Allocative efficiency measurement revisited: do we really need input prices?

The traditional approach to measuring allocative efficiency is based on input prices, which are rarely known at the firm level. This paper proposes a new approach to measure allocative efficiency which is based on the output-oriented distance to the frontier in a profit - technical efficiency space - and which does not require information on input prices. To validate the new approach, we perform a Monte-Carlo experiment which provides evidence that the estimates of the new and the traditional approach are highly correlated. Finally, as an illustration, we apply the new approach to a sample of about 900 enterprises from the chemical industry in Germany.