Emili Grifell-Tatjé

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Autonomous University of Barcelona

This research develops a new group-based profit difference model for comparing profit performance at the group level with heterogeneous production technology and currencies. The proposed model can fully measure component effects that contribute to cross-group profit variation and also explicitly accounts for the contribution of the exchange rate to...

The aim of this study is twofold. First, to identify who benefited from the productivity growth of the American agricultural sector from 1960 to 2004. Second, to measure the relationship between changes in productivity, its distribution, and the evolution of variables linked with climate change. This study shifts the attention from the drivers of p...

The main objective of this paper is to introduce an Allen‐type index of differentiation based on cost functions. With this index, we create an economic measure of product differentiation that quantifies differences between products. Applied research has some generally accepted economic measures, for example, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index for marke...

Previous studies agree that competition influences price dispersion, however there is disagreement on the direction of the effect. To explain this contradiction in findings we include a measure not typically considered in competitive analysis, the level of market heterogeneity. We find that the response of price dispersion to changes in competition...

Purpose Large attention surrounds identifying the meaningful blockchain business model on financial services, while a little focus about non-financial organizations and solutions in terms of how the blockchain business model can affect the organization and bring more value. To address the complex structure of businesses that have public goods, it i...

A primal (or direct) productivity index is conventionally defined as the ratio of an output quantity index to an input quantity index. There have been attempts in the literature to define and implement dual and indirect productivity indexes based on price changes rather than quantity changes. Although dual and indirect productivity indexes share a...

The main objective of the paper is to study the effect of product differentiation on price formation in the airline industry. For this purpose, we introduce the concept of a core product and examine how differentiation beyond the core product effects pricing and markups. We measure differentiation from the core using a Konüs type index of different...

Collaboration between universities and firms has boosted worldwide, due to the transition towards open business models on the industry side and the development of universities' third mission on the academia side. Such collaboration is expected to contribute positively to the improvement and development of products and practices at firms, which shou...

We introduce a novel cost index which collects the impact on cost change between levels of output attributes, allowing measurement of cost-driven differentiation by output attribute in a market. In a practical application we find that the response of price dispersion to changes in competition is conditioned by differentiation. Previous studies show...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how a major retailer like Kmart lost its dominant position in the American retail industry. Design/methodology/approach This paper contains a decomposition of profit change into meaningful economic drivers using a methodology that combines frontier analysis with index number theory. The empirica...

We revisit the recently revived concept of social economic progress. We take a microeconomic perspective and address economic progress where it originates, with value creation at individual businesses. We begin with a brief history of thought on the concept. We continue by analyzing how a business creates private value through productivity growth,...

This chapter provides a wide-ranging interdisciplinary overview of productivity analysis, which also serves to introduce the chapters in the Handbook. It begins with an exploration into the significance of productivity growth, for business, for the economy, and for social economic progress. The chapter continues with a treatment of how productivity...

This chapter explores the relationship between productivity and financial performance, primarily at the level of an individual business. It begins by decomposing profit change into price and quantity drivers, under alternative accounting treatments of operating surplus. The chapter considers a range of related issues, including the drivers of produ...

We develop exact relationships between empirical Fisher indexes and their theoretical Malmquist and Konüs counterparts. We begin by using implicit Malmquist price and price recovery indexes to establish exact relationships between empirical Fisher quantity and productivity indexes and theoretical Malmquist quantity and productivity indexes. We then...

The chapter proposes a definition of the potential economic incentives for competitors to cooperate with each other, namely coopetition. A non-parametric methodological approach based on the rate of return on assets (ROA), a well-known measure of financial performance, enables comparison between non-coopetition and coopetition statuses. The potenti...

Presentation draws on Agrell, P J and E Grifell-Tatjé (2016), A Dynamic Model for Firm-Response to Non-Credible Incentive Regulation Regimes, Energy Policy 90, 287–299.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light in the business practices undertaken by the largest retailer of the world: Wal-Mart. Through careful examination of the data available for this company as well as its main rivals, we have assembled a practical dataset for our goals. We seek to understand the variety of business models applied in the retail...

Productivity Accounting. The Economics of Business Performance by professors E. Grifell-Tatjé and C.A.K. Lovell (Cambridge University Press) offers an in-depth analysis of productivity performance. The book provides an analytical framework within which to account for productivity performance, and also to account for its causes and its consequences....

Mining and fishing are both extractive industries, although one resource is renewable and the other is not. Miners and fishers pursue financial objectives, although their objectives may differ. In both industries financial performance is influenced by productivity and prices. Finally, in both industries capacity constraints influence financial perf...

Although widely applied in Europe, incentive regulation for infrastructure rests on scant empirical evidence. Most firms under price-regulation are constrained to cost minimization and cannot reveal preferences for other rent-seeking behaviour. Further, the type of methodology used for the determination of the price-or revenue cap has not been subj...

Although widely applied in Europe, incentive regulation for infrastructure rests on scant empirical evidence. Most firms under price-regulation are constrained to cost minimization and cannot reveal preferences for other rent-seeking behaviour. Further, the type of methodology used for the determination of the price- or revenue cap has not been sub...

This article evaluates quantitatively the welfare effects and their distribution among key stakeholders of Mali's brief water privatisation experience. To do so, we estimate economic worth generation and its drivers from a new use of indicator duality and production theory. We find that: (i) most users, intermediate suppliers, investors and workers...

In recent years, the concept of the business model has received substantial attention in the strategy literature, where a number of qualitative approaches to describe, represent, and evaluate business models have been proposed. We contend that while helpful to understand a firm’s overall logic of value creation and capture, qualitative methods must...

The aim of this study is to provide a tool which enables us to conduct statistical analysis in the context of changes in productivity and profit. We build on previous initiatives to decompose profit change into mutually exclusive and exhaustive sources. To do this we use distance functions, which are calculated empirically using linear programming...

This paper offers a unique quantitative evaluation of the distribution of the welfare of a water privatization experience in Mali among labor, investors, intermediate input providers, users and taxpayers. The assessment is based on indicator duality and production theory. The paper shows that users benefited through lower real water prices -althoug...

The product test asks the product of the volume and price index numbers to equal the corresponding value change. The literature treats the product test as a requirement. We treat it as a hypothesis, and we provide an empirical test.

The principal aim of this study is to evaluate the regulation of electricity distribution in Spain. To this end, we begin by analyzing whether the changes introduced by the regulator led distribution companies to improve their efficiency; we then address whether the reimbursements paid to the distribution companies are linked to efficiency; lastly,...

We examine variations in financial and economic performance as a function of organizational form, and, over time. The forms we consider include Spanish commercial banks, savings banks, and financial cooperatives. We decompose multilateral variation in operating profit, our measure of financial performance, into price and quantity effects. We then d...

This paper assesses the restructuring of the Spanish electric power sector by analysing the performance of electric companies. To this end, we jointly analyse the creation and decomposition of the economic value generated by them before and after the reform, and its distribution among firms' stakeholders. Our results show that after the reform (i)...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach for gauging the performance of the operating units of a retail banking organisation, responding to the special demands of an internal evaluation. Design/methodology/approach The paper defines a measure of internal performance (MIP) based on behavioural theory, particularly on disappoin...

The Marco Legal Estable provides us with a rare opportunity to study a system of multi-output reimbursements applied to the distribution of electricity in Spain over an extensive period of time: 1988–1997. To do so, an analysis structure is proposed based on a Bennet-type indicator (1920), which allows us to identify the variations in the revenues...

Hypothesis testing and statistical precision in the context of nonparametric efficiency and productivity measurement have been investigated since the early 1990s. Recent contributions focus on this matter through the use of resampling methods?i.e., bootstrapping techniques. However, empirical evidence is still practically non-existent. This gap is...

This note illustrates the potential impact of the specification of a convex production technology on establishing minimal costs compared to the use of a non-convex technology when benchmarking electricity distributors. This methodological reflection is mainly motivated by recent engineering literature providing evidence for non-convexities in elect...

We study the economic, financial and distributional performance of the United States Postal Service subsequent to its 1971 reorganization. We investigate the economic sources of productivity change, (technical change, change in cost efficiency, and scale economies), and the distribution of the financial benefits of productivity change (consumers of...

In this paper we analyze the levels of technical efficiency and productivity growth attained by Spanish insurance companies during a period of deregulation. We compute Malmquist productivity indexes using the estimates of parametric distance function for several specialized insurance branches. In this way, we show that branch specialization matters...

Este artículo responde a las llamadas a la investigación sobre el riesgo en el campo de la dirección estratégica, revisando el concepto y la medida del riesgo ex post o realizado. Para ello se asume que el objetivo prevalente de las empresas es la búsqueda de un desempeño superior sostenido y que el riesgo es la no consecución de este objetivo. Est...

Most theoretical and empirical research on cooperatives focuses on the comparative statics behavior of optimizing cooperatives. We focus on the magnitude and sources of variation in the dividend that cooperatives are presumed to maximize. Variation in the dividend leads to an inefficient allocation of labor among cooperatives. For a panel of 59 Spa...

A principios de los a�os 80 se implant� en Espa�a un sistema de regulaci�n para el sector el�ctrico conocido como Marco Legal Estable, y que pretend�a dar una soluci�n a la situaci�n de precariedad econ�mica y financiera por la que atravesaba esta industria en esos momentos. Este marco legal se basaba en un sistema multiproducto, en el que se retri...

Since engineering information is rarely available, standard practice is to benchmark managerial performance against best observed practice. We exploit a rare opportunity to benchmark managerial performance against engineering standards. Our managerial performance describes the activities of Spanish electricity distributors, and our engineering stan...

The principal aim of this paper is to measure the amount by which the profit of a multi-input, multi-output firm deviates from maximum short-run profit, and then to decompose this profit gap into components that are of practical use to managers. In particular, our interest is in the measurement of the contribution of unused capacity, along with mea...

Hypothesis testing and statistical precision in the context of nonparametric efficiency and productivity measurement have been investigated since the early 1990s. Recent contributions focus on this matter through the use of resampling methods?i.e., bootstrapping techniques. However, empirical evidence is still practically non-existent. This gap is...

This paper proposes a two-dimensional Strategic Performance Measure (SPM) to evaluate the achievement of sustained superior performance. This proposal builds primarily on the fact that, under the strategic management perspective, a firm's prevalent objective is the pursuit of sustained superior performance. Three Basic conceptual dimensions stem fr...

Malmquistindexes of productivity are generally estimated using index numbertechniques or non-parametric frontier approaches. The aim ofthis paper is to show that Malmquist indexes can be estimatedin a similar way using parametric-deterministic or parametric-stochasticfrontier approaches. To allow a multi-output multi-input technologyand for technic...

This study develops an analytical model capable of decomposing both intertemporal and multilateral cost variation. It begins by attributing cost variation to a price effect and a quantity effect. Then the quantity effect is decomposed into a productivity effect and an activity effect. The productivity effect in turn decomposes into a cost efficienc...

In this study we consider the linkage between productivity change and profit change. We develop an analytical framework in which profit change between one period and the next is decomposed into three sources: (i) a productivity change effect (which includes a technical change effect and an operating efficiency effect), (ii) an activity effect (whic...

In 1953 Sten Malmquist, a Swedish economist and statistician, published inTrabajos de Estad{\'i}stica the foundations of a productivity index which now bears his name. In this paper we generalize the Malmquist productivity index. We show that (i) the generalized Malmquist productivity index can be expressed as the product of a Malmquist productivi...

The Malmquist productivity index is based on distance functions, which are reciprocals of radial Debreu-Farrell efficiency measures, and which have a number of desirable properties. Linear programming techniques are frequently employed to calculate the efficiency measures. However these techniques can leave slacks, which constitute a non-radial for...

In this paper we present a new benchmark methodology which explains the differences in level of the rate of return on assets between two firms. Our approach is developed in an economic context given by the neoclassical theory of the firm. The difference between the benchmark firm's return on assets and that of another firm in the industry is explai...

DEA is typically applied to cross-section data to analyze productive efficiency. DEA is infrequently applied to panel data to analyze the variation of productive efficiency over time, but when it is, the technique of choice has been window analysis. Here, we adopt a different approach to the use of DEA with panel data. Following the lead of Färe a...

The Malmquist productivity index has many attractive features. One is that it can be epxressed as the product of a technical efficiency change index and a technical change index. In this paper we express the technical change index as the product of a magnitude index and a bias index. We then express the bias index as the product of an output bias i...

In this paper we examine the pattern of productivity change in Spanish banking over the period 1986–1993. Two sectors dominate Spanish banking, commercial banks and the faster-growing savings banks. We begin by examining productivity change separately within each sector. However since the two sectors are gradually becoming more competitive, we cont...

In this study we consider the linkage between productivity change and profit change. We develop an analytical framework in which profit change between one period and the next is decomposed into three sources: (i) a productivity change effect (which includes a technical change effect and an operating efficiency effect), (ii) an activity effect (whic...

During the 1980s many regulatory constraints limiting competition in Spanish banking were relaxed or removed, although deregulation came later to savings banks than to the rest of the banking sector. Two consequences of partial deregulation of savings banks have been a rapid growth in branching activity, much of it geographically dispersed, and a b...

In recent years the Malmquist index has gained in popularity as a measure of productivity change. We demonstrate that, in the presence of non-constant returns to scale, the Malmquist productivity index does not accurately measure productivity change. The bias is systematic, and depends on the magnitude of scale economies.

Collateral impacts of LULUCF projects, especially those concerning social and environmental aspects, have been recognised as important by the Marrakech Accords. The same applies to the necessity of assessing and, if possible, of quantifying the magnitude of these impacts. This article aims to define, clarify and structure the relevant social, econo...

Summary Rapidly expanding uses of DEA have been accompanied by developments which have enhanced its power and enlarged its utility for additional applications. Developments covered in the present paper include simulation studies comparing DEA with competing forms of statistical regressions. Other studies covered show how these two approaches can be...

This paper analyses some of the approaches that explain the variation in profits based on the concept of total factor productivity (TFP), using the framework of the neoclassical theory of production. In this field different explanatory decompositions of the variation in profits have been suggested. These are based on mathematical expressions that q...

Resumen En este trabajo realizamos una descomposición de la variación en los beneficios económicos registrada por las principales empresas eléctricas españolas a lo largo del periodo 1991-2004. Mediante la aplicación de técnicas de análisis frontera no paramétrico, relacionamos los cambios en la productividad y los precios con la trayectoria de los...

A principios de los años 80 se implantó en España un sistema de regulación para el sector eléctrico conocido como Marco Legal Estable, y que pretendía dar una solución a la situación de precariedad económica y financiera por la que atravesaba esta industria en esos momentos. Este marco legal se basaba en un sistema multiproducto, en el que se retri...

This paper proposes a two-dimensional Strategic Performance Measure (SPM) to evaluate the achievement of sustained superior performance. This proposal builds primarily on the fact that, under the strategic management perspective, a firm's prevalent objective is the pursuit of sustained superior performance. Three basic conceptual dimensions stem fr...

In this working paper we examine variation in financial performance, both across organizational form and through time. Because variation in financial performance may be driven by variation in productivity,we also examine variation in productivity, again across organizational form and through time. The organizational forms we consider are Spanish co...