Energy Policy, Vol.39, No.2, 826-833, 2011
Firm size and productivity. Evidence from the electricity distribution industry in Brazil
In this paper we apply Stochastic Frontier Analysis through a distance function to investigate the impact of firm size on productivity development in electricity distribution. We use a sample of seventeen Brazilian firms from 1998 to 2005 and decompose productivity into technical efficiency, scale efficiency and technical change. Moreover, a further step is to decompose the technical change measurement into several components. The results indicate that firm size is important for industry's productivity, and therefore a key aspect to consider when making decisions that affect the market structure in the electricity distribution industry. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.