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The major aim of this paper is to model, estimate and compare the technical efficiency and technology gap ratios of health care foodservice operations that operate in different Australian regions.

This paper uses a metafrontier model to analyse the difference in health care food efficiency across the various Australian regions. The interesting feature of this model is that it allows for the estimation of firms' efficiency in of various groups that might differ in technology and other production environments. In testing the model, cross‐sectional input/output data were used reflecting on the operational characteristics of health care foodservice operations.

The estimation process was initially supported by a hypothesis test which confirmed the validity of the metafrontier model in comparing the efficiency of the different outlined groups. Results showed that operations in the states of NSW and Victoria are producing on average 85.6 per cent of their potential output with respect to the metafrontier technology. The ratio is lower in other states with an average of 73.4 per cent. The average technical efficiency for operations in NSW and Victoria is also higher both in terms of local (87.8 per cent) and metafrontier technologies (66.6 per cent).

The paper is the first to introduce the metafrontier model to the health care foodservice area, especially for Australian regions.

The purpose of this paper is to compare technical efficiency and metatechnology ratios (MTR) in three production systems confronted with different technological and resource endowments in Bangladesh to identify the suitable production systems for increasing productivity.

The primary data collected by authors from 180 dairy farmers were sampled and modeled in a stochastic metafrontier framework due to its ability to estimate and compare the efficiency of firms among various groups with possibly different group-specific technologies and heterogeneous production environments.

The empirical results show that farms from intensive system were closer to their production frontier than extensive and traditional system. Regarding productivity differences among systems, the MTR is by far highest for intensive, indicating the technological advantage of this system over others two systems. The estimation of farm-specific inefficiency model revealed that farmers’ access to extension and credit services are assumed to be significant determinants in reducing inefficiency.

This study concludes that the ability of the farmers to increase productivity vary depending on the production systems due to variation in resource endowments and access to various inputs and support services. Thus, improving productivity depends on effective policy design on harmonizing access to resources and delivery of extension and credit services.

The empirical analysis of data representing different production endowments by stochastic metafrontier make it possible to identify the efficiency level as well as technology gap, thus, ways to identify the possible policy options reducing those gaps and improving productivity.

The purpose of this study is to examine efficiency differences among petroleum firms based on their ownership status, with the aim of helping these firms understand how specific levels of state-ownership affects efficiency and to bring new perspective to the ownership-performance literature.

The study uses ten-year data (2001-2010) of 32 global petroleum firms categorized into four groups based on ownership types. The metafrontier analysis is used with the dynamic slack-based measure to estimate dynamic efficiency differences among the groups while respectively, accounting for carryover variables such as oil and gas reserves.

Fully state-owned firms outperformed private, majority and minority state-owned firms, indicating that not all types of state-owned petroleum firms are outperformed by private firms. Additionally, firms with shared ownership between state and private are seen to have a lesser comparative advantage in the industry than those with full private or state ownership.

Jointly owned petroleum firms should consider converting ownership to either full private or full state control. Conflict management measures should be used to handle possible conflicts between different shareholding groups.

This is among the first studies to sub-group state ownership into various levels to comprehensively examine specific levels of state ownership that is detrimental to the performance of petroleum firms. It is also the premier oil efficiency study to use the metafrontier framework to cater for group heterogeneity. The study treats oil and gas reserves as interconnecting variables that are not consumed only in the period for which they are discovered to ensure fair assessment.

The aims of the paper are to evaluate the relevance of environmental factors (seasonality, size and quality) on hotels’ performance and benchmarks; to measure the bias in efficiency resulting from a failure to control for these sources of heterogeneity; and to propose some managerial policies to handle for environmental heterogeneity.

The sample is constituted by 2,705 hotels operating in Emilia-Romagna (Italy). The metafrontier approach is used to identify the different production processes and measure technical efficiency scores.

Different production processes exist among accommodation firms due to environmental features; not considering heterogeneity in technological sets produces high levels of bias in the efficiency measurement, albeit the ranking of hotels tends to be fairly consistent; the star rating is the primary source of efficiency bias followed by seasonality, while size has a minor impact.

Future research could be directed to analyse the relevance of environmental heterogeneity in other areas; study the dynamics; investigate agglomeration effects; and use other methodological tools.

The analysis proposes new managerial interventions: targeted strategies to different groups; creation of networks of enterprises, clustered mainly in respect to size for highly rated enterprises and seasonality for low-rated enterprises; and incentives to annual hotels and raise in the product quality.

This paper simultaneously considers several environmental factors affecting heterogeneity in hotel production processes; investigates the effect of heterogeneity on either the efficiency scores or the ranking of hotels; and focuses on micro, low-quality or seasonal hotels.

This study aims to measure the productivity of 21 major shipyards in China, South Korea and Japan.

Data envelopment analysis was applied to measure the productivity of shipyards. The contemporaneous and intertemporal productivity scores of each shipyard were measured. Additionally, the technical gaps among shipyards in China, South Korea and Japan were measured and compared.

The results indicate that Japan led the global shipbuilding industry in 2014 and South Korea dominated in 2015. Additionally, from 2014 to 2015, shipyards in South Korea and Japan maintained their levels of productivity. Comparatively, major shipyards in China made substantial progress from 2014 to 2015, revealing their strong ambition to improve productivity.

This study first used a metafrontier framework to measure the technical gap of shipyards among major shipbuilding countries. The model and approach objectively analyze the productivity of major shipyards and considers their nationalities. Additionally, this study is the first to measure changes in the productivity of shipyards. By decomposing the metafrontier Malmquist productivity index, major shipyards were categorized into eight sets. The results of this study can provide a clear direction for shipyards to improve their productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a benchmark analysis of European cities based on the estimation of a composite index of efficiency from the dimensions of the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor 2017 (CCCM). The study helps to initiate a new exploration path based on this information, using a segmentation criterion of countries according to their economic and demographic characteristics, in search of greater comparative homogeneity.

In this paper, the metafrontier methodological proposal with data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been used to compare the groups of cities individually with their joint reference.

The results obtained indicate, from a greater control of heterogeneity, through the segmentation of the sample of cities and the metafrontier methodology, that the composite index (IEC3) through the enveloping data analysis methodology (DEA) is more robust than that obtained with the arbitrary assignment of CCCM weights. The analyses carried out make it possible to study and conduct more real and rigorous comparisons of the cities that experience the best practices, unlike other more distant ones. Reference to cities such as Paris, Louvain and Cork could serve as a basis for possible improvements.

It is important to bear in mind that the possible urban policies of a city and the creative strategies and their derived impact are different, because of the diversity in each city. These new comparability possibilities could serve as a tool for economic policy makers, companies and local managers to carry out learning and simulation processes in the improvement of creative cities.

The fiscal outlay efficiency matters when the performance-based allocation of funds is made to state governments by the central government in a federal structure of an economy like India. Also the efficiency cannon of public expenditure is a key aspect in the field of public economics. Thus, a study to evaluate the efficiency in fiscal outlay of Indian states has been conducted.

The paper offers a three divisions–based paradigm under Network Data Envelopment Analysis framework to compare the performance of fiscal entities (say Indian state governments) in converting available fiscal resources into desired short-run and long-run growth and development objectives. The network efficiency score has been taken as a measure of the quality of fiscal outlay management that is trifurcated into divisional efficiencies representing budgeting process, fiscal outlay efficiency process and fiscal outlay effectiveness process.

It has been noticed that the states are under performing in achieving short-run growth targets and so the efficiency process division has been identified a major source of fiscal under performance. Suboptimum allocation of fiscal expenditure under various heads within the fiscal resources, as explained under budgeting process, is another major cause of fiscal under performance.

The study purposes a three divisions–based paradigm that takes into account efficiency of a state in (1) planning budget, (2) achieving short-run growth targets and (3) achieving long-run development targets. These three stages are named as budgeting process efficiency, fiscal outlay efficiency and fiscal outlay effectiveness, respectively. Therefore, a new paradigm called BEE paradigm is proposed to evaluate performance of fiscal entities in terms of fiscal outlay efficiency.

In existing literature on measuring efficiency of public expenditure, the public sector outputs have been made as function of fiscal expenditure as input treating the said outlay as an exogenous variable. In present context, the fiscal expenditure has been treated endogenous to the budgeting process. A high inefficiency on account of budgeting process supports this treatment too.

Importance of small-scale tea producers in Kenya is not in doubt. They account for 60% of all tea produced in the country, serve about 560,000 tea farmers and employ about 10,000 people directly. However, the subsector faces a myriad of challenges ranging from declining yields and rising costs of production to fluctuating world prices. Thus, it is imperative that the producers entrench efficiency as a critical success factor. This makes it important for the producers to understand their relative performances to inform decisions on improving input use. Congruent with this motivation, this study sought to analyze the technical efficiency (TE) of the country's small-scale tea processors within and across the regions under the management of Kenya Tea Development Authority.

To allow comparison across regions, this study adopted a stochastic metafrontier approach and to be able to decompose inefficiency into persistent and time-varying components, the study adopted regression analysis.

Results showed that the small-scale tea processors operated at a mean TE level of 76% with a technology gap ratio (TGR) of 97%. This implies that the prevailing level of output could be maintained even if inputs were reduced by 24%. Persistent inefficiency could be reduced possibly through rationalization of structural and managerial components of the firms.

While it is important to adopt yield-enhancing technologies and innovation, small-scale tea processors have the latitude to improve their earnings through enhanced TE. They can save up to 24% of their input and be able to pay farmers better even with the fluctuating global tea prices. Enhancing TE should be given priority because it is within the control of the individual firms.

This is a pioneering study in panel data analysis of TE of small-scale tea processors within and across regions in Kenya.

This paper aims to investigate the efficiency implications of belonging to a strategic hospital alliance (SHA) and measuring the effects over capacity utilization of such agreements in a Mexican healthcare context.

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is the nonparametric methodology used, which supports both objectives. Technological gaps ratios are calculated by using DEA-metafrontier approach to compare efficiency between SHA members and a hospital’s control group. Also, hospital capacity utilization ratios are used as the maximum rate of output possible from fixed inputs in a frontier setting using directional distance functions. Data were collected from an alliance called Consorcio Mexicano de Hospitales in México, which has 29 general private hospitals and a group of 47 hospitals with same characteristics from a database made by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía for year 2014.

The results indicate that efficiency is better at hospitals that belong to an alliance; it also shows an improvement of installed capacity management for hospital alliances in México.

The results can be useful for both private health organization managers and regulators themselves to adopt management practices that may end up having a favorable impact on cost and prices containment. Additionally, there are no previous studies neither in Mexico nor in Latin America that analyze the impact of strategic hospitality alliances on the efficiency and utilization of the capacity of private hospitals.

Este documento tiene como objetivo investigar las implicaciones de pertenecer a una alianza hospitalaria estratégica (AHE) en la eficiencia, así como cuantificar los efectos sobre la utilización de la capacidad de dichos acuerdos en el contexto mexicano de atención médica.

El Análisis Envolvente de Datos (DEA) es la metodología no paramétrica utilizada para lograr ambos objetivos. Las brechas tecnológicas se estiman empleando meta-fronteras calculadas mediante modelos DEA, comparando la eficiencia entre los miembros de la AHE y un grupo de control de hospitales. El nivel de utilización de la capacidad hospitalaria se calcula, utilizando funciones direccionales de distancia, a partir del máximo output alcanzable a partir de la dotación de inputs fijos. Los datos fueron obtenidos de la alianza Consorcio Mexicano de Hospitales en México, integrada por 29 hospitales privados generales, y de un grupo de 47 hospitales con las mismas características obtenidos de una base de datos del Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía para el año 2014.

adosLos resultados indican que los niveles de eficiencia son superiores en los hospitales pertenecientes a la alianza, así como una mejor gestión de la capacidad instalada en la alianza hospitalaria en México.

Los resultados pueden ser útiles tanto para los administradores de las organizaciones de salud privadas como para los reguladores, de forma que puedan adoptar prácticas de gestión con un impacto favorable en la contención de costos y precios. Asimismo, no existen estudios previos ni en México ni en América Latina que analicen el impacto de las alianzas estratégicas hospitalarias en la eficiencia y la utilización de la capacidad de los hospitales privados.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of trade shows and provide insights for trade show exhibitors using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The paper also offers a benchmarking analysis of the business factors for the most efficient trade shows in each sector.

The paper uses the metafrontier DEA methodology and identifies several frontiers according to the sector in which the trade show operates since different sectors could not share homogeneous production technology for exhibitor firms.

The main findings reveal different profiles of individual sectors. The investment sector presents a more homogenous profile than either the consumer goods or the services sector. The consumer goods sector is more heterogeneous but it is also possible to find common characteristics for the most efficient trade shows. The service sector is characterized by a high variability and as such it is more difficult to identify benchmarking elements for the most efficient trade shows.

The main limitation of the study is that the sample only includes audited trade shows. Future studies could extend the period under study in order to obtain a more complete picture on the evolution of trade show efficiency.

This paper extends the DEA results by profiling the most efficient trade shows in each sector so that this information can be used as a benchmarking tool to define exhibitors’ strategic decision making.