The Best Ways To Ship A Container Towards The European Continent
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The Best Ways To Ship A Container Towards The European Continent Several authors advocate a focus on productivity measures such as technical efficiency for performance evaluation in public industries (Pestieau and Tulkens, 1990; Button and Weyman-Jones, 1992). This reasoning stems from the very diverse objectives that public firms often must fulfil. These objectives do not translate readily into first best outcomes like profit maximization or cost minimization. Viton (1995) argues that technical efficiency is of interest from a public policy perspective; how efficiently public firms use their inputs is a critical question. Only after technical efficiency has been achieved can firms realistically address issues of cost efficiency. Therefore, technical efficiency is a useful metric of performance for public firms. Each form of DEA also has a linear programming dual. The names of the dual linear programs are the multiplier form and the envelopment form. For input oriented DEA, the maximization problem is in multiplier form; the envelopment form of input oriented DEA is a minimization problem. Duality in linear programming implies a related set of optimization problems can be solved for output oriented models. In practice, each form is distinguished by the information obtained through the linear program and by ease of implementation. For computational simplicity, the DEA scores in this study are created using the multiplier form. The most important mode of mass transit is the bus. Buses carry sixty-two percent of all passengers using public transit in the United States (USDOT, 1990). This research hopes to improve resource utilization in transit agencies by identifying agency characteristics correlated with non-parametric efficiency scores. It is argued that technical efficiency as measured by frontier methods is well suited to evaluate the performance of public agencies, agencies which do not have readily identifiable economic objectives. The "decomposition" of efficiency scores by a limited dependent variable regression represents a more complete approach to identification of those factors which most impact technical efficiency. The reasons why this paper focuses on the concept of technical efficiency to study productivity in public firms are given first, leading into a description of the methodology used in this study. Characteristics of the sample of bus agencies are presented, along with a description of the input and output measures chosen for the analysis of technical efficiency. The efficiency scores from the data envelopment analysis in the first stage of the study are detailed. Next, the second stage regression on the efficiency scores is motivated and explained. Firm level characteristics (both controllable and uncontrollable) relevant to resource utilization and efficiency in bus transit are then outlined; these are the variables used in the second stage regression analysis. In the remaining sections of the paper the results are interpreted in the context of efficiency in transit systems. The second reason is theoretical. In order to offer useful policy implications, productivity measurement in public firms must focus on that aspect of production which firms have the most control over: the efficiency of the production process. For many public firms (or industries), cost or allocative inefficiencies often are caused by forces external http://www.vde-shiping.comto the firm itself. An example relevant to this industry is the existence of labour unions which help place wage rates above competitive market value.
