A rich literature on the analysis of efficiency in production has developed since pioneering work of Tjalling Koopmans and George Debreu in the 1950s. This literature includes work by researchers in economics, econometrics, management science, operations research, mathematical statistics and...

This chapter discusses common methodological, theoretical and empirical choices that scholars face when undertaking productive and economic efficiency analyses. After summarizing the main results of duality theory in Section 2, we outline in Section 3 the most popular empirical methods available...