Aggregation, Efficiency, and Measurement

Economists have long studied the efficiency of firms, industries, and entire economies. This volume brings together leading scholars to make connections between efficiency and a number of diverse areas of current interest to economists, including an examination of the efficiency of tax systems across generations that overlap, and the efficiency of firm mergers that highlights the tradeoff between the synergy of the merger and the problem of managerial oversight in the now larger firm. An empirical look at productivity growth of states uses a tripartite decomposition of labor productivity into technological innovation, improvement in efficiency, and the capital deepening brought about by new business investment, shedding light on important debates on their relative importance. The efficiency of patent laws is examined in a modern model of economic growth. These contributions are complemented by analyses of methodological problems involved in the measurement, estimation and aggregation of efficiency indices.

Rolf Färe is Professor of Economics at Oregon State University. He received his Docent in Economics from the University of Lund, Sweden. He did post graduate work under Professor R. W. Shephard at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published in various journals including Econometrica, Economic Theory, and the Journal of Economic Theory.

Shawna Grosskopf is Professor of Economics at Oregon State University. She received her doctoral degree in Economics from Syracuse University. She has published in a variety of journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Productivity Analysis, and Economic Theory.

Daniel Primont is Professor of Economics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He received his doctoral degree in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research includes theoretical work in production and duality theory and both theoretical and empirical work in efficiency measurement. He has published in a variety of journals including the Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Productivity Analysis, and Economic Theory.