Is public expenditure productive? Is there a shortfall or excess in public capital investment? We address these old issues in the light of new econometric tools. It is argued that the Cobb-Douglas specification that ignores nonlinearity inherent in the functional relationship of the production...

This paper deals with estimation of technical change through changes in input factor efficiency/productivity. The main advantage of this factor augmenting (FA) approach, unlike the generic time trend models of technical change, is that one can measure input-specific productivity, change in input...

In this paper, we propose a new approach to stochastic frontier models, viz., a Markov switching structure to accommodate cross-sectional parameter heterogeneity and temporal variation in the parameters and technical inefficiency distributions. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques are...

Efficiency estimation in stochastic frontier models typically assumes that the underlying production technology is the same for all firms. There might, however, be unobserved differences in technologies that might be inappropriately labeled as inefficiency if such variations in technology are...

This paper studies performance of both point and interval predictors of technical inefficiency in the stochastic production frontier model using a Monte Carlo experiment. In point prediction we use the Jondrow et al. (1980) point predictor of technical inefficiency, while for interval prediction...

It is generally believed that the structural reforms that usher in competition and force companies to become more efficient were introduced later in India following the macroeconomic crisis in 1991. However, whether the post-1991 growth is an outcome of more efficient use of resources or greater...

This paper proposes a semiparametric smooth-coefficient (SPSC) stochastic production frontier model where regression coefficients are unknown smooth functions of environmental factors (Z). Technical inefficiency is specified in the form of a parametric scaling function which also depends on the...

This paper addresses specification and estimation of multiple-outputs and multiple-inputs production technology in the presence of technical inefficiency. The primary focus is on the primal formulations. Several competing specifications such as production function, input (output) distance...

This paper analyzes the impact of load factor, facility and generator types on the productivity of Korean electric power plants. In order to capture important differences in the effect of load policy on power output, we use a semiparametric smooth coefficient (SPSC) model that allows us to model...