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The political changes witnessed over the last two decades in Eastern Europe propitiated the scenario for comparative analyses between these countries and their counterparts in advanced market economies. This interest materialised in many studies focused on productivity and efficiency analysis of firms or industrial sectors. Nevertheless, not many of them both at macro and micro level- applied techniques related to the conceptual framework of non-parametric frontier efficiency (DEA) and distance functions to analyse economies of scale, cost efficiency, capacity utilisation degree or budget constrained profit maximisation. This book, therefore, provides not only a theoretical framework for these techniques but also the empirical output obtained from their application to industrial sectors in seven European countries - Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Romania and Spain- from 1995 to 1998. Beyond the perishable character of the information, this analysis should help enlarge the spectrum of non-parametric techniques applications, and should be of interest to those working in the field, or anyone interested in learning more about European transition economies.

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Nela Filimon, Ph.D.: Associate Professor at Universitat de Girona. Fields of interest: business economics, economics of culture and consumer behaviour. Diego Prior, Ph.D.: Full Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Fields of interest: private and public business management, corporate governance, efficiency and productivity analysis.

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