ESTIMATION OF MULTIOUTPUT PRODUCTION-FUNCTIONS WITH INCOMPLETE DATA -A GENERALIZED MAXIMUM-ENTROPY APPROACH

One problem commonly, encountered when analysing multiproduct-multifac tor firms is the lack of activity-specific input data. The present stu dy contributes to rite empirical literature on production functions by presenting art information theoretic approach to estimating productio n functions in the absence of activity specific input allocations. The procedure relies solely; on production data, so that behavioural nl h ypothesis (e.g., profit maximisation) are not required and estimation can proceed in the absence of price data. In addition, the method can be applied to ill-posed problems. The proposed procedure is demonstrat ed with simulated production data and exhibits favourable statistical properties.