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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2005.06.010 Byline: Cinzia Daraio (a), Leopold Simar (b) Keywords: Economies of scale; Mutual funds; Nonparametric frontier; Portfolio analysis; Robust estimation Abstract: The topic of the measurement of mutual funds' performance is receiving an increasing interest both from an applied and a theoretical perspective. Beside the traditional financial literature, a growing body of studies has started to apply the tools of frontier analysis for benchmarking comparisons in portfolio analysis. Our paper contributes to this literature proposing a robust nonparametric approach for analysing mutual funds. It is based on the concept of order-m frontier [Cazals, C., Florens, J.P., Simar, L., 2002. Nonparametric frontier estimation: A robust approach. Journal of Econometrics 106, 1-25] and on a probabilistic approach [Daraio, C., Simar, L., 2005. Introducing environmental variables in nonparametric frontier models: A probabilistic approach. Journal of Productivity Analysis 24 (1), 93-121] to find out the factors explaining mutual funds' performance. Within this framework, a decomposition of conditional efficiency is proposed, and its usefulness for economic interpretation analysed. Our approach is illustrated by using US mutual funds data, grouped for category by objective. Economies of scale, slacks and market risks are investigated. A comparison of traditional, nonparametric and robust performance measures is also offered. Author Affiliation: (a) Institute for Informatics and Telematics, IIT-CNR and Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Via G. Moruzzi,1, I-56100 Pisa, Italy (b) Institut de Statistique, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium Article History: Received 9 April 2004; Accepted 9 June 2005 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This paper has been presented during a seminar at the Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, University of Verona, the 23 February 2004.

• We analyse the link between the rankings and financial resources of top universities. • We propose a model to predict a university's ranking from its financial resources. • The predictive model is available online for policy making. • We analyse efficiency in resource utilisation compared with ranking position. • We discuss the importance of different accounting systems for comparison. This study investigates the relationship between university financial resources, applied accounting systems, and the place of a university in the Shanghai Ranking. We find a strong relationship between the financial resources under the control of a world-class university and the position of that university in the highest tier of the global ranking. We propose a model (available online) to predict a university's tier in the ranking through the financial resources it employs. A critical condition for making a university a world-class university could be to provide it with a sufficiently high level of financial resources, and its efficiency could play an important leverage role. In view of the results, policymakers are challenged with a drastic choice: to increase international competition among universities, it is necessary to concentrate a huge amount of resources on a few universities that are already in the ranking. In contrast, the policy of the proportional distribution of resources does not affect international competition and may be inefficient. Furthermore, financial data are not easy to gather homogeneously for universities across countries, due to the existence of different national accounting systems. Finally, we discuss several critical issues associated with the measurement of specific accounting data of universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the effect of competition on technical efficiency of Italian airports by applying a novel conditional nonparametric frontier analysis for the first time to the airport industry. We find that competition affects mostly the frontier of best performers, whilst airports that are lagging behind are less influenced. A novel two stage approach shows that, on average, competition has a negative impact on technical efficiency. We estimate a measure of pure efficiency , whitened from the main effect of the competition, whose distribution has a bi-modal shape, indicating the existence of two differently managed groups of airports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate economies of scale and specialization of European universities. The proposed approach builds on the notion that university production is a multi-input multi-output process different than standard production activity. The analyses are based on an interesting database which integrates the main European universities data on inputs and outputs with bibliometric data on publications, impact and collaborations. We pursue a cross-country perspective; we include subject mix and introduce a robust modeling of production trade-offs. Finally we test the statistical significance of scale and specialization and find that they both have a significant impact on the efficiency of the Humboldt model. Nevertheless, confirming previous findings, specialization has not a significant impact on the efficiency of the research model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By modeling research systems as complex systems we generalize similarity measures used in the literature during the last two decades. We propose to use the mathematical tools developed within the spin-glasses literature to evaluate similarity within systems and between systems in a unified manner. Our measure is based on the 'overlap' of disciplinary profiles of a set of research systems and can readily be integrated in the framework of traditional bibliometric profile analysis. The investigation of the distribution of the overlaps provides useful insights on the dynamics of the general system, that is whether it converges toward a unique disciplinary structure or to a differentiated pattern. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach by investigating the dynamics of disciplinary profiles of European countries from 1996 to 2011. We analyze several bibliometric indicators (including publications and citations) of European countries in the 27 Scopus subject categories. We compare the disciplinary profiles of European countries (i) among them; (ii) with respect to the European standard; and (iii) to the World reference. We find that there is a convergence toward a unique European disciplinary profile of the scientific production even if large differences in the scientific profiles still remain. The investigation of the dynamics by year shows that developing countries are converging toward the European model while some developed countries are departing from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2000s, Italy liberalized its electricity and natural gas markets, and in 2016, it separated retail activities from other activities within these markets. Such differentiation is unique within Europe. Italy is an ideal case for investigating which operational factors may increase profit margins among electricity and gas retailers. The present analysis analyzes 120 retail operators in the Italian electricity and gas markets in 2020, using two models to assess their cost and commercial efficiencies in achieving high direct margin (defined as the difference between revenues and raw materials cost). The findings show a positive effect of size on efficiency. • We analyze the Italian electricity and natural gas retail market in 2020. • We develop two benchmarking models to investigate cost and commercial efficiencies. • We analyze which features bring advantages in achieving high margins to Italian retailers. • We find evidence of economies of scale. • A demand aggregator could provide high margins for small operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European governments increasingly employ competitive university funding to improve performance in higher education. The framework that is developed in this paper suggests a donor-specific trade-off between fostering best performing universities and increasing university efficiency when introducing competitive funding in the university sector. We test this assertion based on a university-level panel dataset across eight European countries from 1994–2006. Estimating a simultaneous two-stage Stochastic Frontier Approach, we find that international public funds decrease the productivity of the best performing universities, which suggests a non-negligible effect because of the administrative burden induced by competitive funding. However, the competition for international public funds also disciplines universities as evidenced by a positive impact on efficiency. Conversely, tuition fees enhance the productivity of the best performing universities but increase the spread of universities with lower productivity, which suggests a strong sorting effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]