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This article introduces the Bayesian structural time series (BSTS) as a potential tool for forecasting in the tourism literature. Using data on Australian tourist arrivals in New Zealand, the forecasting accuracy of the estimated model is evaluated using a fixed partitioning approach. The MAPE of the fitted model is 3.11 per cent for the validation stage and 2.75 per cent for the test stage. The BSTS outperforms two other competing models both in the validation and test stage. In addition to forecasting, BSTS also estimates the trend, trend slope, and seasonality that change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current literature on public hospital efficiency in Australia only reveals information on how efficient public hospitals are in the short run. The presence of persistent technical inefficiency arising from long‐term systemic problems and government‐related regulatory constraints does not appear to have been addressed. Using the aggregated hospital panel data for the period 2002–2018 on eight Australian states and territories, this study incorporates the measure of both transient and persistent technical inefficiency while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity to obtain a more precise measure of technical efficiency. This study's findings estimate the national average transient efficiency to be 0.96. In contrast, the national average persistent efficiency is estimated to be 0.83. Further, Queensland (0.67), Victoria (0.66) and New South Wales (0.60) posted the lowest overall technical efficiency driven by the high level of persistent inefficiency. On the other hand, Northern Territory (0.96), Australian Capital Territory (0.95) and Tasmania (0.95) are the top performers. This study's findings call on policy‐makers and regulators to disclose hospital‐level data to researchers to gain further insight into the causes of persistence in inefficiency, especially among bigger states, which will help formulate more targeted policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inefficiency persistence is often ignored in empirical studies that assess school efficiency levels. Using longitudinal data on state and state‐dependent private schools from 62 New Zealand territories, a dynamic random‐effect stochastic frontier model is employed to obtain the magnitude of inefficiency persistence along with the measure of cost efficiency estimates. The results show that a naive non‐dynamic model incorrectly shows New Zealand schools to be highly cost‐efficient in short run. However, the dynamic model exposes the fact that New Zealand state schools face high persistence in cost inefficiency, which is limiting their ability to provide cost‐efficient schooling in long run. Furthermore, an estimated 9% of the annual state school funding is lost due to the persistence in cost inefficiency. The findings of this study indicate that cost inefficiency among New Zealand schools appears to be long run, requiring significant policy change from the national government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]