Search results for "stochastic frontier analysis"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
Disentangling Tax Evasion from Inefficiency in Firms Tax Declaration: An Integrated Approach
2019
In this article we present a new methodology to support fiscal monitoring by the Italian Revenue Agency (IRA) with the aim of improving current taxpayers fiscal compliance and fighting tax evasion within small and medium enterprises. In fact, given the methodology behind the Sector Studies (Studi di Settore - SdS) system, there is room for firms to implement tax evasion strategies by simply adjusting revenues (and costs) toward an estimated average threshold (known ex-ante), the so called "presumptive" revenues, and achieving the fiscal "congruity" status. By estimating a production function through stochastic frontier analysis we avoid estimating the average threshold know ex-ante and can …
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.
Excessive Focus on Risk? Non-performing Loans and Efficiency of Microfinance Institutions
2021
Technical efficiency and regional disparities in Italy
2019
This paper is a contribution to the literature on Italy's regional disparities with a focus on the nature and determinants of firms' technical efficiency. Our analysis concerns a vast number of Italian firms for the decade 2008-2017 and considers the firms that are annually obliged to deposit their balance sheet. A frontier stochastic analysis is used as a method for estimating the technical efficiency of each firm. Our results offer a detailed representation on a provincial basis of disparity gaps. Moreover econometric analysis provides convincing evidence on the importance of territorial variables in the determinants of technical efficiency.
Innovation efficiency: a bibliometric review and future research agenda
2021
Innovation efficiency has become a phenomenon of global interest. This paper reviews 165 articles from academic journals of innovation efficiency, applies the data-driven text mining approach to ma...
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…
Smart Cities and a Stochastic Frontier Analysis: A Comparison among European Cities
2013
The level of interest in smart cities is growing, and the recent literature on this topic (Holland, 2008; Caragliu et al., 2009, Nijkamp et al., 2011 and Lombardi et al., 2012) identifies a number of factors that characterise a city as smart, such as economic development, environment, human capital, culture and leisure, and e-governance. Thus, the smartness concept is strictly linked to urban efficiency in a multifaceted way. A seminal research for European policy conducted by Giffinger et al. (2007) defines a smart city on the basis of several intangible indicators, such as a smart economy, smart mobility, smart environment, smart people, smart living, and smart governance. These authors’ …
Drivers of productivity change: a comparison of English and Welsh water only and water and sewerage companies
2021
In regulated industries, such as the water industry, it is of great significance to estimate productivity change as it helps policy makers to evaluate the effectiveness of regulatory regime and ind...
Stochastic frontier models using R
2020
Abstract The production function is usually assumed to specify the maximum output obtainable, from a given set of inputs, describing the boundary or frontier of the obtainable output from each feasible combination of input; it relates the production process of individual units to the efficient border of the production possibilities. The measure of the distance of each unit from the border is the most immediate way to assess its (in)efficiency. However, the production function is not generally known, but it has only a set of information on each production unit and it is therefore essential to develop techniques to estimate the production frontier. Starting from the packages already developed…
Assessing the marginal cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: A parametric approach
2021
Abstract Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions involves effort from different sectors of the economy, including the water and sewerage industry. This study estimates the marginal cost of curtailing GHG emissions in the water and sewerage industry using stochastic frontier analysis techniques for a sample of ten English and Welsh water and sewerage companies over the 2010–2019 period. Results illustrated that the average marginal cost of reducing GHG emissions was 0.181 £/Kg CO2 equivalent. The marginal cost estimated notably differs across companies and over time. Findings further illustrate the impact of water companies' operating characteristics on the marginal cost of reducing carbon e…