Economic performance and “frontier” efficiency: A product life-cycle approach

We propose to introduce some economic performance variables of the firms and relate these with the corresponding “frontier” efficiency measures of 13 industries of the Belgian manufacturing sector in 1978. In order to find groups of similar firms by applying a cluster technique, we assume that this relationship is of a product life cycle nature. In the light of the product life cycle scheme itself and variations of it we can consider the possible explanatory variables of technical inefficiency in each group of firms as sources which intensify or slow-down the economic performance of the firm under consideration. Some cautious characterization of the top and bottom level clusters is formulated and linked to the efficiency issue. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989