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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cost efficiency of banks operating in two “non‐core” EU countries, Portugal and Spain, over a number of years. Specifically, the paper aims to examine the extent to which banks' efficiency is influenced by their portfolio orientation and scale of operation.

Data envelopment analysis is used to identify banks' levels of performance over time in both countries. In order to decompose banks' total factor productivity change into technological, scale efficiency and pure efficiency changes, the Malmquist index method is applied.

Banks operating in both countries have improved their performance over time and savings banks and large banks, in particular, have tended to outperform other types of banks. Banks operating in Spain tend to perform better than in Portugal and Spanish‐owned banks perform better than their Portuguese‐owned counterparts. The improvements in performance revealed have mainly been due to technological change.

Bankscope is a well‐respected data source and has been the basis of many studies of performance in international banking. Unfortunately, owing to data deficiencies, around 20 per cent of the banks operating in Portugal and Spain were not included.

If Portuguese banks are to be competitive internationally, there is considerable need for efficiency improvements.

The paper provides insights into the dynamics of the Portuguese and Spanish banking systems. The results should be of interest to management in banking and bank regulators in Europe, and economists and others studying bank performance trends. The research reported may shed light on some of the challenges facing the banking sectors of the “new” EU states (such as Poland and Hungary).

Explores the effect of market orientation on operating effectiveness and cost efficiency using data drawn from automotive distribution channels in Finland and Poland. The results indicate that market orientation is positively associated with measures of effectiveness such as service quality and overall customer service level. Market orientation also has a positive influence on measures of cost efficiency, such as productivity and sales per employee. In addition, profitability measures were highly associated with operating effectiveness and cost efficiency. Additional analysis suggests that market orientation has a greater effect on operating effectiveness, such as service quality, in Poland, a less‐developed country, than in Finland, a more‐developed country. Based on the findings, important managerial and research implications are proferred.

In this study, the impact of owner-operator and non-owner operator rice mills on productive efficiency is investigated.

Primary data collected from a survey of 111 rice mills in the Mwea region of Kenya are used. A metafrontier approach is employed to measure overall technical efficiency which is decomposed into managerial and organisational efficiency.

The results reveal no significant difference in overall technical and managerial efficiency between owner and non-owner operated mills. However, a significant difference exists in organisational efficiency of mills: non-owner operated mills were found to be performing significantly better than owner-operated.

The authors provide supporting evidence to the study and discuss some of the significant policy implications stemming from the study.

It is recognised that for owners to take the risk of divesting control to a hired manager rather than manage the firm themselves can have major strategic, financial and often emotional consequences. However, there is little empirical evidence on how production efficiency will develop as a result of hiring a manager with the underlying economic theory providing ambiguous guidance. Standard economic theory assumes that firms behave as profit maximisers, which can be achieved by operating efficiently. However, this may not always be the case and as the literature indicates, this may especially be so for small businesses in low- and middle-income countries.

The aim of this study is to understand a family firm's choice of related-party transaction (RPT) types and analyze their value impacts to separate the abusive from benign RPTs.

It uses a 10-year panel of BSE-listed 378 family (and 200 non-family) firms. The fixed effects, logit and difference-in-difference (DID) models help examine value effects, propensity and persistence of harmful RPTs.

Loans/guarantees (irrespective of counterparties) destroy firm value. Capital asset RPTs decrease the firm value but enhance value when undertaken with holding parties. Operating RPTs increase firm value and profitability. They improve asset utilization and reduce discretionary expenses (especially when made with controlled entities). Family firms have larger loans/guarantees and capital asset volumes but have smaller operating RPTs than non-family firms. They are less likely to undertake loans/guarantees (and even operating RPTs) and more capital RPTs vis-à-vis non-family firms. Family firms persist with dubious loans/guarantees but hold back beneficial operating RPTs, despite RPTs being in investor cross-hairs amid the Satyam scam.

Rent extractability and counterparty incentives supplement each other. (1) The higher extractability of related-party loans and guarantees (RPLGs) dominates the lower extraction incentives of controlled parties. (2) Holding parties' bringing assets, providing a growth engine and adding value dominate their higher extraction incentives (3) The big gains to the operational efficiency come from operating RPTs with controlled parties, generally operating companies in the family house. (4) Dubious RPTs seem more integral to family firms' choices than non-family firms. (5) Counterparty incentives behind the divergent use of RPTs deserve more research attention. Future studies can give more attention to how family characteristics affect divergent motives behind RPTs.

First, the study does not single out family firms for dubious use of all RPTs. Second, investors, auditors or creditors must pay close attention to RPLGs as a special expropriation mechanism. Third, operating RPTs (and capital RPTs with holding parties) benefit family firms. However, solid procedural safeguards are necessary. Overall, results may help clarify the dilemma Indian regulators face in balancing the abusive and business sides of RPTs.

The study fills the gap by arguing why some RPTs may be dubious or benign and then shows how RPTs' misuse depends on counterparty types. It shows operating RPTs enhance operating efficiencies on several dimensions and that benefits may vary with counterparty types. It also presents the first evidence that family firms favor dubious RPTs more and efficient RPTs less than non-family firms.

The purpose of this paper is not only to gauge the extent of technical efficiency in 31 state road transport undertakings (SRTUs) operating in India but also to explore the most influential factors explaining its variations across SRTUs.

Three popular data envelopment analysis (DEA) models, namely CCR, BCC and Andersen and Petersen's super‐efficiency models, have been utilized to compute various efficiency scores for individual SRTUs. A censored Tobit analysis is conducted to see which factors significantly explain the inter‐SRTU variations in efficiency.

The key findings of the DEA analysis are only five SRTUs define the efficient frontier, and the remaining 26 inefficient undertakings have a scope of inputs reduction, albeit by the different magnitude; the extent of average overall technical inefficiency (OTIE) in these SRTUs is to the tune of 22.8 percent, indicating that the sample SRTUs are wasting about one‐fourth of their resources in the production operations; managerial inefficiency (as captured by the pure technical inefficiency) is a relatively more dominant source of OTIE; and operation in the zone of increasing returns‐to‐scale is a common feature for most of the undertakings. The multivariate regression analysis using Tobit analysis highlights that the occupancy ratio is the most significant determinant for all the efficiency measures, and bears a positive relationship with overall technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies. Further, scale efficiency is also impacted positively by the staff productivity.

The results of this paper can be applied from management's perspective. The managers can assess the relative efficiency of their SRTUs in the industry and take corrective measures to improve efficiency by altering input‐output mix.

This paper provides more robust estimates of relative efficiency of the SRTUs and highlights the key determinants of overall technical efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect that ownership and management structures have on ability to control operating expenses. For individual investors, intensity of management experience is also explored as a possible explanatory variable for operating expenses. For property management services that are contracted out, the level of the fee is investigated as a possible cause for movements in operating expenses as well. Finally, operating expenses are used as a possible explanatory variable for a property’s lease-up performance during the year.

The analysis consists of a series of regression models performed on data provided by the 2012 Rental Housing Finance Survey (RHFS) in the USA. The RHFS is a unique data set that covers a wide degree of information on multifamily properties. The RHFS represents 2,260 properties in total, and covers various aspects of the apartment industry, including financing and operational cost measures. Control variables used as independent variables include number of units, year of property acquisition, and age of building.

Individual ownership and self-management proved to be statistically significant drivers in driving down log operating expenses. Hours spent by individuals performing property management roles on their own properties had a slightly positive association with operating expenses. For professional managers, the fees devoted solely to the manager or management company had a highly significant and positive effect on other operating costs. Finally, when separating out the individual components of operating expenses, only two variables had significant effects on tenant lease-ups: management expenses (positive) and security expenses (negative).

The data set is potentially biased toward those properties with less than 100 units, and thus it would be problematic to assume that these findings are generalizable to the population at large. There are also no geographic coding indicators within the RHFS data set, which eliminates the potential to control for various market factors and rural/urban differences.

The research provides an understanding of some of the basic factors behind increases in operating expenses, which ultimately has implications for performance benchmarks such as net operating income and property market value.

The reasonable controlling of operating expenses ultimately has potentially positive implications for low- to moderate-income populations, who would ultimately experience lower rents as a result.

This research represents one of the first known uses of the RHFS database.

The paper aims to carry out a performance benchmarking study of the zones of Indian Railways (IR) to develop an alternate approach for measurement of aggregate operational performance of the railway zones and to envisage its operations in a supply chain perspective, so as to gain academic and practical insights.

A case study research employing data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology has been used, with the help of data obtained from the IR annual statistical statements published by the Ministry of Railways, Government of India.

Within the set of inputs and outputs considered, the exercise identified the best performing railway zones over the years and the efficiency trends. Some weaknesses of the conventional DEA were addressed by including the concept of cross‐efficiencies along with self‐efficiencies, by analyzing longitudinal data spread over four years and also by comparing the efficiencies with the operating ratios. To an extent, this study has also helped to understand the impact of the recent restructuring of the zones on their performance.

The study enables the reader to gain some valuable insights from a managerial perspective for IR so as to formulate strategies of its zones to foster better performance.

A retrieval system may be evaluated strictly in terms of user satisfaction (operating efficiency), or it may be evaluated from the point of view of efficient means of satisfying user requirements (economic efficiency). When we consider the relationship between operating efficiency and economic efficiency, we are faced with a whole series of possible trade‐offs. There may be several alternative paths we can follow in order to serve user needs. The problem is to determine the most economical path to follow. Pay‐off factors, break‐even points, and diminishing returns must be taken into consideration. This paper considers some of these factors in relation to various parts of the complete retrieval system: the acquisition subsystem, the indexing subsystem, the index language, the searching subsystem, and the equipment subsystem.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functioning of the main Spanish and Portuguese containers ports to observe if they are operating below their production capabilities.

To achieve the above-mentioned objective, one possible method is to calculate the data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency, and the scale efficiency (SE) of targets, and in order to consider the variability across different samples, a bootstrap scheme has been applied.

The results showed that the DEA bootstrap-based approach can not only select a suitable unit which accords with a port’s actual input capabilities, but also provides a more accurate result. The bootstrapped results indicate that all ports do not need to develop future investments to expand port infrastructure.

The proposed DEA bootstrap-based approach provides useful implications in the robust measurement of port efficiency considering different samples. The study proves the usefulness of this approach as a decision-making tool in port efficiency.

This study is one of the first studies to apply bootstrap to measure port efficiency under the background of the Spain and Portugal case. In the first stage, two models of DEA have been used to obtain the pure technical, and the technical and SE, and both the input-oriented options: constant return scale and variable return scale. In the second stage, the bootstrap method has been applied in order to determine efficiency rankings of Iberian Peninsula container ports taking into consideration different samples. Confidence interval estimates of efficiency for each port are reported. This paper provides useful insights into the application of a DEA bootstrap-based approach as a modeling tool to aid decision making in measuring port efficiency.

For strategic and competitive insights, the purpose of this paper is to measure and benchmark the comparative operating efficiencies of Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) major airlines and present a new interpretation along with managerial implications.

This research statistically tests returns to scale and the equality of mean efficiencies for 15 ASEAN airlines covering the period 2010-2014. The disaggregate input efficiency of ASEAN airlines is computed by comparing the target and actual inputs.

The disaggregate input efficiency of ASEAN airlines shows that aircraft efficiency is the lowest, operating cost efficiency is better, and available seat efficiency is the best.

This paper applies data envelopment analysis models, disaggregated input efficiency measures, and bootstrapping approaches to compute the operational efficiency of ASEAN airlines. Strategic suggestions are made to improve the operational efficiency of ASEAN airlines.