In this paper, we consider the stochastic ray production function that has been revived recently by Henningsen et al. (2017). We use a profit-maximizing framework to resolve endogeneity problems that are likely to arise, as in all distance functions, and we derive the system of equations after...

When benchmarking production units by non-parametric methods like data envelopment analysis (DEA), an assumption has to be made about the returns to scale of the underlying technology. Moreover, it is often also relevant to compare the frontiers across samples of producers. Until now, no exact...

Permutation techniques, where one recompute the test statistic over permutations of data, have a long history in statistics and have become increasingly useful as the availability of computational power has increased. Until now, no permutation tests for examining returns to scale assumptions,...