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The purpose of this paper is to assess the efficiency of rice millers and determine factors influencing cost efficiency in Southwest Nigeria using the cost route approach.

The paper analyses cost efficiency of rice millers using primary data collected from 62 respondents through a structured questionnaire. A multi-stage sampling procedure was employed for this purpose. The profile of rice millers and mills were derived using the descriptive analysis. Cost efficiency of the millers was obtained using the quadratic cost function analysis, and Tobit regression was used to determine factors that influence cost efficiency.

The results showed that cost efficiency indexes range from 1 to 57 percent averaging at 20.2 percent. Large rice mills were found to be most efficient with the mean cost efficiency of 25 percent. Paddy, transport and energy costs contributed positively and significantly (p=0.05 and p=0.01) to cost efficiency. Milling capacity and machine age increase cost efficiency while the distance to purchase paddy and quantity of diesel used reduces cost efficiency.

The paper shows that there is enough potential for rice millers to improve their cost efficiency based on the available technology. This has a direct implication on the economy through the increased domestic production and processing of rice to meet the increasing demand for locally produced rice.

The paper attempts to bridge the gap in the literature of cost efficiency among rice millers in Nigeria, and specifically in the application of the normalized quadratic cost function in estimating cost efficiency in the rice milling sector in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a behavioral analysis, through overconfidence, in order to understand how this cognitive bias could affect risk taking and inefficiency in Islamic and conventional banks operating in the MENA region.

To achieve the objective, the authors considered two overconfidence proxies, namely loan growth rate and net interest margin. Using the generalized method of moments method regressions for panel data, the authors found that the two overconfidence proxies have an effect on the risk exposure and consequently on the efficiency level of Islamic and conventional banks.

In general, overconfidence bias causes excessive risk taking and the degradation of the cost efficiency level. Moreover, these effects emerge with a delay of three to four years and have implications that are not too different for both types of banks.

The main motivation underlying this research study is the relatively new field of behavioral finance way in treating the topic of overconfidence. The particularity of the overconfidence bias topic is its assumption that financial decisions can be influenced by cognitive biases, ignoring the fact of a predetermined risk-return calculation.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between capital risk and efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks operating in Bangladesh. In this pursuit, the research attempts to answer these questions: do inefficient banks assume more risk? Is there any major difference between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of efficiency and risk taking behavior?

The study collects various bank-level data from the audited financial statements of Islamic and conventional banks for the period of 2001 to 2011. Collected data are analyzed using Stochastic Frontier Analysis for efficiency estimation and Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) approach for assessing the relationship between capital, risk, and efficiency.

Analysis of data shows that conventional banks are more efficient in managing cost than Islamic banks. Moreover, the SUR results show that the relation between capital and efficiency are bidirectional and negative, whereas the relation between capital and risk is also bidirectional but positive for Islamic banks. On the other hand, risk and efficiency are positively related, and the result is bidirectional for conventional banks.

The research concentrates on private-commercial banks as proxy for conventional banks. State-owned banks including specialized banks and foreign commercial banks are excluded from the sample due to various anomalies in reporting of financial data.

There is a lot of room for Islamic banks to increase productive efficiency because cost efficiency of Islamic banks is less than that of the conventional banks. This can be attributed to the relative small size of Islamic banks in Bangladesh. Because there exists a positive relationship between size and efficiency for Islamic banks, they can concentrate on increasing their size to capitalize on economies of scale. Moreover, the analysis shows that inefficient conventional banks assume higher risk which conforms to moral hazard hypothesis. Therefore, regulatory authorities should discourage banks from exercising such practice for the greater stability of the overall banking system in Bangladesh.

A good number of studies is available in the existing literature that compares the performance of Islamic and conventional banks in the case of Bangladesh. However, very few studies are found that examine the relationship between capital, risk and efficiency. Therefore, the research is new for the selected area. As a result, the research is expected to contribute to the existing literature by providing new information.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the impact of credit risk-taking on financial and social efficiency and examine the relationship between credit risk, capital structure and efficiency in the context of Islamic microfinance institutions (MFIs) compared to their conventional counterparts.

The stochastic frontier approach was used to estimate the financial and social efficiency scores, in a first step. In a second step, the impact of risk-taking on efficiency was evaluated. The authors also took into account the moderating role of capital structure in this effect using the fixed and random effects generalized least squares (GLS) with a first-order autoregressive disturbance. The used dataset covers 326 conventional MFIs and 57 Islamic MFIs in six different regions of the world over the period of 2005–2015.

The overall average efficiency scores are less than 50%, where CMFIs could have produced their outputs using 48% of their actual inputs. IMFIs record the lowest financial (cost) efficiency that is equal to 28% on average. The estimation results also reveal a negative impact of nonperforming loan on financial and social efficiency. Finally, the moderating effect of leverage funding on the relationship between credit risk-taking and financial efficiency was confirmed in CMFIs. However, leverage seems to moderate the effect of risk-taking behavior on social efficiency for IMFIs.

This paper makes an initial attempt to evaluate the effect of risk-taking decision and its implication on efficiency and MFIs' sustainability. Besides, it takes into consideration the role played by the mode of governance through the ownership structure. In addition, this research study sheds light on the importance of the financial support for the development and sustainability of these institutions, which in return, contributes to a sustainable economic development.

This paper aims to examine the level of economic efficiency and factors that influence economic efficiency among seed potato producers in South-western Uganda.

The paper analyses the economic efficiency of 499 informal and 137 formal seed producers using primary data collected through a structured questionnaire. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the study sites and specific farmers. A one-step estimation procedure of normalized translog cost frontier and inefficiency model was employed to determine the level of economic efficiency and the influencing factors.

The results showed that mean economic efficiencies were 91.7 and 95.2% for informal and formal seed potato producers, respectively. Furthermore, results show significant differences between formal and informal seed potato producers in economic efficiency at a one percent level. Market information access, credit access, producers' capacity and experience increase the efficiency of informal while number of potato varieties, market information access and producers' experience increase economic efficiency for formal counterparts.

Most seed potato producers, especially the informal ones do not keep comprehensive records of their production and marketing activities. This required more probing as answers depended on memory recall.

Future research could explore panel data approach involving more cropping seasons with time variant economic efficiency and individual unobservable characteristics that may influence farmers' efficiency to validate the current findings.

The paper shows that there is more potential for seed potato producers to increase their economic efficiency given the available technology. This has a direct implication on the economy through increased investment in the production and promotion of high yielding seed potato varieties to meet the growing national demand for potatoes.

The paper bridges the gap in literature on economic efficiency among seed potato producers, specifically in applying the normalized translog cost frontier approach in estimating economic efficiency in the context of potato sub-sector in Uganda.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2021-0641

The purpose of this paper is to investigate productivity growth and technical progress bias in the USA.

Following the work of Kohli in 1978 and Diewert and Wales in 1992, the paper estimates output supply and input demand functions in the context of a normalized quadratic (NQ) variable profit function using US data (over a period from 1960 to 2002) on six goods: output, exports, imports, labour, reproducible capital, and fixed capital.

Results show that the NQ variable profit function with linear splines works very well and the technique for determining structural breaks is effective. Estimates show that the US productivity rate in the last decade recovered in a stepwise manner, rather than jumped overnight in 1996 (as some previous studies have suggested), and that the US productivity revival after 1995 has been volatile and fragile.

This paper highlights productivity trends in the USA.

The regular occurrence of natural disasters elevates the need for an effective method to measure organizational preparedness in responding to the adverse impact of disasters. In this context, this paper presents a new decision support model to assess organizational disaster preparedness using both subjective and objective disaster preparedness criteria in a multi-criteria decision-making context.

The statistical variance method is integrated with the proximity value index (PVI) technique to determine priority scores in order to rank organizational disaster readiness.

The results of applying the integrated model developed herein enable decision-makers to make informed decisions for assigning priority ranking of organizational disaster preparedness in a simpler and more efficient way.

Human resource is the most impacting criterion affecting hospital preparedness in undertaking action to cure disaster victims.

This paper offers an exemplar of a simple and efficient decision-making process considering the subjectivity associated with decision-making as well as the objectivity of data used for determining the priority ranking of organizational disaster preparedness.

Integrating statistical variance method with the PVI technique is novel and it has not been presented in previous studies. In fact, this study is the first to integrate both methods for selecting the priority ranking of organizational disaster preparedness.

This paper presents a method to improve inverse problem resolution. This method focuses on the measurement set and particularly on sensor position. Based on experiment, it aims at finding sensor position criteria to insure the least bad inverse problem solving.

The studied device is a magnetized steel sheet measured by four sensors. Three optimization techniques are compared: condition number, solid angle and signature optimization.

An efficient criterion to compare the inverse problem resolution quality is presented. The comparison of optimization techniques shows that only signature optimization gives accurate results.

A relative simple case is studied in this paper: only four sensors are used to measure a steel sheet. Moreover magnetostatic low‐field case is supposed. Nevertheless techniques presented could be applied to more complex studies. Condition number and solid angle optimizations techniques should be tested with more sensors to confirm or infirm their inefficiency.

This paper presents the first step of a larger study concerning ships for naval application. The aim is to predict magnetic anomaly created by ship to compensate it. This anomaly could be computed through the resolution of an inverse problem based on internal measurements. The signature optimization technique could be used to find the optimal sensor location onboard.

Traditional regularization techniques are focusing on adding mathematical or physical information to the system in order to improve it. This paper provides another approach to improve inverse problem resolution through measurement set. It shows that sensor position optimization should be efficient.

While additive manufacturing via melt-extrusion of plastics has been around for more than several decades, its application to complex geometries has been hampered by the discretization of parts into planar layers. This requires wasted support material and introduces anisotropic weaknesses due to poor layer-to-layer adhesion. Curved-layer manufacturing has been gaining attention recently, with increasing potential to fabricate complex, low-weight structures, such as mechanical metamaterials. This paper aims to study the fabrication and mechanical characterization of non-planar lattice structures under cyclic loading.

A mathematical approach to parametrize lattices onto Bèzier surfaces is validated and applied here to fabricate non-planar lattice samples via curved-layer fused deposition modeling. The lattice chirality, amplitude and unit cell size were varied, and the properties of the samples under cyclic-loading were studied experimentally.

Overall, lattices with higher auxeticity showed less energy dissipation, attributed to their bending-deformation mechanism. Additionally, bistability was eliminated with increasing auxeticity, reinforcing the conclusion of bending-dominated behavior. The analysis presented here demonstrates that mechanical metamaterial lattices such as auxetics can be explored experimentally for complex geometries where traditional methods of comparing simple geometry to end-use designs are not applicable.

The mechanics of non-planar lattice structures fabricated using curved-layer additive manufacturing have not been studied thoroughly. Furthermore, traditional approaches do not apply due to parameterization deformations, requiring novel approaches to their study. Here the properties of such structures under cyclic-loading are studied experimentally for the first time. Applications for this type of structures can be found in areas like biomedical scaffolds and stents, sandwich-panel packaging, aerospace structures and architecture of lattice domes.

This work presents an experimental approach to study the mechanical properties of non-planar lattice structures via quasi-static cyclic loading, comparing variations across several lattice patterns including auxetic sinusoids, disrupted sinusoids and their equivalent-density quadratic patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficiency of the banking business of Japan’s agricultural cooperatives (JAs), which depend heavily on financial business with non-farmers, contradictory to cooperative principles.

The authors construct a panel data set over 2005–2016 from the financial statements of JAs’ prefectural-level federations and use the input distance stochastic frontier model with a time-variant inefficiency effect for analysis. Both the flow and stock measures of the banking output are used in identical models and the efficiency results are compared. The authors also investigate the determinants of efficiency by using the Tobit and ordinary least squares regression models.

There is strong evidence of significant prefectural differences in efficiency values. The ratio of lending to non-members to total loans is positively related to efficiency. In contrast, the higher reliance on a central organization and credit business leads to lower efficiency.

Apart from banking, JAs provide mutual insurance business services. As the authors investigate only the efficiency of JAs’ banking business in this study, it would be necessary to investigate the efficiency of their insurance business as well when evaluating JAs’ overall financial business.

There are few studies that investigate the efficiency of JAs’ banking business and its determinants, although significant attention has been paid to their excessive dependence on the financial business.