C. A. Knox Lovell - Böcker

When Harold Fried, et al. published The Measurement of Productive Efficiency: Techniques and Applications with OUP in 1993, the book received a great deal of professional interest for its accessible treatment of the rapidly growing field of efficiency and productivity analysis. The first several chapters, providing the background, motivation, and theoretical foundations for this topic, were the most widely recognized. In this tight, direct update, these same editors have compiled over ten years of the most recent research in this changing field, and expanded on those seminal chapters. The book will guide readers from the basic models to the latest, cutting-edge extensions, and will be reinforced by references to classic and current theoretical and applied research. It is intended for professors and graduate students in a variety of fields, ranging from economics to agricultural economics, business administration, management science, and public administration. It should also appeal to public servants and policy makers engaged in business performance analysis or regulation.

This book presents a mathematical programming approach to the analysis of production frontiers and efficiency measurement. The authors construct a variety of production frontiers, and by measuring distances to them are able to develop a model of efficient producer behaviour and a taxonomy of possible types of departure from efficiency in various environments. Linear programming is used as an analytical and computational technique in order to accomplish this. The approach developed is then applied to modelling producer behaviour. By focusing on the empirical relevance of production frontiers and distances to them, and applying linear programming techniques to artificial data to illustrate the type of information they can generate, this book provides a unique study in applied production analysis. It will be of interest to scholars and students of economics and operations research, and analysts in business and government.

This book presents a mathematical programming approach to the analysis of production frontiers and efficiency measurement. The authors construct a variety of production frontiers, and by measuring distances to them are able to develop a model of efficient producer behaviour and a taxonomy of possible types of departure from efficiency in various environments. Linear programming is used as an analytical and computational technique in order to accomplish this. The approach developed is then applied to modelling producer behaviour. By focusing on the empirical relevance of production frontiers and distances to them, and applying linear programming techniques to artificial data to illustrate the type of information they can generate, this book provides a unique study in applied production analysis. It will be of interest to scholars and students of economics and operations research, and analysts in business and government.

Modern textbook presentations of production economics typically treat producers as successful optimizers. Conventional econometric practice has generally followed this paradigm, and least squares based regression techniques have been used to estimate production, cost, profit and other functions. In such a framework deviations from maximum output, from minimum cost and cost minimizing input demands, and from maximum profit and profit maximizing output supplies and input demands, are attributed exclusively to random statistical noise. However casual empiricism and the business press both make persuasive cases for the argument that, although producers may indeed attempt to optimize, they do not always succeed. This book develops econometric techniques for the estimation of production, cost and profit frontiers, and for the estimation of the technical and economic efficiency with which producers approach these frontiers. Since these frontiers envelop rather than intersect the data, and since the authors continue to maintain the traditional econometric belief in the presence of external forces contributing to random statistical noise, the work is titled Stochastic Frontier Analysis.

The productivity of a business exerts an important influence on its financial performance. A similar influence exists for industries and economies: those with superior productivity performance thrive at the expense of others. Productivity performance helps explain the growth and demise of businesses and the relative prosperity of nations. Productivity Accounting: The Economics of Business Performance offers an in-depth analysis of variation in business performance, providing the reader with an analytical framework within which to account for this variation and its causes and consequences. The primary focus is the individual business, and the principal consequence of business productivity performance is business financial performance. Alternative measures of financial performance are considered, including profit, profitability, cost, unit cost, and return on assets. Combining analytical rigor with empirical illustrations, the analysis draws on wide-ranging literatures, both historical and current, from business and economics, and explains how businesses create value and distribute it.

The productivity of a business exerts an important influence on its financial performance. A similar influence exists for industries and economies: those with superior productivity performance thrive at the expense of others. Productivity performance helps explain the growth and demise of businesses and the relative prosperity of nations. Productivity Accounting: The Economics of Business Performance offers an in-depth analysis of variation in business performance, providing the reader with an analytical framework within which to account for this variation and its causes and consequences. The primary focus is the individual business, and the principal consequence of business productivity performance is business financial performance. Alternative measures of financial performance are considered, including profit, profitability, cost, unit cost, and return on assets. Combining analytical rigor with empirical illustrations, the analysis draws on wide-ranging literatures, both historical and current, from business and economics, and explains how businesses create value and distribute it.

This book surveys the state-of-the-art in efficiency and productivity analysis, examining advances in the analytical foundations and empirical applications. The analytical techniques developed in this book for efficiency provide alternative ways of defining optimum outcome sets, typically as a (technical) production frontier or as an (economic) cost, revenue or profit frontier, and alternative ways of measuring efficiency relative to an appropriate frontier. Simultaneously, the analytical techniques developed for efficiency analysis extend directly to productivity analysis, thereby providing alternative methods for estimating productivity levels, and productivity change through time or productivity variation across producers.This book includes chapters using data envelopment analysis (DEA) or stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) as quantitative techniques capable of measuring efficiency and productivity. Across the book’s 15 chapters, it broadly extends into popular application areas including agriculture, banking and finance, and municipal performance, and relatively new application areas including corporate social responsibility, the value of intangible assets, land consolidation, and the measurement of economic well-being. The chapters also cover topics such as permutation tests for production frontier shifts, new indices of total factor productivity, and also randomized controlled trials and production frontiers.

This book surveys the state-of-the-art in efficiency and productivity analysis, examining advances in the analytical foundations and empirical applications. The analytical techniques developed in this book for efficiency provide alternative ways of defining optimum outcome sets, typically as a (technical) production frontier or as an (economic) cost, revenue or profit frontier, and alternative ways of measuring efficiency relative to an appropriate frontier. Simultaneously, the analytical techniques developed for efficiency analysis extend directly to productivity analysis, thereby providing alternative methods for estimating productivity levels, and productivity change through time or productivity variation across producers.This book includes chapters using data envelopment analysis (DEA) or stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) as quantitative techniques capable of measuring efficiency and productivity. Across the book’s 15 chapters, it broadly extends into popular application areas including agriculture, banking and finance, and municipal performance, and relatively new application areas including corporate social responsibility, the value of intangible assets, land consolidation, and the measurement of economic well-being. The chapters also cover topics such as permutation tests for production frontier shifts, new indices of total factor productivity, and also randomized controlled trials and production frontiers.

This book grows from a conference on the state of the art and recent advances in Efficiency and Productivity.  Papers  were commissioned from leading researchers in the field, and include eight explorations into the analytical foundations of efficiency and productivity analysis.  Chapters on modeling advances include reverse directional distance function, a new method for estimating technological production possibilities, a new distance function called a loss distance function, an analysis of productivity and price recovery indices, the relation of technical efficiency measures to productivity measures, the implications for benchmarking and target setting of imposing weight restrictions on DEA models, weight restrictions in a regulatory setting, and the Principle of Least Action.Chapters on empirical applications include a study of innovative firms that use innovation inputs to produce innovation outputs, a study of the impact of potential “coopetition” or cooperation among competitors on the financial performance of European automobile plants, using SFA to estimate the eco-efficiency of dairy farms in Spain, a DEA bankruptcy prediction model, a combined stochastic cost frontier analysis model/mixture hazard model, the evolution of energy intensity in nine Spanish manufacturing industries, and the productivity of US farmers as they age.