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The paper aims to enrich previous findings for an emerging banking industry such as Vietnam, reporting the difference between the parametric and nonparametric methods when measuring cost efficiency. The purpose of the study is to assess the consistency in issuing policies to improve the cost efficiency of Vietnamese commercial banks.

The cost efficiency of banks is assessed through the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Next, five tests are conducted in succession to analyze the differences in cost efficiency measured by these two methods, including the distribution, the rankings, the identification of the best and worst banks, the time consistency and the determinants of efficiency frontier. The data are collected from the annual financial statements of Vietnamese banks during 2005–2017.

The results show that the cost efficiency obtained under the SFA models is more consistent than under the DEA models. However, the DEA-based efficiency scores are more similar in ranking order and stability over time. The inconsistency in efficiency characteristics under two different methods reminds policy makers and bank administrators to compare and select the appropriate efficiency frontier measure for each stage and specific economic conditions.

This paper shows the need to control for heterogeneity over banking groups and time as well as for random noise and outliers when measuring the cost efficiency.

Blood lipid and lipoprotein abnormalities are common among patients with diabetes. The study aimed to assess dietary fat intake and its association with blood lipids among patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) considering sex differences.

A cross-sectional observational study was conducted with patients (207 males and 197 females) with T2DM. The daily food intake and its contents of fat and fat types were assessed through face-to-face interview. Anthropometric measurements, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), triglyceride, total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol were initially recorded.

The results revealed that TC, LDL and HDL cholesterol levels were significantly higher in females than in males. However, the TC: HDL ratio was significantly higher in males than in females. The results also showed that the daily intake of saturated fatty acid (SFA) slightly exceeded the daily recommended allowance. However, the monounsaturated fatty acid + polyunsaturated fatty acid/SFA (MUFA + PUFA/SFA) ratio was within the recommended ratio. In addition, this study found that the main sources of SFA and cholesterol intake were milk and milk products. A significant association between high fat intake and HbA1c levels was observed (r = 0.234, p < 0.001).

As it is a cross-sectional observational study, this study has the natural limitation where it can only demonstrate an association.

The types of dietary fat intake may contribute to blood lipid abnormalities and differences effects may exist among male and female. Studies on the effect of daily fat intake and its types on blood lipids in patients with diabetes, in particular Saudi patients with diabetes are limited. This study focused on the amount and type of the consumed fat among male and female Saudi patients with T2DM and studied the relationship between the type of consumed fat and blood lipid profiles.

While there exist many surveys on the use stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), many important issues and techniques in SFA were not well elaborated in the previous surveys, namely, regular models, copula modeling, nonparametric estimation by Grenander’s method of sieves, empirical likelihood and causality issues in SFA using regression discontinuity design (RDD) (sharp and fuzzy RDD). The purpose of this paper is to encourage more research in these directions.

A literature survey.

While there are many useful applications of SFA to econometrics, there are also many important open problems.

This is the first survey of SFA in econometrics that emphasizes important issues and techniques such as copulas.

The purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between bank efficiency in terms of corporate governance guidelines and the extent of practice of earnings management (EM).

Archival data of listed private commercial banks of Dhaka Stock Exchange over the period of 2007–2016 relating to corporate governance and earnings management are collected and analyzed using parametric and non-parametric methods (efficiency analysis) and applying panel regression analysis.

The same distribution pattern and have low degree of the correlation (0.248) among them. It is found that private commercial banks of Bangladesh, on average, display efficiency level of 80.84%. The average value of discretionary loan loss provision (i.e. measure of earnings management) is 0.4249 and this indicates the presence of earnings management. The relation between earnings management and efficiency score in both cases of two-step system generalized methods of moments (GMMs) and difference GMM are found to be negative. The negative coefficients (−0.7969 and −0.57) indicate that as the efficiency increases, the practice of earnings management by the private commercial bank reduces. By estimating efficiency based on corporate governance guidelines and detecting the existence of EM, the major contribution of the study is establishing the relationship between bank efficiency based on compliance with corporate governance guidelines and managerial practice of earnings management in Bangladesh. Empirical results of the study have also established the fact that the more efficient the management of the banks are, the less likely it will practice earnings management under the compliance of corporate governance guidelines in Bangladesh.

This research study has some limitations. Only conventional banks are considered for the study, with the exception of Islamic banks. Comparison between conventional banks and Islamic banks could have been done.

Based on the literature study, the effectiveness of corporate governance aligns with decreasing agency conflict, protection of shareholders' interests and restrain management from self-serving activities (i.e. practice of earnings management). The empirical results of the study established these facts. Regulators should give more emphasis on effective implementation of good governance.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this may be the first to empirically determine the relationship between efficiency estimation based on corporate governance and earnings management in case of listed commercial banks of Bangladesh.

This study aims to analyse the efficiency effects of institutional distance on Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa.

The study utilised the true fixed-effect stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model. Data from 2003 to 2016 (14 years) were acquired from 42 targeted African countries, which are included in the analysis.

The results reveal that FDI flow efficiency can be maximised with a high institutional distance between China and African countries. Contrariwise, comparable institutional distance, measured by the rule of law, regulatory quality and government effectiveness between the host and home countries, reflected a significant positive impact for Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDIs), indicating Chinese MNEs can invest directly in a country with comparable institutional characteristics.

There have been limited exceptional studies that assessed the effect of institutional distance between emerging countries. However, none of these studies investigated the effect of institutional distance between China and Africa at a national level. Using the advantage of the SFA model, this study assesses the efficiency effects of institutional distance between the host and home country.

The Spanish airport system contains several regional airports within an amenity distance and alternative travel modes. Profitable airports cross-subsidise small airports, which are not required for regional development or connectivity. Airports are government-owned and centralised-managed by Spanish Airports and Air Navigation (AENA, for its Spanish acronym). This study aims to analyse the probability of an under-used public infrastructure and the AENA’s managerial ability as per the financial sustainability of the network in the long term.

The national regulatory framework determines the airports’ environment. Six airports revealed unobserved heterogeneity, avoiding model misspecification. The framework is defined through proxies of the singularities of the Spanish framework: public investments and geographical specifications. The stochastic frontier analysis model follows two time-varying specifications, accounting for airports’ environmental factors, to ensure the robustness of the results to differ from the inefficiency caused by AENA and external factors.

Airports’ infrastructure capacity and traffic are not correlated; regional airports become a financial burden for the system unless they specialise or differentiate. Proxies defining the airports’ context are relevant. Because airports do not compete for airlines and passengers, there are too many regional airports with little traffic, resulting in disused public infrastructure that falls far short of improving connectivity and regional development.

This study contributes to paying attention to the characteristics of the regulatory framework, such as management strongly centralised in AENA, airport charges decided by the owner, lack of competition and lack of an independent regulatory entity. Another original contribution considers reliable capital measures (airports’ infrastructure).

African countries are endowed with both human and natural resources. These resources constitute integral components for any economic development due to the long-lasting relationship with all sectors in an economy, yet there is an obvious disagreement between growing economy and employment generation in Africa. Though there has been a growing pattern of economic size, particularly the gross domestic product (GDP) among African countries, most of these economies are low in human development. The disagreement between economic growth and employment generation in Africa despite abundant natural resources located on the continent calls for public discourse among scholars. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the peculiar drivers of unemployment intensity in a region characterized by endowed resources.

The paper adopts two approaches; the authors employed the pooled mean group (PMG) estimator and utilised stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to generate a government efficiency index between the period 1991 and 2017 among sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries.

The empirical results through the single output-multiple inputs framework indicate that on average, there is a low level of government efficiency towards increasing the objective of human development in Africa. However, in the long run, natural resource endowment has a positive and significant relationship with employment generation for SSA. Hence, the study established that a low level of government efficiency has a long-lasting effect on low human development experienced in Africa.

The need to improve the level of government efficiency towards economic development by making both human and physical capital more effective will spur the exploration of natural resources.

The paper provides an empirical study of the effectiveness and efficiency of government through PMG and SFA in establishing the relationship between government approaches and employment level in selected SSA countries.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate risk in technical efficiency of ASEAN banks in a panel data framework for the period 2000 to 2015.

The directional distance function and semi-parametric framework are employed to estimate efficiency scores for two scenarios, one with only good outputs and the other with a combination of good and bad outputs.

The findings show there is no evidence of technological progress for banks in ASEAN and concerns about the outperformance of Vietnam’s banks. In addition, performance of Vietnam’s banks tends to be distorted by low level of loan loss reserves.

To reflect the true performance and shorten the period of removing bad assets, the State Bank of Vietnam can request banks in Vietnam to book more loan loss reserves.

By examining such a new approach, this study makes an early attempt to incorporate credit risk into the banking efficiency in ASEAN region.

After the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (CFTR) in China, the enthusiasm of farmers for forestry management is stimulated. However, the forest tenure security varies among farmers, making the research conclusions of its impact on forestry management efficiency inconsistent. Based on the survey data of 1,627 households from the collective forest regions in 6 provinces of China in 2017, this paper not only discusses the differences of farmers' forestry management efficiency after the reform, but also further explores the heterogeneous impact of forest tenure security on forestry management efficiency in combination with different forest management types.

This study employed the stochastic frontier production function model to measure the forestry management efficiency of farmers. Then, Tobit models were used to discuss the influencing factors of farmers' forestry management efficiency.

The results demonstrate that the improvement of farmers' forest tenure security can effectively improve forestry management efficiency, but the effect is affected by forest management types. For farmers who manage economic forests and non-timber forests, safe tenure promotes the forestry management efficiency; while for those who manage ecological public welfare forests, tenure security plays an opposite role.

Therefore, satisfying farmers' differentiated demands for forest tenure according to forest management types to improve forest tenure security and further refining supporting policies of collective forestry reform is of great significance to improve the efficiency of farmers' forestry management in collective forest regions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) offering FinTech services. This study contributes to the existing literature on microfinance digitalization, financial inclusion and sustainable development. The study also takes into consideration a behavioral perspective through the efficiency evaluation process of MFIs offering FinTech services.

The following study employs the Stochastic Frontier Analysis approach to estimate the operational and social efficiency scores of the 387 MFIs over the period 2005–2019. Then, it tries to consider factors influencing MFIs' efficiency and assess their effects. Hence, two separate models for operation and social efficiency introducing a set of factors, including FinTech proxies and overconfidence proxies, are tested. The first model for operational efficiency uses a random-effects estimator while the second one for social efficiency uses a fixed-effects estimator.

The results show that innovative MFIs have weaker averages of operational efficiency than non-innovative ones but higher averages of social efficiency. This was justified by the fact that innovative MFIs are more socially oriented. Further, findings of this study depict that the proxies of FinTech affect negatively the level of operational efficiency of MFIs. They also depict a negative relationship between FinTech proxies and the level of social efficiency. These results hold through robustness tests.

The highlight of this study is that it takes heed of the indirect effect of technological innovation on the efficiency of MFIs. It has been proved that it moderates the impact of managerial overconfidence (manifested by excessive risk-taking, viz., high levels of PAR30, LGR and NIM) on the level of both operational and social efficiencies.

本文旨在對提供金融科技服務的微型金融機構的表現作出評價。我們的研究, 就現有之學術文獻而言, 在以下課題之探討上作出了貢獻: 微型金融的數字化、普惠金融、以及可持續發展。本研究亦以行為主義觀點, 對微型金融機構提供之金融科技服務的效率作出評價。

本研究使用隨機邊界分析法的理念, 去估計有關的387間微型金融機構於2005年至2019年期間、經營方面和社會方面的效率分數; 繼而嘗試找出影響微型金融機構效率的因素, 並評估這些因素的影響。為此目的, 研究人員分別測試兩個模型, 一個是探究運作方面的效率, 另一個則探究社會方面的效率。兩個模型內均放入一系列的因素, 其中包括金融科技代理和過度自信代理。探究運作方面的效率的模型使用了隨機效果估算器, 而探究社會方面的效率的模型則使用了固定效果估算器。

研究結果顯示、具創新精神的微型金融機構, 在運作方面的效率的平均值上,較沒具創新精神的為弱, 而社會方面的效率的平均值卻較高。這個結果是合理的, 因為具創新精神的微型金融機構會更著眼於社會。另外, 研究結果描繪了一個現象, 就是: 金融科技代理會對微型金融機構的運作效率水平產生負面影響; 我們也看到、金融科技代理與社會方面的效率水平之間的關聯是負面的; 這些研究結果、均通過穩健性檢驗。

本研究最突出之處為研究人員關注科技之創新會間接影響微型金融機構的效率。研究人員證明了於微型金融機構整合金融科技服務是會緩和管理上的過度自信給運作和社會兩方面的效率水平帶來的影響 (管理上的過度自信、顯露於過度的風險承擔, 即是, PAR30(貸款組合風險-30日)、LGR(貸款增長率) 和NIM(淨息差) 處於高水平)。