Richard Grabowski

Technical, Scale, and Allocative Efficiencies in U.S. Banking: An Empirical Investigation

A nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall, technical, pure technical, allocative, and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks. The sample was drawn from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation tapes on the Reports of Condition and Reports of Income (Call Reports) for the year 1986. The results indicated a low level of overall efficiency. The main source of inefficiency was technical in nature, rather than allocative. Separate efficiency frontiers were constructed to test the effect of branching. However, the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and non-branching banks were not found to be different.

The technical efficiency of US banks

Abstract The paper uses a non-parametric frontier approach to measure the technical efficiency of a sample of U.S. banks. The results indicate that these banks could have produced the same level of output with only 70% of the inputs actually used. In addition, most of this inefficiency is due to pure technical inefficiency (wasting inputs) rather than scale inefficiency (operating at non-constant returns to scale). Finally, regression analysis indicates that the technical efficiency of the banks is positively related to size, negatively related to product diversity, and not at all related to the extent to which branch banking is allowed.

Does education at all levels cause growth? India, a case study

This paper seeks to examine the impact of education on income growth in India for the time period 1966–1996. Education is broken down into the categories of primary, secondary, and tertiary. Time series techniques are used to determine whether education, for each category, has a causal impact on growth. Furthermore, the education variables are also broken down by gender and analysis is carried out to determine whether the causal results vary by gender. The results indicate that primary education has a strong causal impact on growth, with more limited evidence of such an impact for secondary education. Finally, the evidence is quite compelling that it is female education at all levels, that has potential for generating economic growth.

Organizational forms in banking: An empirical investigation of cost efficiency

Abstract This paper compares the relative performance of bank holding company and branch banking organizational forms. Performance is measured by constructing nonparametric frontiers from which measures of overall, allocative, technical, pure technical and scale efficiency can be derived. The results indicate that branch banking is a more efficient organizational form than the bank holding company.

How effective is public health expenditure in improving overall health? A cross-country analysis

The primary emphasis of this paper is on seeking some justification for the worldwide phenomenon of increasing government involvement in health–care. The disability–adjusted–health–expectancy (DALE) rankings of countries in the World Health Report, 2000, ranked wealthier countries, with a typically large public sector involvement in health–care, higher on the list. Contrary to the possible implications for this ranking, this paper finds that the comparatively higher DALE in wealthier countries is not a result of greater public health expenditures. In the middle income and less developed countries, however, there is some evidence of effective public involvement in health–care.

THE TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF ILLINOIS GRAIN FARMS: AN APPLICATION OF A RAY-HOMOTHETIC PRODUCTION FUNCTION

The purpose of this paper is to measure the extent of technical inefficiency among a sample of Illinois grain farms using the corrected ordinary least squares method. Instead of assuming a Cobb-Douglas production function, a linear form of the ray-homothetic is used. The results show a significant amount of technical inefficiency among all the farms in the sample, but with large farms being less technically inefficient than small farms.

The successful developmental state: Where does it come from?

Abstract In this paper it is taken for granted that the state has played an important role in the industrialization of East Asia. Accepting this, the purpose of the paper is to determine why government policy was so effective in these countries while failing, to a great extent, in much of the rest of the developing world. The key seems to reside in the ability of the state to discipline firms which in turn is dependent upon the credibility of government policy. The latter depends on a large number of variables. This paper argues that a crucial factor is the size of the domestic market for manufactured goods

Capital stock estimates for major sectors and disaggregated manufacturing in selected OECD countries

Different countries use different methods of estimating net capital stock at the aggregated as well as at the disaggregated levels. While analysing cross-country data, for consistency it is important that capital stock series be estimated by the same method across all the countries in the model. Out of this necessity, this paper produces consistent (in the sense that the same method is used across all countries) estimates of yearly net capital stock from 1970 to 1992 for selected major sectors and disaggregated manufacturing sectors in 15 OECD countries, namely: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. The major sectors considered are: agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing; communications; construction; finance, insurance and real estate; government service providers; mining and quarrying; retail, wholesale and hospitality industry; transportation and storage, and total manufacturing. The disaggregated sectors considered are: food industries, beverage and tobacco; textile, apparel and leather; wood products and furniture; paper, printing and publishing; chemical products; non-metallic mineral products; basic metal industries; fabricated metal products, and other manufacturing sectors.

Exports, investment, efficiency and economic growth in LDC: an empirical investigation

This study seeks to analyse the relationship between exports and growth for 19 less-developed countries. It utilizes multivariate causality analysis based on the error correction model to address several important hypotheses. The results indicate that when exports have a causal influence in the development process that in general this is the result of their effect on both efficiency and accumulation. In addition, improvements in output and capital accumulation in an economy seem to have just as much of an influence on exports as exports have on output and capital accumulation. Finally, the growth process in East Asia seems to be quite different from that in Southeast Asia.

Education and long-run development in Japan

Abstract This paper’s main goal is to determine the relationship between various types or levels of education and economic growth in Japan in both the pre- and postwar periods. The data utilized represents average years of schooling at the primary, secondary, tertiary, and vocational educational levels. The results indicate that primary schooling is causal with respect to growth in both the pre- and postwar period. Secondary and tertiary education have a causal impact on growth in the postwar period with the evidence strongly supporting the multiple channels via which tertiary education influenced the postwar Japanese economy. Vocational education does not seem to have had a direct effect on growth in either period. There is evidence of some causal feedback from economic growth to education at all levels as well as for vocational education in both the prewar and postwar periods.