IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jproda/v59y2023i1d10.1007_s11123-022-00651-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regularized conditional estimators of unit inefficiency in stochastic frontier analysis, with application to electricity distribution market

Author

Listed:
  • Zangin Zeebari

    (Jönköping University
    Karolinska Institutet)

  • Kristofer Månsson

    (Jönköping University)

  • Pär Sjölander

    (Jönköping University)

  • Magnus Söderberg

    (Halmstad University
    Ratio Institute
    Griffith University)

Abstract

In stochastic frontier analysis, the conventional estimation of unit inefficiency is based on the mean/mode of the inefficiency, conditioned on the composite error. It is known that the conditional mean of inefficiency shrinks towards the mean rather than towards the unit inefficiency. In this paper, we analytically prove that the conditional mode cannot accurately estimate unit inefficiency, either. We propose regularized estimators of unit inefficiency that restrict the unit inefficiency estimators to satisfy some a priori assumptions, and derive the closed form regularized conditional mode estimators for the three most commonly used inefficiency densities. Extensive simulations show that, under common empirical situations, e.g., regarding sample size and signal-to-noise ratio, the regularized estimators outperform the conventional (unregularized) estimators when the inefficiency is greater than its mean/mode. Based on real data from the electricity distribution sector in Sweden, we demonstrate that the conventional conditional estimators and our regularized conditional estimators provide substantially different results for highly inefficient companies.

Suggested Citation

  • Zangin Zeebari & Kristofer Månsson & Pär Sjölander & Magnus Söderberg, 2023. "Regularized conditional estimators of unit inefficiency in stochastic frontier analysis, with application to electricity distribution market," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 79-97, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jproda:v:59:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11123-022-00651-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11123-022-00651-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11123-022-00651-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11123-022-00651-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Behr, Andreas, 2010. "Quantile regression for robust bank efficiency score estimation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(2), pages 568-581, January.
    2. Wang, Wei Siang & Schmidt, Peter, 2009. "On the distribution of estimated technical efficiency in stochastic frontier models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 36-45, January.
    3. Andor, Mark A. & Parmeter, Christopher & Sommer, Stephan, 2019. "Combining uncertainty with uncertainty to get certainty? Efficiency analysis for regulation purposes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 274(1), pages 240-252.
    4. Horrace, William C., 2005. "On ranking and selection from independent truncated normal distributions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 335-354, June.
    5. Tran, Kien C. & Tsionas, Efthymios G., 2009. "Estimation of nonparametric inefficiency effects stochastic frontier models with an application to British manufacturing," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 904-909, September.
    6. Amsler, Christine & Prokhorov, Artem & Schmidt, Peter, 2016. "Endogeneity in stochastic frontier models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 190(2), pages 280-288.
    7. Léopold Simar & Ingrid Keilegom & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2017. "Nonparametric least squares methods for stochastic frontier models," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 189-204, June.
    8. Cliff Huang & Hung-pin Lai, 2012. "Estimation of stochastic frontier models based on multimodel inference," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 273-284, December.
    9. Wang, Yongqiao & Wang, Shouyang & Dang, Chuangyin & Ge, Wenxiu, 2014. "Nonparametric quantile frontier estimation under shape restriction," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 232(3), pages 671-678.
    10. Fan, Yanqin & Li, Qi & Weersink, Alfons, 1996. "Semiparametric Estimation of Stochastic Production Frontier Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(4), pages 460-468, October.
    11. Kumbhakar, Subal C & Ghosh, Soumendra & McGuckin, J Thomas, 1991. "A Generalized Production Frontier Approach for Estimating Determinants of Inefficiency in U.S. Dairy Farms," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 9(3), pages 279-286, July.
    12. William C. Horrace & Ian A. Wright, 2020. "Stationary Points for Parametric Stochastic Frontier Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 516-526, July.
    13. Kumbhakar,Subal C. & Wang,Hung-Jen & Horncastle,Alan P., 2015. "A Practitioner's Guide to Stochastic Frontier Analysis Using Stata," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107609464.
    14. Sickles, Robin C., 2005. "Panel estimators and the identification of firm-specific efficiency levels in parametric, semiparametric and nonparametric settings," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 305-334, June.
    15. Cheryl J. Flynn & Clifford M. Hurvich & Jeffrey S. Simonoff, 2013. "Efficiency for Regularization Parameter Selection in Penalized Likelihood Estimation of Misspecified Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 108(503), pages 1031-1043, September.
    16. Alecos Papadopoulos, 2021. "Stochastic frontier models using the Generalized Exponential distribution," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 15-29, February.
    17. Federico Belotti & Silvio Daidone & Giuseppe Ilardi & Vincenzo Atella, 2013. "Stochastic frontier analysis using Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 13(4), pages 718-758, December.
    18. Hung-jen Wang & Peter Schmidt, 2002. "One-Step and Two-Step Estimation of the Effects of Exogenous Variables on Technical Efficiency Levels," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 129-144, September.
    19. Ruggiero, John, 1999. "Efficiency estimation and error decomposition in the stochastic frontier model: A Monte Carlo analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 555-563, June.
    20. Battese, George E. & Coelli, Tim J., 1988. "Prediction of firm-level technical efficiencies with a generalized frontier production function and panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 387-399, July.
    21. Greene, William H., 1990. "A Gamma-distributed stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 141-163.
    22. Timothy J. Coelli & D.S. Prasada Rao & Christopher J. O’Donnell & George E. Battese, 2005. "An Introduction to Efficiency and Productivity Analysis," Springer Books, Springer, edition 0, number 978-0-387-25895-9, December.
    23. Oleg Badunenko & Daniel J. Henderson & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2012. "When, where and how to perform efficiency estimation," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 175(4), pages 863-892, October.
    24. Mike G. Tsionas, 2017. "“When, Where, and How” of Efficiency Estimation: Improved Procedures for Stochastic Frontier Modeling," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 112(519), pages 948-965, July.
    25. William C. Horrace & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2018. "A Laplace stochastic frontier model," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 260-280, March.
    26. Christopher F. Parmeter & Alan T. K. Wan & Xinyu Zhang, 2019. "Model averaging estimators for the stochastic frontier model," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 91-103, June.
    27. Anil Bera & Subhash Sharma, 1999. "Estimating Production Uncertainty in Stochastic Frontier Production Function Models," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 187-210, November.
    28. Tsionas, Mike G., 2021. "Optimal combinations of stochastic frontier and data envelopment analysis models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(2), pages 790-800.
    29. Cristina Bernini & Marzia Freo & Attilio Gardini, 2004. "Quantile estimation of frontier production function," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 373-381, May.
    30. Meeusen, Wim & van den Broeck, Julien, 1977. "Efficiency Estimation from Cobb-Douglas Production Functions with Composed Error," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 18(2), pages 435-444, June.
    31. M. Stone, 2002. "How not to measure the efficiency of public services (and how one might)," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 165(3), pages 405-434, October.
    32. Christopher F. Parmeter & Hung-Jen Wang & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2017. "Nonparametric estimation of the determinants of inefficiency," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 205-221, June.
    33. Meade, Richard & Söderberg, Magnus, 2020. "Is welfare higher when utilities are owned by customers instead of investors? Evidence from electricity distribution in New Zealand," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    34. Adam Lenart, 2012. "The Gompertz distribution and maximum likelihood estimation of its parameters - a revision," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2012-008, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    35. Jondrow, James & Knox Lovell, C. A. & Materov, Ivan S. & Schmidt, Peter, 1982. "On the estimation of technical inefficiency in the stochastic frontier production function model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 233-238, August.
    36. Greene, William H., 1980. "On the estimation of a flexible frontier production model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 101-115, May.
    37. Jradi, Samah & Parmeter, Christopher F. & Ruggiero, John, 2019. "Quantile estimation of the stochastic frontier model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 15-18.
    38. Ondrich, Jan & Ruggiero, John, 2001. "Efficiency measurement in the stochastic frontier model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(2), pages 434-442, March.
    39. Phill Wheat & Alexander D. Stead & William H. Greene, 2019. "Robust stochastic frontier analysis: a Student’s t-half normal model with application to highway maintenance costs in England," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 21-38, February.
    40. Stevenson, Rodney E., 1980. "Likelihood functions for generalized stochastic frontier estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 57-66, May.
    41. Peter Bogetoft & Lars Otto, 2011. "Benchmarking with DEA, SFA, and R," International Series in Operations Research and Management Science, Springer, number 978-1-4419-7961-2, September.
    42. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William C. Horrace & Hyunseok Jung & Yi Yang, 2023. "The conditional mode in parametric frontier models," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 333-343, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Subal C. Kumbhakar & Christopher F. Parmeter & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2022. "Stochastic Frontier Analysis: Foundations and Advances I," Springer Books, in: Subhash C. Ray & Robert G. Chambers & Subal C. Kumbhakar (ed.), Handbook of Production Economics, chapter 8, pages 331-370, Springer.
    2. Bao Hoang Nguyen & Robin C. Sickles & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2021. "What do we know from the vast literature on efficiency and productivity in healthcare? A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis," CEPA Working Papers Series WP092021, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    3. Bao Hoang Nguyen & Robin C. Sickles & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2022. "Efficiency Analysis with Stochastic Frontier Models Using Popular Statistical Softwares," Springer Books, in: Duangkamon Chotikapanich & Alicia N. Rambaldi & Nicholas Rohde (ed.), Advances in Economic Measurement, chapter 0, pages 129-171, Springer.
    4. Ali M. Oumer & Amin Mugera & Michael Burton & Atakelty Hailu, 2022. "Technical efficiency and firm heterogeneity in stochastic frontier models: application to smallholder maize farms in Ethiopia," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 213-241, April.
    5. Oleg Badunenko & Daniel J. Henderson, 2024. "Production analysis with asymmetric noise," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 1-18, February.
    6. E. Fusco & R. Benedetti & F. Vidoli, 2023. "Stochastic frontier estimation through parametric modelling of quantile regression coefficients," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 869-896, February.
    7. Jun Cai & William C. Horrace & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2021. "Density deconvolution with Laplace errors and unknown variance," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 103-113, December.
    8. Christopher F. Parmeter & Alan T. K. Wan & Xinyu Zhang, 2019. "Model averaging estimators for the stochastic frontier model," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 91-103, June.
    9. Sakouvogui Kekoura & Shaik Saleem & Doetkott Curt & Magel Rhonda, 2021. "Sensitivity analysis of stochastic frontier analysis models," Monte Carlo Methods and Applications, De Gruyter, vol. 27(1), pages 71-90, March.
    10. Kamil Makieła & Błażej Mazur, 2022. "Model uncertainty and efficiency measurement in stochastic frontier analysis with generalized errors," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 35-54, August.
    11. Stead, Alexander D. & Wheat, Phill & Greene, William H., 2023. "Robust maximum likelihood estimation of stochastic frontier models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(1), pages 188-201.
    12. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2015. "Efficiency of the banking system in Vietnam under financial liberalization," OSF Preprints qsf6d, Center for Open Science.
    13. Giovanni Forchini & Raoul Theler, 2023. "Semi-parametric modelling of inefficiencies in stochastic frontier analysis," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 135-152, April.
    14. Orea, Luis, 2019. "The Econometric Measurement of Firms’ Efficiency," Efficiency Series Papers 2019/02, University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG).
    15. Ahn, Heinz & Clermont, Marcel & Langner, Julia, 2023. "Comparative performance analysis of frontier-based efficiency measurement methods – A Monte Carlo simulation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(1), pages 294-312.
    16. Andor, Mark A. & Parmeter, Christopher & Sommer, Stephan, 2019. "Combining uncertainty with uncertainty to get certainty? Efficiency analysis for regulation purposes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 274(1), pages 240-252.
    17. Alecos Papadopoulos, 2021. "Stochastic frontier models using the Generalized Exponential distribution," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 15-29, February.
    18. Christopher F. Parmeter & Hung-Jen Wang & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2017. "Nonparametric estimation of the determinants of inefficiency," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 205-221, June.
    19. Phill Wheat & Alexander D. Stead & William H. Greene, 2019. "Robust stochastic frontier analysis: a Student’s t-half normal model with application to highway maintenance costs in England," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 21-38, February.
    20. Mark Andor & Frederik Hesse, 2014. "The StoNED age: the departure into a new era of efficiency analysis? A monte carlo comparison of StoNED and the “oldies” (SFA and DEA)," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 85-109, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Uncertainty modelling; Productivity; Regularized Estimators; Constrained Estimators; Conditional Estimators;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jproda:v:59:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11123-022-00651-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.