A general approach to intertemporal and interspatial productivity comparisons (Q792056)

From authors' summary: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a general methodology for analysing the sources of intertemporal or interspatial differences in outputs and costs, general in the sense that our methodology allows the productivity analyst to 'break out' of the quadratic 'straightjacket' imposed by the class of superlative index number comparisons. Starting from Taylor series expansions about the two points to be compared, we develop a general growth accounting equation which can be approximated to any desired degree of accuracy, depending on the information available.