In panel stochastic frontier models, the Fixed Effects (FE) approach produces biased technical efficiency scores when time-invariant variables are important in the production process, and the Random Effects (RE) approach imposes distributional assumptions about the inefficiency. Moreover, technical efficiency scores obtained from these models are biased when the sample contains a large number o...

The paper is concerned with several kinds of stochastic frontier models whose likelihood function is not available in closed form. First, with output-oriented stochastic frontier models whose one-sided errors have a distribution other than the standard ones (exponential or half-normal). The gamma and beta distributions are leading examples. Second, with input-oriented stochastic frontier models...

By using a stochastic frontier framework, the mutual effect of input use on production risk and inefficiency is investigated. Disentangling this mutual effect proves important for empirical reasons, at least when applied to west Tennessee cotton systems grown after various cover crops. The most striking result is that the stochastic frontier model, when compared with a typical Just-Pope model, ...

Finite mixture estimation (FME) is compared to estimated generalized least squares (EGLS) in the estimation of economies of size and production cost frontiers for Alabama dairy farms. FME provides several unique insights into the economic forces behind recent changes in Alabama’s dairy industry. FME provides estimation of a stochastic average cost frontier with known statisticalproperties, whic...

This paper aims to estimate a translog stochastic frontier production function in the analysis of a panel of 150 mixed Catalan farms in the period 1989-1993, in order to attempt to measure and explain variation in technical inefficiency scores with a one-stage approach. The model uses gross value added as the output aggregate measure. Total employment, fixed capital, current assets, specific co...

Parametric stochastic frontier models have a long history in applied production economics, but the class of tractible parametric models is relatively small. Consequently, researchers have recently considered non–parametric alternatives such as kernel density estimators, functional approximations, and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The purpose of this paper is to present an information theoret...

Literature of productive efficiency analysis is currently divided between two main paradigms: the parametric Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and the deterministic, nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This paper develops a new encompassing framework that melds the SFA-style stochastic composite error term to the DEA-type nonparametric frontier that satisfies monotonicity and concav...

The paper proposes to combine stochastic frontier models and linear programming methods by using DEA measures as priors of efficiency in the stochastic frontier model. These prior measures are revised to obtain posterior measures using Bayes theorem. Monte Carlo methods are developed to perform empirical Bayes inference in the new model. The methods are organized around Gibbs sampling with data...

In this paper an attempt is made to explain the basic concept of efficiency, frontier production function, technical efficiency, deterministic frontier, and stochastic frontier. Efficiency of a firm/industry refers to its performance in the utilization of resources at its disposal and is a relative concept. Technical efficiency of a production function is defined as the maximum quantity of outp...

A lot is known about the Hölder regularity of stochastic processes, in particular in the case of Gaussian processes. Recently, a finer analysis of the local regularity of functions, termed 2-microlocal analysis, has been introduced in a de-terministic frame: through the computation of the so-called 2-microlocal frontier, it allows in particular to predict the evolution of regularity under the a...