An Ex-Ante Evaluation of Technical Efficiency of Ghana’s Public Hospital to Support National Health Insurance Scheme Implementation in Ghana (Published)
This paper assessed whether the public district hospitals in Ghana are technically efficient to meet the challenge of possible increase in health care demand by Ghanaians that might result from the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme.The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach was used to estimate the efficiency of 51 Public District Hospitals. The results show an average overall Technical Efficiency of 77.6%, pure Technical Efficiency of 84.5% and Scale Efficiency of 92.1%. Out of the 51 public district hospitals used in the study, 30 of them were purely technically inefficient. The results also indicate that in general a total of 102 Medical and Pharmacy Staff, 530 General Administrative Staff, 462 Nursing Staff and 830 beds are wasted or not utilized in health care delivery by the public district hospitals. This indicates that any immediate increase in health care demand as a result of the National Health Insurance Scheme will not necessitate an increase in health care expenditure by the government but instead health care management should be called upon to operate more efficiently. The study concludes that there is potential to improve access and/quality of care without injecting additional resources into the health sector.
Keywords: Allocative Efficiency, Health Insurance, Hospitals, Technical Efficiency, input slacks
Determinants of the Technical Efficiency Performance of Privatized Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria: An Econometric Analysis (Published)
This work is designed to empirically evaluate the determinants of the technical efficiency of ten privatized manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The firms were selected from the numerous firms in the four geo political zones to represent the interest of the entire country due to their age long establishment, size and government equity investment in them. The study adopted Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and ordinary least square regression as the techniques of analysis and the period of analysis is five years before and five years after privatization. The efficiency scores generated from the first stage using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used as dependent variables in the second stage against a set of explanatory variables. The investigation revealed that concentration ratio, size and age of firms were considered as determinant of technically efficiency. It also shows that, concentration ratio will lead to higher monopoly power, with age firms gain experience and with size, firms gain more strength to control or have a larger share of the market. It is recommended that there should be market competition with liberalization of entry conditions, in order to terminate monopoly and allow for new entrants to make operations competitive for production. This will be in line with the industrialization policy.
Keywords: Determinants, Nigeria, Privatized Manufacturing firms, Technical Efficiency
Technical Efficiency of Dreg’s Rice Production in Benin: Case of the Municipality of Savè (Published)
The aim of this article is to study the technical efficiency of the rice producer of dregs of the municipality of Savè and to identify the determining factors of the production of the rice in the optics of a sustainable agricultural productivity. The results of the estimation of the border of production show that the technical efficiency of rice producer is situated between 72.02 % and 98.25 %, with an average technical efficiency of 90 %. The access to the cash credits, the quantity of agricultural inputs, the membership in an agricultural cooperative and the quantity of seed improved by rice determine the technical efficiency of the production of the rice in the municipality of Savé in Benin. These results reveal the existence of the possibilities to improve the agricultural technical training, the academic level and educational. These agricultural practical basic possibilities are necessary conditions to increase better rates of efficacy technique of the production of the rice of dregs
Keywords: Technical Efficiency, agricultural practices, border of possibility, rice of dregs
Impact of Small-scale Irrigation on Farm Households’ Technical Efficiency: The Case of Girawa District, East Hararghe, Oromia, Ethiopia (Review Completed - Accepted)
This study evaluated the impact of small-scale irrigation on farm households’ technical efficiency of production in Girawa district, East Hararghe, Oromia, Ethiopia. Both primary and secondary data were collected for the study. Primary data were collected from 200 sample respondents drawn from both participant and non-participant households. Econometric models were employed for data analysis. Stochastic production frontier model was used for technical efficiency estimation and Propensity score matching method was applied to analyze the impact of small-scale irrigation on the technical efficiency. The logistic regression was employed to estimate propensity scores. In matching processes, kernel matching with band width of 0.5 was found to be the best matching algorism. This method was also checked for covariate balancing with a standardized bias, t-test, and joint significance level tests. The results revealed that households that participate in irrigation practice have got an improvement of 8.92% in technical efficiency than those households that were not participating in irrigation practice. Results showed that participation in irrigation has a significant, positive and robust impact on the outcome variables. The sensitivity analysis also showed that the impact estimates are insensitive to unobserved selection bias. All results obtained from different models revealed the positive impact of irrigation on farm household technical efficiency. Therefore, policy makers should give due emphasis to the aforementioned variables to increase participation in irrigation farming and improve the livelihood of rural households
Keywords: : Irrigation, Propensity Score Matching And Stochastic Frontier, Technical Efficiency