Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/242589 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Economics Working Paper Series No. 2021/02
Publisher: 
Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, Auckland
Abstract: 
Current literature on public hospital efficiency in Australia only reveals information on how efficient public hospitals are in the short run. The presence of persistent technical inefficiency arising from long-term systemic problems and government-related regulatory constraints does not appear to have been addressed. Using yearly panel data for the period 2002-2018 on eight Australian states and territories, this study incorporates the measure of both transient and persistent technical inefficiency while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity to obtain a more precise measure of technical efficiency. The results of this study indicate that the technical inefficiency among public hospitals in Australia is persistent rather than transient based on state and territory level data. This implies that policymakers need to formulate comprehensive policies involving a longer time horizon that focuses on reducing the persistence in inefficiency among public hospitals in Australia. The study also calls on policymakers and regulators to disclose hospital-level data to researchers in order to gain further insight into the causes of persistence in inefficiency to formulate effective policies.
Subjects: 
stochastic frontier analysis
Australian hospitals
technical efficiency
persistent inefficiency
frontier estimation
Bayesian
STAN
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.