In this study we explore Russian banking system and its development. The recent financial crisis of August 1998 revealed several fundamental problems in the Russian banking sector as well as the whole economy. Our analysis focuses on evaluation of relative performance of banks before and after the crisis. We compare...
The following three essays explore the use of the directional output distance function (Chambers et al., 1996), an economic model originally developed to measure efficiency and productivity for multi-input and multi-output production processes, to assess performance for multi-attributed environmental processes.
The first essay illustrates the use of the directional output...
This dissertation addresses three topics on applied microeconomics. First, we investigate issues of market power and tax incidence in the U.S. brewing industry. Since alcohol consumption can be addictive, we derive a structural econometric model of addiction from a dynamic oligopoly game. This model identifies the degree of market power...
This study has two main objectives. First, we propose an alternative way for treating deposits in modeling a banking firm, which account for both their input and output features. Second, we contribute to modeling failures in the banking sector by distinguishing three groups of factors affecting failures: bank level, industry...
Two essays are focused on crop choice and the growth of corn production in
the Corn Belt and surrounding areas. The first essay develops a partially
degenerate nested logit model to examine the effect of price islands and local
ethanol capacity on corn production and crop mix. The primary data...
In this work I integrate some of my recent research developments in the theory and practice of Productivity and Efficiency Analysis of Economic Systems. In particular, I present some new theoretical relationships between various measures of efficiency and productivity, propose new solutions to some aggregation problems in efficiency analysis and...
The last two decades have witnessed a triumph of free market policies in many developing countries and thus an increase in trade and financial openness. While economic theory provides a solid justification of the fact that trade and financial openness for a small economy with perfectly competitive markets improve resource...
In 2011 Oregon enacted a public education open enrollment policy that gives students and families the choice of what school to attend, regardless of district lines. Despite the lack of public information, this policy will sunset this school year unless it is further extended during legislative session. This paper attempts...
Increased efficiency of household energy-using appliances effectively lowers the price of the services these devices provide. Basic consumer theory predicts that ceteris paribus, these lower prices will increase usage, thus making the effect on total energy demand ambiguous. In the literature, this phenomenon
has been called the rebound effect. In...
The purpose of this study is to identify firm safety practices, safety technologies, and firm characteristics that are related to motor carrier accident rates. The theory of the firm suggests that firms maximize profit by investing in safety practices and safety technologies until marginal cost is equal to the marginal...