The paper investigates the impact of subsidies and of para-agriculture on the technical efficiency of organic farms in Switzerland, Austria and Southern Germany. The data-set consists of bookkeeping data with 1,704 observations in the years 2003 to 2005. Technical efficiency is modelled using a...

Simar and Wilson (J. Econometrics, 2007) provided a statistical model that can rationalize two-stage estimation of technical efficiency in nonparametric settings. Two-stage estimation has been widely used, but requires a strong assumption: the second-stage environmental variables cannot affect...

The issue of quality and its relationship with efficiency and performance is a crucial operational issue in many fields of study including production economics, operations research, engineering and business management. In this paper we provide a methodology for identifying latent quality...

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...