The Unmet Medical Demand among China’s Urban Residents

Our work aimed to build a reasonable proxy for unmet medical demands of China’s urban residents. We combined health demand modeling and stochastic frontier analysis to produce a frontier medical demand function, which allowed us to disentangle unmet medical demands from the unobservable effects. We estimated unmet medical demands by using China’s provincial dataset that covered 2005–2018. Our estimates showed that unmet medical demand at the national level was 12.6% in 2018, and regions with high medical prices confronted more unmet medical demands than regions with moderate or low medical prices during 2005–2018. Furthermore, medical prices and education were the main factors that affected unmet medical demand; therefore, policy making should pay more attention to reducing medical costs and promoting health education.

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Comparison of Cambodian Rice Production Technical Efficiency at National and Household Level

10.20944/preprints201709.0161.v1 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sokvibol Kea ◽

Hua Li ◽

Linvolak Pich

Keyword(s):

Technical Efficiency ◽

Capital Investment ◽

Stochastic Frontier Analysis ◽

National Level ◽

Stochastic Frontier ◽

Rice Production ◽

Frontier Analysis ◽

Household Level ◽

The Government ◽

National Analysis

Rice is the most important food crop in Cambodia and its production is the most organized food production system in the country. The main objective of this study is to measure technical efficiency (TE) of Cambodian rice production and also trying to identify core influencing factors of rice TE at both national and household level, for explaining the possibilities of increasing productivity and profitability of rice, by using translog production function through Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) model. Four-years dataset (2012-2015) generated from the government documents was utilized for the national analysis, while at household-level, the primary three-years data (2013-2015) collected from 301 rice farmers in three selected districts of Battambang province by structured questionnaires was applied. The results indicate that level of rice output varied according to the different level of capital investment in agricultural machineries, total actual harvested area, and technically fertilizers application within provinces, while level of household rice output varied according to the differences in efficiency of production processes, techniques, total annual harvested land, and technically application of fertilizers and pesticides of farmers. The overall mean TE was estimated at 78.4% (national-level) and 34% (household-level), indicates that rice output has the potential of being increased further by 21.6% (national production) and 66% (household) at the same level of inputs and technology if farmers had been technically efficient. The TE also recorded -7% decreasing rate at the national-level and -14.3% at household-level due to highly affected of natural disasters and various environmental and social factors during the study periods.

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Technical Efficiency of Traditional Village Chicken Production in Africa: Entry Points for Sustainable Transformation and Improved Livelihood

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13158539 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (15) ◽

pp. 8539

Author(s):

Mulugeta Y. Birhanu ◽

Tesfahun Alemayehu ◽

Jasmine E. Bruno ◽

Fasil Getachew Kebede ◽

Emmanuel Babafunso Sonaiya ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Technical Efficiency ◽

Production System ◽

Stochastic Frontier Analysis ◽

National Level ◽

Stochastic Frontier ◽

Integrated Approach ◽

Flock Size ◽

Village Chicken ◽

Frontier Analysis ◽

Entry Points

Increasing poultry product consumption trends have attracted researchers and development practitioners to look for interventions that transform the low-input low-output-based village chicken production to a high yielding production system. However, due to the intricate nature of the production system, there is a dearth of evidence that helps design comprehensive interventions at the smallholder level. Using national-level representative data collected from 3555 village chicken producers in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, this study examines the technical efficiency of village chicken production and investigates the main factors that explain the level of inefficiency. We applied a stochastic frontier analysis to simultaneously quantify the level of technical efficiency and identify factors associated with heterogeneity in inefficiency. We found that the level of technical efficiency is extremely low in the three countries, suggesting enormous opportunities to enhance productivity using available resources. The heterogeneity in technical efficiency is strongly associated with producers’ experience in breed improvements and flock management, limited technical knowledge and skills, limited access to institutions and markets, smaller flock size, gender disparities, and household livelihood orientation. We argue the need to adopt an integrated approach to enhance village producers’ productivity and transform the traditional subsistence-based production system into a commercially oriented semi-intensive production system.

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National versus Local Production

Public Finance Review ◽

10.1177/1091142117692874 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 46 (6) ◽

pp. 926-948

Author(s):

William P. McAndrew

Keyword(s):

Fiscal Federalism ◽

Economies Of Scale ◽

Stochastic Frontier Analysis ◽

Local Level ◽

National Level ◽

Stochastic Frontier ◽

Unique Contribution ◽

Frontier Analysis ◽

National Institute Of Justice ◽

Using Data

Public finance and public choice economists have contrasting views on the determinants of public sector size. This article makes a unique contribution to this literature by exploring an integer count of output, rather than the commonly used dollar approximation of output, using data that are homogeneous across the levels of government, where a unit of observation is not a governing body, but rather a service provider. Specifically, this article explores the counteracting effects of fiscal federalism and economies of scale using data from the National Institute of Justice with an application of data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis. I determine that provision of forensic science services at the national level rather than local level does not lead to higher relative cost, and national production may be relatively more efficient. In general, however, neither locally nor nationally operated laboratories are operating at an efficient scale, a potential argument for privatization, insourcing, or outsourcing.

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