Directional distance functions provide very flexible tools for investigating the performance of Decision Making Units (DMUs). Their flexibility relies on their ability to handle undesirable outputs and to account for non-discretionary inputs and/or outputs by fixing zero values in some elements...

Conditional efficiency captures efficiency of firms facing heterogeneous environmental conditions. Traditional approaches estimate nonparametrically conditional distribution requiring smoothing techniques. We rather use a flexible nonparametric location-scale model to eliminate the dependence of...

The measurement of technical efficiency allows managers and policy makers to enhance existing differentials and potential improvements across a sample of analyzed units. The next step involves relating the obtained efficiency estimates to some external or environmental factors which may...

A rich literature on the analysis of efficiency in production has developed since pioneering work of Tjalling Koopmans and George Debreu in the 1950s. This literature includes work by researchers in economics, econometrics, management science, operations research, mathematical statistics and...