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The purpose of this chapter is to cover banking efficiency using the concept of the Meta frontier function and to study group and subgroup differences in the production technology. This study estimates the technical efficiency (TE) and technology gap ratios (TGRs) for banks in Islamic countries. Using the assumption of the convex hull of the Meta frontier production set using the virtual Meta frontier within the nonparametric approach as presented by Battese and Rao (2002), Battese et al. (2004), and O'Donnell et al. (2007, 2008) and after relaxing this assumption, the study investigates if there is a significant difference between these two methods. To overcome the deterministic criterion addressed to nonparametric approach, the bootstrapping technique has been applied. The first part of this chapter covers the analytical framework necessary for the definition of a Meta frontier function and its estimation using nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) in the case where we impose the assumption of the convex production set and follows in the case of relaxation of this assumption. Then we estimated the TE and the TGR in concave and nonconcave Meta frontier cases by applying the Bootstrap-DEA approach. The empirical part will be reserved for highlighting these methods on data bank to study the technical and technological performance level and prove if there is a difference between the two methods. Three groups of banks namely commercial, investment, and Islamic banks in 17 Islamic countries over a period of 16 years between 1996 and 2011 are used.

Given some similarities in the banking industry and economic condition across Vietnam, China and India, the purpose of this paper is to estimate and compare the cost and revenue efficiency of banks across these three countries over the period 1995–2011.

This study employs the meta-frontier of Battese et al. (2004) and O’Donnell et al. (2008) which envelops the three country-frontiers to measure the cost and revenue efficiency of banks in these three countries.

This study finds that Chinese banks adopt the most advanced cost-reducing and revenue-increasing technology when providing banking products to their customers, followed by Indian banks. Indian banks are as cost-efficient as Chinese banks, but more cost-efficient than Vietnamese banks. Indian banks are as revenue-efficient as Vietnamese banks, but less revenue-efficient than Chinese banks. Over the analysis period, banks in the three countries have employed the more advanced technology in reducing costs, and they have become more cost-efficient. Nonetheless, for revenue side, the improvement in revenue efficiency and adopted technology are observed only in Chinese banks. The main source of meta-cost and meta-revenue inefficiency of these banking systems stems from undertaking inferior technology rather than managerial ability. Results from comparison across bank types show that state-owned banks (SOBs) are more cost and revenue-efficient than privately owned banks, with Indian and Chinese SOBs being the most cost- and revenue-efficient, respectively.

To improve meta-cost efficiency, Chinese and Indian banks would constitute a relevant benchmark for Vietnamese banks, while to improve meta-revenue efficiency, Chinese banks would be considered as a relevant benchmark for Vietnamese and Indian banks.

This is the first study which utilizes meta-frontier to compare cost and revenue efficiency and technology across banks in Vietnam, China and India.

The purpose of this study is to comprehend the efficiency levels of the Indian textile industry and also its sub-sectors in the light of changing global and national business environment. It is imperative to study the efficiency levels of textile industry for an emerging economy like India, where the industry contributes up to 13 per cent in export earnings, 10 per cent in total industrial production and 2 per cent in gross domestic product (GDP). The study holds an important place in the wake of phasing out of the quota regime existing under the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA) and the rising competition being faced from countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia.

The present study attempts to have an in-depth analysis of the efficiency levels in the Indian textile industry using meta-frontier data envelopment analysis, which is a non-parametric linear programming based frontier technique.

The findings highlight that the Indian textile industry is inefficient and has a huge scope of improvement in terms of efficiency. It also confirms the existence of different production functions among the sub-sectors of the industry. Among the different sub-sectors, the proximity of production frontier of readymade garments is the closest to meta-frontier followed by cotton and blended yarn, man-made fibre, cloth and others.

The findings bear strong implications for the policymakers in their attempt to regain the lost competitive position of the Indian textile industry and to enhance its contribution in the economy. As per the findings, policymakers should target the relatively inefficient sub-sectors of textile industry (cloth, man-made fibre, cotton and blended yarn) to infuse more efficiency in these sectors to enhance the market share of the Indian textile industry in the global textiles market.

The current study is a unique addition to the sparse literature on managing efficiencies in the textile industry, particularly of emerging economy like India. Looking at the methodological and geographical coverage of the previous work, it was found that no study has explored and analysed the efficiencies of the sub-sectors in the Indian textile industry using meta-frontier analysis. Therefore, this study will be the first of its kind which seeks to fill such gaps and intends to enrich the available literature.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the environmental efficiency level and trend of the transportation sector in the upper–mid–downstream of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the JingJinJi region in China and assess the effectiveness of policies for protecting the low-carbon environment.

This study uses the meta-frontier slack-based measure (SBM) approach to evaluate environmental efficiency, which targets and classifies specific regions into regional groups. First, this study employs the SBM with the undesirable outputs to construct the environmental efficiency measurement models of the four regions under the meta-frontier and group frontiers, respectively. Then, this study uses the technology gap ratio to evaluate the gap between the group frontier and the meta-frontier.

The analysis reveals several key findings: (1) the JingJinJi region and the downstream of the YEB had achieved the overall optimal production technology in transportation than the other two regions; (2) significant technology gaps in environmental efficiency were observed among these four regions in China; and (3) the downstream region of the YEB exhibited the lowest levels of energy consumption and excessive CO₂ emissions.

To evaluate the differences in environmental efficiency resulting from regions and technological gaps in transportation, this study employs the meta-frontier model, which overcomes the limitation of traditional environmental efficiency methods. Furthermore, in the practical, the study provides the advantage of observing the disparities in transportation efficiency performed by the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei regions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare the efficiency ratios and the technological gaps of banking industries in seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The meta-frontier model was used to evaluate efficiency across countries that may have different production technologies.

The results of the meta-frontier analysis of banking systems over the period from 1991 to 2011 showed that Tunisian banks were the most efficient in terms of cost and profit. For the cost (profit) model, the analysis of the technological gap showed that Egyptian (Tunisian) banks used the most advanced technology in offering financial services to clients. The comparison of efficiencies confirmed that most efficient banks in terms of cost are not necessarily the most efficient in terms of profit and vice versa. The authors also concluded that cost efficiency analysis provides a partial view of banking efficiency and hence, profit efficiency analysis is as important.

The study is relevant for policymakers, regulators and monetary authorities and for researchers to know more about the real differences of efficiency of banks across countries in MENA region and to clarify the sources of this inefficiency to better adapt to the new environment, to make strategic decisions and to reference the performance of banking institutions.

This paper aims to identify drivers of efficiency and their influence on airline performances in South Africa. Unfortunately, the methods currently used to measure airline efficiency fail to address the heterogeneity problem, which blurs inefficiency.

To remedy the heterogeneity problem, this paper adopts the meta-frontier framework to identify drivers of efficiency. The interesting feature of the model is that it ensures that heterogeneous airlines are compared based on one homogeneous technology. The model is tested using a panel data sample of nine South African airlines, which operated from 2015 to 2018.

The paper demonstrates that structural drivers, namely, “aircraft size”, and “airline ownership” and one executional driver, namely, “the cost structure” significantly influence (p < 0.05) airline efficiency thereby corroborating evidence from some prior studies.

First, because of the small size of the industry, fewer airlines and a lack of detailed data, the study could not consider other important factors such as optimal routing and network structure. Second, a more rigorous analysis over a period of time would yield better understanding about the growth of the industry in South Africa and recognise the variation in the influence of drivers of efficiency on airline performances over time.

The results have potential policy implications. First, as the market in South Africa is too small to operate with a smaller aircraft probably, for airlines that operate with smaller aircraft to operate efficiently they should first identify niche markets where they can have a route monopoly. Second, while all state-owned airlines are perfect statehood symbols that define and represent countries, most state carriers in South Africa are highly inefficient. The researcher recommends policymakers to privatise state airlines or seek equity partners. Many nationalised airlines have turned losses to profits in the run-up to privatisation. British Airways, once a large burden on the British taxpayer, is now one of the world’s most efficient airlines. After the privatisation of Air France and Iberia, all two turned from loss-making concerns into profitable airlines. It, therefore, makes no sense for the South African government to expect state carriers to pursue a commercial mandate with such political interference. The very notion of efficiency itself is at risk.

This paper is a first attempt to identify drivers of operational efficiency using a bootstrapped meta-frontier approach in the airline industry in South Africa. By applying the meta-frontier approach the paper ensures that all heterogeneous airlines are assessed based on their distance from a common and identical frontier.

The purpose of this paper is to use the concept of meta-frontiers data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compare the technical efficiencies of banks in selected Southeast Asia countries in the periods of 1998-2012.

The authors evaluate bank efficiency in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines by means of DEA, and the authors employ a meta-frontiers approach to calculate efficiency scores in a cross-country setting.

The analysis shows that even there are some similarities in the process of financial reforms undertaken in the selected countries, the observed efficiency levels of banks vary substantially across the market.

It is crucial to take into consideration of different technologies in explaining the efficiency differences.

The study measures the technology gap and performance of the Norwegian dairy farms accounting for farm heterogeneity.

The analysis was based on a meta-frontier and unbalanced farm-level panel data for 1991–2014 from 417 Norwegian farms specialized in dairy production in five regions of Norway.

The result of the analysis provides empirical evidence of regional differences in technical efficiencies, technological gap ratios (TGRs) and input use. Consequently, the paper provides some insights into policies to increase the efficiency of dairy production in the country across all regions.

The author used a meta-frontier approach for modeling regional differences based on a single-output production function specification. This approach has commonly been used in the economics literature since Battese et al. (2004). To get more informative and useful results, it would be necessary to repeat the analysis within terms of multiple input-output frameworks using, for instance, the input distance function approach. Moreover, the author estimated the meta-frontier using the non-parametric approach, thus it is also a need for further analysis if the values are different by estimating using a parametric approach.

One implication for farmers (and their advisers) is that dairy farms in all regions used available technology in the area sub-optimally. Thus, those lagging the best-performing farms need to look at the way the best-performing farmers are operating. Policymakers might reduce the gap is through training, including sharing information about relevant technologies from one area to another, provided that the technologies being shared fit the working environment of the lagging area. Moreover, some of the dairy technologies they use may not fit other regions, suggesting that agricultural policies that aim to encourage efficient dairy production, such as innovation of improved technology (like breeding, bull selection and improved feed varieties) through research and development, need to account the environmental differences between regions.

For both taxpayers and consumers, one implication is that the contributions they pay that go to subsidize dairy farmers appear to bring some benefits in terms of more efficient milk production that, in turn, increases the supply of some foods so possibly making food prices more affordable.

The paper contributes to the literature in several ways. In contrast to Battese et al. (2004), the author accounts for farm-level performance differences by applying the model devised by Greene (2005), thus may serve as a model for future studies at more local levels or of other industries. Moreover, the author is fortunate to able to use a large level farm-level panel data from 1991 to 2014.

Banking is the key industry to guarantee the core leading role of finance in the process of economic development. It is important to study the bank efficiency and optimal allocation of bank’s resources. The purpose of our paper is to study the optimal allocation of resources between the bank savings system and loan system under the premise of environmental heterogeneity.

We use a two-stage meta-frontier Data Envelopment Analysis model to solve the relative efficiency of each city branch and use the multivariate statistical tools to analyze the empirical results.

This paper measures the relative efficiency of 16 Bank Branches of a state-owned bank in Anhui province considering regional heterogeneity. Based on the optimal resource allocation, we get the two-stage operation performance of all banks under group-frontier and meta-frontier and analyze the impact of the technical differences between the branches.

This study has a positive guiding significance for the banking industry to improve its operational efficiency in various business practices in the new era of big data. It will also provide practical suggestions and support for the government and relevant departments in the process of formulating macro-policies to ensure the healthy and stable development of the banking industry.

This chapter studies the technical efficiencies of Chinese airports by using a meta-frontier production function model which accounts for airports in different regions accessing different technologies. Our empirical results show that the technical efficiency scores of airports and provincial output in the coastal region are higher than their counterparts in the inland region. However, the technical efficiency scores of airports and provincial output in inland region are steadily increasing while the counterparts of airports and provincial output in coastal region are slowly declining. In addition, our analysis of provincial efficiency changes shows that airport productivity has a positive and statistically significant effect on the technical changes of provincial output. Our results partially confirm the success of the government policy of promoting airport construction and development in the western inland region.