This paper uses both the stochastic and nonstochastic production function approach to measure technical efficiency in public education in Utah. The stochastic specification estimates technical efficiency, assuming half normal and exponential distributions. The nonstochastic specification uses two-stage DEA to separate the effects of fixed inputs on the measure of technical efficiency. The empirical analysis shows substantial variation in efficiency among school districts. While these measures are insensitive to the specific distributional assumptions about the one-sided component of the error term in stochastic specification, they are sensitive to the treatment of fixed socioeconomic inputs in the two-stage DEA.

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This paper reports the results of both standard and truncated count data travel cost demand models for estimating demand for and the economic value to participants in mountain biking in the Moab, Utah, area. The empirical estimates for average trip demand per person per season were 2.25 and 2.53 trips under truncated Poisson and truncated negative binomial models, respectively. Consumer surplus per person per trip for both models was approximately US $585. The total annual use value for mountain biking in the Moab area was US $1.33 million. This value suggests that this recreation has a higher value than most other activities in the area and that public land managers should be aware of the relative value of mountain biking as they make allocation decisions.

Abstract. For a given odd integer n > 1, we provide some families of imaginary quadratic number fields of the form Q( √ x 2 − t n ) whose ideal class group has a subgroup isomorphic to Z/nZ.

This paper investigates technical efficiency and productivity growth in Indian life insurance industry in the era of deregulation. The empirical study uses DEA method and Malmquist productivity index to measure and decompose technical efficiency and productivity growth, respectively. The results suggest that the growth in overall productivity is mainly attributed to improvement in efficiency. Higher pure technical efficiency and lower scale efficiency indicate the insurance firms have generally, moved away from the optimal scale over the study period. The truncated regression exploring the main drivers of efficiency in the long run found claims ratio, distribution ratio, and firm-size influence technical efficiency positively. The study also found firms that had both life and non-life businesses are more efficient than firms that has only life insurance business.