In this paper we present a new empirical model based on an input distance function, from which estimates of allocative inefficiency and its cost can be obtained. The model avoids the Greene problem, which refers to the difficulty in practice of using a cost system to separate economic...

In the literature on the topic, excess capacity in the hospital sector is usually calculated using a short-run cost function, which implies cost minimisation with respect to variable inputs. However, the analysis of NHS hospitals reveals a bureaucratic structure characterised by expense...

In this article, we develop and implement a methodology for analyzing the sources of variation in environmental efficiency across producers. We formulate a two-stage model. In the first stage, we use stochastic frontier analysis to estimate both technical and environmental efficiency. In the...

This study employs data drawn from the 2000 Agricultural Resource Management Survey, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-sponsored farmers’ survey. The article estimates returns to scale relationships across dairy farms of different sizes and across different regions, incorporating variables...

Agricultural production is known to have environmental impacts, both adverse and beneficial, and it is desirable to incorporate at least some of these impacts in an environmentally sensitive productivity index. In this paper, we construct indicators of water contamination from the use of...

We evaluate agricultural bank management performance, focusing on the impacts of interstate banking laws on productivity change. The generalized Malmquist productivity index decomposes productivity change into technological change, technical efficiency change, and change in scale economies....

We introduce new specifications and estimation procedures of traditional distance functions that allow researchers to undertake environmental efficiency and productivity studies within a parametric stochastic framework. Relying on a translog distance function specification that treats the...

"Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Productivity Growth of Electricity Generators" by Greg Murtough, David Appels, Anna Matysek, and C. A. Knox Lovell, was released on 18 December 2001. This paper develops and applies a measure of productivity growth that can incorporate unpriced environmental...