Panel stochastic frontier analysis with dependent error terms

In presence of panel data, technical efficiency is used to compare the performances of Decision-Making Units (DMUs). The novelty of this paper is the consideration of the dependence between the two error terms in the case of panel data and the introduction of time effect models in the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). Hence, our SFA model considers the balanced panel case, several models describing the evolution of the inefficiency over time and the dependence between the two error terms. The inefficiency and noise terms being dependent, a copula function which reflects the dependence between them is included in their joint density. The model is estimated by maximum likelihood and the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) is used for model selection. Moreover, a likelihood ratio test is performed for the nested models. A bootstrap algorithm is proposed for statistical inference on the Technical Efficiency (TE) measures. Results for Moroccan policy of the production and sales of drinking water from 2001 to 2007 identify the most and least efficient provinces, and a generally positive trend of estimated TE measures.