Applications tend to ignore that measured TFP reflects the variation of output that cannot be explained by changes in inputs. Such a change is not necessarily technological, so measured TFP differences across firms are an amalgam of technological, efficiency and other differences in attributes,...

This paper contributes to the productivity literature by using results from firm-level productivity studies to improve forecasts of macro-level productivity growth. The paper employs current research methods on estimating firm-level productivity to build times-series components that capture the...

We discuss nonparametric regression models for panel data. A fully nonparametric panel data specification that uses the time variable and the individual identifier as additional (categorical) explanatory variables is considered to be the most suitable. We use this estimator and conventional...

Inference about productivity change over time based on data envelopment (DEA) has focused primarily on the Malmquist index and is based on asymptotic properties of the index. In this paper we propose a novel set of significance tests for DEA based productivity change measures based on...

When benchmarking production units by non-parametric methods like data envelopment analysis (DEA), an assumption has to be made about the returns to scale of the underlying technology. Moreover, it is often also relevant to compare the frontiers across samples of producers. Until now, no exact...

Standard income inequality indices can be interpreted as a measure of welfare loss entailed in departures from equality of outcomes, for egalitarian social welfare functions defined on the distribution of outcomes. But such a welfare interpretation has been criticized for a long time on the...

This article tests the hypothesis that financial supply-side shifts help to explain the low-investment climate of private firms in Germany. The core contention is that a firm's financial position contributes to its access to external finance on credit markets. Special emphasis is put on small...

This paper improves on the issues of extreme data points and heterogeneity found in the linear programming data envelopment analysis (DEA) by presenting a cluster-adjusted DEA model (DEA with cluster approach). This analysis, based on efficiency, determines the number of clusters via Gap...

Permutation techniques, where one recompute the test statistic over permutations of data, have a long history in statistics and have become increasingly useful as the availability of computational power has increased. Until now, no permutation tests for examining returns to scale assumptions,...