In empirical productivity analysis it has become customary to use flexible functional forms to represent a firm …

the use of classical functional forms with few rigorous procedures available for selecting the most appropriate function … We employ flexible functional forms {Box-Cox curves} to distinguish statistically among classical curves These flexible …

The authors propose two general functional forms, and apply them to the specification of utility functions for …-ratio test. The appropriate degree of nonlinearity of the utility function can best be determined by using the general functional … forms without a priori specification. Further, farmers' utility functions may exhibit a decreasing absolute risk aversion …