Search results for "efficiency"
showing 10 items of 1430 documents
Energy efficiency in the European Union: What can be learned from the joint application of directional distance functions and slacks-based measures?
2014
Abstract Over the last few years concerns have increased about the energy mix in many countries. These concerns have been of greater magnitude for countries with a common energy regulation such as European Union (EU) member states. An important aspect to take into account when choosing a given energy mix is the efficiency involved in its generation. In this context, the present study analyzes the efficiency with which electricity and derived heat was produced in 25 EU member states over the last decade. This analysis considers not only the inputs and outputs involved but, more importantly, which undesirable by-products were generated during the production process, a relevant issue for EU cl…
(In)Efficiencies in Latin American ETFs
2017
Este estudio evalúa empíricamente la eficiencia en la valoración de varios ETFs latinoamericanos, expresada en desviaciones de sus precios de mercado frente a los valores liquidativos subyacentes. Se cuantifican tales ineficiencias y se implementa una estrategia de negociación verificada por regresiones basadas en el CAPM y el Modelo Fama-French. Los resultados discrepan con la Hipótesis de los Mercados Eficientes y son mejor explicados por aspectos de las finanzas comportamentales. Finalmente, se examina cómo las desviaciones influyen sobre la decisión de creación o redención de ETFs, mediante un análisis de regresión logística. Los resultados evidencian que los participantes autorizados r…
The European Green Deal: New Challenges for the Economic Feasibility of Energy Retrofit at District Scale
2020
The European Green Deal proposes an epochal change in the European society by transforming environmental and climatic problems into opportunities and making sustainable and fair the European Union economic system. Radical changes will also concern urban redevelopment and energy efficiency measures in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve these objectives, rules and standards, as well as financial resources and assessment tools, are needed to support both urban planning and public decision process. This paper aims to analyze the existing European programs that are applied in some European smart cities, as they constitute a valuable source of information for the developm…
L'éducation en Afrique sub-saharienne. Les indicateurs d'efficience et leur utilisation politique
2005
05047; National audience; Cet article examine l'idée selon laquelle les systèmes éducatifs africains ne souffriraient pas tant d'un manque de ressources que d'une mauvaise utilisation de celles-ci. Deux arguments soutiennent cette idée. Le premier relève d'une comparaison internationale de l'efficience fondée sur un indicateur -part des dépenses d'éducation dans le PIB / durée moyenne de scolarisation- défectueux. Le second rrelève de l'estimation des fonctions de production scolaire dont l'interprétation commune des résultats est incorrrecte. Cette double argumentation, discutable, dissuade une forte augmentation de l'aide et encourage l'expansion de systèmes dont la médiocrité, conforme à…
Trends and cycles in U.S. job mobility
2021
Recent studies document a decline in U.S. labor-market fluidity from as early as the 1970s on. Making use of the Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), I uncover a pronounced increase in job-to-job mobility from the 1970s to the 1990s, i.e., the annual share of continuously employed job-to-job movers rises from 5.9 percent of the labor force in 1975–1979 to 8.8 percent in 1995–1999. Job-to-job mobility exhibits a downward trend only since the turn of the millennium. In order to provide a formal economic interpretation, I additionally estimate the parameters of the random on-the-job search model. Furthermore, I document that job-to-job mobility h…
A bargaining model of Farrell inefficiency
1998
Abstract An enormous number of empirical papers have estimated technical efficiency, the distance of firms inside a frontier, following the model of Farrell (Farrell, 1957. The measurement of productive efficiency. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 120 (3), 253–290). We propose a theory that explains the distance these empirical papers seek to measure. The theory is based on the idea that workers can bargain low `effort' (high crew sizes etc.) if they and the firm have some monopoly power. We provide simple theoretical expressions for the empirical measures of technical and allocative efficiency and compare them to those in the statistical literature. We also consider the re…
Sensitivity analysis of efficiency and Malmquist productivity indices: An application to Spanish savings banks
2008
Hypothesis testing and statistical precision in the context of non-parametric efficiency and productivity measurement have been investigated since the early 1990s. Recent contributions focus on this matter through the use of resampling methods-i.e., bootstrapping techniques. However, empirical evidence is still practically non-existent. This gap is more noticeable in the case of banking efficiency studies, where the literature is immense. In this work, we explore productivity growth and productive efficiency for Spanish savings banks over the (initial) post-deregulation period 1992-1998 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and bootstrapping techniques. Results show that productivity growth…
Entrepreneurial capital and productive efficiency: the case of the Spanish regions
2019
The aim of this paper is to analyse the interrelation between entrepreneurial capital and productive efficiency of the Spanish regions while verifying the importance that business dynamics and entrepreneurial activity have on regional economic growth. For this purpose, data are used from the seventeen Spanish regions during the period 2003−2016. A multi-equation model is estimated that enables the analysis, on the one hand, of the existence of a causal relationship between business dynamics and entrepreneurial activity and, on the other hand, of these variables on the total factor productivity. The results lead to the conclusion that the entrepreneurial activity and the net creation of comp…
Analysing farming systems with Data Envelopment Analysis: citrus farming in Spain
2004
Abstract Farming systems in the Mediterranean agricultural areas of Spain are frequently characterised by the small size of the production units and a widespread strategy of externalisation of many growing tasks which could be seen as a way of allowing farms to remain competitive. In this paper, we suggest Data Envelopment Analysis as an appropriate analytical tool to explore the possibilities of short-term viability of individual farms, after eliminating current inefficient practices. From a sample of Spanish citrus farms, we identify the efficient production units that determine the technological or best practice frontier, and we compare their characteristics with those of the average far…
Productive Efficiency and Territorial Externalities in Small and Medium-Sized Industrial Firms: A Dynamic Analysis of the District Effect
2012
A series of works have analysed differential behaviour in terms of productive efficiency between companies inside a hypothetical industrial district and those outside the district. This objective has been addressed using measures of technical efficiency. The results obtained provide valuable information for quantifying the district effect at a given moment in time. However, constant changes in the market and business behaviour mean that it is worthwhile studying the business district effect from a dynamic point of view. In this study, we provide this new vision through the use of Malmquist productivity indices. This methodology enables us to analyse possible differential evolutions by compa…