{"title":"Exploring horizontal mergers in Swedish district courts using technical and scale efficiency: rejecting convexity in favour of nonconvexity","authors":"Xiaoqing Chen, Kristiaan Kerstens, Qingyuan Zhu","doi":"10.1007/s10479-025-06508-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Swedish district courts have undergone a major mergers and acquisitions program between 2000 and 2010 to centralize activity in larger and fewer courts. The purpose of this contribution is to conduct an efficiency analysis of these courts to identify the eventual efficiency gains. Distinguishing mainly between technical and scale efficiency and determining the returns to scale of individual observations, we try to find the potential rationales behind this merger wave. We are to the best of our knowledge the first to combine traditional convex with nonconvex nonparametric frontier methods to calculate efficiency before and after the mergers. It turns out that the nonconvex methods provide a more cogent ex post explanation of this historical merger wave aimed at increasing the size of operations. A battery of recent test statistics rejects convexity in favour of nonconvexity.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":8215,"journal":{"name":"Annals of Operations Research","volume":"351 2","pages":"1319 - 1351"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Annals of Operations Research","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10479-025-06508-9","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"OPERATIONS RESEARCH & MANAGEMENT SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Swedish district courts have undergone a major mergers and acquisitions program between 2000 and 2010 to centralize activity in larger and fewer courts. The purpose of this contribution is to conduct an efficiency analysis of these courts to identify the eventual efficiency gains. Distinguishing mainly between technical and scale efficiency and determining the returns to scale of individual observations, we try to find the potential rationales behind this merger wave. We are to the best of our knowledge the first to combine traditional convex with nonconvex nonparametric frontier methods to calculate efficiency before and after the mergers. It turns out that the nonconvex methods provide a more cogent ex post explanation of this historical merger wave aimed at increasing the size of operations. A battery of recent test statistics rejects convexity in favour of nonconvexity.
期刊介绍：
The Annals of Operations Research publishes peer-reviewed original articles dealing with key aspects of operations research, including theory, practice, and computation. The journal publishes full-length research articles, short notes, expositions and surveys, reports on computational studies, and case studies that present new and innovative practical applications.
In addition to regular issues, the journal publishes periodic special volumes that focus on defined fields of operations research, ranging from the highly theoretical to the algorithmic and the applied. These volumes have one or more Guest Editors who are responsible for collecting the papers and overseeing the refereeing process.
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