This paper presents a new procedure based on DEA applied to complete panel data, allowing the calculation of technical level and efficiency bounds. The methodology is applied to the food industry of the Spanish regions, and the results are compared with those obtained using Malmquist indexes. Productivity measurement based on gross production vs. value added approaches are evaluated. It emerges that the results from empirical sector productivity models based on value added could be severely biased.

Key words: productivity, DEA, efficiency, change technical, regions, industry nourishing.
JEL Classification: D24, L66, O47.