The aim of this paper is to analyse the regional productivity differentials on dairy farms in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Several methods have been suggested for analysing productivity differentials in agriculture between groups of farms or countries. Hayami [5] and Hayami and Ruttan [7]...

Two-stage data envelopment analysis (2-DEA) is commonly used in productive efficiency analysis to estimate the effects of operational conditions and practices on performance. In this method the DEA efficiency estimates are regressed on contextual variables representing the operational...

This paper extends the nonparametric approach to efficiency analysis to deal with uncertainty of input-output prices. We generalize the notion of economic efficiency to derive necessary and sufficient first-order stochastic dominance (FSD) efficiency conditions. Interestingly, the FSD conditions...

This paper explores an intermediate route between the Fisher and the Malmquist productivity indexes so as to minimize data requirements and assumptions about economic behavior of production units and their production technology. Assuming quantity data of inputs and outputs and the behavioral...

Isotonic nonparametric least squares (INLS) is a regression method for estimating a monotonic function by fitting a step function to data. In the literature of frontier estimation, the free disposal hull (FDH) method is similarly based on the minimal assumption of monotonicity. In this paper, we...

The need for monitoring countries’ overall performance in sustainable development (SD) is widely recognized, but the methods for aggregating vast amounts of empirical data remain rather crude. This paper examines the so-called ‘benefit of doubt’ weighting method as a tool for identifying...

Environmental cost-benefit analysis (ECBA) refers to social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts. Valuation of the environmental impacts in monetary terms forms one of the critical steps in ECBA. We propose a new approach for environmental...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a linear programming based method for evaluating performance of comparable production units such as firms. Although the method is already extensively applied in many areas of economics, its use in environmental economics and related fields remains limited. The...

The need for monitoring countries’ overall performance in Sustainable Development (SD) is widely recognized, but the methods for aggregating vast amounts of empirical data remain rather crude. This paper examines the so-called ‘benefit-of-the-doubt’ weighting method as a tool for...