This paper presents a metafrontier production function model for firms in different groups having different technologies. The metafrontier model enables the calculation of comparable technical efficiencies for firms operating under different technologies. The model also enables the technology gaps to be estimated for firms under different technologies relative to the potential technology available to the industry as a whole. The metafrontier model is applied in the analysis of panel data on garment firms in five different regions of Indonesia, assuming that the regional stochastic frontier production function models have technical inefficiency effects with the time-varying structure proposed by Battese and Coelli (1992).

This book is concerned with measuring the performance of firms, which convert inputs into outputs. An example of a firm is a shirt factory that uses materials, labour and capital (inputs) to produce shirts (output). The performance of this factory can be defined in many ways. A natural measure of performance is a productivity ratio: the ratio of outputs to inputs, where larger values of this ratio are associated with better performance. Performance is a relative concept. For example, the performance of the factory in 2004 could be measured relative to its 2003 performance or it could be measured relative to the performance of another factory in 2004, etc.

This paper considers a stochastic metafrontier function to investigate the technical efficiencies of firms in different groups that may not have the same technology. A decomposition of output is presented involving the technology gap and technical efficiency ratios for firms in a group relative to the best practice in the industry.