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The Dutch healthcare insurance reform in 2006 replaced the dual system of public and private insurance with a single compulsory health insurance scheme, in which insurance providers compete for customers in a free market. This paper investigates whether competition among healthcare insurers has indeed increased and their efficiency has improved. We measure competition directly from either shifts in market shares, or developments in profits, using Dutch regulatory data. We find that a structural break occurs after the reform: competition is significantly higher after 2006 than before. This holds both for the analysis based on shifts in market shares and that based on profits. Several robustness tests confirm this outcome. Hence, the reform has had a significant impact. Nevertheless, we find that the health insurance sector is still less competitive than financial sectors such as banking and life insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, South Korea has prioritized higher education to boost knowledge-based economic development. This study investigates Korean private universities' scale and scope economies using several input/output variables and employs them using a stochastic frontier analysis of the input distance function. As our dataset does not comprise price-based information, the duality approach between the cost and input distance functions enables us to use our data directly to test ray- and product-specific scale and scope economies. Our dataset comprises university-level data for 57 private universities from 2011 to 2016. The findings reveal ray-scale and global-scope economies for the sampled universities. Based on these empirical results, we provide several suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuously increasing bank sizes have received much attention from both policymakers and researchers. We present new estimates of returns to scale in cost, revenue, and profit for European banks over 2000–2020 based on nonparametric, local‐linear methods. We find that most banks faced increasing returns to scale in cost and decreasing returns to scale in revenue and profit across years, across European countries, and across bank size quartiles. Our results suggest that restricting the size of banks may not bring too much loss of revenue and profit, but could prevent European banks from exploiting increasing returns to scale in cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of size on the risk-adjusted fund performance of US-publicly listed index-tracking passive equity exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Using panel quantile and Fama–MacBeth cross-sectional regression approaches, we determine that the asset-based size growth is informative in the risk-return trade-offs of ETFs, and that these ETFs do not follow a constant return-to-scale. The quantile regression results show that the rate of return-to-scale diminishes as the ETFs size increases and becomes negative for the most significant fund group. The size has a considerably substantial negative impact on the highest-performing clusters of ETFs, suggesting that the diseconomies of scale found in conventional active mutual funds affect the ETFs. The results align with Indro et al. (Financ Anal J 55: 74–87, 1999) findings of mutual funds that there are diminishing marginal returns to information acquisition and trading, and the marginal returns become negative when the fund exceeds its optimal size. This study provides further insights and understanding of the performance and size relationship of index-tracking passive equity ETFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural is the property of Sociedade Brasileira de Economia e Sociologia Rural and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research studies the presence or not of scale economies in the Paraguayan banking sec tor during the period 2016-2020. The gap in efficiency is presented as an issue that could be approached by taking advantage of economies of scale in the sector. The general objective is to determine the existence of scale economies in the banking sector of Paraguay, period 2016-2020, with secondary research design carried out at first. Then, laboratory research is used, in which it is estimated a panel data model, reaching the correlational level. In the study it is applied the analytical-synthetic method, with a mixed research approach. For the estimation, a translog function is used and the variables are costs, products and bank prices. The findings of the re search allow to verify that there are scale economies in the Paraguayan banking sector during 2016-2020, and that small banks have greater expansion capacity than large banks. The banking sector has growth potential to achieve efficiency by increasing the volume of banking products offered. It is concluded that it is possible to expand access to financial services, due to the lower unit costs that economies of scale represent, which are also translated into more affordable prices for the population.

In this article, "optimal city size" is examined in terms of democracy and participation. Democracy and participation are not possible in overcrowded cities. For these reasons, the relationship between optimal city size and democracy has been considered. The study is based on a literature review and discussion of optimal city size is limited to democracy and participation. On the determined subject, Prof.Dr. Ruşen Keleş's thoughts were also evaluated. Because Keleş is a pioneering scientist who shaped urban science in Turkey and his views are important. In the study, it has been determined that cities should not be too big for democracy and participation to take place. For this reason, it has been concluded that while determining the optimal city size, not only economic but also democracy and participation opportunities should be considered. In this regard, Prof. Ruşen Keleş is of the same opinion. According to the study, the size of the metropolitan cities of our country restricts democracy and participation opportunities. The size of metropolitan cities destroys democracy and participation opportunities. It has been concluded that considering democracy and participation opportunities in urbanization policies is important in terms of increasing the quality of urban life in our country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A voluminous empirical literature has examined scale economies in public organisations, particularly in local government. By contrast, little effort has been directed at the empirical investigation of economies of scale in higher education administration, including in Australian universities. To address this gap in the empirical literature, this paper examines administrative scale economies and task density in Australian public universities for the period 2009/10–2018/19 using a pooled data framework. We find that there are administrative scale economies in Australian universities and that task density is a key determinant of administrative intensity. In addition, regional universities exhibit a higher level of administrative intensity than their metropolitan counterparts. We conclude by canvassing some of the main public policy implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Size effects such as economies of scale and economies of scope can be utilised to achieve cost savings in local government systems. Numerous municipal reform policies in Australia and elsewhere have historically been premised on size effects. In this paper, we investigate whether an interaction effect exists between scale economies and scope economies in New South Wales local government using a 2011 sample of local councils. We estimate the effects of scale and specialisation on efficiency by way of a multiple regression, using a novel approach to measure specialisation. We find empirical evidence that indicates economies of scale and economies of scope are both likely to be present across a broad range of scales. However, we find no evidence of any interaction effect between scale and scope economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The costs and benefits of subsidized microfinance are still controversial. We utilize a cost-function estimation approach that accounts for the double bottom line (social and financial) of microfinance institutions (MFIs) to evaluate how subsidies affect both cost efficiency and risk of mission drift. We control for endogenous self-selection into the business models of credit-only versus credit-plus-deposit. Our results suggest that MFIs that both supply loans and collect deposits need no subsidies to be cost-efficient. In addition, subsidies to these MFIs are associated with an increase in deposit size, which might hurt the most disadvantaged depositors. In sum, combining subsidized funds from donors with deposits increases the risk of mission drift, and can therefore be socially undesirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments worldwide have issued massive amounts of debt to inject fiscal stimulus during the COVID‐19 pandemic. This paper analyzes fiscal responses to an epidemic, in which interactions at work increase the risk of disease and mortality. Fiscal policies, which are designed to borrow against the future and provide transfers to individuals suffering economic hardship, can facilitate consumption smoothing while reduce hours worked and hence mitigate infections. We examine the optimal fiscal policy and characterize the condition under which fiscal policy improves social welfare. We then extend the model analyzing the static and dynamic pecuniary externalities under scale economies—the decrease in labor supply during the epidemic lowers the contemporaneous average wage rate while enhances the post‐epidemic workforce health and productivity. We suggest that fiscal policy may not work effectively unless the government coordinates working time, and the optimal size of public debt is affected by production technology and disease severity and transmissibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investment costs of pension funds are crucial for their returns. Consolidation in the pension fund market proceeds continuously, often with cost savings as the main argument. Unused economies of scale in pension fund investment costs, however, have declined over the years to values close to zero, except for very small pension funds. This paper investigates investment economies of scale in the Netherlands and pays special attention to the non-linear relationship between investment costs and sizes of pension funds. Furthermore, investment cost margins are disaggregated into three cost types and into six asset categories. Performance fees are in particular paid for complex asset categories held by large pension funds. They reduce the traditional-scale economy results for the entire portfolio. Cost savings by consolidation is still possible but is very limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vast empirical literature has investigated economies of scale in local service provision, especially in water and waste management. By contrast, the question of scale economies in local government administration has attracted much less attention, especially in Australian local government. To address this gap in the Australian empirical literature, we investigated administrative scale economies in the New South Wales (NSW) local government system for rural, regional, and urban local authorities over the period 2014/15 to 2017/18. We find that total municipal population and municipal staff exhibit a U‐shaped relationship with the total administration costs of urban councils in NSW. However, we find no economies of scale for administrative intensity in rural and regional councils in NSW. Related Articles: Ertas, Nevbahar. 2015. "Policy Narratives and Public Opinion Concerning Charter Schools." Politics & Policy 43(3): 426–51. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12120/full. Wallis, Joe, Tor Brodtkorb, Brian Dollery, and Muiris MacCarthaigh. 2017. "Local Government Reform: Expressed Leadership Identities of Commissioners in Inquiries Proposing Municipal Mergers in Northern Ireland and New South Wales." Politics & Policy 45(2): 285–308. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12199. Miragliotta, Narelle, Sarah Murray, and Martin Drum. 2021. "Values, Partisan Interest, and the Voting Age: Lessons from Australia." Politics & Policy 49(5): 1192–215. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12413. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present model revisits the issue of unit and ad valorem taxes in a model of monopolistic competition. It is shown that if the assumption of full employment is relaxed, then taxation can increase employment conditionally when the elasticity of substitution among varieties is low. Moreover, with the same level of initial unemployment, ad valorem tax is better than unit tax in terms of employment, when the targeted tax revenue is relatively high and scale economies are strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates returns to density in the U.S. Railroad industry using a cost function with commodity-specific outputs and explores implications for differential pricing. We find that large density economies persist in the U.S. railroad industry, suggesting that marginal cost pricing would not come close to recovering railroad costs. Increased pricing freedom from deregulation has enabled railroads to retain relatively competitive shippers and has fostered substantial cost reductions and innovation. While there is room to improve rate relief processes for relatively captive shippers, policies that make broad changes limiting the extent of differential pricing allowed by railroads have the potential to reduce the ability of the industry to respond to market forces, limiting investment and innovation, and harming railroads and shippers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficiency and democracy are two crucial concepts during the provision of local goods and services in many developed and developing local government systems. Policy makers, quite often, appear to make delicate choices between these two rival elements. Turkey is no exception as there is always scarcity of financial sources and huge service expectations in the public, but at the same time there are growing demands for democracy. Turkey initiated a number of local reforms to reach an acceptable level of democracy and efficiency. Seeking for an optimum level has been continuing for the last 15 years. The amalgamation initiative and enlarging municipal scales have been an effective approach in these reform attempts. There is a quite contentious issue in delivering local goods and services to the public and providing democratic instances at the same time. Turkish provision of reforms has been echoed by many countries due to the tensions among economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. The study finds that prioritizing efficiency does not necessarily lead to diminishing democracy. The empirical evidence shows that these kinds of initiatives would be regarded as a journey for better delivery of services while being aware of democratic implications at local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard welfare comparisons between female-headed households (FHHs) and male-headed households (MHHs) have largely ignored two confounding factors: marital status (affecting access to assets and markets) and heterogeneity in household demographics (with bearing on economies of scale in consumption). Both influence welfare and are correlated with sex of headship. As judged by the usual per capita welfare measures, FHHs have lower poverty rates than MHHs in Africa. However, even a modest adjustment for economies of scale in consumption changes the poverty comparisons, with FHHs faring significantly worse overall in East, Central, and Southern Africa. Marital status also matters: the households of female heads are poorer than MHHs except when the female head is married. Taking the head's marital status and the household's demographics into account is critical to the association between female headship and welfare outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In highly competitive industries, many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) increasingly outsource production to reduce costs. We study an OEM's outsourcing decision between a third‐party supplier and a vertically integrated firm that manufactures in house and competes with the OEM in the consumer market (i.e., an integrated competitor). Our setting explicitly considers two important aspects of the sourcing decision. First, we capture the competition between the two sourcing alternatives through interdependent repeated bilateral wholesale‐price negotiations in which the negotiating parties' disagreement payoffs are endogenous. Specifically, in the negotiation between the OEM and either supplier, the negotiating parties' disagreement payoffs are given by the profits that would result if the OEM sourced from the other supplier. Second, we capture the economies of scale involved with production in that either supplier derives positive externalities from increasing his total production quantity. We show that, for given wholesale prices—counter to intuition—it is not optimal for the OEM to always choose the supplier offering the lower wholesale price. In the absence of either competition or economies of scale, the OEM always simply prefers the source with the lower wholesale price. However, in the presence of both economies of scale and competition in the focal market, the OEM may be better off sourcing from the third‐party supplier even at a higher wholesale price. When equilibrium wholesale prices are determined through simultaneous bilateral negotiations between the OEM and the two potential suppliers, sourcing from the integrated competitor might be more profitable when scale economies are strong and competition is weak. We investigate the robustness of our findings and find that our structural results continue to hold for several model relaxations and extensions. We also show that in the absence of restrictive capacity constraints, the OEM always prefers sourcing exclusively from one of the suppliers to dual sourcing. Our findings demonstrate the importance for managers to account for both the extent of scale economies and the competitive dynamics in the consumer market when deciding their supply mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is assumed that Marx focuses on profits that are to be realized in larger production that permits some surplus production. This understanding underpins the importance of increasing returns embedded in employment dynamics associated with larger employment bases. This organizational form not only permits increases in profits in production but also supports employment-based learning by doing-led new investment opportunities that maintain and increase such profits. The conception of profits changes from the employment dynamics-based one, to one that relies more on market power-based returns. Accordingly, the present paper argues that empirical analyses should not focus on a falling rate of profits as such: they should rather focus on what factors make clear the behaviour of the rate of profit, and clearly distinguish between the employment dynamics-based profits and the profits that relate more to the returns to higher fixed costs. JEL codes: B5, E11, O14, P17

This paper analyzes economic performances of cooperatives relative to other types of ownership in the US electric power industry. Specifically, the paper uses a panel data of electric utilities over 2001–2013 to analyze economic performances of cooperatives relative to for-profit firms and to investigate the sources of performance differences under a model of cost minimization. The results show that investor-owned utilities are more profitable than cooperatives, but there are no significant differences in physical productivity between investor-owned utilities and cooperatives. Independent power producers are more financially profitable and more physically productive than their counterparts. The results also support that although the industry exhibits substantial scale economies over a broad range of output, cooperatives are constrained to exploit the scale economies than other groups as it is limited by higher cost of financing. This suggests that while a small number of very large firms are not required for efficient production in the industry, mergers between cooperatives could provide substantial scale economies, as discussed in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 aimed to improve the financial stability of the banking industry. This reform was intended to reduce the too‐big‐to‐fail practices for very large banks. However, it might also affect the performance of relatively small asset size banks with different lending portfolios. Using the Call Report data from 2006 to 2016, evidence suggests that the Dodd‐Frank Act has affected the estimates of cost efficiency and returns to scale measures of both big banks and small agricultural banks. Results indicate that Dodd‐Frank Act has increased cost efficiency, discouraged mergers, and encouraged product specialization for banks above the $50 billion asset size. However, none of these results hold for the banks just above the $10 billion asset size. This appears to suggest that Dodd‐Frank Act has mainly affected the economic measures of those very big banks that are subject to the more stringent regulations. Nevertheless, Dodd‐Frank has reduced agricultural banks' cost efficiency and increased incentives for mergers. In addition, the Dodd‐Frank Act has dampened the incentives for product diversification in agricultural banking. Likewise, evidence exists that this act has slowed productivity growth, efficiency, and technological change in agricultural banks. Taken together, Dodd‐Frank reduced consolidations in very big banks that are subject to greater oversight but adversely affected U.S. agricultural lending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tiempo y Economía is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is common in business analyses to invoke different efficiencies generated by scale. Growth is associated with declining average costs/sales and rising profit margins. Factors cited include the relatively fixed nature of some costs, increased bargaining power, and network effects. We investigate how different cost lines evolve for a sample of U.S. firms after their IPO. To our surprise, costs/sales do not generally decline and margins do not increase, even during the early years when growth is highest. We observe similar results for other samples of domestic and overseas firms, both public and private. We explore possible explanations for our results and discuss implications, especially for cost allocation and financial projections. JEL Classifications: G30; M13; M21; M41. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Estimated a short-run cost function for urban rail transport (i.e. metro) operations • Used a unique panel dataset of 24 metro operations from across the globe. • Addressed various endogeneity challenges in such empirical analysis. • Found metro systems with high density of usage to be the most cost-efficient. • Provided new insights into existence of economies of scale in metro operations. There is considerable variation in the average cost of operations across urban rail transport (or metro) systems. Since metros are typically owned and operated by public authorities, there is a public interest case in understanding the key drivers of their operational costs. This paper estimates short-run cost functions for metro operations using a unique panel dataset from twenty-four metro systems around the world. We use a flexible translog specification and apply dynamic panel generalised method of moments (DPGMM) estimation to control for confounding from observed and unobserved characteristics of metro operations. Our empirical results show that metro systems with a high density of usage are the most cost-efficient. We also find that operational costs fall as metro size increases. These results have important implications for the economic appraisal of metro systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversy surrounds local government reform, particularly efforts directed at reducing the number of local authorities to secure economies of scale. We examine whether economies of scale exist in local government outlays by analysing the expenditure of 398 municipalities for the Brazilian state of Paraná using a 16-year panel dataset covering the period 2002–2017. We find evidence that municipal expenditure is characterised by substantial scale economies. However, given the strong correlation between population size and population density, it is important to ascertain whether the influence of population size on municipal expenditure is due to variations in population density or not. When local government areas are divided into sub-groups based on population density, evidence of scale economies remains with the majority of councils operating below optimal size. Municipal consolidations may thus lead to lower per capita expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Journal of Social Research / Turkiye Sosyal Arastirmalar Dergisi is the property of Turkish Journal of Social Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper provides the first empirical research on the intra-household distribution of resources and individual poverty levels in Brazil. A collective model for household behavior was estimated using cross-section microdata from the Brazilian Consumer Expenditure Survey. The findings show that the average share of household total expenditure is slightly larger for men than for women. The share of household resources accruing to children is in turn comparatively smaller. We also find that standard poverty indices overstate the incidence of child poverty. This study also provides suggestive evidence of sizeable scale economies of living together in the household which affects poverty measures. Poverty rates among adults are then smaller because parents are highly compensated by the economies of scale due to joint consumption. Our findings imply that intra-household resource allocation is crucial to the understanding of household members' material well-being and for the design of redistributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, the U.S. economy has witnessed a tremendous surge in the usage of electronic payment processing services and an increased importance of the firms that provide these services. In this paper, we estimate scale economies, scope economies, and technical change in the Federal Reserve's provision of payments processing from 1990 to 2000. We find considerable scale economies and evidence of some scope economies for the provision of automated clearinghouse, Fedwire, and Book-Entry services no matter whether we specify a separable quadratic or a translog cost function. In addition, we find that disembodied technical change also contributed to the overall reduction in costs throughout the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary and resource-based theories imply that firms in an industry with different resources and capabilities may differ in critical characteristics of their production functions, such as economies of scale. This paper measures these inter-firm differences in economies of scale and examines how they affect the subsequent evolution of the market share distribution in the money market mutual fund industry. The findings indicate that fund families with larger marginal benefits to increasing their scale do subsequently gain market share at the expense of their rivals, but that this effect diminishes as the fund family ages, perhaps as a consequence of imitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local authorities responsible for carrying out local services are separated by their categorisations by law in Turkey. The most comprehensive type of local administration with responsibilities and duties are municipalities. Municipal types are determined by variables such as the breadth of the area they serve, the diversity of revenues and services. The reason why municipalities are various in nature is due to the fact that they essentially seek to have an optimal size. Municipalities have a number of financial consequences for municipalities that provide services on various scales, such as different populations and service areas. It is expected by citizens that municipalities financing their expenditures primarily with taxes should provide more services with as little financial resources as possible. In this sense, municipalities making their expenditures effectively and efficiently according to the type and thus the size of the service scale in Turkey is an issue that needs to be taken into consideration. Therefore, metropolitan municipalities and provincial municipalities within local administrations system in Turkey will be compared in their budgets and then expenditures in terms of efficiency and by the help of this comparison some evaluations will be made in various ways in terms of optimum size of municipalities in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Economic efficiency of waste management companies has been analyzed. • The costs' partial elasticity is measured considering the separate collection rate. • Results show the existence of scale economies. • The population density strengths the cost advantages. This article analyzes the economic efficiency of waste management companies with the aim of verifying the existence of scale economies with respect to separate waste collection preceding reuse, recycling, and recovery. For this purpose, an approach based on partial elasticity is used for a group of companies providing waste management services throughout Italy. Results show that the greater the separate waste collection rate, the higher the total costs incurred by the analyzed companies; this relationship is non-linear since a rise in the separate waste collection rate increases total costs less than proportionally, which gives evidence for the existence of scale economies. The findings also reveal that such a cost advantage is strengthened by a positive interaction effect with population density. These results show that a significant increase in separate waste collection rate could be realized in an efficient way and, thus, without jeopardizing companies' economic sustainability, which is essential to continue ensuring such important services for the community. One of the main implications of these results concerns policy makers: considering the population density impact, working in certain territories can be more economically convenient for companies; thus, policy makers should support those firms that could be penalized by the contextual conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ethiopia, there is a renewed interest in agricultural cooperatives as an institutional tool to improve the welfare of smallholder farmers. One of the pathways through which cooperatives benefit their members is scale economies. However, the establishment of cooperatives in Ethiopia seems to pay little attention to the size of the organizations. This article aims at investigating the effect of size on cost efficiency of agricultural cooperatives. More specifically, the purpose is to examine whether a single cooperative can serve a given number of farmers at a lower cost than two or more smaller cooperatives could. We employ the concept of cost subadditivity to compare the cost efficiency of large versus small cooperatives, and by extension unilateral actions. We estimate a flexible production technology using cross‐sectional cooperative‐level data. Findings show that costs would drop by 78% to 181% if farmers join hands in relatively large rather than small cooperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the drivers of total factor productivity of Spanish banks from early 2000, including the last financial crisis and the post-crisis period. This allows us to study changes in productivity following a major restructuring process in the banking sector such as the one experienced in Spain. Overall, we find that following a period of continued growth, productivity declined after the height of the crisis, though large banks were less affected. We also find that risk, capital levels, competition and input prices were important drivers of the differences in productivity change between banks. Finally, our results suggest that, by the end of our sample period, there was still some room for potential improvements in productivity via exploiting scale economies and enhancing cost efficiency. These opportunities appear to be generally greater for the smaller banks in our sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]