Benchmarking Economic Efficiency: Technical and Allocative Fundamentals

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Conceptual background: firms’ objectives, decision variables and economic efficiency.- Part I.- Chapter 3: Shephard’s input and output distance functions: cost and revenue efficiency decompositions.- Chapter 4: The generalized distance function (GDF): Profitability efficiency decomposition.- Part II.- Chapter 5: The Russell Measures: Economic Inefficiency Decompositions.- Chapter 6: The Weighted Additive Distance Function (WADF): Economic inefficiency decompositions.- Chapter 7: The enhanced Russell graph measure (ERG=SBM): economic inefficiency decompositions.- Chapter 8: The directional distance function (DDF): economic inefficiency decompositions.- Chapter 9: The Hölder distance functions: economic inefficiency decompositions.- Chapter 10: The loss distance function: economic inefficiency decompositions.- Chapter 11: The modified directional distance function (MDDF): economic inefficiency decompositions.- Chapter 12: The reverse directional distance function (RDDF): economic inefficiency decompositions.- Chapter 13: A unifying framework for decomposing economic inefficiency: The general direct approach and the standard and flexible reverse approaches.- Chapter 14: A final overview: economic efficency models and properties.- Bibliography.- Subject Index.- Author Index.

Jesus T. Pastor is a professor of Statistics and Operations Research at the Universidad Miguel Hernandez of Elche, Spain. He has been visiting researcher at the Universities of Georgia (USA), Toronto (Canada), Queensland (Australia) and Warwick (UK). Prof. Pastor’s research fields include location science, banking and, for the last twenty-five years, efficiency analysis.

Juan Aparicio is a professor Statistics, Mathematics and Information Technology at the Miguel Hernandez University of Elche (UMH), Spain, and the head of the Center of Operations Research. His research interest includes efficiency and productivity analysis combined with Machine Learning and Data Science. He is associate editor of Omega; The International Journal of Management Science, Journal of Productivity Analysis, Mathematics and Advances in Operations Research.

José Luis Zofío is a professor of Economics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and former Chair of the Department of Economics. He is also Visiting Professor at Erasmus University and Wageningen University and Research, and Visiting Fellow to the Erasmus Research Institute of Management ERIM, where he collaborates with several academics from the Rotterdam School of Management. His research interests are related to measurement theory in economics, in particular the use of index numbers for efficiency and productivity analysis, as well as spatial economics and trade theory.