency of a set of banking systems of the European Union over the period 1992–1998. Unlike in the established literature in which specialisation differences are not considered, in this paper cost inefficiencies are decomposed into two different components: the first is related to the inefficiency associated with the composition of specialisations in each banking system and the second is related to specific inefficiencies of banks within their specialisation. The results show the existence of high cost inefficiencies. However, the intra‐specialisation inefficiencies indicate that the inefficiencies of the European ban…