IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v257y2025ics0165176525005567.html

A simple approach to estimate technical efficiency in stochastic frontier models

Author

Listed:
  • Parmeter, Christopher

Abstract

Estimation of technical efficiency lies at the core of stochastic frontier analysis. However, it is common that only the conditional expectation of technical efficiency for each observation is calculated. If one were interested in alternative features of the conditional distribution, such as quantiles or the mode, these are commonly unavailable in closed form and require simulation methods. Here we propose a simple nonparametric approach that can provide an array of features of the distribution of technical efficiency, for any set of distributional assumptions.

Suggested Citation

  • Parmeter, Christopher, 2025. "A simple approach to estimate technical efficiency in stochastic frontier models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:257:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525005567
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112719
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176525005567
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112719?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. V. Chernozhukov & I. Fernández-Val & A. Galichon, 2009. "Improving point and interval estimators of monotone functions by rearrangement," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 96(3), pages 559-575.
    2. Kumbhakar, Subal C. & Sun, Kai, 2013. "Derivation of marginal effects of determinants of technical inefficiency," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 249-253.
    3. Christine Amsler & Artem Prokhorov & Peter Schmidt, 2014. "Using Copulas to Model Time Dependence in Stochastic Frontier Models," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(5-6), pages 497-522, August.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. William Greene, 2003. "Simulated Likelihood Estimation of the Normal-Gamma Stochastic Frontier Function," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 179-190, April.
    7. Peter Hall & Jeff Racine & Qi Li, 2004. "Cross-Validation and the Estimation of Conditional Probability Densities," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 99, pages 1015-1026, December.
    8. Alexander D. Stead, 2025. "Maximum likelihood estimation of normal-gamma and normal-Nakagami stochastic frontier models," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 183-198, April.
    9. Stevenson, Rodney E., 1980. "Likelihood functions for generalized stochastic frontier estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 57-66, May.
    10. 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.
    11. Yoshihiko Tsukuda & Tatsuyoshi Miyakoshi, 2003. "An alternative method for predicting technical inefficiency in stochastic frontier models," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(11), pages 667-670.
    12. Li, Qi & Racine, Jeffrey S, 2008. "Nonparametric Estimation of Conditional CDF and Quantile Functions With Mixed Categorical and Continuous Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 423-434.
    13. Greene, William H., 1990. "A Gamma-distributed stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 141-163.
    14. V. Chernozhukov & I. Fernández-Val & A. Galichon, 2009. "Improving point and interval estimators of monotone functions by rearrangement," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 96(3), pages 559-575.
    15. Alecos Papadopoulos & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2022. "Quantile Methods for Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Foundations and Trends(R) in Econometrics, now publishers, vol. 12(1), pages 1-120, November.
    16. Alecos Papadopoulos & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2025. "Two-Tier Stochastic Frontier Analysis for the Social Sciences," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-031-81513-3, October.
    17. Jeffrey S. Racine & Qi Li & Qiaoyu Wang, 2024. "Boundary-adaptive kernel density estimation: the case of (near) uniform density," Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 146-164, January.
    18. Christine Amsler & Robert James & Artem Prokhorov & Peter Schmidt, 2024. "Improving Predictions of Technical Inefficiency," Advances in Econometrics, in: Essays in Honor of Subal Kumbhakar, volume 46, pages 309-328, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    19. Polachek, Solomon W & Yoon, Bong Joon, 1987. "A Two-tiered Earnings Frontier Estimation of Employer and Employee Information in the Labor Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 69(2), pages 296-302, May.
    20. 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)

    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. Alecos Papadopoulos, 2021. "Stochastic frontier models using the Generalized Exponential distribution," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 15-29, February.
    2. Alecos Papadopoulos, 2025. "Two-tier stochastic frontier analysis: heterogeneous error distributions and model selection," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 223-234, December.
    3. Emilio Gómez-Déniz & Nancy Dávila-Cárdenes & Alejandro Leiva-Arcas & María J. Martínez-Patiño, 2021. "Measuring Efficiency in the Summer Olympic Games Disciplines: The Case of the Spanish Athletes," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(21), pages 1-15, October.
    4. Emilio Gómez-Déniz & Jorge Pérez-Rodríguez, 2015. "Closed-form solution for a bivariate distribution in stochastic frontier models with dependent errors," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 215-223, April.
    5. 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.
    6. Alexander D. Stead, 2025. "Maximum likelihood estimation of normal-gamma and normal-Nakagami stochastic frontier models," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 183-198, April.
    7. Tsionas, Efthymios G., 2012. "Maximum likelihood estimation of stochastic frontier models by the Fourier transform," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 170(1), pages 234-248.
    8. Adugna Lemi & Ian Wright, 2020. "Exports, foreign ownership, and firm-level efficiency in Ethiopia and Kenya: an application of the stochastic frontier model," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 669-698, February.
    9. William Griffiths & Xiaohui Zhang & Xueyan Zhao, 2010. "A Stochastic Frontier Model for Discrete Ordinal Outcomes: A Health Production Function," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1092, The University of Melbourne.
    10. Adwoa Asantewaa & Tooraj Jamasb & Manuel Llorca, 2022. "Electricity Sector Reform Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Parametric Distance Function Approach," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-29, March.
    11. 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.
    12. Alexander D. Stead & Phill Wheat & William H. Greene, 2023. "On hypothesis testing in latent class and finite mixture stochastic frontier models, with application to a contaminated normal-half normal model," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 37-48, August.
    13. Willam Greene, 2005. "Fixed and Random Effects in Stochastic Frontier Models," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 7-32, January.
    14. Tariq Mahmood & Ejaz Ghani & Musleh-Ud Din, 2006. "Efficiency of Large-scale Manufacturing in Pakistan: A Production Frontier Approach," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 45(4), pages 689-700.
    15. 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.
    16. Kamil Makieła & Błażej Mazur, 2020. "Bayesian Model Averaging and Prior Sensitivity in Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-22, April.
    17. Huang, Tai-Hsin & Chen, Kuan-Chen & Lin, Chung-I, 2018. "An extension from network DEA to copula-based network SFA: Evidence from the U.S. commercial banks in 2009," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 51-62.
    18. Maira Caño- Guiral, 1995. "Competitividad y eficiencia técnica. Un modelo de datos panel para la industria láctea uruguaya," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 0795, Department of Economics - dECON.
    19. Hung-pin Lai & Cliff Huang, 2013. "Maximum likelihood estimation of seemingly unrelated stochastic frontier regressions," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 1-14, August.
    20. Kneib, Thomas & Silbersdorff, Alexander & Säfken, Benjamin, 2023. "Rage Against the Mean – A Review of Distributional Regression Approaches," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 99-123.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:eee:ecolet:v:257:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525005567. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.