Search results for "Inefficiency"

The Italian law on body donation: A position paper of the Italian College of Anatomists

2021

In Italy, recent legislation (Law No. 10/2020) has tuned regulations concerning the donation of one's postmortem body and tissues for study, training, and scientific research purposes. This study discusses several specific issues to optimise the applicability and effectiveness of such an important, novel regulatory setting. Some of these unsolved issues may involve the grantees of teaching and training activities, the role of academic anatomical institutes, the role of family members in the donation process, the universal time limit indicated for any donation, the handling of corpses, and the limited body donation and its subordination to the donation of organs and tissues. Critical issues …

Climate variability and agriculture in Italy: a stochastic frontier analysis at the regional level

2020

In the next future, climate change effects will represent a challenge for Europe and the Mediterranean area. These will have to cope with a rapid increase in climate variability. Although many economic sectors may be affected, agriculture is the most susceptible as climate heavily affects crop production trends, yield variability and the availability of areas suitable for cultivation. Using the stochastic frontier approach, the aim of this work is to analyse the impacts of climate variability on Italian regional technical efficiency in the agricultural sector for a period spanning from 2000 to 2009. Considering that technical inefficiency could be influenced by two main annual meteorologica…

Gender and potential wage in Europe: a stochastic frontier approach

2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide evidence concerning wage differentials and the existence of gender pay discrimination in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used the stochastic frontier approach as an alternative method to measure the relevance of gender discrimination. This methodology allows them to explain the differences between the potential and the observed wage that an individual could obtain, given his or her human capital endowment.FindingsThe authors found support for wage discrimination against women. The results show that a significant part of the gender wage gap in all the countries analysed is not attributa…

Evaluating the Reform of Healthcare System in Sicily: variations of efficiency and appropriateness between 2008 and 2010

2022


 
 Background. Sicilian government has developed a very ambitious Reform through the Regional Law n. 5 (14th April 2009). Hospitals were requested to ensure the quality of care through monitoring of appropriateness and quality of service. The aim of this study was to assess variations of efficiency and organizational appropriateness of healthcare delivery before and after this Reform and to show patterns associated to different types of healthcare delivery organizations.
 Methods. This study was based on repeated cross-sectional data for 118 (out of 129) short-term, acute-care, non teaching-and-research Sicilian hospitals, in 2008 and 2010. Congestion and slacks analysis was…

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…

2002

This paper analyses the effects of partially revocable endogenous commitments of a seller in a negotiation with a deadline. In particular, we examine when commitment is a source of strength, a source of inefficiency and when it does not affect the bargaining outcome at all. We show that when commitment possesses a minimum amount of irrevocability this crucially determines the bargaining outcome. In the bilateral bargaining case, commitment becomes a source of inefficiency since it causes a deadline effect. In the choice of partner framework, however, the deadline effect disappears and there is an immediate agreement and, moreover, commitment becomes a source of strength since it increases t…

Farmers' costs of environmental regulation: Reducing the consumption of nitrogen in citrus farming

2007

Abstract Environmental externalities in agriculture, and the choice of suitable instruments to integrate environmental concerns into agricultural policies, are a matter of interest for the Common Agricultural Policy. In this paper, we use Data Envelopment Analysis techniques to assess the impact on farms' performance of two environmentally-friendly regulations aimed at abating consumption of inorganic nitrogen in Spanish citrus farming: levies on purchased nitrogen and nitrogen use permits for farms. By comparing farms' short-run maximum profits under both unregulated and regulated scenarios a regulation cost index is computed. Our results show that nitrogen overuse is mostly a matter of ma…

Comparative efficiency of green and conventional bonds pre- and during COVID-19: An asymmetric multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis

2021

Abstract Motivated by the lack of research on price efficiency dynamics of green bonds and the impact of the COVID-19 on the pricing of fixed-income securities, this study investigates the comparative efficiency of green and conventional bond markets pre- and during the COVID-19 pandemic applying asymmetric multifractal analysis. Specifically, the multifractal scaling behaviour is examined separately during upward and downward trends in bond markets using the asymmetric multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (A-MF-DFA) approach. The empirical findings confirm the presence of asymmetric multifractality in the green and traditional bond markets. Not surprisingly, inefficiency in both bon…

The Territorial Organization of Public Tourism Statistics in Spain: A Problem of Date Generation and Use in Geomarketing

2021

The changes produced in the last decade in tourism have generated new demands for statistical information that is comparable over time and space, on a microdata scale and focused on knowledge of tourist behaviour. However, the decentralization of the production of tourism statistics in Spain, derived from the division of powers between the Spanish state and the autonomous communities, has produced the emergence of various and multiple alternative entities for the generation and transfer of tourism data. This fragmentation produces a high dysfunctionality and inefficiency, due to, among other circumstances, a high heterogeneity and duplication of data, a heterogeneity of methodology and type…