An efficiency indicator of industry configuration (allowing for entry/exit of firms) is presented which accounts for four sources components: (1) size inefficiencies arising from firms which can be conveniently split into smaller units; (2) efficiency gains realized through merger of firms; (3)...

The present paper aims at evaluating the effect of regional policies in the agricultural field, with a specific focus on the Italian case. Provincial systems are evaluated through the Directional Output Distance Function (DODF) that is an extension of the Data Envelopment Analysis technique...

Apart from the well-known weaknesses of the standard Malmquist productivity index related to infeasibility and not accounting for slacks, already addressed in the literature, we identify a new and significant drawback of the Malmquist–Luenberger index decomposition that questions its validity...

This research analyses the environmental footprint of the airline industry in an attempt to highlight potential paths for improvement. We develop a directional economic-environmental distance function (DEED) which accounts for the production of both desirable and undesirable output and the...