Estimating Public Library Efficiency Using Stochastic Frontiers

Abstract

This article uses public libraries to analyze public sector cost-efficiency. The growth of large bookstores and the Internet in recent years may have motivated libraries to behave in a more cost-efficient manner. Alternatively, monitoring of libraries may have decreased as patrons shift away from library use, increasing inefficiency. Using a stochastic cost frontier, the level of cost-inefficiency is estimated and analyzed. The results suggest that competition, regardless of the source, does not have a large effect on cost-efficiency. Local government spending decreases inefficiency in smaller libraries, consistent with the monitoring role governments can have on public spending.

Citizen coproduction and efficient public good provision: Theory and evidence from local public libraries

“…Hence, to the extent that basic inputs are employed for the provision of such services, our analysis is likely to overthese variables correspond to stock measures, which may benefit older libraries, the variable returns to scale approach employed in our efficiency model smoothly accounts for this (Fried et al, 2008). Finally, in line with earlier work on library efficiency (Hammond, 2002;Hemmeter, 2006), our three final outputs are (1) total youth borrowers (<16 years), (2) total fiction and nonfiction book circulation and (3) total media circulation. Descriptive statistics of all variables employed are presented in Table 1.…”

“…Its effect is a priori uncertain as a large population may increase the group interested in efficient libraries, but it could also engender congestion concerns (lowering the perceived benefit of the library and reducing efficiency demands) (De Witte and Geys, 2011). Finally, the source of public library funding is likely to influence the local population's monitoring activity as people care more about inefficiency in the provision of public resources when they pay for such services more directly (through fees and municipal subsidies as compared to regional-level grants) (Hemmeter, 2006;De Witte and Geys, 2011). 13 For the FDH model, we find an average (in)efficiency score of 1.162 for the 'service potential model' and 1.142 for the 'service delivery model'.…”

States’ Potential Enrollment of Adult Students: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

“…Economists have utilized SFA techniques to examine the efficiency of profit-maximizing firms in a variety of industries such as agriculture (e.g., Battese and Coelli 1995), manufacturing (e.g., Bottasso and Sembenelli 2004;Schank 2005), health care (e.g., Jacobs 2001; Li and Rosenman 2001), sports (e.g., Hofler and Payne 1997;Kahane 2005), and banking (e.g., Clark and Siems 2002). Researchers have also used SFA techniques to analyze efficiency among nonprofit firms such as museums (e.g., Bishop and Brand 2003) and libraries (e.g., Hemmeter 2006). Labor economists (e.g., Hofler and Polacheck 1985;Lang 2005) have utilized SFA techniques to examine potential wages or the earnings frontier.…”

Efficiency measures and productivity indexes in the context of university library benchmarking

“…Some recent studies using SFA to assess library performance can be found in Saunders (2003) and Hemmeter (2006). A methodological discussion of stochastic and non-stochastic frontier estimation is given in Fried et al (1993), a critical comment on frontier techniques in general is provided by Smith and Street (2005).…”