| My dissertation considers a Cobb-Douglas frontier production specification and a translog frontier production specification. First, I specify a Cobb-Douglas frontier production with a simple technical change term and a technical inefficiency term that follow the truncated normal or the half normal distribution. Second, I specify a translog frontier production function with a nonneutral (or neutral) technical change term and a technical inefficiency that follow the truncated normal (or the half normal) distribution. I use the maximum likelihood method to estimate the parameters of the stochastic production frontier.;First, this dissertation seeks to improve understanding of patterns of efficiency and technical changes in manufacturing and industries. In particular, I estimate a stochastic frontier production function for a sample of 13 OECD (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries and decompose productivity growth into technical efficiency and technical changes. Second, with the definition of efficiency and technical changes, this study gets more accurate policy analysis for productivity growth. Furthermore, with the industry-level data, this study gets more accurate results for productivity-enhancing policy implications. This study compares the productivity performance to see whether convergence occurs in manufacturing and industries. Third, under the definition of efficiency and technical changes, one of my objectives is to show that the stochastic frontier model is conceptually a better technique than other production models such as the nonfrontier method (e.g., growth accounting approach), nonparametric method (e.g., data envelopment analysis), and nonstochastic method (e.g., Deterministic frontier). Fourth, this study shows the industry-level performance and the manufacturing-level performance are different for the pattern of technical efficiency, technical progress, and productivity growth. |
