Abstract
This paper uses Two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (“TS DEA”) and Stochastic Frontier models (“SF models”) to compare the efficiency performance of national postal operators. It applies TS DEA and SF methods to the same postal operator dataset, and compares their efficiency rankings and the way they account for the effect of exogenous variables. Section 2 contains a literature review. Section 3 applies two-stage DEA with bootstrapped Tobit regression and SF models to the database used in Pierleoni and Gori (2013). Section 4 concludes. The critical aspect of this paper is limited data availability (77 observations, seven operators for 11 years). This calls for caution in interpreting the results; there is a need for a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis to fully grasp differences in performance between postal operators.
This paper represents the view of the authors and not necessarily of the affiliated institutions.
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Notes
- 1.
We use the following software: DEA Frontier for DEA and Limdep version 10 for the second stage in TS DEA and for SF.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
A flexible rate would distort the data on costs by negatively impacting the operators of countries which have experienced devaluation and positively impacting those operating in currencies with higher exchange rates.
- 5.
As suggested by Banker and Natarajan (2004) and Barnum et al. (2008), it would be useful for further research to apply a significance test to the efficiency scores obtained by the simple and two stage DEA presented in Table 2. This would allow analysing another interesting topic, that is, the relevance of the related ranks.
- 6.
A specification with the mean of the inefficiency term as a function of exogenous determinants did not lead to satisfactory results.
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Meschi, M., Pierleoni, M.R., Gori, S. (2015). Advanced Semi-parametric and Parametric Methods to Assess Efficiency in the Postal Sector. In: Crew, M., Brennan, T. (eds) Postal and Delivery Innovation in the Digital Economy. Topics in Regulatory Economics and Policy, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12874-0_16
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