Crossword clues for inefficiency
inefficiency
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Inefficiency \In`ef*fi"cien*cy\, n. The quality of being inefficient; lack of power or energy sufficient for the desired effect; inefficacy; incapacity; as, he was discharged from his position for inefficiency.
Wiktionary
n. lack of efficiency or effectiveness.
WordNet
n. unskillfulness resulting from a lack of efficiency [ant: efficiency]
Wikipedia
The term inefficiency generally refers to an absence of efficiency. It has several meanings depending on the context in which it is used:
- Allocative inefficiency - Allocative inefficiency is a situation in which the distribution of resources between alternatives does not fit with consumer taste (perceptions of costs and benefits). For example, a company may have the lowest costs in "productive" terms, but the result may be inefficient in allocative terms because the "true" or social cost exceeds the price that consumers are willing to pay for an extra unit of the product. This is true, for example, if the firm produces pollution (see also external cost). Consumers would prefer that the firm and its competitors produce less of the product and charge a higher price, to internalize the external cost.
- Distributive Inefficiency - refers to the inefficient distribution of income and wealth within a society. Decreasing marginal utilities of wealth in theory suggests that more egalitarian distributions of wealth are more efficient than unegalitarian distributions. Distributive inefficiency is often associated with economic inequality.
- Economic inefficiency - refers to a situation where "we could be doing a better job," i.e., attaining our goals at lower cost. It is the opposite of economic efficiency. In the latter case, there is no way to do a better job, given the available resources and technology.
- Keynesian inefficiency - might be defined as incomplete use of resources (labor, capital goods, natural resources, etc.) because of inadequate aggregate demand. We are not attaining potential output, while suffering from cyclical unemployment. We could do a better job if we applied deficit spending or expansive monetary policy.
- Pareto inefficiency - Pareto efficiency is a situation in which one person can not be made better off without making anyone else worse off. In practice, this criterion is difficult to apply in a constantly changing world, so many emphasize Kaldor-Hicks efficiency and inefficiency: a situation is inefficient if someone can be made better off even after compensating those made worse off, regardless of whether the compensation actually occurs.
- Productive inefficiency - says that we could produce the given output at a lower cost—or could produce more output for given cost. For example, a company that is inefficient will have higher operating costs and will be at a competitive disadvantage (or have lower profits than other firms in the market).
- Resource-market inefficiency - refers to barriers that prevent full adjustment of resource markets, so that resources are either unused or misused. For example, structural unemployment results from barriers of mobility in labor markets which prevent workers from moving to places and occupations where there are job vacancies. Thus, unemployed workers can co-exist with unfilled job vacancies.
- X-inefficiency - refers to inefficiency in the "black box" of production, connecting inputs to outputs. This type of inefficiency says that we could be organizing people or production processes more effectively. Often problems of "morale" or " bureaucratic inertia" cause X-inefficiency.
Productive inefficiency, Resource-market inefficiency and X-inefficiency might be analyzed using Data Envelopment Analysis and similar methods.
Usage examples of "inefficiency".
I sensed his despairing pessimism, his conviction that the corruption, the inefficiency and bumbledom that pervaded the army and the court would land us like an overripe plum in the lap of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, whom he loathed more than any man on earth.
Feast, My place seems lower than the least The conscience of the life to be Smiles me with inefficiency, And makes me all unfit to bless With comfortable earthliness The rest-desiring brain of man.
And the editor spends some time lambasting the Civil Guard for its inefficiency in not being able to find a two-ton statue.
Shannon took copious notes, swearing at the inefficiency of a penlight for writing in the middle of a pitch-dark theater.
My safety, our safety, depended, under Providence, Saint Patrick, Stephen the Protomartyr, and Saint Brendan, solely upon my own ineptitude, my own gross ineptitude: I might even say inefficiency.
Hispanics to send food and clothing to the Mexican town of Nayarit after the devastations of Hurricane Kenna had been stymied by the inefficiency and obduracy of the Mexican consulate.
The loyalists, encouraged by the progress of Prevost, and the notorious inefficiency of the Whigs, were now gathering in formidable bodies, in various quarters, operating in desultory bands, or crowding to swell the columns of the British army.
In the last months before the war when, prior to his retirement in April, the intrigues of the cliques swirled around him, some to have him named Minister of War or Commander in Chief designate in place of Joffre, others to reduce his pension or remove his friends, his diary was filled with disgust for life, for “that miserable thing, politics,” for the “clan of arrivistes,” for unreadiness and inefficiency in the army and with no great admiration for Joffre.
Sinnall decided that regulation issue would be too skimpy for Harlan's frame in any event and the discrepancies would pass as back-country inefficiencies.
An additional inefficiency of the inferior down-time mills is that bagasse has to be moved to drying areas and then to the evaporation area where it is used as fuel.
I could not but weep in spirit as I saw the wretchedness around me--the squalid misery of the soldiers, the inefficiency of their officers, the bickerings of their rulers, the noise and threats, the dirt and ruin, the terrible dishonesty of those who were trusted!
She had, apparently, braved the bureaucracy and chronic inefficiency of Qaddafi's Libya and bunkered in Tripoli (a practice the experienced ship's master learns not to repeat unless desperate).
After years of muddy inefficiency, of contentedness with the second-rate and the dishonest, that flame astoundingly bursts forth, from a hidden, unheeded spark that none had ever thought to blow upon.
The space agency's recent string of failed missions and gargantuan budget overruns had earned NASA the dubious honor of becoming Sexton's unofficial poster child against big government overspending and inefficiency.
But underfoot, and stretching beyond sight on each hand, the sun power screens glowed with a faint opalescent radiance, their slight percentage of inefficiency as transformers of radiant sun power to available electrical power being evidenced as a mild phosphorescence.