The purpose of this note is to define a new and more general method to obtain qualitative information about returns to scale for individual observations. In a second section the traditional methods developed for estimating returns to scale on nonparametric deterministic reference technologies...

This article determines the sources of observed technically inefficient behaviour among French urban transit companies using non-parametric deterministic frontier specifications of technology. Decomposing overall technical efficiency yields component-wise efficiency measures reflecting scale,...

This paper defines a decomposition of technical efficiency for a series of nonparametric deterministic reference technologies related to the Free Disposal Hull. More specifically, introducing several returns to scale assumptionsinto this non-convex production model allows one to distinguish...

This note illustrates the potential impact of the specification of a convex production technology on establishing minimal costs compared to the use of a non-convex technology when benchmarking electricity distributors. This methodological reflection is mainly motivated by recent engineering...

Current methods for assessing capacity and its utilisation in fisheries operate at the firm-level, but neglect industry capacity. Here, we introduce the Johansen-Färe measure of plant capacity of the firm into a multi-output, frontier-based version of the short-run Johansen industry model. The...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sensitivity of a recently proposed non-parametric approach to technical efficiency measurement. Using a data set of Belgian municipalities, we analyze the sensitivity of the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) approach with respect to the number of input and...

This note proposes a new decomposition of the Malmquist productivity index to account for changes in plant capacity utilisation. Using a primal, non-parametric specification of technology, the Malmquist index is decomposed into technical efficiency change, variations in plant capacity...