In this paper, we study the so-called “wrong skewness” anomaly in Stochastic Frontiers (SF), which consists in the observed difference between the expected and estimated sign of the asymmetry of the composite error. We propose a more general and flexible specification of the SF model,...

In this note, we provide the mathematical details of the calculation of the Fisher information matrix when the data involve type I right censored observations from a Dagum distribution.

In this note, we provide the mathematical tools for computing the entries of the Fisher information matrix in case of the observations are doubly censored from a Dagum distribution.

In this paper we study the bivariate Rodriguez-Burr III distribution from a reliability point of view. In particular, we derive various functions used in reliability theory of conditional distributions, viz hazard rate, reversed hazard rate, mean residual life and mean reversed residual life...

Are Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Research & Development (R&D) productive inputs or efficiency determinants? This is the topic of this paper which analyses a sample of 2691 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2007-2009. The empirical setting is based on a production...

The empirical literature on trade imbalances does not make currency tensions easy to understand, because tensions across traders originate from the assumption that export-price elasticity is high. This paper provides new evidence by analysing the export-behaviour of China, France, Germany,...

Efficiency wages theories argue that the threat of firing, coupled with a high unemployment rate, is a mechanism that discourages employee shirking in asymmetric information contexts. Our empirical analysis aims to verify the role of unemployment as a worker discipline device, considering the...

Using Total Factor Productivity (TFP) as a measure of corporate performance, this study compares the performance of owner management to that of firms run by professional managers over the period 2004-2006. We consider the influence of owner management for the sample as a whole and for subgroups...

In this paper, using data from Italian local level governments for the years 1985- 2008, we investigate whether political competition affects the quality of elected politicians, as measured by using some ex-ante characteristics such as educational level and type of job held. We handle...