Efficiency scores of firms are measured by their distance to an estimated production frontier. The economic literature proposes several nonparametric frontier estimators based on the idea of enveloping the data (FDH and DEA-type estimators). Many have claimed that FDH and DEA techniques are...

Frontier estimation appears in productivity analysis. Firm’s performance is measured by the distance between its output and an optimal production frontier. Frontier estimation becomes difficult if outputs are measured with noise and most approaches rely on restrictive parametric assumptions....