The Malmquist productivity index has many attractive features. One is that it decomposes into a technical efficiency change index and a technical change index. Under constant returns to scale, its technical efficiency change index has been decomposed into a "pure" technical efficiency change...

Until the recent financial crisis, biology-based industries were some of the most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy—the biofuels business was booming, agriculture commodity prices were high, agricultural biotechnology firms were making record profits, and the pharmaceutical industry...