Productivity and Efficiency Analysis: An Economic Approach to Measuring and Explaining Managerial Performance

This book provides a coherent description of the main concepts and statistical methods used to analyse economic performance. The focus is on measures of performance that are of practical relevance to policy makers. Most, if not all, of these measures can be viewed as measures of productivity and/or efficiency. Linking fields as diverse as index number theory, data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis, the book explains how to compute measures of input and output quantity change that are consistent with measurement theory. It then discusses ways in which meaningful measures of productivity change can be decomposed into measures of technical progress, environmental change, and different types of efficiency change. The book is aimed at graduate students, researchers, statisticians, accountants and economists working in universities, regulatory authorities, government departments and private firms. The book contains many numerical examples. Computer codes and datasets areavailable on a companion website.

Christopher J. O’Donnell is a Professor in Econometrics at the University of Queensland.  He is a co-editor of the Journal of Productivity Analysis, an associate editor of Empirical Economics, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. His research interests focus on mathematical programming and statistical methods for measuring and explaining productivity and efficiency change. His work has been published in leading economics and econometrics journals, including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, and Econometric Reviews. He has provided in-house training and/or been a consultant for organisations including the World Bank, the International Rice Research Institute, the Australian Energy Regulator, the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, and the Australian Independent Hospital Pricing Authority.