Productivity analysis: roots, foundations, trends and perspectives

Abstract The goal of this article is to give a brief overview of productivity analysis, starting with general concepts, its importance and a brief historical excursion and then focusing on various productivity indexes. We also start from very simple productivity indexes to more sophisticated, such as Malmquist Productivity Indexes, which are among the most popular in academic literature these days. A special attention is on the contributions to this literature from Rolf Färe and Shawna Grosskopf (and their many co-authors), and some of the related works they have inspired.A brief discussion of likely perspectives for the area is also provided.