This paper develops two cost decompositions based on the multiplicative and additive Russell efficiency measurement framework. While the multiplicative cost decomposition is a straightforward extension of the standard cost decomposition, the decomposition we develop in this paper incorporates...

The production of desirable (good) outputs is frequently accompanied by unintended production of undesirable (bad) outputs. If two or more of these undesirable outputs are produced as byproducts, one may ask: ‘Which bad is worst?’ By worst we mean which bad inhibits the production of...

This paper studies the interaction between economic and environmental performance. Applying the directional output distance function approach, the purpose is to compare estimates of Luenberger total factor productivity indicators, including and excluding bad outputs. Specifically, based on...

technology. Pollutants, or bads, are explicitly modeled by imposing technology properties of disposability and null-jointness. With data on firms from Swedish manufacturing, we investigate the potential to reduce emissions, and we take a closer look at the pulp and paper sector. Dividing the...

The last two decades have witnessed a revival in interest in the measurement of productive efficiency pioneered by (1957) and (1951). 1978 was a watershed year in this revival with the christening of DEA by (1978) and the critique of Farrell technical efficiency in terms of axiomatic production...

In this paper we focus on specification of revenue functions in their dual price space. We consider two distance functions, both dual to the revenue function: Shephard output distance function and the directional output distance function, both in price space. The former is multiplicative,...

This paper introduces a decomposition of the Malmquist productivity index into component indexes. The motivation is to derive an analogue of the decomposition of the Törnqvist index into productivity and quality change provided by Fixler and Zieschang (1992) to the Malmquist index. Since we...

In this paper we focus on specification of revenue functions in their dual price space. We consider two distance functions, both dual to the revenue function: Shephard output distance function and the directional output distance function, both in price space. The former is multiplicative,...

The purpose of this paper is to include consumer satisfaction in the specification of productivity. We accomplish this by using Shephard’s preference indirect distance function to model technology subject to a utility target. The utility constraint allows us to include information on consumer...

This study models the joint production of good and bad output production and calculates traditional productivity when bad output production is regulated and when it is unregulated. We apply this model to data for U.S. coal-fired electric power plants for 1985-1995 and compare rates of...