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A Laplace Stochastic Frontier Model

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Abstract

We propose a Laplace stochastic frontier model as an alternative to the traditional model with normal errors. An interesting feature of the Laplace model is that the distribution of inefficiency conditional on the composed error is constant for positive values of the composed error, but varies for negative values. Therefore, it may be ideally suited for analyzing industries with many forms on or close to the efficient frontier. A simulation study suggests that the model performs well relative to the normal-exponential model when the two-sided error is misspecified. A brief application to US Airlines is provided.

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  • William C. Horrace & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2014. "A Laplace Stochastic Frontier Model," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 166, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    • Handle: RePEc:max:cprwps:166
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    1. William Horrace & Seth Richards-Shubik & Ian Wright, 2015. "Expected efficiency ranks from parametric stochastic frontier models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 829-848, March.
    2. Magnus, J.R. & Powell, O.R. & Prüfer, P., 2008. "A Comparison of Two Averaging Techniques with an Application to Growth Empirics," Other publications TiSEM 0392dffa-51e0-4bc9-9644-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
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    4. William C. Horrace & Peter Schmidt, 2000. "Multiple comparisons with the best, with economic applications," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1), pages 1-26.
    5. Horrace, William C., 2005. "On ranking and selection from independent truncated normal distributions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 335-354, June.
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    10. Kumbhakar, Subal C. & Parmeter, Christopher F. & Tsionas, Efthymios G., 2013. "A zero inefficiency stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 172(1), pages 66-76.
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    12. Rafael Cuesta, 2000. "A Production Model With Firm-Specific Temporal Variation in Technical Inefficiency: With Application to Spanish Dairy Farms," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 139-158, March.
    13. Magnus, Jan R. & Powell, Owen & Prüfer, Patricia, 2010. "A comparison of two model averaging techniques with an application to growth empirics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 154(2), pages 139-153, February.
    14. Kim, Yangseon & Schmidt, Peter, 2008. "Marginal Comparisons With the Best and the Efficiency Measurement Problem," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 253-260, April.
    15. 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.
    16. Qu Feng & William C. Horrace, 2012. "Alternative technical efficiency measures: Skew, bias and scale," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 253-268, March.
    17. Alfonso Flores-Lagunes & William C. Horrace & Kurt E. Schnier, 2007. "Identifying technically efficient fishing vessels: a non-empty, minimal subset approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(4), pages 729-745.
    18. Efthymios G. Tsionas, 2007. "Efficiency Measurement with the Weibull Stochastic Frontier," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 69(5), pages 693-706, October.
    19. Cazals, Catherine & Florens, Jean-Pierre & Simar, Leopold, 2002. "Nonparametric frontier estimation: a robust approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 1-25, January.
    20. Carree, Martin A., 2002. "Technological inefficiency and the skewness of the error component in stochastic frontier analysis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 101-107, September.
    21. Robin C. Sickles & William C. Horrace (ed.), 2014. "Festschrift in Honor of Peter Schmidt," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-1-4899-8008-3, November.
    22. 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.
    23. Greene, William, 2005. "Reconsidering heterogeneity in panel data estimators of the stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 269-303, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Tsionas, Mike G. & Assaf, A. George & Andrikopoulos, Athanasios, 2020. "Quantile stochastic frontier models with endogeneity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    2. Oleg Badunenko & Daniel J. Henderson, 2024. "Production analysis with asymmetric noise," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 1-18, February.
    3. Kamil Makieła & Błażej Mazur, 2020. "Bayesian Model Averaging and Prior Sensitivity in Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-22, April.
    4. Alecos Papadopoulos, 2023. "The noise error component in stochastic frontier analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(6), pages 2795-2829, June.
    5. 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.
    6. William C. Horrace & Yulong Wang, 2022. "Nonparametric tests of tail behavior in stochastic frontier models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(3), pages 537-562, April.
    7. Papadopoulos, Alecos & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2021. "Type II failure and specification testing in the Stochastic Frontier Model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 293(3), pages 990-1001.
    8. Zhao, Shirong & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2022. "The “wrong skewness” problem: Moment constrained maximum likelihood estimation of the stochastic frontier model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    9. 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.
    10. Juan Cabas Monje & Bouali Guesmi & Amer Ait Sidhoum & José María Gil, 2023. "Measuring technical efficiency of Spanish pig farming: Quantile stochastic frontier approach," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 67(4), pages 688-703, October.
    11. Kamil Makie{l}a & B{l}a.zej Mazur, 2020. "Stochastic Frontier Analysis with Generalized Errors: inference, model comparison and averaging," Papers 2003.07150, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2020.
    12. 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.
    13. Christopher F. Parmeter & Shirong Zhao, 2023. "An alternative corrected ordinary least squares estimator for the stochastic frontier model," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(6), pages 2831-2857, June.
    14. Graziella Bonanno & Filippo Domma, 2022. "Analytical Derivations of New Specifications for Stochastic Frontiers with Applications," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(20), pages 1-17, October.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Horrace, William C. & Rothbart, Michah W. & Yang, Yi, 2022. "Technical efficiency of public middle schools in New York City," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    19. Jun Cai & William C. Horrace & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2024. "Penalized sieve estimation of zero‐inefficiency stochastic frontiers," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(1), pages 41-65, January.
    20. 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.
    21. 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.
    22. Cheol-Keun Cho & Peter Schmidt, 2020. "The wrong skew problem in stochastic frontier models when inefficiency depends on environmental variables," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(5), pages 2031-2047, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stochastic frontier; efficient estimation;

    JEL classification:

    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • C16 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Econometric and Statistical Methods; Specific Distributions
    • C44 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

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