Does productivity change at all in Swedish district courts? Empirical analysis focusing on horizontal mergers

This contribution is the first to compare the Malmquist and Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indices in the context of horizontal mergers of Swedish district courts during the period 2000-2017. It is also the first to calculate these productivity indices for convex and nonconvex nonparametric frontier specifications in courts under both constant and variable returns to scale. Moreover, a one-sample symmetric Wilcoxon test and a t-test are performed on the average productivity index to determine whether it is significantly different from unity. Also Li-test statistics examine the differences in productivity between these two indices or between convexity and nonconvexity for a given index. Furthermore, we compare these two productivity indices before and after the mergers to investigate the impact of the horizontal merger activity. The empirical results indicate that overall there is no significant technical change at all. Furthermore, horizontal mergers overall do neither result in technical change, nor in post-merger productivity gains.