Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Conceptual background: firms’ objectives, decision variables and economic efficiency -- Part I -- Chapter 3: Shephard’s input and output distance functions: cost and revenue efficiency decompositions -- Chapter 4: The generalized distance function (GDF):...

In this paper we compare two flexible estimators of technical efficiency in a cross-sectional setting: the nonparametric kernel SFA estimator of Fan, Li and Weersink (1996) to the nonparametric bias corrected DEA estimator of Kneip, Simar and Wilson (2008). We assess the finite sample...