This article demonstrates how technical efficiency and the impact of environmental regulations of Taiwanese farrow-to-finish swine production can be estimated in the presence of undesirable outputs. The issue of measuring technical efficiencies while considering undesirable outputs has been addressed by past studies. But the proper method of including undesirable outputs has always been a subject of debate. This article develops a data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based model that includes undesirable outputs. The technologies of desirable output production and undesirable output control are considered simultaneously. This allows one to transform undesirable output into desirable output, whereby a traditional Shephard distance function can be used to measure technical efficiencies. An approach to measuring the impacts due to environmental regulations is then derived. Empirical results show that larger farms are more technically efficient than small-sized farms, but no clear conclusions can be reached for the measures of regulatory impact among farms with different sizes. On average, the sample farms incurred an opportunity cost due to environmental regulations equivalent to 9.8% of market value. Opportunity costs rise with efficiency. Copyright (c) 2008 International Association of Agricultural Economists.

The purpose of this article is to investigate relative efficiency of management and variation of managerial efficiency among 37 domestic banks in Taiwan. The relative efficiency of management is analysed through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate the competitiveness of each bank and managerial efficiency is to show the efficiency variation of each bank through Malmquist index. This article also links those two types of efficiency by constructing a matrix of relative efficiency and managerial efficiency defining of eight different categories of banks. The empirical results show that all 37 banks possess an average relative efficiency value of 0.591, with a SD of 0.228. And there are 6 banks with an efficiency value of 1. From the results estimated by Malmquist model, it indicates there are 20 banks with an efficiency variation greater than 1. This means that managerial efficiency of those 20 banks has been improving. However, there are 17 banks with an efficiency variation less than 1. This means that managerial efficiency of those 17 banks has been declining

Most multi-purpose water resources have been planned and constructed by governments in Taiwan to meet the water demands of different users. However, economic and solvency differences among parties using water create conflicts regarding the reasonable and equitable allocation of investment and operational costs. The Chi-Chi Weir in Nantou County, which was completed in 2002, meets the high water demand of residents and the needs of industrial growth in central Taiwan. Thus, multi-purpose water reservoirs are designed to serve agriculture, the public and industry. Three analytical methods, the quantity-based method, marginal cost method, and separable cost remaining benefit method (SCRB), are employed to compare the cost allocation for different parties using water. The quantity-based method indicates that proportional costs allocated to agriculture, the public, industry and new irrigated areas are 88.02, 3.63, 7.86, and 0.49%, respectively. Via the marginal cost method, the proportional costs allocated to agriculture, the public, hydropower, industry and new irrigated areas are 68.44, 2.51, 28.71, and 0.34%, respectively. The marginal cost price of water is NT$ 2.97 ton(-1); industrial use has the highest price. Based on the SCRB method, the proportional costs allocated to agriculture, the public, hydropower, and new irrigated areas are 18.2, 22.2, 51.8, 4.8, and 2.9%, respectively