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Undesirable outputs and a primal Divisia productivity index based on the directional output distance function

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  • Feng, Guohua
  • Serletis, Apostolos

Abstract

Despite their great popularity, all the conventional Divisia productivity indexes ignore undesirable outputs. The purpose of this study is to fill in this gap by proposing a primal Divisia-type productivity index that is valid in the presence of undesirable outputs. The new productivity index is derived by total differentiation of the directional output distance function with respect to a time trend and referred to as the Divisia–Luenberger productivity index. We also empirically compare the Divisia–Luenberger productivity index and a representative of the conventional Divisia productivity indexes–the radial-output-distance-function-based Feng and Serletis (2010) productivity index–using aggregate data on 15 OECD countries over the period 1981–2000. Our empirical results show that failure to take into account undesirable outputs not only leads to misleading rankings of countries both in terms of productivity growth and in terms of technological change, but also results in wrong conclusions concerning efficiency change.

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  • Feng, Guohua & Serletis, Apostolos, 2014. "Undesirable outputs and a primal Divisia productivity index based on the directional output distance function," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 183(1), pages 135-146.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:183:y:2014:i:1:p:135-146
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2014.06.014
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Directional output distance function; Divisia–Luenberger productivity index; Undesirable outputs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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