Estimation of support frontiers and boundaries often involves monotone and/or concave edge data smoothing. This estimation problem arises in various unrelated contexts, such as optimal cost and production assessments in econometrics and master curve prediction in the reliability programs of...

When faced with multiple inputs X ∈ Rp + and outputs Y ∈ Rq +, traditional quantile regression of Y conditional on X = x for measuring economic efficiency in the output (input) direction is thwarted by the absence of a natural ordering of Euclidean space for dimensions q (p) greater than...

The Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) suggests a convenient way of measuring the productivity change of a given unit between two consequent time periods. Until now, only a static approach for analyzing the MPI was available in the literature. However, this hides a potentially valuable...

In productivity analysis, the performance of production units is measured through the distance of the individual decision making units (DMU) to the technology which is defined as the frontier of the production set. Most of the existing methods, Farrell-Debreu and Shephard radial measures (input...

In this paper we investigate the problem of nonparametric monotone frontier estimation from an extreme-values theory perspective. This allows to revisit the asymptotic theory of the popular Free Disposal Hull estimator in a general setup, to derive new and asymptotically Gaussian estimators and...

In production theory and efficiency analysis, we are interested in estimating the production frontier which is the locus of the maximal attainable level of an output (the production), given a set of inputs (the production factors). In other setups, we are rather willing to estimate an input (or...