Estimation of the non-linear Constant Elasticity of Scale (CES) function is generally considered problematic due to convergence problems and unstable and/or meaningless results. These problems often arise from a non-smooth objective function with large flat areas, the discontinuity of the CES...

We derive and empirically apply an input-oriented distance function based on the stochastic ray production function suggested by L¨othgren (1997, 2000). We show that the derived ray-based input distance function is suitable for modeling production technologies based on logarithmic functional...