Non-parametric Meta-frontier Approach Research Articles

Nonparametric efficiency measurement of undergraduate teaching by university size

Conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) models assume that all decision-making units (DMUs) are homogenous. While higher education institutions (HEIs) of very different sizes challenge the homogeneity of DMUs, DEA studies have paid relatively little attention to university size when assessing the performance of HEIs. This article proposes novel, effective methods for evaluating university performance and identifying useful benchmarks for improving the operations of inefficient performers. Specifically, DEA and cluster analysis (CA) are applied for the evaluation of the performance of traditional Spanish public universities. DEA is utilized to examine the relative performance of these universities in terms of undergraduate teaching output. CA is applied to find similar-in-scale universities prior to the DEA to facilitate peer-groupings. The advantage of this method is that when DMUs are clustered based on their size, one can obtain homogenous groups of units with comparable operating environments. Furthermore, using the meta-frontier framework, this research finds significant evidence that there is an efficiency advantage for medium- and large-sized universities over small ones in providing undergraduate teaching. A bootstrapped, non-parametric meta-frontier approach also verifies this latter result. Some of the factors that contribute to the differences in the relative efficiencies are identified as well.

Evaluation of carbon shadow price within a non-parametric meta-frontier framework: The case of OECD, ASEAN and BRICS

Unintended outputs, as non-market goods, may have no exchange value and require shadow pricing to investigate the abatement costs. Unlike previous research, which assumes homogeneous production technology for decision-making units in the shadow price analysis, this paper considers group and global production frontiers. The ratio of group to global shadow prices is derived to indicate the position with respect to the tangent point (i.e., equal shadow prices) of the group and global technologies. This departs from the conventional technology gap approach. The nonparametric meta-frontier approach is used to evaluate the shadow price of carbon emission for several groups of countries (OECD, ASEAN, BRICS) that are likely to face homogenous technologies. The results show that carbon shadow prices for the countries differ across group and non-meta technologies. Therefore, the traditional approach towards shadow pricing may render a biased economic interpretation. This paper also compares the inefficiency scores with and without considering carbon emissions in countries. Therefore, the role of the carbon emission is assessed from different perspectives.

Environmental Efficiency Analysis of Urban Agglomerations in China: A Non-Parametric Meta-Frontier Approach

ABSTRACT This paper studies the environmental efficiency of Chinese urban agglomerations (UAs) based on a non-parametric meta-frontier approach. We find most of UAs has a large gap and imbalance of environmental performance under meta-frontier. The meta-efficiencies of eastern and southern coastal areas are better than that of middle and western. Besides, the efficiency difference of cities in each UA is relatively small, which may be caused by the technology spillover effect. In addition, the average technology gap among most UAs exists but not so huge. Based on the findings, we provide specific suggestions for Chinese central and local governments.

Measuring the efficiency of grid companies in China: A bootstrapping non-parametric meta-frontier approach

The unbundling policy reform of power industry has become a worldwide trend since 1980s. There are quite many studies focusing on the efficiency changes of transmission and distribution sectors in European and Latin American countries while few reports on China's issues have been found. This paper employs a nonparametric frontier estimation combined with meta-frontier and bootstrapping method to measure the productive efficiency and changes in the decomposition index for China's 31 grid companies from 2004 to 2013. In addition, it further employs Tobit regression model to analyze the influences of relevant policies and heterogeneity factors, such as natural conditions and economic development. The results indicate that the grouping approach extends the application of non-parametric data envelopment analysis, which may decrease the assumption of homogeneity for the decision making units and provide better efficiency estimates by increasing the credibility of the evaluation results. Overall productive efficiency increased during the whole study period, with technology progress the main contributor to this improvement. Efficiency trends fluctuated with changes in economic development and power supply situation, and the economics and customer density had positive effects on productive efficiency while the influence of clean power proportion is negative.

The relationship between airport performance and privatisation policy: A nonparametric metafrontier approach

The assessment of economic and technical efficiency is a useful tool for selecting the most appropriate technology for airport operations. However, traditional models require that the units being assessed operate with the same technology. To overcome this limitation, one can use a non-concave metafrontier approach that is based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate the techno-economic efficiency and Technological Gap Ratios (TGRs) with non-homogeneous technologies for airports across countries and with different ownerships. The previous studies mainly applied DEA to measure the operational efficiency of airports. Our results indicate that privately owned airports have better technical efficiency than public ones. In addition, our empirical analysis shows that public airports in the Asia-Pacific area have the lowest techno-economic efficiency.

China's CO2 emissions of a critical sector: Evidence from energy intensive industries

CO2 emissions from China's energy intensive industries increased sharply during 2000–2013 and reached around 43.84 billion tons in 2013. The large amounts of emissions make it necessary to study the CO2 emissions performance and efficiency in these industries. In this paper, we use the Shephard input distance function and nonparametric metafrontier approach to construct an index called Metafrontier Malmquist CO2 Emissions Performance Index (MMCPI) to evaluate the efficiency of CO2 emissions from China's energy intensive industries. Then we decompose the index into three components: technical efficiency change (TEC), technical change (TC) and catching-up effect. Finally, we calculate the reduction potential of CO2 emissions under both the meta-frontier and group-frontier. The results show that, the CO2 emissions efficiency in China's energy intensive industries improved in the period of 2000–2013. In addition, under the group-frontier, there is almost no CO2 emissions reduction potential for energy intensive industries in Jiangsu and Shanghai in Eastern China, while CO2 emissions reduction potential in Hebei Province is the largest. In Central China, CO2 emissions reduction potential in Shanxi is the largest and Henan has the lowest. In Western China, the potential of CO2 emissions reduction in Sichuan is the lowest, while Ningxia has the largest reduction potential.

Technology gap and regional energy efficiency in China's textile industry: A non-parametric meta-frontier approach

Based on the theory of total factor production, this paper analyzes energy efficiency in China's textile industry at the regional levels using non-parametric meta-frontier approach and a provincial panel data during the period, 2000–2012. We further analyze the regional differences in energy utilization technology gap using the technology gap ratio. Irrespective of the frontier (meta or group), the empirical result depicts a tremendous energy saving potential in China's textile industry. Relative to meta-frontier, the average energy efficiency of China's textile industry is 0.673 during the sample period; hence, the energy saving potential is 32.7% if output remains unchanged. Relative to group frontier, the average efficiency of China's textile industry is 0.797, which may overestimate the true level of energy utilization. From the regional perspective, significant differences exist in energy technology within the textile industry. During the sample period, the energy utilization technology gap ratio (TGR) of the Textile Industry in eastern China remains above 0.95 and it's steadily improving, approaching the optimum for the whole textile industry. Moreover, the textile industries in central and western China have improvement potentials of 19.6% and 27.4%, respectively. Finally, based on the results from the regional energy efficiency analysis, future policy priorities are suggested.

Sources of the potential CO2 emission reduction in China: A nonparametric metafrontier approach

Taking the underlying technology heterogeneity into account, this paper uses a nonparametric metafrontier approach to estimate the CO2 emission efficiency and the potential emission reduction of China’s 30 provinces for the period 2006–2010. The sources of the potential emission reduction are identified as managerial failure and technology gap. The proposed models are estimated using linear programming method. The main findings are as follows. Firstly, the potential CO2 emission reduction is averagely 56.2million tons for each province, and 1687million tons for the whole country. Secondly, over half of the potential emission reduction is caused by technology gap. Thirdly, the major contributor to the potential emission reduction varies across different regions, as management inefficiency for the east area and technology gap for the central and west areas.

Measuring non-convex metafrontier efficiency in international tourist hotels

The non-convex metafrontier model was introduced by O’Donnell et al (2008) with a brief sketch and interpreted by Tiedemann et al (2011) through a graphical instruction. However, the specific function was not present in former studies. In order to strengthen the non-parametric metafrontier approach, this study proposes the specific modelling function and calculational operation for the non-convex metafrontier model and applies the developed model to investigate the technology gaps between the four operating types of Taiwan’s international tourist hotels. The empirical findings show that management contract technology has achieved the potential best practice within the four groups and that there exists a significant gap between the potential best practice and present performance in the domestic, franchise, and membership chain technologies.

A metafrontier directional distance function approach to assessing eco-efficiency

This paper uses directional distance functions to extend the non-parametric metafrontier approach to efficiency measurement proposed by O’Donnell et al. (Empir Econ 34:231–255, 2008) to the assessment of technological differences in eco-efficiency between groups of producers. Furthermore, eco-efficiency is assessed at the level of specific environmental pressure management. This methodology is applied to a sample of Spanish olive producers that belong to both traditional mountain and traditional plain growing systems. We find great potential for both olive growing systems to reduce environmental pressures. In terms of pressures on natural resources, the most eco-efficient technology is the traditional plain system, while the traditional mountain system is the most eco-efficient when considering pressures on biodiversity. These results might help policymakers design strategies to improve the performance of olive growing and meet the demands of society regarding the economic and ecological functions of this farming activity.

Measuring the efficiency of highway maintenance contracting strategies: A bootstrapped non-parametric meta-frontier approach

Highly deteriorated US road infrastructure, major budgetary restrictions and the significant growth in traffic have led to an emerging need for improving performance of highway maintenance practices. Privatizing some portions of road maintenance operations by state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) under the auspices of performance-based contracts has been one of the innovative initiatives in response to such a need. This paper adapts the non-parametric meta-frontier framework to the two-stage bootstrapping technique to develop an analytical approach for evaluating the relative efficiency of two highway maintenance contracting strategies. The first strategy pertains to the 180 miles of Virginia’s Interstate highways maintained by Virginia DOT using traditional maintenance practices. The second strategy pertains to the 250 miles of Virginia’s Interstate highways maintained via a Public Private Partnership using a performance-based maintenance approach. The meta-frontier approach accounts for the heterogeneity that exists among different types of highway maintenance contracts due to different limitations and regulations. The two-stage bootstrapping technique accounts for the large set of uncontrollable factors that affect the highway deterioration processes. The preliminary findings, based on the historical data for the state of Virginia, suggest that road authorities (counties) that have used traditional contracting for transforming the maintenance expenditures into the improvement of the road conditions seem to be more efficient than road authorities that have used the performance-based contracting. This paper recommends that road authorities use hybrid contracting approaches that include best practices of both traditional and performance-based highway maintenance contracting.

Assessing the performance of German Bundesliga football players: a non-parametric metafrontier approach

This article presents a novel model for evaluating the performance of field players in football. Based upon Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we employ a non-concave metafrontier approach that permits estimation of players’ efficiency scores under consideration of their playing positions. The model is applied to a data set of Germany’s premier league football players covering the playing seasons 2002/03 to 2008/09. The results reveal a clear positive relationship between a team’s average player efficiency score and its rank in the league table at the end of the season. In addition, the metafrontier approach is used to identify a footballer’s optimal playing position in the team and to quantify the performance increase from moving to that position.

Are cooperatives the weakest link in European banking? A non-parametric metafrontier approach

This paper investigates the productive performance of cooperative banking firms as compared to their commercial and savings counterparts, accounting for technology heterogeneity due to different ownership in European banking. Based on the metafrontier notion, we introduce a methodology which allows the identification of technology gaps among different bank types and their decomposition into input- and output-invariant components. Our findings suggest that the type-specific frontier corresponding to cooperative banking firms lies, to its largest part, away from the European metafrontier. Furthermore, within the cooperative bank type a dichotomy seems to arise. The decomposition results suggest that the cooperatives’ technology gap is attributed to output production rather than input use.