Data envelopment analysis for environmental assessment: Comparison between public and private ownership in petroleum industry

Environmental assessment recently becomes a major policy issue in the world. This study discusses how to apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for environmental assessment. An important feature of the DEA environmental assessment is that it needs to classify outputs into desirable (good) and undesirable (bad) outputs because private and public entities often produce not only desirable outputs but also undesirable outputs as a result of their production activities. This study proposes the three types of unification for DEA environmental assessment by using non-radial DEA models. The first unification considers both an increase and a decrease in the input vector along with a decrease in the direction vector of undesirable outputs. This type of unification measures “unified efficiency”. The second unification considers a decrease in an input vector along with a decrease in the vector of undesirable outputs. This type of unification is referred to as “natural disposability” and measures “unified efficiency under natural disposability”. The third unification considers an increase in an input vector but a decrease in the vector of undesirable outputs. This type of unification is referred to as “managerial disposability” and measures “unified efficiency under managerial disposability”. All the unifications increase the vector of desirable outputs. To document their practical implications, this study has applied the proposed approach to compare the performance of national oil firms with that of international oil firms. This study identifies two important findings on the petroleum industry. One of the two findings is that national oil companies under public ownership outperform international oil companies under private ownership in terms of unified (operational and environmental) efficiency and unified efficiency under natural disposability. However, the performance of international oil companies exhibits an increasing trend in unified efficiency. The other finding is that national oil companies need to satisfy the environmental standard of its own country while international oil companies need to satisfy the international standard that is more restricted than the national standards. As a consequence, international oil companies outperform national oil companies in terms of unified efficiency under managerial disposability.     

DEA environmental assessment: Measurement of damages to scale with unified efficiency under managerial disposability or environmental efficiency

This study proposes a use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for environmental assessment. Firms usually produce not only desirable but also undesirable outputs as a result of their economic activities. The concept of disposability on undesirable outputs is separated into natural and managerial disposability. Natural disposability is an environmental strategy in which firms decrease their inputs to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs. Given the reduced input vector, they attempt to increase desirable outputs as much as possible. Managerial disposability involves the opposite strategy of increasing an input vector. The concept of disposability expresses an environmental strategy that considers a regulation change on undesirable outputs as a new business opportunity. Firms attempt to improve their unified (operational and environmental) performance by utilizing new technology and/or new management. Considering the two disposability concepts, this study discusses how to measure unified efficiency under managerial disposability and then discusses how to measure environmental efficiency. The proposed uses of DEA can serve as an empirical basis for measuring new economic concepts such as “Scale Damages (SD)”, corresponding to scale economies for undesirable outputs, and “Damages to Scale (DTS)”, corresponding to returns to scale for undesirable outputs.     

Modelling weak disposability in data envelopment analysis under relaxed convexity assumptions

The treatment of undesirable (bad) outputs in models of efficiency and productivity analysis often requires replacing the assumption of free disposability of outputs by their weak disposability. In a recent publication the authors showed that the Kuosmanen technology is the only correct representation of the fully convex technology exhibiting weak disposability of bad and good outputs. In this paper we relax the assumption of full convexity and consider two further possibilities: the case in which only the output sets are assumed convex and the case in which no convexity is assumed at all. In the first case we show that, although the traditional Shephard technology of nonparametric production analysis satisfies the assumption of convex output sets, it is larger than necessary. Based on the minimum extrapolation principle, we develop a correct model that is based on the assumed axioms. The second case leads to the development of a weakly disposable analogue of the free disposable hull. To complete our study, we give a full axiomatic definition of the Shephard technology.     

Nonlinear Cournot oligopoly games with isoelastic demand function: The effects of different behavior rules

The analysis of asymptotical convergence for the oligopoly game has always been important to characterize the firms’ long-term behavior. In the nonlinear oligopoly competition possibly involving chaotic fluctuations, non-convergent trajectories are particularly undesirable since the resulting behavior will become unpredictable. In this paper, consistent with a traditional assumption that the firms update their outputs simultaneously, we at first construct an adjustment process and discuss the convergence to the equilibrium for a nonlinear Cournot duopoly game with the isoelastic demand function. We indicate that the tendency to instability does rise with the number of firms and the adjustment speeds. In particular, we alter this assumption from simultaneous decisions to sequential decisions so that the latter firms are able to observe the former ones at every time periods. We finally arrive at a conclusion that the unique equilibrium is convergent as long as the adjustment speeds are less than a fixed threshold, no matter what the number of the firms. Our findings show that the firms with sequential decisions can achieve the equilibrium more easily.     

Alternative formulations of a combined trip generation,trip distribution,modal split,and trip assignment model

The traditional four-step model has been widely used in travel demand forecasting by considering trip generation, trip distribution, modal split and traffic assignment sequentially in a fixed order. However, this sequential approach suffers from the inconsistency among the level-of-service and flow values in each step of the procedure. In the last two decades, this problem has been addressed by many researchers who have sought to develop combined (or integrated) models that can consider travelers’ choice on different stages simultaneously and give consistent results. In this paper, alternative formulations, including mathematical programming (MP) formulation and variational inequality (VI) formulations, are provided for a combined travel demand model that integrates trip generation, trip distribution, modal split, and traffic assignment using the random utility theory framework. Thus, the proposed alternative formulations not only allow a systematic and consistent treatment of travel choice over different dimensions but also have behavioral richness. Qualitative properties of the formulations are also given to ensure the existence and uniqueness of the solution. Particularly, the model is analyzed for a special but useful case where the probabilistic travel choices are assumed to be a hierarchical logit model. Furthermore, a self-adaptive Goldstein–Levitin–Polyak (GLP) projection algorithm is adopted for solving this special case.     

Shadow pricing of undesirable outputs in nonparametric analysis

For three decades a growing interest in the modeling of desirable and undesirable outputs has led to a theoretical and methodological debate in the nonparametric literature on production technology and efficiency. The first main discussion is about the way of modeling ‘bad/undesirables’ as inputs or outputs, or by transformation functions. The second debate concerns the implications of the weak disposability assumption in the modeling of bad outputs, in particular the possibility of assigning unexpected signs to shadow prices of bad outputs. In addition, we point out a current error in the modeling of weak disposability under a variable returns to scale technology. In this paper we introduce a hybrid model to ensure the economically meaningful jointness of good and bad outputs while constraining shadow prices of bad outputs to their expected sign. We argue that it is a sound compromise to model undesirable outputs with a meaningful primal/dual economic interpretation. Finally we propose an extension to define shadow prices for undesirable outputs following the Law of One Price (LoOP) rule.     

Measurement of Returns to Scale and Damages to Scale for DEA-based operational and environmental assessment: How to manage desirable (good) and undesirable (bad) outputs?

Environmental assessment is increasingly important in preventing various types of pollutions. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been long used as an operational performance measure, but we have insufficiently explored the use of DEA for environmental assessment. This study explores a new use of DEA for the environmental assessment in which outputs are classified into desirable (good) and undesirable (bad) outputs. Such an output separation is important in the DEA-based environmental assessment. This study extends the use of DEA to the measurement of both Returns to Scale (RTS) for desirable outputs and Damages to Scale (DTS) for undesirable outputs. A Range-Adjusted Measure (RAM) is used as a DEA model for this study because the non-radial model can easily combine the two types of outputs in a unified treatment. All the mathematical features regarding the RAM-based RTS/DTS measurement are first discussed from the operational and environmental performance in a separate treatment. Then, this study combines the two performance measures as a unified measure. The RAM-based RTS/DTS is mathematically explored from the unified measure for operational and environmental performance.     

A generalized model for weight restrictions in data envelopment analysis

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is designed to maximize the efficiency of a given decision-making unit (DMU) relative to all other DMUs by the choice of a set of input and output weights. One strength of the original models is the absence of any need of a priori information about the process of transforming inputs into outputs. However, in the practical application of DEA models, this strength has also become a weakness. Incorporation of process knowledge is more a norm than an exception in practice, and typically involves placing constraints on the input and/or output weights. New DEA formulations have evolved to address this issue. However, existing formulations for weight restrictions may underestimate relative efficiency or even render a problem infeasible. A new model formulation is introduced to address this issue. This formulation represents a significant improvement over existing DEA models by providing a generalized, comprehensive treatment for weight restrictions.     

On the manifolds of total collapse orbits and of completely parabolic orbits for the n-body problem

In this paper we show for most choices of masses in the coplanar n-body problem and for certain masses in the three-dimensional n-body problem that the set of initial conditions leading to complete collapse forms a smooth submanifold in phase space where the dimension depends upon properties of the limiting configuration. A similar statement holds for completely parabolic motion. By a proper scaling, these two motions become dual to each other in the sense that one forms the unstable set while the other forms the stable set of a particular set of points in the new phase space. Most of the paper is devoted to solving the Painleve-Wintner problem which asserts that these types of orbits cannot enter in an infinite spin.     

On the equivalence of strong formulations for capacitated multi-level lot sizing problems with setup times

Several mixed integer programming formulations have been proposed for modeling capacitated multi-level lot sizing problems with setup times. These formulations include the so-called facility location formulation, the shortest route formulation, and the inventory and lot sizing formulation with (?, S) inequalities. In this paper, we demonstrate the equivalence of these formulations when the integrality requirement is relaxed for any subset of binary setup decision variables. This equivalence has significant implications for decomposition-based methods since same optimal solution values are obtained no matter which formulation is used. In particular, we discuss the relax-and-fix method, a decomposition-based heuristic used for the efficient solution of hard lot sizing problems. Computational tests allow us to compare the effectiveness of different formulations using benchmark problems. The choice of formulation directly affects the required computational effort, and our results therefore provide guidelines on choosing an effective formulation during the development of heuristic-based solution procedures.