Caves, Christensen, Diewert introduced Malmquist output, input and productivity indexes into production theory in a systematic way. These indexes use distance functions to represent the technology. In recent years, there have been many attempts to decompose Malmquist productivity indexes into...

Diewert and Fox (2013) proposed decompositions of a Malmquist-type productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting technical progress, technical efficiency change and returns to scale components. A major problem with their decompositions is that it may be difficult to...

Caves, Christensen, Diewert introduced Malmquist output, input and productivity indexes into production theory in a systematic way. This paper revisits the debate on how to decompose Bjurek’s concept of a Malmquist productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting...

Caves, Christensen and Diewert proposed a method for estimating a theoretical productivity index for a firm using Törnqvist input and output indexes, augmented by exogenous estimates of local returns to scale. However, in order to implement their method, they assumed that the firm maximized...

Diewert and Fox (2013) proposed decompositions of a Malmquist-type productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting technical progress, technical efficiency change and returns to scale components. A major problem with their decompositions is that it may be difficult to...

The paper presents a decomposition of a production unit’s cost ratio over two periods into explanatory factors. The explanatory factors are growth in the unit’s cost efficiency, output growth, changes in input prices and technical progress. In order to implement the decomposition, an...