ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the way in which we have used the production function, the econometric tool that handles the study of the impact of service inputs on the measures of outputs. There are four sections. The first summarises the main concepts of production function theory. 'Joint supply' is discussed in chapter 11, which is focused on its estimation. The second section explores the features added to the standard form of the production function to fit it to the needs of the production of welfare approach. The third section discusses important implications of the methodology, and generally provides a 'manual' for the interpretation of the results. The last section outlines the structure of the chapters containing the results for each of the output variables.
