This paper investigates the factors that explain the level and dynamics of manufacturing firm productive efficiency. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique sample of about 39,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2005. We estimate the...

Mikroökonomisch fundierte Einführung: Sie zeigt, wie man auch ohne Vorkenntnisse der Produktionsfunktion zu Aussagen über die produktive Effizienz kommen kann. Die Autoren stellen den Ansatz der nichtparametrischen Frontierfunktionsanalyse vor und erweitern ihn über verschiedene Schritte....

The traditional approach to measuring allocative efficiency is based on input prices, which are rarely known at the firm level. This paper proposes a new approach to measure allocative efficiency which is based on the output-oriented distance to the frontier in a profit technical efficiency...