The Expected Minimum Cost Function: a Non Parametric Approach.

The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of expected minimum cost function and to present the methodology for a non parametric estimation of it. Generally, in cost enonometric analysis, inference is made on the cost function, namely the conditional expectation of cost given some level of output. Here, we consider the conditional distribution on the cost, given that the output level is greater than a fixed level. Our methodology is applied to a data set concerning cost and outputs of the delivery activity for french post offices.