Measuring productive efficiency for nonprofit organizations has posed a great challenge to applied researchers today. The problem has many facets and diverse implications for a number of disciplines such as economics, applied statistics, management science and information theory. This monograph discusses four major areas, which emphasize the applied economic and econometric as. pects of the production frontier analysis: A. Stochastic frontier theory, B. Data envelopment analysis, C. Clustering and estimation theory, D. Economic and managerial applications Besides containing an up-to-date...

Econometrics as an applied discipline attempts to use information in a most efficient manner, yet the information theory and entropy approach developed by Shannon and others has not played much of a role in applied econometrics. Econometrics of Information and Efficiency bridges the gap.
Broadly viewed, information theory analyzes the uncertainty of a given set of data and its probabilistic characteristics. Whereas the economic theory of information emphasizes the value of information to agents in a market, the entropy theory stresses the various aspects of imprecision of data...

Data envelopment analysis develops a set of nonparametric and semiparametric techniques for measuring economic efficiency among firms and nonprofit organizations. Over the past decade this technique has found most widespread applications in public sector organizations. However these applications have been mostly static. This monograph extends this static framework of efficiency analysis in several new directions. These include but are not limited to the following: (1) a dynamic view of the production and cost frontier, where capital inputs are treated differently from the current inputs, (2)...

Use of information is basic to economic theory in two ways. As a basis for optimization, it is central to all normative hypotheses used in eco- nomics, but in decision-making situations it has stochastic and evolution- ary aspects that are more dynamic and hence more fundamental. This book provides an illustrative survey of the use of information in econom- ics and other decision sciences. Since this area is one of the most active fields of research in modern times, it is not possible to be definitive on all aspects of the issues involved. However questions that appear to be most important in...

This book presents the main applied aspects of stochas- tic optimization in economic models. Stochastic processes and control theory are used under optimization to illustrate the various economic implications of optimal decision rules. Unlike econometrics which deals with estimation, this book emphasizes the decision-theoretic basis of uncertainty specified by the stochastic point of view. Methods of ap- plied stochastic control using stochastic processes have now reached an exciti g phase, where several disciplines like systems engineering, operations research and natural reso- ces interact...

Control theory methods in economics have historically developed over three phases. The first involved basically the feedback control rules in a deterministic framework which were applied in macrodynamic models for analyzing stabilization policies. The second phase raised the issues of various types of inconsistencies in deterministic optimal control models due to changing information and other aspects of stochasticity. Rational expectations models have been extensively used in this plan to resolve some of the inconsistency problems. The third phase has recently focused on the various aspects...