STOCHASTIC FRONTIER ANALYSIS OF NEW ZEALAND'S MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES: SOME EMPIRICAL RESULTS

This paper examines the sources of total factor productivity growth (TFP) in New Zealand's manufacturing industries over the period 1978-98 and over various sub-periods. Examination of the data adopts two stages using a stochastic frontier approach. The first stage involves the specification and estimation of the stochastic frontier production function and the prediction of technical efficiency effects. The second stage involves the specification of a regression model for the predicted technical efficiency effects. The sources of TFP growth have been decomposed into four components; i.e. technical progress, changes in technical efficiency, scale effects, and change in allocative efficiency. The empirical results show that productivity has been largely due to changes in technical progress, technical efficiency and resource allocation effect. The changes in technical progress and resource allocation have improved in the post-reform period, i.e. 1984-98, while technical efficiency has declined in the post-reform period. With respect to scale effect its contribution to productivity growth is quite small