| 1. |
- Bostian, A. J. A., et al.
(författare)
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Assessing the productivity consequences of agri-environmental practices when adoption is endogenous
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441. ; 53:2, s. 141-162
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We address the general problem of selection bias, an issue endemic to policy analysis when adoption is voluntary, with an empirical application to environmental policies for agriculture. Many voluntary practices for mitigating the environmental impacts of agriculture provide external benefits while lowering productivity. Policy analysis of the productivity consequences is complicated by the fact that decision makers can choose their own policy levers, an action that ruins any notion of random assignment. We introduce an identification strategy to correct this kind of endogeneity, combining classic methods from stochastic frontier analysis and selection models. Applying it to micro-level data from Finnish grain farms, we find that more efficient producers are more likely to enroll in subsidized practices. And, because those practices tend to reduce yield, frontier analysis without the endogeneity correction greatly understates the productivity loss. In other words, naively basing the frontier estimator on the subset of less-productive farms leads to downward bias in the frontier estimates. In fact, average inefficiency more than doubles after the correction in this case. An outlier investigation suggests that the lowest decile of farms are responsible for most of the selection bias in the uncorrected model.
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| 2. |
- Forchini, Giovanni, et al.
(författare)
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Semi-parametric modelling of inefficiencies in stochastic frontier analysis
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - : Springer. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441. ; 59, s. 135-152
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose a novel penalized splines method to estimate a stochastic frontier model in which the frontier is linear and the inefficiency has a single index structure with unknown link function and a linear index. The approach is more flexible than the traditional methodology requiring a parametric link function and, at the same time, it does not incur the curse of dimensionality as a fully non-parametric approach. The procedure can be easily implemented using existing software. We give conditions for the model to be identified and provide some asymptotic results. We also use Monte Carlo simulations to show that the approach works well in finite samples in many situations when compared to the well specified maximum likelihood estimator. An application to the residential energy demand of US states is considered. In this case, the penalized splines approach estimates inefficiency functions that deviate substantially from those resulting from parametric maximum likelihood methods previously implemented.
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| 3. |
- Heshmati, Almas, et al.
(författare)
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Estimation of technical change and TFP growth based on observable technology shifters
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - : Springer. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441. ; 53:1, s. 21-36
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper models and estimates total factor productivity (TFP) growth parametrically. The model is a generalization of the traditional production function model where technology is represented by a time trend. It decomposes TFP growth into an unobservable time trend induced technical change, scale economies and an observable technology shifter index's components. The empirical results are based on unbalanced panel data at the global level for 190 countries observed over the period 1996-2013. It uses a number of exogenous growth factors in modeling four technology shifter indices to explore development infrastructure, finance, technology and human development determinants of TFP growth. Our results show that unobservable technical change remains the most important component of TFP growth. Our findings also show that technical changes and TFP growth are unexpectedly negative across all country income groups and years.
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| 4. |
- Heshmati, Almas, et al.
(författare)
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Introduction to the special issue on African productivity
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - : Springer. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441.
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This Special Issue of the Journal of Productivity Analysis on African Productivity is the result of many years of collaboration and planning that began with Felicity Addo of the Institute for Sustainable Economic Development (Vienna) and her interest in expanding and broadening the scope of the International Society for Efficiency and Productivity Analysis’ (ISEaPA) conferencing venues to encompass the African continent. Although planning for such a conference began with discussions in 2016 at the European Workshop on Efficiency and Productivity in London, it was not until 2021 that formal planning for a virtual conference gained momentum. Almas Heshmati of the Jönköping International Business School (Sweden), whose experience in African higher education and research is quite extensive, and his former student Selamawit G. Kebede of the Poverty and Social Welfare Center (Ethiopia), joined with Christopher Parmeter (University of Miami), Robin Sickles (Rice University), and Felicity Addo to solicit papers and coordinate with then Editor-in-Chief William Greene on a Special Issue for the Journal of Productivity Analysis.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Lundgren, Tommy, 1970-, et al.
(författare)
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Efficiency in electricity distribution in Sweden and the effects of small-scale generation, electric vehicles and dynamic tariffs
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - : Springer Nature. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We measure the cost of technical inefficiency for local electricity distribution firms in Sweden using Stochastic Frontier Analysis, and explore how small-scale generation, the number of electric vehicles and the introduction of dynamic pricing schemes affects the transient inefficiency and efficiency scores. Our results show little to no effect of these environmental variables on the cost of technical inefficiency of electricity distribution grids in Sweden.
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| 7. |
- Mattsson, Pontus, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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TFP change and its components for Swedish manufacturing firms during the 2008-2009 financial crisis
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - : Springer. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441. ; 53:1, s. 79-93
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A driving force of economic development is growth in total factor productivity (TFP). Manufactured goods are, to a large extent, exports, and represent an important part of the economy for many developed countries. Additionally, a slowdown in labour productivity has been observed in many OECD countries since the financial crisis of 2008-2009. This study investigates TFP change and its components for the Swedish manufacturing industry, compared with the private service sector, during the years 1997-2013, centering on the financial crisis. Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) is used to disentangle persistent and transient efficiency from firm heterogeneity and random noise, respectively. In addition, technical change (TC), returns to scale (RTS) and a scale change (SC) component are also identified. Along with the empirical analysis, an elaborative discussion regarding TC in SFA is provided. The persistent part for manufacturing (service) is 0.796 (0.754) and the transient part is 0.787 (0.762), indicating improvement potentials. Furthermore, TFP change is substantially lower between the years 2007-2013, compared to 1997-2007. This occurs due to a lower technological progress. Policy should, therefore, target interventions that enhance technology. However, care needs to be taken so that policies do not sustain low-productive firms that otherwise would exit the market.
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| 8. |
- Smith, Andrew S. J., et al.
(författare)
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Efficiency measurement in the tendering of road surface renewal contracts
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - : Springer Nature. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The problem of slow productivity growth in the road construction (and wider construction) industry is well known. The present paper suggests a means for efficiency analysis in one part of this industry, namely road surface renewal in Sweden, built upon the application of Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) techniques. The paper is novel in that it focuses on project level rather than firm or contractor level performance and takes the perspective of the inefficiency that may result from the way the contracts are specified by the highway agency’s pavement engineers (client side). We compare 233 renewal contracts tendered over a four-year period via the estimation of a cost frontier, with controls for heterogeneity between projects. Our results produce first estimates that expose substantive differences in the relative efficiency performance of different engineers within the Swedish highways procurement organisation (Trafikverket); with indicative savings of around €40 m out of a total road renewals budget in Sweden of €200 m. We also find substantial economies of scale that could, in principle, point to further cost savings if road renewal projects can be packaged up as larger projects. These client-side savings represent potentially important sources of savings in addition to those that can be achieved through the pressure of competitive tendering on the supplier side. The paper therefore illustrates how disaggregate analysis of project level information can readily be used for revealing important information about how best to frame the procurement process and thus deliver productivity and unit cost improvements over time.
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| 9. |
- Zeebari, Zangin, et al.
(författare)
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Regularized conditional estimators of unit inefficiency in stochastic frontier analysis, with application to electricity distribution market
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Productivity Analysis. - New York, NY : Springer. - 0895-562X .- 1573-0441. ; 59:1, s. 79-97
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In stochastic frontier analysis, the conventional estimation of unit inefficiency is based on the mean/mode of the inefficiency, conditioned on the composite error. It is known that the conditional mean of inefficiency shrinks towards the mean rather than towards the unit inefficiency. In this paper, we analytically prove that the conditional mode cannot accurately estimate unit inefficiency, either. We propose regularized estimators of unit inefficiency that restrict the unit inefficiency estimators to satisfy some a priori assumptions, and derive the closed form regularized conditional mode estimators for the three most commonly used inefficiency densities. Extensive simulations show that, under common empirical situations, e.g., regarding sample size and signal-to-noise ratio, the regularized estimators outperform the conventional (unregularized) estimators when the inefficiency is greater than its mean/mode. Based on real data from the electricity distribution sector in Sweden, we demonstrate that the conventional conditional estimators and our regularized conditional estimators provide substantially different results for highly inefficient companies. © 2022, The Author(s).
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