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The promotion of quality of life is becoming ever more important in a scenario of regional, national and even international competition among cities, triggered by globalization. Public sites, and green spaces in particular, which are available in varying extent in all urban areas, can bring important benefits to urban vitality and, as a consequence, to quality of life. However, cities are intricate entities and measuring their success in converting the potential for public green space usage into increased quality of life is a difficult task. In order to contribute to the objective of assessing the potential for public green space use, and its consequences on urban vitality, we applied the Data Envelopment Analysis technique to assess a total of 174 European cities. The results detect the best performing cities, and for the cities considered inefficient, a set of benchmarks is identified, whose best practices can be copied to support efforts of performance improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Small and regional airports frequently suffer from limited traffic given minimum fixed infrastructure requirements and insufficient revenues to cover their costs. The question is whether such airports could be structured, managed and possibly financially supported in order to survive efficiently. Efficient operations contribute to decreasing the financial dependency of airports on subsidies or the likelihood of foreclosure. This paper applies data envelopment analysis, assuming that the aeronautical output is exogenous, in order to estimate the relative efficiencies of a set of 85 European regional airports over the last decade. We estimate the potential savings and revenue opportunities to be in the order of 50% and 25% respectively because cost increases were in excess of any changes in demand over the timeframe. Using second stage regressions we examine the reasons for poor performance, which include discretionary variables such as the failure to search for commercial opportunities or to produce ground-handling and fueling activities in-house. We also note that belonging to an airport system reduces efficiency in the order of 5%. Finally, the break-even passenger throughput over the last decade more than doubled to 464 thousand, however airports behaving efficiently could have covered their annual operating budget with a mere 166 thousand passengers annually. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In the last decade, the use of public service obligations (PSO; regulation and/or subsidies) in air transport to European remoter regions has substantially increased. However, there is significant heterogeneity between different regions in Europe with respect to the provision of PSO operations which makes benchmarking of European PSO airlines and learning from best practices a worthwhile activity. Particularly during the current times of government austerity it is interesting to understand, whether individual PSO operators are efficiently run. As most of these services are supposed to be vital for the social and economic development of the relevant regions, it is decisive to examine factors (other than cease operation) that could improve this efficiency. This paper applies a two-stage DEA approach to measure the efficiency of 18 European PSO airlines over two fiscal years. We then use truncated regressions to determine the impact of specific details of the airlines and their 206 PSO contracts on efficiency. Our results suggest that ownership has no impact on the airlines efficiency. By contrast, the number of remaining months (before a PSO is due for renewal) on these contracts has a very significant positive and the average stage length a negative impact on the efficiency of the associated airlines. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Earlier studies on the association between health systems' economic performance and public satisfaction were based on between-countries comparisons. This approach can be challenged as it ignores the fact that subjective measures like 'satisfaction' might be relative. Cohort analysis is a way of dealing with this issue as it focuses on within-countries comparisons. The association between change in satisfaction with health care systems and change in economic performance, determined by an output-orientated constant returns to scale DEA Malmquist model over the period 1995 to 2000/2002 using OECD data, is explored. The results show that a health care systems' economic performance is not associated with public satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]