Productivity Accounting

Emili Grifell-Tatjé is currently Professor of Management and Business Economics in the Department of Business at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and former head of department and academic director of the doctoral programme in Economics, Management and Organization. He has received research grants from academic and private institutions, and has been awarded visiting appointments by various universities around the world. Professor Grifell-Tatjé has published in a wide range of academic journals. C. A. Knox Lovell is Honorary Professor with the Centre for Efficiency and Productivity Analysis in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. He served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Productivity Analysis for a decade. He has authored several books, including Production Frontiers (with Färe and Grosskopf) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (with Kumbhakhar) for Cambridge University Press.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Profitability change: its generation and distribution; 3. Decomposing the productivity-change and price-recovery-change components of profitability change; 4. Profit change: its generation and distribution; 5. Decomposing the quantity-change and price-change components of profit change; 6. Decomposing the productivity-change component of profit change; 7. Productivity and cost; 8. Productivity, capacity utilization, and return on assets.

'The central theme of this book is decomposition. With chirurgical precision the authors dissect change of profitability, profit, cost, and return-on-assets, looking for traces of productivity change. They are thereby interested not only in the drivers of productivity change, but also in the distribution of its fruits. As a result the book turns out to be a tasty blend of economics, statistics, and business performance measurement. In addition, quite a number of lesser known treasures from history were unearthed. This is a rich book, both for theorists and practitioners.' Bert M. Balk, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University