The performance of local tax offices of Norway is studied over a three-year period
applying Data Envelopment Efficiency analysis and a Malmquist productivity index.
The estimates are bias-corrected using a bootstrap approach recently developed for
DEA models. The results show that bias correction and the construction of confidence
intervals give a quite different picture without bootstrapping. A set of best
practice offices is identified for future work on finding explanations for good
performance. The productivity development of individual offices is classified into
the four categories: productivity improving cost increase, productivity improving
cost savings, productivity decreasing cost savings and productivity decreasing cost increase.
Banker, R. D.
(1993),
‘Maximum likelihood, consistency and data envelopment analysis: a
statistical foundation,’Management Science, 39(10), pp.
1265-1273
.
2.
Banker, R. D.
,
Charnes, A.
and
Cooper, W. W.
(1984),
‘Some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies’
, Management Science, 30, pp.
1078-1092
.
3.
Bird, S. M.
,
Cox, Sir D.
,
Farewell, V. T.
,
Goldstein, H.
,
Holt, T.
and
Smith, P. C.
(2005),
‘Performance indicators: good, bad, and ugly,’Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 168 (Part
1), pp.
1-27
.
4.
Caves, D. W.
,
Christensen, L. R.
and
Diewert, E.
(1982),
‘The economic theory of index numbers and the measurement of
input, output, and productivity,’Econometrica, 50(6), pp.
1393-1414
.
5.
Charnes, A.
,
Cooper, W. W.
and
Rhodes, E.
(1978),
‘Measuring the efficiency of decision making units’
, European Journal of Operational Research,
2(6), pp.
429-444
.
6.
Edvardsen, D.F. (2004), ‘Four essays on the measurement of
productive efficiency’, Ph.D. thesis, Department of Economics, School of
Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University.
7.
Edvardsen, D. F.
,
Førsund, F. R.
and
Kittelsen, S. A. C.
(2003), ‘Far out or alone in the crowd:
classification of self-evaluators in DEA’, Working paper 2003:7
from the Health Economics research program,
University of Oslo
.
8.
Efron, B.
(1979),
‘Bootstrap methods: another look at the jackknife’
, Annals of Statistics, 7, pp.
1-6
.
9.
Farrell, M. J.
(1957),
‘The measurement of productive efficiency,’Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 120
(III), pp.
253-281
.
10.
Førsund, F. R.
and
Hjalmarsson, L.
(1974),
‘On the measurement of the productive efficiency’
, Swedish Journal of Economics, 76, pp.
141-154
.
11.
Førsund, F. R.
and
Hjalmarsson, L.
(1979),
‘Generalised Farrell measures of efficiency: an application to
milk processing in Swedish dairy plants’
, Economic Journal, 89, pp.
294-315
.
12.
Førsund, F. R.
and
Hjalmarsson, L.
(2004),
‘Are all scales optimal in DEA? Theory and empirical evidence’
, Journal of Productivity Analysis,
21(1), pp.
25-48
.
13.
Førsund, F. R.
and
Kalhagen, K. O.
(1999), ‘Efficiency and productivity of
Norwegian colleges’, in
Westermann, G.
(ed.), Data Envelopment Analysis in the Service Sector,
Wiesbaden, Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag
, pp. 269-308.
14.
Førsund, F. R.
,
Kittelsen, S. A. C.
and
Lindseth, F.
(2005), ‘Efficiency and productivity of Norwegian
tax offices’, Memorandum 29/2005 from the Department of
Economics,
University of Oslo
.
15.
Frisch, R.
(1965), Theory of Production,
Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company
.
16.
Moesen, W.
and
Persoons, A.
(2002),
‘Measuring and explaining the productive efficiency of tax
offices: a non-parametric best-practice frontier approach’
, Tijdschrift voor Economie en ManagementXLVII(3), pp.
399-416
.
17.
Silverman, B. W.
(1986), Density Estimation for Statistics and Data
Analysis,
Chapman and Hall
.
18.
Simar, L.
and
Wilson, P. W.
(1998),
‘Sensitivity analysis of efficiency scores: how to bootstrap in
nonparametric frontier models’
, Management Science, 44, pp.
49-61
.
19.
Simar, L.
and
Wilson, P. W.
(1999),
‘Estimating and bootstrapping Malmquist indices’
, European Journal of Operations Research,
115(3), pp.
459-471
.
20.
Simar, L.
and
Wilson, P. W.
(2000),
‘Statistical inference in nonparametric frontier models: the
state of the art’
, Journal of Productivity Analysis, 13, pp.
49-78
.
21.
Simar, L.
and
Wilson, P. W.
(2002),
‘Nonparametric tests of returns to scale’
, European Journal of Operations Research, 139, pp.
115-132
.
22.
Simar, L.
and
Wilson, P. W.
(2005),
‘Estimation and inference in two-stage, semi-parametric models of
production processes’
, Journal of Econometrics (forthcoming).
23.
Torgersen, A. M.
,
Førsund, F. R.
and
Kittelsen, S. A. C.
(1996),
‘Slack-adjusted efficiency measures and ranking of efficient units,’Journal of Productivity Analysis, 7, pp.
379-439
.
