IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v60y2021i6d10.1007_s00181-020-01988-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wrong skewness and finite sample correction in the normal-half normal stochastic frontier model

Author

Listed:
  • Jun Cai

    (Huazhong University of Science and Technology)

  • Qu Feng

    (Nanyang Technological University)

  • William C. Horrace

    (Syracuse University)

  • Guiying Laura Wu

    (Nanyang Technological University)

Abstract

In parametric stochastic frontier models, the composed error is specified as the sum of a two-sided noise component and a one-sided inefficiency component, which is usually assumed to be half-normal, implying that the error distribution is skewed in one direction. In practice, however, estimation residuals may display skewness in the wrong direction. Model respecification or pulling a new sample is often prescribed. Since wrong skewness may manifest as a finite sample problem, this paper proposes a finite sample adjustment to existing estimators to obtain the desired direction of residual skewness. This provides an alternative empirical approach to deal with the wrong skewness problem that does not require respecification of the model.

Suggested Citation

  • Jun Cai & Qu Feng & William C. Horrace & Guiying Laura Wu, 2021. "Wrong skewness and finite sample correction in the normal-half normal stochastic frontier model," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(6), pages 2837-2866, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:60:y:2021:i:6:d:10.1007_s00181-020-01988-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s00181-020-01988-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-020-01988-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00181-020-01988-z?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 search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Stevenson, Rodney E., 1980. "Likelihood functions for generalized stochastic frontier estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 57-66, May.
    3. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2002. "Determining the Number of Factors in Approximate Factor Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 191-221, January.
    4. Mester, Loretta J., 1997. "Measuring efficiency at U.S. banks: Accounting for heterogeneity is important," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 230-242, April.
    5. Leopold Simar & Paul Wilson, 2010. "Inferences from Cross-Sectional, Stochastic Frontier Models," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 62-98.
    6. 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.
    7. Myungsup Kim & Yangseon Kim & Peter Schmidt, 2007. "On the accuracy of bootstrap confidence intervals for efficiency levels in stochastic frontier models with panel data," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 165-181, December.
    8. Moon, Hyungsik Roger & Schorfheide, Frank, 2009. "Estimation with overidentifying inequality moment conditions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 153(2), pages 136-154, December.
    9. 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.
    10. Waldman, Donald M., 1982. "A stationary point for the stochastic frontier likelihood," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 275-279, February.
    11. Green, Alison & Mayes, David, 1991. "Technical Inefficiency in Manufacturing Industries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(406), pages 523-538, May.
    12. Greene, William H., 1980. "On the estimation of a flexible frontier production model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 101-115, May.
    13. 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.
    14. Olson, Jerome A. & Schmidt, Peter & Waldman, Donald M., 1980. "A Monte Carlo study of estimators of stochastic frontier production functions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 67-82, May.
    15. 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.
    16. 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, February.
    17. 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.
    18. 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. Dan Ben-Moshe & David Genesove, 2022. "Regulation and Frontier Housing Supply," Papers 2208.01969, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2024.
    2. Subal C. Kumbhakarⓡ & Emir Malikovⓡ & Christopher F. Parmeterⓡ, 2021. "Applications of efficiency and productivity analysis: editors’ introduction," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(6), pages 2657-2663, June.
    3. 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.
    4. 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).
    5. 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.
    6. Alecos Papadopoulos & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2024. "The wrong skewness problem in stochastic frontier analysis: a review," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 121-134, April.

    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. Qu Feng & William Horrace & Guiying Laura Wu, 2013. "Wrong Skewness and Finite Sample Correction in Parametric Stochastic Frontier Models Abstract: In parametric stochastic frontier models, the composed error is specified as the sum of a two-sided noise," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 154, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Cheng, Xiaomei & Andersson, Jonas & Bjørndal, Endre, 2015. "On the Distributional Assumptions in the StoNED model," Discussion Papers 2015/24, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    5. Sickles, Robin C. & Song, Wonho & Zelenyuk, Valentin, 2018. "Econometric Analysis of Productivity: Theory and Implementation in R," Working Papers 18-008, Rice University, Department of Economics.
    6. Graziella Bonanno & Domenico De Giovanni & Filippo Domma, 2017. "The ‘wrong skewness’ problem: a re-specification of stochastic frontiers," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 49-64, February.
    7. Christian M. Hafner & Hans Manner & Léopold Simar, 2018. "The “wrong skewness” problem in stochastic frontier models: A new approach," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 380-400, April.
    8. 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.
    9. Fei Jin & Lung-fei Lee, 2020. "Asymptotic properties of a spatial autoregressive stochastic frontier model," Journal of Spatial Econometrics, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-40, December.
    10. 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.
    11. William C. Horrace & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2018. "A Laplace stochastic frontier model," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 260-280, March.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. Hafner, Christian & Manner, Hans & Simar, Leopold, 2013. "The “wrong skewnessâ€Ω problem in stochastic frontier models: A new approach," LIDAM Discussion Papers ISBA 2013046, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    16. 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.
    17. Christopher F. Parmeter & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2019. "Combining the Virtues of Stochastic Frontier and Data Envelopment Analysis," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 1628-1658, November.
    18. Young Hoon Lee & Hayley Jang & Sun Ho Hwang, 2015. "Market Competition and Threshold Efficiency in the Sports Industry," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(8), pages 853-870, December.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stochastic frontier model; Skewness; MLE; Constrained estimators; BIC;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

    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:spr:empeco:v:60:y:2021:i:6:d:10.1007_s00181-020-01988-z. 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.